Falling For The Lawyer (3 page)

She looked at him quizzically before whispering huskily, “You have no idea how grateful I am, JP, because you’ve no idea how important it is I don’t lose this job …”

But Alex stopped then and snapped her mouth shut—too late. For after all his years as a trial lawyer JP was adept at hearing what people were not telling him, and right then all his instincts were telling him Alex Farrer was not terrified of just losing her job, she was terrified of losing her job at Griffen Murphy Lawyers in particular.

“What’s so important about keeping your job at this law firm of yours?” He watched her expression carefully for any hint of what was going through her mind but the shutters began to close over her face.

“It’s nothing, just family stuff,” she said quickly, looking troubled and distant.

“We don’t have time to go into it anyway,” JP replied, silently resolving to get to the bottom of that comment some time soon. “It’s eight-forty. Shouldn’t you be at work?”

Alex looked at her wristwatch. “Oh hell! Yes! I have to go!”

“Then go,” he replied with a short laugh of relief that he was finally bringing his charade to an end.

“Just like that?”

“Aye,” he replied, surprised to hear himself lapse back into his Scottish vernacular. He didn’t normally use that word outside of Scotland except when he was highly distracted—but Alex Farrer was nothing if not highly distracting in that suit.

“So after this amazing act of generosity I just thank you and walk out the door? It doesn’t feel right. There must be something else I can do to show my gratitude.”

JP’s raw male instincts immediately launched themselves into man-land where all sorts of appealing notions of how he might like Alex to show him her gratitude threw themselves up at him, but he mentally shoved them to one side. He reminded himself about the difficult weeks coming Alex’s way at his firm, but she’d apparently been able to read his mind because she was blushing furiously.

“Would you like to shake hands? Would that bring a nice, formal closure to this farewell of ours?” he finished with a teasing grin.

Alex nodded, clearly relieved at the formality which would end what in her mind would be their last minutes together, and it began as a handshake. The only problem was that a split second after that it was no longer a handshake. He was quite simply cradling her hand and pressing her long, cool fingers in his as she transfixed him with those eyes of hers that seemed to be busy scooping out his soul as though it was the bottom of an ice-cream dish.

JP couldn’t have let her hand go if he’d wanted to and he didn’t want to. Before he could stop himself he was watching her slightly parted lips and fighting off a powerful urge to find out what that mouth tasted like behind those lips. But with a quick summoning of willpower he got on top of the urge, released her hand and swung around to pick up her bag and pass it to her.

“Good luck today.” He now really wanted her to go as soon as possible, disturbed at the direction his thoughts had been taking him.

Alex nodded and took a few steps backwards. He watched as she turned and waved goodbye to Andrea who was still deep in conversation on the phone but who managed a wave of acknowledgement. With a final glance backwards Alex Farrer flashed him a fleeting but serenely happy smile as she walked out of the boutique, leaving JP with a strong sense of foreboding that it might have been better for both of them if their paths had never crossed that morning.

“Oh … my … God!” Sophie declared, deliberately pausing for emphasis between each word as she took in Alex’s new outfit.

Sophie Reynolds, Acting Head of HR at Griffen Murphy Lawyers was resting her elbows on a workstation partition. She was deep in conversation with one of the senior PAs but her eye had been caught by her best friend wandering into the office as she’d never looked before.

Alex put her finger to her lips to hush Sophie before the entire office was alerted to the fact she was wearing a new outfit. Sophie nodded and winked at her conspiratorially, peeled herself off the partition and marched at breakneck speed around the office furniture to meet her friend at her desk. She grabbed Alex’s hands and lifted her arms up to take in the full view of her new suit.

“Is that what I think it is?” Sophie demanded to know.

“Clothing?”

“Very funny, Alex. I know obscenely expensive designer clothing when I see it. Which bank did you rob to buy this?”

Alex laughed. “Nothing so drastic. It’s just a second … floor stock … something like that,” she repeated JP’s words of earlier that morning, awash with another wave of relief as she reminded herself he would never have an opportunity to make her feel
that way
again, for a woman should never feel
that way
about any man when she was engaged to marry another.

