Chapter 34
The house was suffocatingly silent when Daniela returned from campus that afternoon.
She’d attended all of her classes as if it were a normal day, then she’d calmly walked to the admissions office and withdrawn her enrollment.
Mistaking the cause of the tears that blurred her eyes, the kind admissions clerk had attempted to console Daniela by telling her that there would always be a place for her at the university whenever she was ready to continue her studies.
She’d cried all the way home.
When she stepped through the front door and was greeted with utter silence, it only punctuated the sense of loneliness and despair threatening to engulf her.
After checking her mother’s bedroom and finding it empty, she assumed that Pamela had stepped out to run errands or visit her friends at the senior center where she volunteered.
Returning to the living room, Daniela kicked off her shoes and sank down on the sofa with the remote control.
As she wandered aimlessly through channels, she marveled at the pendulum of her emotions.
After the glorious, magical weekend she’d spent with Caleb, she’d been floating on cloud nine.
But in the span of a day she’d gone from feeling the highest of highs, to the lowest of lows.
Because today was the day she’d decided to tell Caleb the truth about herself.
Withdrawing from the university had been the first step, a way to bolster her courage for the difficult task that awaited her.
Difficult? Daniela thought grimly. Try excruciating.
Her only consolation, if one could be found, was that once she came clean to Caleb, dealing with her brothers would be a veritable cakewalk.
Because there was nothing Kenneth could say that would make her feel any worse than she already did, knowing she’d betrayed Caleb in the worst possible way, and knowing that her punishment was to face a future without the first and only man she’d ever truly loved.
When the doorbell rang, she got up and shuffled to the door on leaden legs. As if he’d been conjured by her thoughts, Caleb stood on her doorstep.
Her pulse raced at the sight of him. She loved him so damn much. And though she knew it was a long shot, deep in her heart lingered the hope that somehow, some way, she could tell him the truth about everything and still not lose him.
She licked her lips nervously. “Hi, Caleb,” she said with forced normalcy. “You must have read my mind. I was just going to call you and ask you to come by after your last class.”
One side of his mouth lifted in a half smile, but there was something in that smile, something barely perceptible, that sent a whisper of foreboding through her.
“In that case,” he drawled softly, “I guess it’s a good thing that I’m a mind reader, isn’t it?”
Unsure how to respond to the strange undertone in his voice, Daniela merely smiled and stepped aside to let him enter. As he shouldered past her into the house, she noticed a manila folder tucked beneath his arm.
“Would you like something to drink?” she offered, closing the door and leaning against it for support, her knees feeling terribly weak—even weaker than they normally felt whenever she was around Caleb.
“No, thanks. I’m fine, Daniela.”
Was it just her imagination, or had there been a slight edge to his voice when he said her name?
Deciding it was just her guilty conscience getting to her, Daniela pushed away from the door, walked over to the sofa and sat down, automatically expecting Caleb to follow suit.
He didn’t. Moving to the window, he propped a shoulder against the wall and regarded her in calm, implacable silence. He seemed to be waiting for something, though she couldn’t fathom what that might be.
Her hands twisted nervously in her lap. “Have you already eaten? I could fix you something, like a sandwich or—”
“I’m fine, Daniela.” A shadow of cynicism curved his mouth. “Or would you prefer to be called Miss Roarke?”
For one stunned moment Daniela stared at him, his words not fully registering. But once they did, she felt a huge wave of sorrow, and a shame so intense she could barely hold her head up.
She got to her feet slowly. “Caleb—”
He pinned her with a look of such scathing contempt that tears burned her eyes. “How long were you planning to keep up the charade, Daniela?” he sneered. “Weeks? Months? Years?”
She shook her head quickly. “No, of course not. I—”
“Of course not?” he thundered furiously, advancing on her. “You say that as if I should know better, as if the idea of you going undercover for ‘years’ should be any more outrageous than your going undercover at all!”
Daniela strove for calm, though her insides were quaking violently. “Caleb, please let me explain—”
“Don’t bother!” He slapped the manila folder down on the coffee table, spilling some of the contents to the floor.
