Falling For The Lawyer (2 page)

Together they approached the glass door of the boutique and left their sodden umbrellas to one side. A stylish young woman was moving about the shop and getting ready for the business day ahead. The stranger knocked on the door and caught her attention. She looked towards them in surprise but on seeing him at the door she smiled broadly and approached to unlock it.

“JP! Darling!” she cried, standing back to let the two of them in but barely acknowledging Alex’s existence.

“Andrea, it’s good to see you.” He smiled, accepting her kiss on both cheeks.

“It’s been too long! How’s Caroline?”

“She’s fine … last time I saw her anyway.”

“Oh … I see!” Andrea nodded, her eyes roving over him with flirtatious interest.

Alex turned in surprise to the man she now knew as ‘JP’, intensely curious about the powerful sex appeal he had for this very stylish woman. But giving him the quick once over again Alex decided that despite the devastating effect he was having on Andrea, he was a very long way from drop dead gorgeous.

There was no doubt he was what a lot of girls her age described as ‘built’, but he wasn’t especially tall. And he had a very ordinary, outdoorsy kind of face. In fact his knock-about looks suggested he’d spent far too many of his young years exposed to either the freezing cold of Scottish football fields or the blazing heat of Spanish beaches.

“So Caroline is still in the UK?” Andrea persisted, unfazed by JP’s short responses.

“Yep, no plans to come here at this stage.” JP gave Andrea an obscure smile. “Anyway, I didn’t come in to discuss Caroline; I need to ask a favour.”

“Of course, anything.”

“This is … ?”

“Alex,” Alex interjected, remembering JP didn’t know her name.

Andrea swung around to Alex for the first time and gave her a look as though she’d only just noticed she was standing there. Alex wasn’t offended. She was used to being invisible to women like Andrea. But she was clearly becoming less invisible as Andrea’s jaw dropped and her eyes widened as she took in Alex’s hair, face and clothes.

“Oh dear! Do you know you are almost completely encased in mud? What on earth happened?”

“Alex had a run in with passing traffic and lost,” JP offered by way of the briefest explanations. “She now has to front the new boss from hell and needs something presentable to wear so that she can get to work on time.”

“I’ll need to clean up first,” Alex threw in, looking away from Andrea’s stunned expression in appeal to JP.

“Would that be okay?” he asked Andrea.

“Of course. I’ve a shower and towels out the back.”

Andrea moved towards a rack of clothing and removed some garments. “Here, this is a lovely outfit for the office. I’m assuming you
do
work in an office?” she added doubtfully, staring at Alex’s dreary outfit before she draped a peppermint-coloured suit over her arm and began to lead her towards a door at the back of the shop.

Alex turned to follow Andrea but as she did a price tag on the outfit flipped over into full view. Four figures appeared after the dollar sign and behind Andrea’s back Alex turned and shot a look of sheer alarm at JP, pointing to the price tag. He looked at it, nodded and then raised his eyebrows and pointed his finger at her as if to say, ‘we had a deal, remember?’ then that same finger rested against his lips to silence her protests.

“There’s some shampoo in the shower recess,” Andrea continued, unaware of the wordless exchange going on behind her before tossing at Alex with breathtaking directness, “Oh, and you’ll find some heels out there as well. I’m afraid those shoes you’re wearing just won’t do at all—mud or no mud!”

JP McKenzie rose from the comfort of Andrea’s lounge chair with jerky movements. He knew that if he didn’t get up and walk about he’d soon slip into a deep, intoxicating sleep.

God he hated that flight from London. It absolutely killed him every time. He’d flown in three days ago and the jet lag was still eating away at his brain. And the problem was he needed his wits about him that morning, particularly as Alex Farrer had let it slip that every member of his new litigation section was dreading his arrival that day.

“Where on earth did you find that little poppet?” Andrea crooned from her large table, busy entering information into a laptop as they waited for Alex to return.

JP couldn’t help but smile to himself. Andrea had only just met Alex yet she’d immediately relegated her to the level of ‘poppet’.