“Can I borrow it sometime, Al? No, on second thoughts don’t lend it to me. It would be just my luck to spill tomato sauce all down the front.”

“Soph, you can borrow it anytime you like. In fact you can have it. In the circumstances it might be better if you do. I’m not sure wearing an outfit bought for me by …” But then Alex bit down hard on her bottom lip. Sophie was her best friend but what possible good could come of her trying to explain the strange events of her morning. Unfortunately she’d stopped herself too late because Sophie’s all-seeing green eyes were already searching her face like a roaming spotlight.

“Okay Alex, what’s going on?” Sophie asked in her best interrogatory tone of voice as she perched on the edge of Alex’s desk. “You’re flustered and flushed and fidgeting with your hair in that way you do when you’re really on edge. Something’s happened to upset you this morning hasn’t it?”

Alex bit her bottom lip as she lowered herself onto her chair, her handbag still hanging uselessly from her shoulder. She was wondering whether she could give Sophie a boring potted version of what had happened on her way to work that morning which would not bring on too many questions. But Alex wasn’t sure how to condense her morning into that format. And Sophie’s eyes were huge and expectant and Alex didn’t have the heart to mislead her.

“So let me get this straight,” Sophie began quizzically as Alex wrapped up the account of her morning. Her friend had been listening quietly with a knowing look but listening was at an end. “You get covered in mud. Some perfect stranger whisks you off to the most expensive designer boutique in the city, organises you into a new outfit and then says ‘have a nice life’.”

“Exactly!”

“No, no. You don’t fool me. You’re not telling me something.”

“I promise I’ve told you everything.”

“So he goes by the mysterious name of JP and you don’t know where he works.”

“No idea.”

“And he doesn’t know your second name or anything about you.”

“He knows where I work but …”

“Ah huh!” Sophie declared victoriously and pointed a long, fire engine red fingernail at her friend. “He’ll phone you.”

“No Sophie, it wasn’t like that. He has no intention of phoning me. And please don’t suggest it anyway, it makes me feel more uncomfortable about all this than I already do.”

“Alex Farrer,” Sophie grabbed Alex’s hand, resting it in her own and patting the top of it patronisingly, a wicked glint dancing in her eyes. Alex was desperately trying to think of something she could say to stop Sophie from blowing her meeting with JP out of all proportion, but her friend was already half way out of the barrier and was never one to be reined in once she’d made up her mind to sprint towards the finishing line.

“It’s time we had another one of our little talks. You know, about life and the way it really is—not the way you think it is. Okay. Here I go,” Sophie began in a singsong voice as though she was recounting a fairy story for a small child. “A red-blooded, I’m guessing quite attractive male, meets attractive young woman on side of road in distress. He rescues her from job loss by buying her four-figure outfit to wear to work. Then says ‘have a nice life’ and lets her walk away because he has done all of it out of the goodness of his heart.”

Sophie finished her account breathlessly, raising her eyebrows at Alex expectantly as though waiting for an answer before shaking her head slowly. Alex couldn’t help but laugh at her friend’s exaggerated school prefect expression.

“Okay. Now I’ll give you life as it really is. Attractive man meets wet and bedraggled but nevertheless alluring young woman on side of street in distress. Talks to her for a few minutes and then discovers he actually finds her
extremely
attractive and wants to get her into bed as soon as possible. Has more money than he knows what to do with so buys her an expensive outfit to woo her because he’s already found out where she works and will be calling her later that day to ask her out on a ‘pre-getting her into bed’ date.”

“Sophie, stop! It wasn’t like that at all. Anyway, you’re forgetting one show-stopping detail in this fairy story.”

“Oh really? What’s that?”

“Wet and bedraggled girl is engaged.”

“Yes I know that but Sir Lancelot doesn’t,” Sophie retorted. “What’s more, he has no idea he’s just gone to all that trouble and expense over you for nothing. Poor guy!” Sophie declared, her eyes shining bright with incredulity. “I can’t believe this has happened to you of all people. You’re the last person who would go looking for it.”

“Do you mean people go looking to be covered in mud on their way to work?” Alex replied, deliberately obtuse.

