Falling For The Lawyer (19 page)

“Okay, very funny. If you two have finished we’ll get on with things,” JP began, rubbing his hands together and bouncing up and down on the spot in a quick warm up that soon had a few of the others following suit. “Now as I was saying, commercial, after all their big talk, have arrived here today and are down two players. And outrageous as it is they’ve asked me to send one of my players over to even up the numbers.”

“No way!” someone called out in mock protest.

“That’s typical of commercial lawyers,” Michael Porter shouted. “They’re full of big talk, but when things don’t go their way they go to water. They just can’t hack the pressure like litigators can.”

“You’re exactly right Michael,” JP agreed, egging on his team’s competitive zeal. “But we can’t have commercial saying we beat the pants off them because we were up a player. We need to beat the pants off them with equal numbers. So who’s volunteering?”

He was met with a stony silence.

“Come on guys,” he prodded. “Someone’s got to do it.”

“I’ll go!” Alex offered. Everyone turned to her.

“No way, not Alex,” Michael Porter protested with a shout.

“No, not you, Alex,” JP agreed in swift confirmation and turned to the others.

“Why not?” she argued. Again, all faces turned back to her. “Look I know I’m your star player but you can’t have them saying you sent over the weakest link, can you?” she finished jokingly.

With that, Alex turned on her heel and began to saunter over to the commercial group before anyone else could argue.

“Alex!” JP called out behind her, craving a moment of her exclusive attention before she disappeared across to the opposition. She turned and waited for him to catch up.

“Are you sure you don’t mind? I dragged you into this game after all.”

“I don’t mind,” she answered brightly and began to walk backwards, her ponytail swinging from side to side as she moved towards her new team. “Anyway,” she tossed at him with a teasing, heart catching grin, crinkling her nose a little as she squinted into the bright morning sunshine. “It’ll give me a chance to check out whether any of the commercial partners are looking for a new PA seeing as I’m only in that role with you—for the time being,” she added, echoing his words to Caroline Cartwright of two days ago.

She threw him a cryptic smile before swinging around and continuing on, a tiny bounce in her walk. And her upbeat, positive mood didn’t end there. She joined in with the sparring and the good-natured but ferocious competitiveness, the high-fives and the friendly abuse of poor David from the mailroom who’d foolishly volunteered to referee the game.

And despite her self-deprecatory remarks about her rugby prowess, once she had the ball she was surprisingly difficult to catch before she tore across the score line. At one stage Michael Porter even took to chasing and holding her in his arms whenever play started so that no one could pass the ball to her.

But in the end litigation won the day, although commercial wanted a right of challenge to follow in the next few weeks. Justin was insistent that Alex become commercial’s official mascot, thereby banned from playing with litigation in the future. JP was equally insistent that she was on temporary loan and would definitely not be playing for commercial again. In fact, the pulsating imperative within him to keep Alex as close as possible on every level was escalating to a point where any other outcome was becoming unthinkable.

When Alex walked into JP’s office, freshly showered and back in her work clothes after their morning rugby match, she didn’t have her head buried in any documents. It was held high.

He’d been dictating quietly but his words trailed off as he watched her approach his desk. He leant back in his office chair slowly and stretched his arms back to lock his hands behind his head, regarding her curiously.

“You have a message from Mark Jackson,” she explained in a business like tone of voice.

“He rang
you
?”

“You were on the phone.”

“What did he say?” JP beckoned to her with his finger to sit down opposite him.

“I wrote it down in short hand,” Alex perched on the edge of one of his client chairs. “I thought I should take it down verbatim so that you had the precise meaning of his message. In the interests of decorum I’ve changed some wording which will become apparent to you.”

“Okay,” JP murmured slowly, wishing he knew where Alex was going with all her newfound professional formality. “Shoot.”

