Falling For The Lawyer (10 page)

“That’s a terrible ending,” she whispered, swallowing in an effort to get the words out of her choked up throat. “And you?” Alex began again quietly. “Did he beat you too?”

“Oh no,” JP replied with a scoff in his voice. “My Da was solid gold coward. He only hit defenseless women; he had enough brains to work out that one day I might be able to throw a major punch back at him. And he wasn’t the only one to work that out because at fifteen I started lifting weights and pretty soon I was twice his size.”

“And Annabelle?”

“Once I could take him on the beatings stopped but I stayed at home for a few more years, for her sake. I tried to talk her into going to the police, leaving him; you name it, I tried it. But she wouldn’t do it. As for becoming a doctor my Da had killed the dream within her as surely as if he’d strangled it with his bare hands. She waited on him for five years until she died within three weeks of being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.”

“And your father?”

“Don’t know. Don’t care. I haven’t spoken to him in over ten years.”

“I don’t understand, why didn’t he want her to study medicine?” Alex was confused at a level that went way beyond the simple story he’d just recounted to her.

“It was all about control. People might dress it up as something else but that’s all it comes down to—one person wanting to commandeer another’s life.”

Alex dropped her eyes and began to fidget with the ends of her hair lying across her shoulder.

“I know my mother’s situation was extreme, and I’m certainly not suggesting anyone in your family is a bully. But I do know something about regret and I’m here to tell you: don’t do deals with it, Alex. It will eat your life away from the inside out. In my mother’s case it ended up killing her.”

He’d dropped his head in front of her so that he could see her better in the dim light of his car, bringing his face closer to hers.

“I understand how bitter you are about your father JP, I really do. But you can’t be sure that what he did to your mother was the cause of her cancer. Thinking that way will only end in misery for you.”

“There’s not a doubt in my mind that the two are connected.”

She didn’t reply as she studied the hard, male angles of his face and the unrelenting light emanating from deep within his dark eyes. Suddenly a hand was cupping that face and drawing it closer to hers. In a haze, she recognised the silver watch around the slim wrist in front of her but it took several more seconds to register that the silver watch, the wrist and that hand were hers.

In the next moment that same wrist was resting on her lap, enclosed in his firm grip.

“If you ever kiss me Alex, I can promise you it won’t be out of pity.”

“I was
not
going to kiss you!”

JP guffawed. “I’ve been kissed by enough women in my life to know when it’s about to happen
and
when it’s their idea.”

“That’s it, I’m going!” Alex snapped at JP with sharp, shocked finality, horrified at the intimacy of the gesture she’d just shown him—not even wanting to think about what she might have instigated straight afterwards.

“Wait a second. Alex!” JP objected as he firmed his grip around her wrist to prevent her from opening the car door and fleeing into the night. “Can I come in and meet your parents?”

She gawked at him in disbelief. “No way! That’s a terrible idea!”

“Why? Will I embarrass you?” he asked with a provocative smile playing at the corners of his mouth as he released her arm.

“I don’t want to take you in there,” Alex answered in exasperation. “And what’s more, I don’t want to be cross-examined by you about why not.”

JP gave out a short laugh. “Okay. But you haven’t answered my question yet.”

“About what?” she threw back, completely flustered. She was still trying to work out how she could have reached out and touched him like that without even knowing she was doing it? And was he right about the kiss thing? She didn’t think so, but a niggling doubt was eating away at her even as she denied it to herself.

What kind of strange power did JP hold over her? Whatever it was there was one thing she knew for sure. She had to get out of reach of that power as soon as possible before she did something much more serious than caress his cheek.

“I want an answer about the paralegal offer—now.”

Alex felt herself slump as she dropped her face into her hands but JP wasn’t having a bar of it. Taking each of her hands in his he prised them away.

“Look at me Alex, straight in the eye and give me a straight answer,” he demanded.

“I’m going to talk to Simon but I have to be honest JP, I can’t see how your offer will work for us.” She was surprised at the steady calm underpinning her voice. “I appreciate what you’ve tried to do but the bottom line is that Simon and I made plans long ago. As I said before, I won’t make everyone I love unhappy by turning all those plans upside down now.”

