Shielded In The Shadows

With a hand on top of hers, he stopped her. “Would it be all right with you if we don’t work through dinner? I’ve promised to go check the Heber dates tonight, and I will. I’d just like to eat my food without a rock in my gut.”

“Oh. Yeah. Sure!” She put her phone away. Folded her hands in her lap while she tried to erase the memory of the warmth of his touch. Like some silly teenager who was discovering her sexuality for the first time. Not sure what to do with it.

The man was gorgeous. A temptation. She wasn’t a schoolgirl. She was a mature adult; a woman who knew the ropes, and then some. A woman who knew that no matter how great he seemed on the surface, there’d be a shadow side to him, too.

Everyone had them. She wasn’t the only one.

She was a woman planning to be a mother.

And he was a man on his second chance. Meaning that he’d blown his first one and had learned from it?

Did that blown chance have anything to do with why he was single? Had he been married, too? Maybe been unfaithful? Was that why someone as tempting as him was alone and a workaholic?

“Have you ever been married?” she asked, testing her theory. Needing answers.

“No. Have you?”

She should have seen that coming. “Yes.”

His brows rose.

She’d surprised him. It felt good—surprising him.

“You don’t have to look so shocked that a guy would actually want to marry me!”

“It’s not that. It’s just...you’re like... I thought we were two of a kind. You know, married to our work, so to speak...”

So he’d felt it, too, then, like she’d first thought? This whatever-it-was that was drawing them together? A sense of sameness between them?

“I am. Now.” She felt compelled to give him that.

He nodded. Sipped from his iced tea. Toyed with the straw wrapper. “So...how long were you married?”

“Two years.”

“Recently?”

“No. I married him fresh out of law school. He was in my graduating class.”

“What happened?”

She shrugged. Not that she wanted Jayden to find her irresistible—even if her darker side was pushing for it—but Emma didn’t relish him knowing that she didn’t have what it took to keep her man, either.

Of course she knew that Drake’s issues weren’t about her. That she could have been a porn star or a centerfold and he’d still have strayed. Knowing didn’t seem to take the sting away.

“Work get in the way?” he asked when she didn’t find any words that satisfied her.

She finally just put it out there. “Other women did.”

Drake had been a Harley-riding wild man, the one in their class who bucked the laws and found a way to argue himself out of every single predicament he got into. He’d been the star of their moot court team. Ms. Shadow had adored him. With all of her big, open, emotional heart.

“He was unfaithful to you?” His voice rose an octave.

She’d surprised him again. It was nice.

“Multiple times.” He was so big on second chances, she wouldn’t want him to think her a woman who couldn’t give them.

Or hadn’t given them. She wouldn’t be doing that again, giving a man a chance to be unfaithful to her. She had to be in a committed relationship for that to happen.