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“Hey, beautiful.” A warm, tingling hand landed lightly on her bare shoulder. Oh, wait. That was her doing the tingling.
She looked up at Cam and smiled. The guy did wear a suit extremely well. The first time she’d met him he’d been wearing sweaty gym clothes, and he’d been very sexy.
At the party, he’d taken off his coat and tie and wore an open necked dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up to display his tanned, muscular forearms, and he’d been even more sexy.
But she liked him best of all in a beautifully tailored suit, just like this. There was something about wondering what he looked like underneath the expensive wool and starched white cotton shirt that was a huge turn-on to her. And after all, she had a decent idea what was under the suit thanks to his skimpy, wet T-shirt and shorts that first day.
He leaned down to kiss both her cheeks, European-style. When he straightened, she noted the brief warning glance he fired at the other men nearby. Staking his claim on her, was he? That was okay. It played right into her grand plan.
He murmured, “Sorry about being so forward, but enough men in here are eyeing you like you’re on the menu for desert that I thought I’d better make it clear you’re off limits.”
“Umm, thanks? But how do you know I don’t want to pick up one of the men in here and take him home?”
“Do you want to?” he replied, sounding surprised and maybe a tiny bit hurt.
She took her time gazing around the bar, pretending to assess the unaccompanied male patrons. “No, I’ll pass. I’m already with the best prospect of the bunch.”
His eyebrows shot up.
“What?” she demanded in response to his eyebrows.
“I didn’t take you for the forward type.”
“I’m full of surprises,” she replied lightly.
“Indeed, you are. Shall we go sit down? Jean-Phillipe told me when I arrived that our table’s ready.”
“Who’s Jean-Phillipe?” she asked as she slid off the stool.
“The ma?tre d’.”
Cam was on a first name basis with the ma?tre d’ at a place like this? “How often do you come here?” she blurted.
“Whenever I have something to celebrate, I like to come here. It’s my favorite restaurant.” He held out his elbow for her. Wow. He was laying on the manners thick, tonight. Granted, this place was formal enough for polite gestures to seem appropriate.
“And what are we celebrating?” she asked him.
“Consider this my way of apologizing for our last encounter. I was totally out of line and I’m sorry.”
Well, shoot. She’d really enjoyed that kiss. While she knew it couldn’t happen again, she didn’t want the guy apologizing for blowing her mind. Unfortunately, the only way she could logically respond was to murmur, “Apology accepted.”
“Hungry?” he murmured as Jean-Phillipe led them toward their table.
“Mmm hmm. Starving.” She let just a hint of innuendo creep into the word. Not so much as to be cheap, but enough to let him know she was not frigid.
His gaze snapped to her, but his expression was too guarded for her to read his thoughts. This was, of course, the problem with being around attorneys socially. They were professionally trained to hide their real feelings.
Jean-Phillipe stopped beside a high-backed booth tucked in the back corner with a low, three-wicked candle providing the only light. Cam handed her into her seat, and she slid across the black velvet, appreciating its silky softness. Man. This spot screamed of romance.
“This is perfect, Jean-Phillipe,” Cam said warmly. “I don’t know how you always manage to come through for me like this, but I appreciate it.”
Cam had asked for this private, seductive booth, had he? Perfect. Her plan was going to be even easier to pull off tonight than she’d thought it would be.
Cam slid into the booth across from her. A waiter who’d obviously been remaining nearby, stepped up immediately to serve them, saying, “To go with your apéritif tonight, we have paté de foie gras and lobster in puff pastry.”
A second man with a white linen towel draped over his arm stepped up to the table and quietly introduced himself as the sommelier. He poured them two glasses of what turned out to be a crisp white wine that tickled Dani’s tongue.
She’d never had paté before and imitated Cam as he spread some of the spiced goose liver on a cracker and popped it in his mouth.
It was rich and savory and utterly delicious. If this was a harbinger of the meal to come, she was in for a treat. She took another sip of the wine, relishing how it cleared her palette and prepared her mouth for another bite of the yummy paté.
“How was your afternoon, counselor?” she asked, reaching for one of the lobster puffs.