JP stared at her in outraged disbelief. “So if you’re diagnosed with a terminal illness tomorrow and a month later they find a cure would that be your response? Sorry Doc, Simon and I have made too many plans towards my own demise—hold on to your cure because I refuse to turn things around now?”

“This is not about a terminal illness! This is my life and my choices are going to affect other people, not just myself!”

“Goddamn it! I wash my hands of this!” JP declared and tossed his hands up in the air for emphasis.

“I wish you would wash your hands of this!” Alex countered immediately in hot rebuke. “I never asked you to involve yourself in my life in the first place.”

With that she grabbed her bag from the floor of the car, wrestled with the unfamiliar door handle to get it to open and in the next moment was rushing down the footpath towards the safe haven of her parents’ home.

“Are you sure you’re all right, Alex?” her mother asked again as she led her daughter down the hallway of her childhood home.

“Yes Mum, I’m fine,” Alex assured her, hoping she didn’t sound too flustered or dismissive.

“You’re very flushed. I think you’re working too hard. And you’re very thin. Why don’t you come back and live at home and I’ll fatten you up.”

“Stop fussing woman!” Alex’s father piped up good-humouredly from his usual position on the sofa in front of the TV.

Alex bent over to peck him on the cheek and he gave her hand an affectionate squeeze.

“I don’t need fattening up, Mum.”

“Yes Mary, the girl looks fine,” Peter Farrer interjected again. “And perhaps you should be checking with her future husband whether he wants her fattened up. You know how much wedding dress fabric costs.”

Alex smiled weakly despite the disheveled state of her emotions after fleeing JP’s car just minutes before.

Her elderly parents had been engaging in their affectionate banter for as long as she could remember. Being amidst it made her feel warm, safe and secure, as though she was a little girl again. But at the same time her stomach was lurching at their reference to Simon and the wedding, hot knives of guilt over her burgeoning feelings for JP slicing mercilessly through her.

“How’s work? You have a new boss, don’t you?” Mary Farrer asked as she returned to the cooker to stir the steaming, aromatic contents of her French Ovens.

“Yes, and work’s fine thanks,” Alex answered as heat filled her cheeks.

“I hope he’s treating you properly.”

“Yes, Mum.”

“Who does he think he is working you back so late?” her father shouted across the room. He was a little deaf and so felt that by shouting himself he would assist everyone else’s hearing as well. “Your mother tells me he’s had you working in some God forsaken place for hours.”

“It was a legal centre.”

“Well what do you want to be going and doing there? Do they pay you?”

“No, Dad. The centre provides free legal advice.”

“Free! Holy Mary and Joseph! Now I’ve heard everything,” Peter Farrer shouted again from his chair. “Free legal advice! Why haven’t I ever had free legal advice?”

“Because you can afford to pay for it. Those people are desperate.”

“Afford it! I could afford it until the first lawyer got a hold of me. I’ve been broke ever since.”

“You have the first dollar you ever earned and you know it,” Alex replied as she perched on the arm of his lounge chair and draped her arm around his shoulders affectionately.

“Well, you’re a good girl,” he replied, immediately soothed by her gentle touch. “But you know I’m not happy you’re working with lawyers. They’re all thieves!”

“Not all of them, Dad. You know you’re exaggerating.”

“Never trust a man who hasn’t produced something you can touch at the end of his working day.”

“Lawyers produce words,” Alex argued. “And words are important too. Think where we would be today without words.”

“A whole lot better off. There was a time when a man’s word was as good as his handshake, then someone invented lawyers to complicate things. I tell you, law is no way to make a living.”

At that moment the doorbell rang and Alex got to her feet to answer it.

“Sit down girl. A young lady doesn’t answer the door at this time of night.”

With that, Peter Farrer climbed laboriously out of his chair onto his weak knees and shuffled off down the hallway. Alex wandered over to the cooker to stand beside her mother as she stirred and added to her pots.

