Falling For The Lawyer (15 page)

Mark Jackson’s blood shot eyes had a dangerous glint to them. “Alex doesn’t want to dance with you McKenzie. You ask her.”

“Well actually Mark I did promise I’d have one dance with JP,” she explained quickly, sinking with relief into JP’s arms and allowing him to move her away to the other side of the dance floor. Behind them Mark tripped and stumbled his way back to the bar and JP suspected he’d spend the rest of the evening there until the hotel staff threw him out.

“Thank you,” she said quietly to him. “I was scared to death. He literally dragged me onto the dance floor and then began to grope me. God, it was hideous! Can we get out of here JP, please? He really creeps me out!”

JP glanced across at Mark Jackson. He’d taken up his pew again at the bar but was watching the two of them dance with a dark and violent expression. “Let’s just have this one dance as you said. If we leave now it might provoke him. He has a filthy temper when he’s drunk and I’d rather not have a scene.” JP smiled at her then. “By the way, I hope you realise that you just passed up an opportunity to join Mark’s harem of current mistresses? He’s been eyeing you off all day you know.”

“Tempting,” Alex laughed, edginess from her close encounter with Mark still rippling through her voice as she looked up at him to reveal dark shadows of exhaustion encircling her eyes, “And although I could have stood the drinking, the swearing and the ogling, I’d have had to draw the line at the burping.”

JP gave a short laugh and gathered her closer; she was heaven in his arms.

“You did a great job today, Alex.”

“Me? What about you? Mark was so difficult to pin down that I thought your head would explode at one point, but you kept at it anyway.”

“Was that the point where he gave me five completely different versions of the one conversation?”

Alex nodded. “When you threw the pen down onto the table and shouted that if he didn’t stop lying through his teeth you’d leave and wouldn’t come back.” Alex paused thoughtfully before going on. “Do you think you got the truth out of him in the end?”

“I got a version of the truth,” JP conceded. “The problem with men like Mark Jackson is they think they’re smarter than everyone else. What he doesn’t realise is that in cross-examination a good Senior Counsel will unravel his lies so fast his head will be spinning and the next day they’ll be all through the newspapers. All I can do is try and weed them out now before he gets into the witness box and perjures himself.”

“I could never manage a client like you did today.”

“Rubbish, it’s just experience and confidence. One day you’ll have both in spades.”

His arms circled her waist then, her arms looping over and around his shoulders. They’d drawn so close it was hard to tell where one stopped and the other began. And despite all his promises, all his resolve, his body was raging with a fierce, sweet need to be one with her before the night was out.

He dropped his head a little so that his rough, unshaven cheek was tickled by the softness of her dark hair tumbling down around her face. “What happened during the break this afternoon?” he asked in her ear before pulling back a little so that he could watch her closely. “I want you to tell me Alex. Now. No arguments.”

She watched him back, clearly too exhausted to fight his will that night, and in the next moment she was relating her conversation with Monique.

“There could be a perfectly innocent explanation,” he offered when she’d finished but he couldn’t hide the doubt in his voice.

“There could be but I don’t think so.” Alex’s answer was despondent.

“Considering the skyrocket attraction between us you can hardly sit in judgment.”

Suddenly her eyes were flashing their own skyrockets. “There’s no comparison!” she snapped.

JP guffawed in bitter response. “I think if Simon had seen us together in my car the other night, or could even see us now, he’d disagree.”

“Nothing happened between you and me that night and nothing’s happening now.”

“Whatever, but the real problem is you don’t love Simon and you know that’s the truth, you’re just too terrified to admit it’s over. But Simon knows it’s over and he’s beginning to make alternative plans for his future—a fallback position.”

“You don’t know that,” Alex hurled at him.

“Trust me. I’m a man. I know what train of thought Simon’s on. But if I were you I wouldn’t beat myself up over it. In fact Alex, I’d like to see you cut loose for a while—from your parents, your fiancé, me, everyone. Then maybe you’ll work out what you want and start fighting for it rather than drifting along with what everyone else in your life wants for you.”

