Page 53 of A Legal Affair
“It was a long time ago,” he said gruffly, suddenly awash with memories of his mother—a quiet, unassuming woman who’d struck him as a tragic figure long before her death. He remembered, as a child, wondering about the sadness in her eyes, the smiles she sometimes forced when Crandall spoke to her. Although his parents never argued in front of him, Caleb knew their marriage was unstable, fraught with a tension he hadn’t understood until he was much older. That was when he’d learned about his father’s extramarital affair with a woman he’d loved since childhood. The betrayal had hastened his wife’s descent into depression, making her more susceptible to the disease that eventually claimed her life. To this day, Caleb knew what killed his mother couldn’t have been cured with medicine. She’d died of a broken heart.
“I guess we both know what it’s like to lose a parent,” Daniela said quietly. “But at least you had your mother for fourteen years. Does that make it better, or worse?”
“I don’t know.” He hesitated, then confided, “My mother and I weren’t that close. I didn’t know her very well.”
“I’m really sorry to hear that,” Daniela said, her eyes full of sympathy. “Was she emotionally closed off?”
“You could say that. It’s complicated,” Caleb murmured, his tone discouraging further probing.
Daniela fell silent for several moments, thinking. Then, “Can I ask you another personal question?”
He tensed, automatically bracing himself. “Go ahead,” he said warily.
“Why did you stop practicing law, Caleb? I heard you were amazing.”
“Don’t believe everything you hear,” he said grimly. Absently he realized she’d been calling him by his first name, but he didn’t bother correcting her. What was the point? His behavior on Friday evening, and his very presence in her home tonight, was proof that their relationship—or whatever it was—had progressed beyond the use of formal addresses.
“Don’t be so modest,” Daniela teased. “It’s okay to say you kicked ass and took names as one of San Antonio’s most formidable trial attorneys.”
“You have a flair for the dramatic, Miss Moreau.”
“It’s Daniela,” she corrected. “And you’re avoiding my question.”
“No, I’m not.” He scrubbed a hand down his face and pushed out a long, deep breath. He could feel the dull edges of fatigue settling into his muscles. He’d overdone it at the ranch this weekend, trying to purge her from his system.
As if such a thing were even possible.
“I stopped litigating because I got burned out,” he said finally. “Contrary to what you may have heard, there was no deep philosophical reason behind my decision. I didn’t wake up one morning and have an epiphany. The truth is, I didn’t particularly like most of the people I was defending, and over time, I didn’t like myself too much, either. So I got out.”
“You make it sound so simple,” Daniela said softly, watching him with eyes that saw too much. “I know it wasn’t that simple.”
Caleb shrugged, unnerved by her perceptiveness but unwilling to show it. “No simpler than it was for you to walk away from your accounting career. But once you did, you knew it was the right thing to do. Seems to me you should understand better than anyone my reasons for leaving the courtroom.”
“I think I do,” she murmured.
And somehow, Caleb knew she did. “Come to think of it,younever answered my question that day in the coffee shop. I asked you why you wanted to be a lawyer, and you never told me.”
“I didn’t?”
“No,” he said succinctly, “you didn’t.” Why did he get the sense that Daniela was being deliberately evasive?
She shrugged, the edge of her teeth digging into the plump flesh of her bottom lip. “I don’t know. Maybe I feel silly admitting to my law professor that I’m not really sure what I hope to accomplish with my law degree. I mean, I’m twenty-seven years old, too damn old not to know what I want to do with the rest of my life.”
Caleb smiled, touched by this unexpected glimpse of her vulnerable side. “At the risk of sounding like a patronizing grownup, there’s nothing wrong with not knowing what you want to do with the rest of your life. At some point or another, everyone experiences that uncertainty about the future, no matter how old—oryoung—they are. You have nothing to be embarrassed about.”
She beamed a smile at him, that beautiful, endearing smile that made his chest swell and had him feeling twenty feet tall.
Gruffly he said, “But I would suggest that you come up with a game plan soon, because law school doesn’t get any easier as you go along. And if you’re in it for the long haul, you might as well have a clear idea what you expect to get out of it.”
She grinned, giving him a mock salute. “Yes, sir.”
He chuckled, reaching over to playfully ruffle her hair, as much to tease as to touch her. “Smartass.”
As he leaned away, Daniela caught his hand in hers. Without releasing his gaze, she rested her warm cheek in the curve of his palm. His breath stalled in his lungs. As if in a trance, he watched her lips part and form the soft request: “Stay and watch a movie with me.”
And though a warning bell went off in his brain, he felt himself nodding slowly. “All right.”
Halfway through the romantic comedy, Daniela fell asleep curled up in a ball in a corner of the sofa. As Caleb watched her, he had to force himself not to reach over and touch her, not to trace his fingers across the delicate arch of her brow or the pillowy fullness of her lips. Her cheeks were flushed, and there were faint dark smudges beneath her eyes from lack of sleep. As he gazed at her, he felt a wave of fierce tenderness wash over him. This Daniela, with the sweetly angelic face and curled-up body, posed no threat to him.