How did women like Andrea know with such certainty who was in their social stratosphere and who wasn’t? Caroline had been like that too; swift and brutal had been his ex-girlfriend’s assessments of the women she associated with. You were either on her ‘A-list’ or you weren’t, and once you were off the list there were no second round offers.

“I found her on the edge of George Street just after the mud thing.” JP was wandering around the boutique, casting his eyes over the limited range of outfits on display. But he wasn’t thinking about clothing right then, he was thanking his lucky stars fate had intervened on his side that morning.

But for the old man in front of him at the cash machine, struggling to master the challenges of modern banking, he would never have stood still long enough to notice Alex Farrer standing motionless at the pedestrian crossing.

She would have been so easy to miss too. Grey was the colour she’d conjured up in his mind: from a distance she’d been almost invisible against the backdrop of mist and city paving. If she hadn’t turned at the very moment he was looking her way he would never have felt the lightning bolt of familiarity.

Once he’d captured a glimpse of her he’d been able to place her immediately. Quite a few times over the last couple of days he’d glanced at her photograph on the firm’s website. And although he’d only had her profile before him as he’d waited for the cash machine he’d known instantly that the drowned rat standing at the lights was his new Assistant PA.

“You found her on the edge of the road and are now buying her a four figure outfit!” Andrea tinkled lightly. “I didn’t know that inside that brash exterior was a knight in shining armour!”

“I have an ulterior motive,” he explained in a low voice as he approached the table and rested his hands on it to lean closer to Andrea.

Andrea’s eyes shone with conspiratorial pleasure. “And what would that be?”

“What that young lady doesn’t know is she’s my new PA and I’m her new boss and I’ve decided to have some fun in what is building up to be a day from hell.”

“I see, but buying your PA a new outfit is an expensive way to have fun. Clearly you’ve got too much time on your hands, JP McKenzie,” Andrea finished with a coquettish tilt to her head.

Andrea couldn’t have been more wrong. JP had never been busier in his life. For months he’d been drowning in the logistics of merging his London law firm with the one partnered by his two best mates, Adam and Justin. Just to complicate things he’d also had to negotiate a torrid break-up of his two year relationship with Caroline, and that had drained him on every level possible.

“I can promise you I haven’t had any time on my hands in ages.” JP straightened again and shrugged his shoulders. “That means I haven’t had time to spend any money let alone have any fun. It will be worth every dollar that outfit costs me when I see Alex’s face in my office in about thirty minutes.”

“I wish I could be a fly on the wall.”

“I’ll tell you about it some time.”

“Well why don’t we grab a meal … some time,” Andrea shot back in immediate rejoinder, raising her eyebrows in a way that suggested she’d be happy to be dessert.

JP swallowed in instinctive response. One of his ex-girlfriend’s best pals was hitting on him and he hadn’t even seen it coming—clearly he’d been out of the dating game too long.

His eyes flickered over Andrea. He took in the snappy short hairdo and the figure that was impossibly slender and curvy all at once. There was no doubt about it, she was a seriously sexy woman and he was seriously contemplating the not unattractive prospect of taking up her offer.

But as a critical bonus Andrea had those qualities in a woman that always attracted him like a moth to a flame: hard as nails, independent and ambitious to the core—just like Caroline. And just like Caroline, Andrea would never ask for anything from him beyond the shallowest commitment—no protecting, no encouraging, no emotional props would be needed—in short, the polar opposite of his mother.

JP opened his mouth to accept Andrea’s offer but then quickly closed it again. Despite her perfection something he couldn’t put his finger on was holding him back and until he knew what it was he didn’t want to risk becoming tied up with another woman if his heart wasn’t in it.

“Thanks for the offer but I’m not going to have time to tie my shoe laces over the next few weeks let alone go out for dinner.”

Andrea shrugged easily and smiled. Thankfully she was unfazed by the knock-back. “So? Who’s talking weeks? I’m not going anywhere over the next few months and my calendar is very flexible.”

JP gave Andrea a bland smile in response to her suggestive one and was relieved to see out of the corner of his eye that Alex had reappeared in the shop. Nevertheless it took him a few moments to gather his thoughts and focus on Alex rather than the woman who’d just been offering herself up as a no-strings-attached date. Yet once the focus mechanism kicked in the rush of clarity took his breath away. For the second time in a minute he swallowed.

