Was it possible Crandall Thorne wasn’t as bad as she—and her brothers—had thought?
It was an unsettling prospect.
As the sun slid toward the mountain range, ushering in nightfall, candles were discreetly produced and lit along the table. After lingering over coffee and sinfully rich hazelnut cheesecake, the party began to break up. Crandall announced that he was tired; the four-hour dialysis treatment he’d undergone that day had taken its usual toll on him, he grudgingly admitted.
Bowing gallantly over Daniela’s hand, he smiled at her. “It was a pleasure spending time with you this evening, Miss Moreau. I’ll be in touch soon.”
Daniela felt an immediate kick of guilt. “Thank you for inviting me into your beautiful home, Mr. Thorne,” she said warmly. “I had a wonderful time, and I look forward to hearing from you again.”
Shortly after Crandall departed, Ruth and Rita, offering vague excuses about needing to finish certain tasks before bedtime, wished Caleb and Daniela a good night and quickly retreated inside the house.
Before Daniela realized what had happened, she and Caleb were all alone.
Chapter 15
Gazing across the candlelit table at Caleb’s darkly sensual face, Daniela was struck by a sudden attack of shyness. “I guess you can take me home now,” she said, hearing the reluctance in her own voice.
She hadn’t fooled Caleb, either. One corner of his mouth curved upward. “You don’t want to go home yet,” he told her, his voice like the stroke of velvet on her skin.
Her belly quivered. “I don’t?”
He shook his head, keeping her gaze trapped in the banked heat of his own. “At least not until you’ve watched the sunset. It’s an amazing sight from here, one of those simple pleasures everyone should experience at some point in their lives.”
Daniela chuckled softly, recognizing her own words to him. “Like coffee and ice cream?”
He smiled, slow and sexy. “Exactly.”
As she watched, breath trapped in her throat, Caleb glided to his feet with an effortless flexing of his muscles and came around the table to claim the chair beside her. As he scooted closer to her, the sides of their shoulders and thighs brushed. Daniela trembled, sensation passing from one nerve to another like a flow of warm honey.
“I really had a great time tonight,” she told him somewhat breathlessly. She felt like a shy virgin on her first date with the handsome star quarterback of the high school football team. Which was ridiculous, considering how intimate she and Caleb had already been with each other.
“Glad to hear it,” Caleb murmured, his gaze searching hers in the approaching dusk. “Did you mean what you said earlier, about men going out of their way to avoid commitment? Has that been your personal experience?”
Daniela laughed. “To be fair to your gender,” she drawled, “it’s not like I’ve ever met anyone I’ve seriously contemplated settling down with.”
Until now, an inner voice whispered.
Shaken, she promptly shoved aside the dangerous thought.
“Are you seeing anyone right now, Daniela?” Caleb asked huskily.
She turned her head, and this time it was she who searched his face. “Does it matter?” she countered softly.
Something stirred in the fathomless depths of his eyes, an unnamed emotion that made her heart beat a wild tattoo in her chest. For several charged moments they stared at each other, and then Caleb glanced away, breaking the intimacy of their heated gaze.
“I tell myself it shouldn’t matter,” he quietly admitted, gazing out into the distance. “You’re one of my students—”
“I’m twenty-seven years old, Caleb,” Daniela reminded him. “Hardly a child.”
A muscle bunched in his jaw. “That’s not the point. The point is that there are certain standards, a code of ethics established to govern our conduct with students, and I’ve broken each and every rule. That’s not easy for me to swallow.”
As Daniela studied his brooding profile in the lengthening shadows, she felt a twinge of sympathy. For the first time, it dawned on her that Shara Adler had lied to her about Caleb’s past indiscretions with other students, in order to make Daniela jealous enough to back off. The man seated next to her was genuinely conflicted about crossing the line with her. He was not a womanizer, as she’d been led to think, but an honest, upstanding man made of flesh and blood who’d succumbed to temptation. The truth of that was so obvious Daniela wondered how on earth she’d ever believed otherwise.