The smells that emanated from Mary Farrer’s kitchen were always delectable and she cooked gourmet delights at every meal. Alex had just tasted a mouthful of the night’s meal off a teaspoon offered by her mother when she was grabbed from behind. She jumped violently, her nerves still on edge after her encounter with JP in the car, before twisting around in a pair of all-encompassing arms.

“Simon!” she whispered breathlessly as she felt the blood drain from her face.

“Surprised?” he asked gleefully, his dark eyes shining with delight.

“Yes … yes … I’m staggered. I was only talking to you a few hours ago in New Zealand.”

“I know, I rang your Mum from the airport to let her know I’d come straight here. I wanted to surprise you.”

“Well aren’t you going to give your future husband a kiss?” Mary Farrer prompted with more than a hint in her tone.

“Yes, of course,” Alex agreed hurriedly, feeling awkward with her parents in the room.

Simon’s mouth descended upon hers for a short hard kiss but then Alex sensed that someone other than her parents was watching them closely.

It was her cousin Monique, standing quietly in the background as she watched the reunion unfold before her.

“Did you and Monique arrive together?” Alex asked Simon in surprise and he nodded, releasing her from his arms.

“Hello, you!” Alex said in delight and moved across the room to hug her cousin. “I had no idea you and Simon were travelling home together. I thought you were still in New Zealand.”

“I was,” Monique explained. “But I decided to change my flight so that I could come home with Simon.”

“Well you look great. Have you had a lovely time?”

“Yes, wonderful. You haven’t been to New Zealand have you?” Monique hooked her arm in Alex’s and led her away from the family.

“No, I haven’t.”

“I can’t believe that in all the time Simon’s been there you didn’t manage to get there yourself.”

“It’s been hard to get away from work. You know how it is.”

“Yes, I know,” Monique agreed and then lowered her voice a little so that only Alex could hear. “I hope you don’t mind that I linked up with Simon for the trip home. I really hate taking flights by myself. The take-offs scare me half to death.”

“Of course not,” Alex assured her. “I’m glad you both had the company. Simon told me you cooked for him. He would have loved that. You know how he hates any meals which are shop bought.”

“That’s the least I could do after he’d shown me around Auckland for a whole day.”

“Well now you are making me feel guilty,” Alex confessed. “I must try and get over there for his next trip.” With that Alex looked over at Simon who had his sharp eyes firmly fixed on the two girls. As he heard Alex’s last words he wandered over to her and slid his arms around her waist.

“I’m afraid there won’t be any more opportunities for you to go to New Zealand, unless we want to go for fun.”

“What do you mean?” Alex asked as her heart began to pound away in her chest.

“I’ve sold the whole business.”

Alex gaped at him, dumbfounded. “What? But I thought you were only going to sell part of it.”

“They made me an offer. I’ve jettisoned the whole business. And that means …” he began suggestively, raising his eyebrows.

“You can come back to Australia for good,” Alex finished, plastering a smile on her face, waiting for the inevitable upshot of his news.

“And that means you and I don’t have to wait any longer to get married. Let’s book the church and do it.”

Alex nodded in response to his ecstatic look. “Yes … yes, of course.”

Simon’s smile dissolved. “You don’t look as happy as I expected you would.”

“No, I am happy Si, really.” Alex reassured him and summoned everything she could from within herself to reflect his own happiness.

But then Alex’s eyes caught her mother’s. Mary Farrer had been watching her future son-in-law and her daughter and she was now staring at Alex with a look of intense disapproval.

Alex felt sick. Did her mother see something that no one else in the room could, something that even she was having trouble recognising?

At that moment the doorbell rang again. Alex jumped into movement, mainly to escape the scrutiny of her mother and fiancé.

Thankfully her father had been unable to hear the bell over the conversation in the kitchen so she had a free run to collect her thoughts and calm her nerves as she made her way down the hallway. It had all been too much, that was for sure. First, those intense minutes in the car with JP, then the big announcement from Simon. Alex wasn’t sure she could take much more.

JP heard the sound of heels clicking on a timber floor within before the front door was swung open.

“Oh no!” Alex shook her head in disappointment and disbelief as she took in the sight of him outside her parents’ door.