“Interesting.” He launched into an explanation of a tricky legal argument a clever defense attorney had tried in court and how he’d avoided it.
Holy cow. The lobster was even more delicious than that paté. She could eat a whole plate of these suckers.
But despite how good the food was, she was more intrigued with how Cam had avoided the trap the other lawyer had laid for him. She made a suggestion for how the defense attorney could have sucked him back into the trap. Cam laughed and countered, and then she counter-countered.
He had fully as quick a mind as he’d already hinted at, and he was fun to spar with. He didn’t take her disagreeing with him personally, and they were able to have a spirited debate without getting emotional about it, which made the conversation even more entertaining.
The waiter interrupted long enough to ask which of the main courses they would like. Tonight, the choices were Tournedos Rossini, a beef filet mignon cooked in butter, served on a crouton, and topped with a hot slice of fresh whole foie gras and a madeira sauce, or Gallandais duck served whole and crisped with a plum chutney and orange coulis. When she couldn’t decide, Cam suggested they order one of each and share so she could taste both.
The waiter left and they resumed their vigorous legal debate. Eventually, they both leaned back as the waiter brought them a new wine to sample.
Cam declared, “I believe we have reached a draw.”
“Are you declaring the jury hung or conceding the point?” she retorted.
“I never concede.”
“Likewise,” she murmured, smiling over her glass at him and savoring the complex bite of an exceptional Bordeaux.
“Now that we’ve thoroughly dissected my day, how was yours?” he asked. To his credit, he actually sounded interested in hearing her answer. Huh. She’d assumed he would be a whole-world-revolves-around-me type. Most of the guys she’d gone to law school with had been that way.
She answered, “Well, I had a routine deposition in a divorce. There’s a solid pre-nup, and the fifth wife’s lawyer is trying to find a way to break it and get more of the soon-to-be ex’s millions.”
“God bless well written contracts,” Cam murmured.
“Amen,” she added. She took another appreciative sip of her wine. “Before that, I had a frustrating meeting with a client.”
“Can you talk about it?”
“Sorry, no. Confidentiality and all.”
“Got it.”
“But, I do want to talk with you about a fascinating chat I had with Leon Whitney yesterday.”
“About?”
She watched him closely. “I suspect you know what.”
His gaze flickered up toward the ceiling. Evasion . Oh, yeah. He’d definitely sicced the old fart on her to get her to take the D.A.’s plea deal.
All he said, though, was, “And?”
“And my client isn’t budging. I saw him yesterday and again this morning, and he remains committed to going to trial.”
“Was he your frustrating client?” Cam asked perceptively.
She nodded, declining to mention out the bit about Alex threatening to fire her if she did too good a job defending him.
Cam leaned back and took a drink of his own wine before commenting, “Based on our conversation so far this evening, I have to say this should be an interesting trial. I’ll look forward to what gambit you pull out of thin air in your futile efforts to save a one-hundred percent guilty man.”
She grinned in genuine amusement. “If that was a fishing expedition to get me to show you my cards before the trial begins, you’re gonna go home with an empty bucket and no fish for supper.”
“You do realize it’s nothing personal, right, Dani? You and I are both just playing our parts so the legal system can do its job.”
“Yes, Cam. I am vaguely familiar with the purpose of defense attorneys and prosecutors.”
“Just saying. There’s no need for us to be enemies because we’re sitting on opposite sides of the aisle.”
“I got that memo in ninth grade debate,” she replied dryly.
“You did debate, huh? So did I.”
Debate wouldn’t have gotten him noticed by the cute girls in school, and he struck her as the type who’d been popular and dated a lot in high school. She studied him over her wine. “I’ll bet you played football, too. Let me guess. Star quarterback?”
He shrugged. “I’m tall and have a good arm. I didn’t ask to be quarterback. Coach just put me at that position. I’d have been just as happy being a tight end or maybe a linebacker on the defensive side of the ball.”
She had no idea what tight ends and linebackers were. “And I suppose you led your team to the state championship?”
He grinned ruefully. “We did make it to the state championship game. But we got crushed by a school with a gigantic defensive line they imported from somewhere in the South Pacific. Every one of their linemen was at least eight feet tall and weighed five hundred pounds. Took me a week to walk upright again after that game.”