Because you wanted to believe it. You wanted to latch on to something negative about him that would make you feel better about your own deceitfulness.
Shame flooded her at once, and the mellow mood she’d been in all evening began to dissipate.
Seeing her downcast expression, and mistaking the cause, Caleb reached over and gently took her chin between his thumb and forefinger, forcing her to meet his dark, piercing gaze. “That said,” he intoned in a low, husky voice, “I enjoyed every last second of making love to you, Daniela. And if I had to do it all over again, I wouldn’t change a thing, except to prolong our time together.”
Daniela’s heart soared, tears biting beneath her eyelids. “Oh, Caleb—”
He slanted his head over her mouth, capturing the rest of her words. He parted her lips with his and kissed her with a melting hunger, slowly exploring her mouth with his tongue in deep, sensuous strokes that sent a hard shiver through her.
“Caleb,” she half moaned against his lips, “what about your family? Do they know…? Do you think they suspect that we’re…?”
She felt the vibration of his low chuckle all the way down to her toes. He dragged his mouth from hers to kiss her lowered eyelids, then her temple, before drawing back slightly to smile into her eyes. “What do you think the mass exodus was about? They wanted to give us time alone.”
Daniela grinned. “I figured as much. Oh, look!” she cried in sudden delight.
Caleb turned his head, and together they watched the sun sink behind the vast mountaintops, spreading vivid flames across the sky in a display that was nothing short of breathtaking.
Daniela sighed deeply. “I think I’ve died and gone to heaven.”
Caleb smiled a little, gazing down at her. “Kinda feels that way, doesn’t it?” he said in a soft tone that made Daniela wonder if he was talking about the sunset, or something else entirely. She looked at him, and as she watched the play of candlelight across his strong, beautifully sculpted features, her heart swelled painfully in her chest.
Dear God. She was falling in love with him.
Even as her mind offered a swift, vehement denial, she knew it was true. She was falling in love with Caleb, and there was not a single thing she could do about it. She couldn’t tell him how she felt, nor could she stop herself from falling harder. Which was exactly what she was doing with each passing minute, hour and day that she spent with him—falling harder.
“Dance with me, Daniela.”
The low, seductive timbre of Caleb’s voice broke into her tortured musings. She blinked, and realized that he had risen from the chair and now stood over her, his hand outstretched to her.
She swallowed, staring up at him uncomprehendingly. “Dance? But…there’s no music.”
“A minor detail.” His midnight-black eyes glinted with mirth and something else, something so profoundly intimate that Daniela’s pulse accelerated, doing double time.
Drawing in an unsteady breath, she placed her trembling fingers in his hand, rose to her feet and allowed herself to be led away from the table, to a clearing on the flagstoned terrace. Holding her gaze, Caleb drew her slowly into the solid warmth of his arms.
As they began to sway together, falling into an easy rhythm that seemed instinctive, Daniela inquired dazedly, “What’re we dancing to, Caleb?”
“Whatever you want, sweetheart,” he murmured huskily, the tender endearment sending a wave of indescribable pleasure coursing through her. “How about ‘One Heartbea
t’ by Smokey?”
“Smokey Robinson?”
“Yeah.” Caleb hummed a bar from the familiar song in her ear, his voice a deep, velvety caress along her nerve endings.
“Mmm, that works,” Daniela all but purred. With a sigh of dreamy pleasure, she closed her eyes, curved her arms around his neck and rested her head on his shoulder. What could be more romantic, she thought, than slow dancing on a secluded hillside summit against the backdrop of a breathtakingly glorious sunset? It was perfect as nothing else in her life had ever been, their bodies moving in perfect harmony as if they had danced together a million times before. She was intensely aware of his body against hers as they swayed together, keeping to the beat of a romantic ballad heard only in their own minds. Every sinewy muscle that defined the hard wall of his chest, the length of his muscular thighs against hers, the gentle brush of his fingers across her cheek. Her breasts felt incredibly heavy against him, aching for his touch. She wanted to curl into him, press herself fully against him—so she did.