Daniela stared, in abject horror, as a black-and-white photograph of herself leaving Roarke Investigations landed right at her feet.
“How apropos,” Caleb jeered. “That’s the very same photo I wanted you to see. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, Miss Roarke. What do you suppose that particular picture is saying?”
Daniela knelt down to pick it up, her heart sinking further when she saw her smiling image, and realized how Caleb must have interpreted it. She looked up at him. “It wasn’t like that, Caleb,” she said, imploring him to believe her.
“Oh, really?” he mocked bitingly. “So you didn’t leave campus after we spoke that day and run straight to your brothers to brag about landing an interview with my father?”
“I didn’t brag!” she cried, surging to her feet. “If anything, I was hoping they’d talk me out of going!”
Shaking his head slowly, Caleb raked her with a look of withering scorn.
“You must really take me for a fool, Daniela. And why wouldn’t you?
I fell for your little scheme—hook, line and damn sinker.
Oh, you were good, I’ll give you that. Oscar-winning good.
That whole help-me-find-my-calling act was inspired. ”
“It wasn’t an act!”
His brow arched in cynical disbelief. “So you really do have an interest in becoming a lawyer? Is that what you’re telling me?” When she floundered, he nodded tersely. “That’s what I thought.”
Daniela took a beseeching step toward him. “Listen to me, Caleb. Almost everything I told you about myself is true. About my family, about where I attended college—”
“That’s even more insulting,” he bit out.
“You were so confident in your ability to win my trust that you didn’t even bother to invent a solid alias.
It never once occurred to you that I might see through your lies, that I might grow suspicious enough to check into your background.
My God, Daniela, you didn’t even bother supplying the school with a fake address!
All it would’ve taken was a basic online search to ascertain the name of the homeowner at this address, and you would’ve been busted.
But that never occurred to you, did it? You and your brothers knew I would be easy prey—”
“No!” Daniela cried, unable to bear the thought of him somehow blaming himself for letting down his guard with her.
“That wasn’t it at all! I never for one moment thought you’d be easy prey!
We made the decision to stick as close to the truth as possible to make it easier for me to…
to—” She couldn’t even bring herself to complete the awful explanation, which sounded far worse than she could have ever imagined.
“To lie to me,” Caleb finished for her. “You stuck close to the truth to help you keep your lies straight. Brilliant strategy.” He shook his head, his mouth twisting contemptuously. “I must commend you for pulling it off, Miss Roarke. I never saw you coming.”
Tears crowded in Daniela’s eyes and rolled, unchecked, down her face. “If you believe nothing else I say, Caleb,” she told him in an aching whisper, “believe me when I tell you that I never meant to hurt you.”
His gaze hardened. “You’ll forgive me if I have a hard time believing that,” he mocked scornfully.
His eyes narrowed on hers. “Tell me something,” he said, understated menace in every inflection.
“What did you really expect to learn about my father? What deep, dark secret did you hope to expose by seducing me?”
She shook her head helplessly, on the verge of hysteria.
“I don’t know, Caleb!” she choked out miserably.
“Hoyt Philbin thinks your father has ties to the Mexican mafia, that he tampers with juries and engages in economic espionage, that he accepts bribes from corrupt labor union bosses and extorts money from his clients.”
When she’d finished rattling off the litany of alleged offenses, Caleb said in a low, quelling voice, “Hoyt Philbin doesn’t believe a single one of those things. And you know why? Because they’re not true.”
“I’m just letting you know what I was told!”
“Yeah? Did Philbin also tell you that he’s hated my father for over forty years, long before Crandall built his empire and became a target of random government audits and secret investigations?
” At Daniela’s surprised look, Caleb’s mouth twisted sardonically.
“Did you seriously think your ‘undercover operation’ was the first my father has ever endured? Did you think your little detective agency was the only one Philbin had ever approached to help him in his personal crusade to take down my father?”
He didn’t raise his voice above a low growl, and yet each word snapped in the air like the crack of a whip, lashing at Daniela, breaking her down until she sank weakly onto the sofa and dropped her head into her cupped hands.