Page 113 of A Legal Affair

Her mother awaited her in the living room, where she’d apparently witnessed the entire scene from the window. Daniela pulled up short, her face heating with embarrassment at getting caught.

But then elation took over, and she threw her arms around Pamela and exclaimed, “Mom, you’re home! I missed you!”

Pamela chuckled dryly. “Coulda fooled me.” She leaned back, looking vaguely amused as she searched her daughter’s face. “Who was that young man on the motorcycle?”

Daniela shrugged. “Just someone I met at the university,” she replied, trying to sound nonchalant—but not so nonchalant that her mother would think she was having cheap, meaningless hookups with random men.

Pamela looked skeptical. “Just someone, huh?”

“Yes, just someone.” She dropped a kiss on her mother’s soft cheek before heading toward her bedroom. “I want to hear all about your trip?—”

“Then why are you walking in the opposite direction?”

Daniela glanced over her shoulder with a sheepish grin. “Because if I stand there a minute longer, Mama, you’ll have me confessing everything I’ve done over the past week. Give me time to get my story straight.”

At that, her mother laughed.

Ten minutes later, Caleb roared up to the curb next to a sidewalk café where Shara sat at one of the little tables sipping a latte while working on her laptop. He’d tracked her down using the app she’d insisted he install on his phone so he could locate her if she ever went missing while walking across campus at night. It wasn’t a reciprocal exchange, since he’d never granted her request to trackhiswhereabouts.

He wasn’t born yesterday.

Dropping the kickstand, he pulled off his helmet and propped it on his lap. The distinctive rumble of the Ducati’s engine turned heads, including Shara’s. When she saw him, her surprise quickly turned to pleasure.

“Caleb—”

He crooked a finger at her.

She rose without hesitation and sashayed over with a warm, delighted smile as he killed the engine. He didn’t want her to miss a single word he was about to say.

“What a nice surprise,” she gushed. “Did you change your mind about joining?—”

“You talked to my father,” Caleb said flatly.

Her smile froze. “I?—”

“Don’t ever do that again. He has nothing to do with this.”

“Well, no,” she conceded, “but since you wouldn’t listen to reason, I just thought?—”

“You thought wrong.” His voice was hard, his stare cold as he quietly mused, “So this is what our friendship has come to, Shara?”

“Don’t put this on me,” she fired back. “Youbroke the rules.”

He regarded her stonily. “Fraternizing with colleagues is frowned on, but that didn’t stop you from welcoming me into your bed, and since then you haven’t stopped inviting me back.”

Her face tightened with humiliation, nostrils flaring. “If you came here to beg me to reconsider?—”

“Beg? Please. You know me better than that. Do what you gotta do.”

She shook her head at him, looking hurt and stunned. “I can’t believe…It doesn’t have to be this way, Caleb.”

“On that we agree.”

“Stop seeing her,” she demanded petulantly, anger and desperation lacing her voice. “Tell her it’s over.”

“That’s not happening.”

Her chin lifted. “Then you leave me no choice.”