She shook her head. Why boys insisted on putting on pads and trying to pummel one another over an oblong hunk of leather escaped her understanding.
“How about you? Did you play any sports in school?”
She nodded as the first course was set down before them. “I did. Four years of girls’ basketball. Vicious sport. No pads and long fingernails.”
They traded funny anecdotes of their high school years, moved on to war stories of their worst professors in law school, and migrated into favorite books and films. The main course finished without a resolution to their debate over the best film of all time.
Finally, he announced, “Obviously, a head-to-head viewing of each of our favorite movies is called for, followed by a final vote.”
“Name the time and place,” she challenged, “and I’ll bring the popcorn.”
“You interested in dessert?”
“I wish I could, but I’m stuffed.”
“Now, then.”
She blinked. “Excuse me?”
“Let’s do the movie view-off now. It’s Friday night. You don’t have to log billable hours tomorrow to meet your weekly quota, do you?”
“Nah, I’m on volunteer public defense duty. I get a flat paycheck based on eighty hours of billed work per week.”
Cam rolled his eyes. “Lord, what a sweet deal. I get paid in bags of chicken feed and loaves of stale bread.”
“Yeah, but it’s great experience to work in a big city D.A.’s office. Don’t most guys in your position jump to private practice eventually and make a fortune as defense lawyers?”
His gaze shuttered instantly.
Crap. She’d said too much. She leaned forward, using her arms to shove her breasts together and practically out the top of her dress. On cue, his gaze dropped. And promptly heated up to approximately the melting point of tempered steel.
“Check, please,” he said to the waiter at his post nearby. “And if you could pack up two chocolate mousses to go, that would be great.”
He’d read her mind. If she was going to try a dessert from this exquisite French restaurant, that would be the one she chose.
She smirked to herself. Given how sharply he’d just pulled back from talking about private law firms recruiting him, she would probably have to get him liquored up and distracted before he would tell her who the owner of that raspy voice had been.
But he was practically drooling over her cleavage. How hard could it be to get some booze down him and loosen his tongue?
Mistake. She shouldn’t have thought about his tongue and the way it had moved against her lips. How it had invaded her mouth and swept inside, claiming everything in its path. How it had thrust suggestively into her wet, hot depths and all but plundered her tonsils. More hot and bothered than she cared to admit, she slid out of the booth. She jumped half out of her skin as Cam’s big hand came to rest in the small of her back, escorting her politely—and possessively—out of the restaurant.
She screeched to a stop just inside Ma Foulle’s front door. During supper, it had gotten dark, but moreover, the skies had opened up. It was not only raining outside, it was pouring. Crud. She was never going to get a cab in this deluge. And it had been bright and sunny this morning when she left for work, which meant she hadn’t grabbed an umbrella.
Resigned to morphing into a half-drowned rat the moment she stepped out onto the sidewalk, she asked Cam, “Which direction to the closest subway entrance?”
He grasped her elbow and tugged her back from the door. “Come with me.”
The guy was strong. So strong that dragging her off to the side of the lobby was effortless for him. “My car’s in the parking garage below this building. I’ll give you a lift.”
“You don’t have to do that!” Hopefully, he would mistake her alarm for gratitude.
“It’s no problem.”
“But—”
“But nothing. C’mon.”
She opened her mouth to argue. Closed it. She couldn’t come up with a single convincing reason for him not to drive her home. It was just that the idea of being alone in a car with him was daunting to her.
Granted, the booth at Ma Foulle had been very private, very dark, very intimate, and very, very romantic. How much worse could this guy’s car be? And at least he would be occupied with driving and not gazing at her with rapt attention the way he had for the past two hours.
Still. Him giving her a ride home made this whole evening feel way too much like a date.
A crack of thunder made her jump, and the rain came down even harder as the core of an impressive thunderstorm rolled in.
“I can’t in good conscience let you go out into this deluge, Dani. Not when my car is close by, indoors, and readily available. My grandmother would kill me if she found out I let a lady get drenched in the middle of a thunderstorm?—”
A flash of lightning by an immediate, deafening crash of thunder made them both jump.