Alex stiffened in his arms like a board. “You know, if I’d wanted a lecture I’d have telephoned my mother!” With that she wriggled out of his hold, marched across the dance floor, snatched up her handbag from the bar and disappeared out the nearest exit.

JP thrust his hands deep into his pockets and followed in her wake, wandering slowly through reception and out through the hotel’s front doors. He scanned the streetscape but there was absolutely no sign of her.

Shrugging his shoulders he swung on his heel and began to stroll towards his city apartment for a shower and a shave. One thing was for sure though, he wasn’t about to slip into his pajamas and crawl into bed all alone that night. If Alex Farrer thought their conversation was over for the evening then she could think again.

When Alex burst through her front door she knew with absolute certainty that if she shut herself up inside her tiny apartment that night she would surely go mad. There was only one thing for it: water.

Within minutes she was diving into the deep end of her apartment complex’s pool and cruising up and down its length with long, invigorating strokes. She reached fifty before she gave up counting the laps but she didn’t let up on speed, not until she’d felt the familiar soothing ache in every one of her muscles; not until she was simply too exhausted to feel anything other than pure physical pain.

Only then, with murderous feelings towards JP beginning to subside, did Alex prop her arms on the edge of the pool and stop. Resting her cheek on the cool wet skin of her forearm she listened to melodic guitar music drifting from one of the apartments nearby. It rippled through the night air in time with the ripples still playing at the edges of the pool after her laps.

Ever since she’d been a little girl water had been her best friend; it hadn’t let her down that night either. As always it soothed, comforted and inspired. Becoming a part of it had always helped her to see life with a frightening clarity. The only problem was that the clarity kicking in that night was whenever she thought about Simon.

She
did
want to marry Simon. Didn’t she?

Before Alex could answer her own question she threw herself backwards and began a slow languorous backstroke up the pool. Only more swimming might shake off the doubts she was battling. But it was no use—even twenty more laps couldn’t help her see a way forward that night. JP had addled her brain so completely that no amount of swimming was going to diffuse the endless questions swamping her: Did Simon love her? Did she love him? Would she make him happy?

Alex stopped in the middle of the pool, the water lapping around her shoulders like the doubts lapping at her mind and keeping time with the heavy, portentous pounding of her heart.

Would she make Simon happy?

She reached unsuccessfully for answers in the still, inky blackness of the warm night before diving down and swimming submerged to the far wall. By the time she’d burst to the surface for air she’d made her decision.

Enough was enough.

There would be no more JP and no more mind games. She would ring Simon that very night and make things right between them, once and for all.

Alex first saw him as she wandered up the dark garden pathway towards her apartment. He was leaning back against one of the stone pillars, a foot propped back against it, his arms folded across his chest, his expression pensive.

Alex stopped dead in her tracks, her eyes trailing compulsively over the powerful thighs in his jeans and the broad shoulders filling out the grey t-shirt clinging to his upper body like a second skin. His hair was damp from a recent shower, swept back from his forehead which was unconsciously lined with worry.

JP McKenzie.

Alex swallowed as an overwhelmingly urgent need to touch him and be touched by him banished the promise she’d made less than a quarter of an hour ago to exclude him from her heart and her mind once and for all.

She shivered then and moved forward to approach him and his attention was caught. He stood up straight, arms still folded, taking in the damp hair strewn about her shoulders and the surf towel knotted about her waist.

“What are you doing here?” she snapped nervously, praying he wouldn’t notice the desire rising like a fine mist from her bare skin.

“I was worried about you.” He strolled towards her and stopped very close, breaking every unspoken social law of personal space. “You rushed out of the hotel tonight and I wanted to make sure you got home okay. Your phone’s switched off.”

“Well as you can see I’m fine,” she blurted, her pounding heart creating staccato notes of her words.

