Page 51 of Take the Bait

“Thank you,” she said sadly.

“Thank you for reminding me of our professional obligations. I confess, I was not thinking about them earlier.” He paused. “At all.”

“Me, neither.” She smiled at him wistfully. “Being with you was epic. But it was also a huge mistake. We can’t tell another living soul about it. If asked, we both have to deny it ever happened.”

He frowned. “Nobody’s going to ask us if we slept together.”

“We can’t know that for certain.”

“I don’t like to lie,” he said doubtfully.

“Neither do I. But barring someone putting me under oath, I will deny it. I’ve worked too long and too hard to get here. I’m not going to throw it all away because I just had the best sex of my life.”

“The best of your life, huh?”

“Really? That’s what you got out of what I just said?”

“You’re so easy to get a rise out of,” he responded mildly. “But I agree with you. I won’t lie if put under oath, but shy of that, I’m prepared to deny tonight ever happened.”

“Thank you,” she breathed in relief.

People often scoffed at him for standing his ground on seemingly trivial points of ethics. But it was a slippery slide. Make a short cut once, and the next time it was a little easier to do, and a little easier, until right and wrong meant nothing any more. She was right, of course. They couldn’t tell anyone about this stolen night between them.

“I’ll deny it under one condition,” he declared.

“What’s that?” she asked warily.

“When Alex’s case is over, you agree to go out to dinner with me again and see if the chemistry’s still there between us.”

She snorted. “As if it wouldn’t be.”

He smiled ruefully. “Do we have a deal?”

“We do. No more social or personal contact of any kind between us until the trial’s over. Then dinner…and whatever comes after that.”

“God, I hate this,” he muttered.

“Same,” she muttered back.

He said grimly, “I’ll drive you home.”

15

Dani spent the weekend digging through old personnel files at WMP. Zoey had obtained a pile of paper folders out of the company’s archived records storage, and she’d sent a couple dozen more recent electronic files to Dani’s home email.

When she had a list of two dozen female lawyers who’d left the firm for no apparent reason shortly after being hired, Dani felt confident enough in her suspicion that she wasn’t the first woman who’d been treated as meat for sale at WMP to e-mail the women and share with them confidentially what she’d overheard.

That done, she went for a vigorous run in Central Park. She took a shower and made herself a power smoothie. But then she was out of ways to distract herself from thinking incessantly about Cam and their incendiary night together.

She couldn’t believe she’d thrown herself at him the way she had. Not that she could bring herself to regret having done so. Of course, he’d been all over her, too. It had been instant attraction, hot and unstoppable. She hadn’t been kidding when she’d told him it was the best sex of her life.

They might have to stay away from each other for now but that didn’t stop her from imagining doing everything they’d done that magical night—and more—again. Constantly.

The only thing that kept her from going over to his house and taking him to bed was the certain knowledge that both of their careers were over if they got caught.

Between worrying over how the women she’d reached out to would respond and fretting over whether Cam would forget all about her and move on to some other lucky woman’s bed before Alex’s trial concluded, she tossed and turned in bed for hours, unable to sleep.

It was nearly midnight when her cell phone rang, lurching her upright and out of steamy, frustrated thoughts of Cam. She answered the phone more grumpily than usual.

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