Caleb groaned softly into her hair. One strong hand slid up her back to close lightly over the nape of her neck, and the other moved down to gently grasp her bottom through the snug fabric of her skirt. She gasped a little.
He tilted her head back, his hand firm on her neck. She breathed deeply, her eyes half-closed, watching him through the thick fringe of her eyelashes. She saw the sensuous curve of his mouth, and then he was kissing her, a slow, drugging kiss that made her feel deliciously boneless. His hand gently kneaded her bottom, dragging her closer until she felt the undeniable proof of his arousal. An answering need swept through her like wildfire.
He shoved his fingers through the sides of her hair, working at the French twist until the pins loosened and popped free, scattering across the ground. Caleb emitted a low, satisfied groan as her hair tumbled freely to her shoulders.
“I’ve wanted to do this all night,” he uttered raggedly. He sank his hands deep into the curly, silken mass and seized her lips in another hot, soul-stealing kiss. Daniela kissed him back just as greedily, absorbing the heat and flavor of his mouth, running her hands up and down the corded muscles of his back, wanting him more than anything she’d ever wanted in her life. It scared her senseless.
“It’s getting late,” she whispered shakily when Caleb finally lifted his head from hers. “We should probably start heading back.”
Before I lose my mind completely and beg you to take me right here and right now, and God help us if your family is watching!
Caleb must have had the same thought, for she could have sworn she saw his pupils dilate in the candlelit gloom. His mouth curved upward in a slow, wolfish grin that made her breath catch, it was so darned potent.
“You’re right,” he murmured silkily. “I’d better take you home now…while I still can.”
“How’d the interview go with Crandall Thorne?” Janie Roarke inquired the next afternoon when she met Daniela for lunch at the Espuma Coffee and Tea Emporium located in the King William District, less than a ten-minute walk from Daniela’s house. The quaint little café had been converted from an old house and featured cozy, well-lit rooms decorated with the works of local artists.
Daniela took a sip of her iced Vietnamese coffee, a signature menu item at the Espuma. “The interview, if you can call it that, went well.”
Janie eyed her curiously. “What do you mean, ‘if you can call it that’?”
“Well, the actual interview itself lasted about five minutes. He asked me a few questions, and then it was time for dinner. For dinner we were joined by Crandall Thorne’s housekeeper, private nurse and, of course, Caleb, so there was really no opportunity for Crandall to continue the interview.”
“Hmm,” Janie murmured, nodding slowly. “Interesting.”
Daniela could see the wheels spinning in her sister-in-law’s mind. “What are you thinking?”
“Really want to know?” At Daniela’s exasperated look, Janie grinned. “Okay, here’s what I think. I think the interview was less about ascertaining your qualifications as an intern, and more about determining your potential as a future daughter-in-law.”
“What?” At the loud exclamation, curious heads swung in her direction. Daniela gave the other diners a sheepish look, then returned her attention to Janie. “What are you talking about?” she demanded, keeping her voice low.
Janie’s grin widened. “Think about it, El. How often would you guess Caleb Thorne takes his first-year law students home to meet his father?”
Daniela frowned, remembering the conclusion she’d reached about Caleb’s nonexistent affairs with his students. “Probably not very often,” she admitted.
“I’d venture to say he’s never brought home a student. So you can imagine Crandall Thorne’s surprise when, barely two weeks into the semester, Caleb comes to him with information about a student who should be considered for an internship at the firm. A first-year student, mind you, without a law background and no legal experience whatsoever. Now tell me. What do you think went through Crandall Thorne’s mind?”
“That his son believes I’m exceptionally brilliant?” Daniela suggested, but without much conviction.
Janie chuckled. “While that may be true,” she said wryly, “somehow I don’t believe that’s the case here. I think by the time Caleb finished telling his father all about you, Crandall realized that you must be pretty special to his son, special enough to bring home for an introduction.”