“It’s not safe to be outside,” he added persuasively. “You could get hit by lightning.”
“I’m guessing the lightning will head for the hundreds of skyscrapers a whole lot taller than me,” she retorted.
“Stranger things have happened than a person getting hit by lightning in this town.”
He had a point. And she didn’t have a coat to ward off even a little of the deluge coming down.
“Fine. If you’re sure you don’t mind driving me home?—”
“I don’t mind at all. It’ll be my pleasure,” he replied quickly.
Reluctantly, she followed him into the parking garage. She should have expected the sleek, low-slung sports car. She thought the hood marking was German, but she knew almost nothing about sports cars.
She did know it looked expensive, though. Which did beg the question of how a young assistant district attorney on a fixed salary could afford a car like this. Most of the lawyers she knew drove used cars and ate ramen for the first several years out of law school while they paid of their law school debts.
“How long have you been out of law school?” she asked as he unlocked the passenger door and opened it for her.
“Five years. You?”
“Less than one.”
He grinned as he slid into the driver’s seat beside her. “I was right, wasn’t I? This is your first case, isn’t it?”
“I’ve worked on plenty of cases as co-counsel,” she replied defensively. If three was plenty.
He just grinned and started the engine. The car was quiet but purred like a tiger beneath her rear end. Cripes. This was like sitting inside a very expensive, very sexy vibrator.
Cam’s shoulder was only a few inches from hers in the car’s tight confines, and every time he shifted gears, his knuckles rubbed lightly against the side of her knee. Of course, it was a manual transmission. Not to mention the streets of New York required constant starting and stopping, which translated to constant upshifts and downshifts.
The little voice in her head that usually constituted her conscience and better judgment whispered, You could move your legs and plaster them against the door.
She scowled at the voice. Hush up. The car’s as sexy as the man, and it’s not like I’m ever going to get another ride in a car like this.
She’d never thought of cars as fun, but this one was exhilarating. It didn’t hurt that Cam drove smoothly and confidently, his big hands moving over the car’s controls as if he was making love to the car. With the leather seat vibrating against her nether regions enough to make her half-orgasmic, watching him drive made her think vividly about what sex with him would be like. It wasn’t a stretch to imagine his hands caressing her skin or handling her body with that same confidence.
Her breath came shorter and shorter as the fantasy spun out in her head.
They stopped at a red light, and the rain came down so hard she could barely see out the front windshield.
He glanced over at her as if he knew exactly what his car was doing to her. “Glad you let me drive?”
He had no idea how glad. “Umm, yes,” she managed to say without sounding totally breathless and turned on. “The rain’s really coming down hard out there.”
His mouth twitched with humor but thankfully he didn’t say anything. She could definitely feel a flush of sexual pleasure heating her face. She prayed he couldn’t see it in the dim light of the dashboard, or if he did see it, he just thought the red glow of the car’s instrument panel was turning her cheeks that pink color.
He glanced down at the shopping bag resting on the floor between her feet. “What’s in the bag?”
She was so discombobulated that the truth just popped out before she could stop it. “Sexy lingerie.”
The car’s engine raced as his foot spasmed on the gas pedal. “Do tell,” he choked out.
Abruptly, a full-blown blush blossomed on her face setting her skin burning. The bane of being a porcelain-skinned redhead was how bright red she blushed. She could feel that she was lit up like fire engine now.
“Forget I mentioned it,” she mumbled.
“Not bloody likely,” he muttered.
The light turned green and his car leaped forward. After a few blocks, he took his foot off the gas and settled down to a more sedate pace.
She exhaled the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. For a minute there, she’d been worried she was going to have an orgasm, given the way the engine’s powerful vibrations had roared through the car’s chassis, up into her seat, and through her body.
Desperate to distract herself from having sex with his car, she asked, “How does an assistant district attorney pay for a hot ride like this?”
He smirked and shot her a sidelong look so steamy she nearly orgasmed again. Dang it! She hadn’t meant the question to come out that way.
Thankfully, he answered innocuously, “Graduation gift from law school.”