“Here I go.” Alex began to read in a monotone fashion. “Is that you, Alex? Good. At last they’ve put me through to someone I know in that den of thieves you work in. Your boss is on the line to someone else who he’s no doubt robbing every last cent from, so pass this message on, will you? Tell Jonathan McKenzie from me that I got his letter. If he thinks I’m going to pay all my outstanding debts to your firm before he’ll accept another matter from me then he can go and expletive himself. Then you can tell him I never said those things he’s put into my expletive affidavit at paragraph forty and I don’t care how many expletive documents he reckons he can find that prove I said them. And you can also tell him that if he doesn’t expletive wake up to himself and let the client run the show instead of expletive banging on with legal mumbo jumbo all the time then he’ll have no expletive clients left.”

JP stared at Alex and then throwing his head back began to laugh helplessly. For the first time since entering his office, Alex smiled.

“So what did you say back to him?”

“I said I’d pass the message on.”

“Ever the cool professional, eh Alex?”

“What will happen with Mark now?” Alex deftly ignored his sardonic remark.

“With any luck he’ll do as he’s threatened and find another lawyer. But I suspect what will actually happen is he’ll sober up, pay his bills and as his lawyers we’ll all move on for another five years of having to put up with him.”

Alex nodded and was silent as their eyes locked but then she got to her feet and was taking steps backwards towards the door.

“Okay,” she said lightly, “Well that’s all. I’ll let you get on with dictating now.”

But JP wasn’t having it. He got to his feet and with his longer stride reached the door before her and slammed it shut.

“Oh no you don’t,” he muttered, hearing an involuntary hint of menace in his tone. “You don’t escape that easily. You’ve been avoiding me too long already.”

“Why, do you have something else for me to do?” she asked, feigning wide-eyed innocence.

JP narrowed his eyes in response. “Aye, I do,” he replied. “We’re going to talk.”

“I like the way you say that.”

“What?”

“Aye.”

“Why?”

“It seems to mean more than just ‘yes’. It seems to mean, I don’t know, ‘we’re on the same page’, something like that.”

“Are we on the same page, Alex? Because I, for one, feel like I’m stumbling around in a three volume edition of ‘War and Peace’.”

“What exactly do you want to be on the same page about?”

“Everything.”

“Everything,” she echoed, tilting her head a little, still a study in disingenuous innocence. “Well I have a few things I need to talk to you about. Maybe that would be a start.”

“What are they?”

“My position here for one. All of a sudden I seem to be your only PA—for the time being.”

“That’s right. Caroline needed one and Vera was the obvious choice.”

“Why Vera and not me? Is it as Vera says, because she’s ‘high-level’?”

JP placed his hand over his mouth and regarded Alex with open suspicion. “Are you saying you want to work for Caroline?”

Alex pondered the question. “No,” she admitted finally, “I’d just like to know how the decision came about when the last conversation we had about this you said you didn’t want me to be your PA.”

“I didn’t say that. I said I wanted you to be my paralegal.”

“You still haven’t answered my question.”

“The partners thought you should go to Caroline. I intervened and suggested Vera instead on the basis that she’s had more experience here and will be better placed to help Caroline settle in.” JP paused as he took in Alex’s slightly dissatisfied look before explaining. “Vera and I are like oil and water Alex, you know that. You on the other hand can read my mind and I like telepathy in a PA,” he added with a deliberately challenging smile as he waited for her reaction.

“Is that right? What else do you like in a PA?” she tossed at him, narrowing her eyes in challenging rejoinder.

But JP knew he was a long way off telepathy himself at that moment. In fact, he was having more trouble reading her than he ever had before.

Essentially she was still the same old Alex but there was something different about her. She was more lighthearted and flirtatious, yet more cryptic and aloof too. But one thing was for sure. She was nothing if not the sexiest woman he had ever known and he wanted her so badly at that moment it actually hurt.

Unfortunately wanting her was one thing. Having her, another.

For weeks he’d been pressuring her to stand up for herself and make her own decisions. Now she’d done just that. But did he have any future in the life of this new Alex who was reinventing herself before his eyes? He had no reason to think so. Two nights ago she’d effectively shown him the door and now she was barely less than cool towards him.