“You know what I mean. You’re not exactly forward when it comes to winning attention from the opposite sex yet here you are, fresh out of the clutches of the original knight in shining armour.”

“Have you ever thought that perhaps I’m not interested in that kind of attention from the opposite sex because I’m engaged?” Alex offered in ironic understatement.

Sophie scoffed and Alex immediately regretted raising that impediment; her engagement was one of Sophie’s favourite hobbyhorses.

“Even if you weren’t engaged to Simon you wouldn’t look for attention from men. It’s not your style. Anyway, you’ve been engaged to Simon for so long I bet you don’t remember what attention from men feels like.”

“Of course I do. Three years is not so long.”

In fact three years felt like yesterday. One minute Simon was tinkling a spoon against a champagne glass to make a toast for her twenty-first birthday party and the next he was proposing in front of a gathering of more than a hundred family members and friends.

She’d been so stunned she’d simply nodded and smiled, desperately trying to conceal just how staggered she was that he’d ignored her point of view that they were too young to get married. But he had ignored it, adamant there was no need to wait. A long engagement would sort out any concerns she had, he’d said—and in a way he was right. She’d been surprised at how easily she’d slipped into her new status as an engaged woman, especially with family excitement and expectation wrapping around them both like a warm, comfortable cloak.

“How are the wedding plans going by the way?” Sophie’s demeanour was mischievous. “Booked the church yet? The reception venue?”

“You know we haven’t Sophie, but we’re going to organise it soon.”

“How about I take over the planning for you?”

Alex couldn’t tell whether Sophie was winding her up or not. “No, that’s very kind of you but …”

“I’m just kidding. No need to panic, Alex. I’ve no intention of bringing this wedding on before you’re ready.”

Sophie was right. Simon had been keen to get the wedding underway for quite some time by that point, and she had been dragging the chain on the wedding preparations. But it was so obvious to everyone that she and Simon were destined for one another there didn’t seem any need to rush things.

She couldn’t remember a time when Simon was not a part of her life. They were the original childhood sweethearts. Their families had been friends for years and they’d played together in the backyard as children. To say her parents adored him was the understatement of the century—Simon was the son they’d never had—and his family adored her too. They’d grown up in the same neighbourhood, gone to the same school and mixed within the same social network of families and friends all their lives. Their engagement had been a fitting together of two final pieces in a very large jigsaw puzzle that extended way beyond their two individual lives.

“What does Simon think about the upheaval within your office?” Sophie asked curiously.

“He doesn’t know.”

“You haven’t told him?”

“Well nothing’s happened yet … and I don’t think he’d care too much if I lost this job,” Alex confessed as she swivelled absentmindedly from side to side on her chair, her heart sinking as she heard herself utter a near truth she found unsettling.

The actual truth was that Simon would be ecstatic if her ties at Griffen Murphy were severed. He wanted her to start concentrating on the wedding and their future home life. As he’d said last time they were together, she was in a go-nowhere job paying chicken feed. Why would she bother with a career at all when his business was going gangbusters?

There was just one problem—Alex loved her job.

“That’s right,” Sophie declared mercilessly as though she could read Alex’s mind. “No need for the little wife to work when she’s going to marry Mr Megabucks.”

“It’s not that. We want to start a family as soon as possible.” Alex could hear Simon’s so often repeated words echoing in her own voice. But Alex knew she was wasting her breath. Sophie had been raised amidst the expectation that career opportunities should know no limits. It was pointless to try and explain that the expectations swirling around her own life like mountain mist were so very different.

“Yes, well you are getting on,” Sophie teased. “That biological clock is starting to tick pretty fast at twenty-four. Better get on with it.”

“Stop it, Soph!”

“Stop what?”

“This … this thing that you do about my engagement.”

“Well someone has to try and gee you up! You’re the most unenthusiastic bride-to-be I’ve ever met!”

“I’m not unenthusiastic,” Alex argued as she felt self-conscious heat rise in her cheeks. “But when your fiancé lives overseas most of the time it’s hard to plan a wedding. And work has been busy …”