Jeez. Her parents had given her a set of suitcases from a big box store. And that had been a financial stretch for them. She’d been really touched by their gift.
This car had probably cost more than her parents’ house.
No wonder Cam was right at home at WMP. And no wonder the firm was recruiting him. He was their kind of people.
Truth be told, she felt like a fish out of water at the fancy firm. She didn’t have a closet full of designer suits, she didn’t wear expensive jewelry and perfume, and she wasn’t anywhere near as slick and urban and sophisticated as her coworkers, most of whom had Ivy League diplomas hanging on their office walls.
Honestly, she had been starting to wonder why she’d been hired at the firm at all, given her humble background and the modest law school she’d attended.
Her first paycheck had been a huge deal to her. She’d never seen a check that large before and neither had her parents. Her mom had cried when she’d sent her folks a picture of it, and her dad had been choked up when he told her how proud he was of her.
Just thinking of that moment sent a surge of warmth and pride through her.
WMP might have its flaws, but she sure couldn’t complain about her salary?—
Huh. Apparently, she was more shallow and materialistic at her core than she’d realized until this very second. It turned out she could be bought and paid for, too. A disturbing thought. She’d always envisioned herself the champion of the downtrodden. A seeker of justice.
She couldn’t very well throw rocks at Cam for selling out and jumping the aisle to work at WMP for big bucks if that was exactly what she’d already done by choosing not to be a public defender and going the private practice route.
“Why the frown?” Cam startled her by asking.
“I was just pondering my general moral turpitude.”
He laughed. “Moral turpitude, huh? Because you accepted a ride in my car in the middle of a downpour or are we talking about something else?”
“What gave you the idea I’m talking about anything else?” she challenged, trying to turn the subject—and her thoughts—to something not anywhere near as sexy as this car or its driver.
“You did bring up your deplorable morals in practically the same breath you announced you have a bag of sexy lingerie at your feet. I think my question is reasonable and has merit.”
If she wasn’t mistaken, the car swerved a little before he jerked it back to the center of its lane. Rats. A subtle misdirect hadn’t distracted him. It was time to force a change of subject. She peered outside for something innocuous to talk about.
“Where are we?” she blurted.
It was raining so hard she couldn’t really make out the street signs. But the neighborhood didn’t look the least bit familiar. Not that she was any great expert on New York City, of course, after living here only a few months. It was a huge place, sprawling across dozens of distinct neighborhoods. It was fully possible the route from the restaurant back to her apartment would traverse areas she’d only commuted beneath in subway trains.
“We’re almost there,” Cam said casually.
She sat back to let him concentrate on driving. The conditions outside really had gotten treacherous. He navigated slowly through street flooding deep enough to wash over the curbs onto the deserted sidewalks.
She did frown, though, when he turned into a narrow, dark alley, the beams of his headlights only cutting a few yards ahead into the darkness. Rows of fences lined the narrow passageway.
Fences? Those implied yards. As in patches of grass where dogs pooped and kids played. There were precious few places in this concrete metropolis that rated actual backyards.
Heaven knew, her neighborhood didn’t have any. Even the tiny playground that passed for a park between the endless apartment buildings crammed together on her street was paved with asphalt and devoid of anything that grew out of dirt.
Cam reached up to his sun visor and pressed a garage door opener. She started when he took a tight turn and an actual garage door rose slowly a few yards ahead of them. A four-story brick row house loomed above the dark opening.
“This isn’t my building!”
“Correct. It’s mine. We did agree to watch our favorite movies and compare them, did we not? I figured we’d be more comfortable having our movie marathon at my place.”
“This mansion is yours?”
“It’s hardly a mansion.”
“By New York City standards, it is. Or has it been divided into apartments? I didn’t think the city let these historic brownstones get subdivided.”
“The city doesn’t. The whole place is mine.”
She gaped as he pulled into the garage and cut the engine.
In a lame attempt to cover up her abrupt nervousness, she quipped, “Is this the part where you drug me, tie me up, and torture me, then shove my dismembered parts in a storage locker somewhere in New Jersey?”
He chuckled. “It’ll be fun. I promise.”
“Hah. That’s what all the psychopaths say.”