“Does it look that bad?” Alex blurted in horror as she read his shocked expression and began to fidget with the lapel of her new jacket.

JP gave out a snort of laughter. He rested back against the edge of the desk and folded his arms to continue his study of her. Andrea approached Alex with a satisfied smile and guided her latest model to an enormous mirror lining the wall to her left before leaving her there to answer a phone call.

Alex gasped visibly as she took in her reflection and JP guessed the sheer amazement of seeing herself in that extraordinarily beautiful suit was genuine. After all, the outfit she’d had on that morning was nothing short of a disaster on every level—even without the mud.

Alex’s mouth remained open a little as she took in her tall figure; her legs looked like they went on forever in those silk pants. And JP couldn’t help noticing the way the jacket tapered in at her tiny waist before blossoming open at the top of the silky black camisole she was wearing underneath. The whole outfit couldn’t have fitted her better if it had been tailor made.

“Well, Alex, what do you think?” JP approached her from behind and studied the reflection of her heart shaped face and the silky dark hair with the fringe cut a little shorter than usual above her exotic eyes. “It will get you through today, yeah?” he added with a grin.

“It’s the most sensational outfit I’ve ever worn,” she breathed, clearly still shocked at her transformation. “But I’ll feel totally like a fish out of water in this. Everyone will look at me.” She was fidgeting again—this time with the jacket buttons.

“Of course they’ll look at you—you look dead gorgeous. At least you will if you stop fidgeting.”

“But I don’t like people looking at me like
that
.”

“You mean you don’t like
men
looking at you like that.”

“It’s not about the men. If I wear this then I’ll feel like I’m … I don’t know … trying to show off.”

Only then did JP understand what the girl in front of him was saying. She was ill at ease with the idea that the world might stand up and take notice of her because she simply didn’t want to be noticed.

Incredible!

For so long he’d surrounded himself with women like Caroline and Andrea who revelled in the world’s spotlight, he’d completely forgotten there were women who hated it with an equal passion.

“Alex,” he began eventually, trying not to sound patronising to this girl who fate had decided to throw in his path that morning. “You are what you are. Don’t hide it under drab and shapeless clothing. You should dress up every single day and walk tall.”

Alex gazed up at him, her dark chocolate eyes wide and thoughtful. She was processing his suggestion carefully before she shook her head in decided rejection of his proposition. “If I am what I am then why should I try and pretend I’m something I’m not?”

Suddenly the frivolity vanished from JP’s mood. This girl was the real deal, the genuine article—no pretense or falsity whatsoever. And there
he
was pretending to be something he wasn’t by keeping his identity from her. What had seemed like a bit of fun, as he’d described it to Andrea, was no longer feeling quite so funny. For with every passing moment Alex Farrer was becoming less like a ghostly grey apparition on the side of the road and more like a warm and charming girl. Worse still, she was obviously feeling fragile about the day ahead of her and her future was in his hands.

She’d been quite right when she’d said her boss would have to sack her in the next few weeks. The new policy at Griffen Murphy Lawyers was clear: no more than one PA to a lawyer. And as the latest equity partner to join the firm he would have to lead by example—Justin and Adam would make sure of it.

“You know we could stay here and have this conversation all day but I don’t think it’s going to get us anywhere.” JP was now anxious to shut down the deception he’d begun as soon as possible.

“I don’t mean to sound ungrateful about what you’ve done for me this morning,” Alex explained as she swung around to face him. “You’ve been very kind.”

“Do you like the outfit?”

“Of course I like it. How could I not? It’s stunning.”

“It’s yours then. Keep the shoes too. Andrea said she could discount things; write them off as seconds, floor stock, whatever.”

“I’ll pay you back then,” Alex announced as she swallowed and nodded her head in determined confirmation. “It may take me a little while but you’ll get every cent. If you give me your address I can send you a cheque and …”

“My shout, Alex. I don’t want you to pay me back.” He knew her salary to the dollar and just how much it would hurt her bank account to do that.