“Are you?” His voice was mellifluous and mellow, like golden syrup pouring over her skin. “You don’t look it. In fact,” he continued, taking yet another forbidden step into her personal space, “You’ve been like an emotional train wreck for most of the day.”

Meanwhile Alex was screaming silently at herself to move: sideways, backwards—anywhere to put space between them so that she could collect her resolve and get inside to make that phone call to Simon. But she was frozen in time and space as JP filled her vision, her hearing, her sense of smell. All that was missing was taste and touch and that seductive notion made her bite her bottom lip in uneasy response.

“The only person turning me into an emotional train wreck is you,” she replied but immediately regretted her words. JP would not let them go without comment and his mouth was already shifting into a satisfied smirk.

“An interesting admission,” he purred finally, the edges of his eyes crinkling in that heart-stopping way of his.

“Not one you need to take any credit for,” she argued, her chin rising so that she could look him clear in the eye.

“Oh really?”

“For some reason you’ve decided turning my life upside down should be taken on as a personal crusade,” she began, seriously unnerved by his closeness. She was also trying to ignore the fact that his eyes were shamelessly resting on her lips, already full and sensitive. “You seem to have a problem with not trying to rescue me and I seem to have a problem with … well, I have too many problems to list. But whatever is happening between us …”

“Falling in love?” JP’s cobalt blue eyes were suddenly looking about as warm and inviting as the North Sea in winter.

“Don’t,” Alex snapped and with fingers chilled from her recent swim she fumbled uselessly to get her key into the door before the whole bunch fell with a clatter at JP’s feet. He scooped them up immediately.

“Please can I have my keys,” Alex demanded hotly.

JP turned to push the key into the door but instead of standing back and letting her in he pushed it open and stepped inside, holding it back for her to pass through into the hallway.

Alex gaped at him. “I’m not going in there with you,” she objected, her heart racing at the prospect of being alone with him in her apartment. It was one thing to revolve around him in the confines of their busy office, quite another to spend time with him in her quiet, warm home with its soft lighting and romantic ambience.

“Yes, you are coming in,” he demanded. “We have to talk and if we stay out here we’ll have neighbours on our backs.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t trust you.”

“You mean you don’t trust yourself.”

He raised questioning eyebrows at her when she didn’t respond. And he was right. She didn’t trust herself around him at all.

“There’s been a significant development at work, Alex. I need you to know about it before you go back tomorrow.” There was no teasing spark in his eyes now. His mouth was a straight, hard line.

“What is it?”

“Come inside. I’m not going to discuss it out here.” He cocked his head in that way he did when he wanted her to follow him somewhere and then her legs were obeying and carrying her inside without reference to any direction from her head.

“What on earth is so important that it can’t wait until tomorrow?” Alex asked when she’d moved into the dim hallway. She didn’t like the fact that the two of them were sharing such a quiet, confined space but it was preferable to taking him any further into the intimate privacy of her small home.

“There’ll be a new partner in the litigation section tomorrow.”

“That’s the news that couldn’t wait?”

“Her name’s Caroline Cartwright,” he continued in a flat voice as though she hadn’t spoken, as though he was willing himself to continue despite anything she might say.

Caroline, Alex thought to herself. Why was that name ringing a bell? Then it came back to her. Of course, the woman in the boutique and Marie from the legal centre had both asked after a ‘Caroline’ in his life.

“Until recently Caroline and I were in a serious two year relationship.”

Alex searched his face for some indication of what he was feeling but it was a still mask in the grey light, the picture of control and neutrality. She just wished she could say the same about herself but she couldn’t, for at that moment she was feeling very strange indeed.

The problem was she’d never, ever thought about JP in terms of anything but what he was to her. From day one he’d made her feel as though she was indispensably central to his life and yet it was a completely stupid and naïve notion. The truth was she’d never been anything to him but his PA: not his girlfriend, his wife, his lover, not even his friend.

“Are you okay, Alex?” He was looking at her very closely. She averted her look from his to avoid revealing the disquiet rumbling away inside her.