Daniela grew silent, recalling the first words out of Crandall Thorne’s mouth when he met her. You must be the young woman my son’s been raving about.
Had Caleb really raved about her? She felt a thrill of pleasure at the thought.
Janie was watching her, a speculative gleam in her dark eyes. “Which makes me wonder… Exactly how close have you and Caleb gotten?”
Heat crawled up Daniela’s neck. In the time it took her to drop her gaze and become absorbed in an examination of her half-eaten vegetable pita, Janie’s eyes widened in shock. “¡Ay dios! Have you slept with him?”
“Must you be so loud?” Daniela hissed, throwing a self-conscious glance around the busy restaurant. Thankfully, no curious gazes met hers this time—although she did notice more than a few averted grins.
She scowled at her amused lunch companion. “Thanks for broadcasting my personal business to a roomful of complete strangers.”
Mischief glimmered in Janie’s dark eyes. “When were you going to tell me about you and Mr. Sexy Law Professor?”
“I don’t know… Never, maybe?”
Janie laughed. “Oh, come on, El. I’m an old married woman. You know I have to live vicariously through you. Not that Kenny and I aren’t—”
Grimacing, Daniela held up a hand. “Please. I don’t even want to think about what you and my brother are, or aren’t, doing behind closed doors.” She shuddered at the thought, drawing another laugh from Janie.
“All right, out with it, Daniela. When did you and Professor Thorne begin your private tutoring sessions?”
Daniela was no recently deflowered virgin, but she suddenly felt like one as she reluctantly met Janie’s gaze across the table. “He showed up unexpectedly at my house on Monday evening,” she began.
“Seriously?”
Daniela nodded. “He wanted to know why I’d missed class that day. I told him I had the flu, invited him inside and…”
“And?” Janie prompted, leaning forward in her chair with an expression of rapt absorption.
Knowing that her sister-in-law would settle for nothing less than a detailed account, Daniela found herself telling Janie everything about the night she and Caleb made love. By the time she’d finished, nearly an hour later, Janie was smiling from ear to ear.
“Wow,” she murmured, staring at Daniela. “Sounds pretty amazing.”
“It was,” Daniela agreed, somewhat wistfully. “He’s amazing.”
Janie grinned. “Clearly.”
Daniela flushed. “I don’t jus
t mean in the bedroom. He’s amazing in the classroom, the way he effortlessly commands the attention of his students, even the slackers. The passion in his voice is there when he talks about the law, and civil procedure, in a way that lets you know teaching is not just a job to him. He can be stern and intimidating one moment, unbelievably sweet and funny the next. And he has this intense way of zeroing in on my face whenever I’m talking, and making me feel as if what I’m saying is ultra-important to him.”
“That’s probably because it is,” Janie observed with a gentle smile. “Sounds to me like Caleb Thorne is pretty crazy about you, El.”
Her words filled Daniela with a mixture of pleasure and despair, two emotions she’d been vacillating between since last night, when she’d made the difficult decision not to invite Caleb into her home. After their incredibly romantic slow dance under the stars, followed by a sexually charged ride back to her house in which they held hands and shared heated looks, Daniela had wanted nothing more than to finish what they’d started at the ranch. But she’d turned him away, telling him that they needed to slow things down. It was one of the hardest things she’d ever had to do in her life. But it had been necessary.
If she was to make things right between them, she had to begin the process of letting him go. Because once he learned the truth about her, there’d be no gradual weaning. She’d have to go cold turkey without him.
Caleb, hurt and enraged, would give her no other option.
“Something tells me,” Janie said, watching Daniela carefully, “that Caleb’s feelings aren’t one-sided.”
Daniela hesitated, then shook her head with a deep, heavy sigh. “No, they’re not.” She paused, swallowing past the lump in her throat before quietly confessing, “I’m in love with him, Janie.”
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