“In a PA I’ll settle for brains, spirit, loyalty, and the best set of legs in running shorts I’ve ever seen,” he answered her with a short laugh.

“You know I could sue you for that comment.”

“I don’t care. By the way, Michael Porter wants to ask you out. I overheard him asking someone whether you’re single or not, on the way back from the game this morning. Are you single, Alex?”

“You know I am,” she replied quietly, the merest of quavers in her voice as she hit that sensitive topic.

“I didn’t think you’d be able to stand up to all the family expectation, all the history.”

“It wasn’t easy.” She looked agitated suddenly as though she didn’t trust herself to discuss the topic without breaking down. “But about work …”

“Of course!” JP ran his hand through his hair as his chest heaved with a sigh. Yet again she was pushing him back to an arms length position. “Work. What do you want to know?”

“Lots of things have changed for me …” she began, turning away from him and taking some steps towards the windows.

He followed and stood behind her. “Do you want me to request a transfer for you, away from me? Is that what you’re building up to this afternoon?”

He was bringing the conversation to a speedy climax but he couldn’t bear the suspense of not knowing how she felt about him. He was banking on the fact that if she gave him some hint of what she wanted from him at work it might give him a hint about what she wanted from him in the rest of her life. There was one line he would not cross though: he would not pressure her into a relationship with him. If the two of them had a future it would be Alex’s decision and Alex’s decision only.

She swung around to him. “I don’t want to be transferred.”

Relief flooded through JP, intoxicating and sweet, but he counselled himself against haste.

“What
do
you want then?”

“I want to work with you as a paralegal and study law. So I’d very much like to take up the firm’s offer if it’s still open, thank you.”

“Of course it’s open. But as for working with me, I’m afraid I don’t know what my future holds.”

“I know that.”

“You’ll probably be left high and dry. You may not get any notice before I head back to the UK. Now that Caroline is here there’s every possibility that will happen. It’s not in your interests to wait and see and you should talk to HR about a transfer. I could get a temp for now.”

“I’ll take my chances,” she declared decidedly. “And don’t worry, I’ll be completely professional, despite what’s happened between us.”

“I’m not the slightest bit concerned about what’s happened between us.” He dismissed her words instantly, wondering whether she was quite as emotionally detached from him as he’d thought. He decided another question might test her mettle a little. “What do you think of Caroline, by the way?”

Alex blew out through pursed lips and looked away from him to collect her thoughts for a few seconds before looking back again.

“She’s incredible,” she answered with resigned honesty. “She’s beautiful, clever, charming. And just to top it off Sophie tells me she has some aristocratic pedigree going back to the Tudors and flies her own plane. She’s so overawing I feel as if I should curtsy in front of her.”

JP covered his mouth with his hand to conceal a smile. He didn’t want Alex to think he was mocking her when as far as he was concerned Caroline simply wasn’t in her league.

“Don’t underestimate yourself, Alex. Anyway, forget Caroline. I want to run through where we are now. For a start, you and I are going to maintain a strictly professional relationship at all times,” he began, breathing in the scent of lavender from her hair. “And you’re going to stick with me until any day now I simply won’t turn up in my office because I’m on a plane back to London. At that point you’ll resolve to press on with the rest of your life—without me.”

Alex nodded and his heart moved north into his throat. How could he feel like he did about her and she feel nothing? It just couldn’t be possible, could it?

“It’s a bit clinical but I think that’s pretty much it,” she replied eventually but her voice was hoarse.

“It’s completely clinical! And that’s all you want?”

Alex was staring up at him now. He couldn’t help roaming her face like searchlights in the dark, willing her to take a leap of faith and utter the words he ached to hear.

And of course Alex did want more. She knew that having him in her life as just her boss would never, ever be enough. She would be tortured every single minute by his untouchable presence. For JP was the manifestation of a promise she’d carried around in her heart forever. The emptiness he would create if he carried on with his life without her would be unfathomable.

“Al, please,” he murmured, his voice heavy with need. “Tell me now if that’s all you want from me.”