Legally Addicted (17 page)

For a second Brad paused to reflect on Caro’s accusation, but then he dismissed it. Considering how Caro treated Georgia, it was hardly surprising that seeing the woman arrive at his office would unsettle her. He simply didn’t believe it. There was nothing at all about Georgia’s behaviour that indicated she wanted something from him.

‘It’s okay; it wasn’t a legal matter. She was here about the gala, but thankfully Jeffrey’s agreed to take it on.’

‘She didn’t say anything about the addiction centre, did she?’

After the way Caro had reacted when Georgia tried to raise her proposal with the board, it made sense that she would be fearful that Caro might try to undercut her. But Brad fully intended to make up his own mind once he read the report. Based on everything he knew about Georgia, he predicted it would be well researched and comprehensive, and he fully expected to be able to throw his full support behind it.

There was no need to worry her with Caro’s toxic allegations.

‘Not directly. She seems more concerned about the funding. I’m sorry I haven’t had a chance to read it yet, but as soon as I get through this lot, I will.’

He felt bad that he hadn’t had a chance to read the document. Georgia had obviously put a lot of work into it. Now that he understood more about her background, he realised this wasn’t just some random charitable project to fulfil a personal need for altruism. Ultimately, the whole thing had to be about her mother and was therefore deeply personal.

‘Oh, that’s okay. I understand.’

‘I promise I’ll read it before you come over tonight.’

‘So I’m expected?’ she asked, gripping onto the doorframe, briefly resting her head against it in a motion that reminded him of how much he enjoyed waking up with her beside him on the pillow.

‘Any time, Georgia. You know you don’t need an invitation.’

After work, as was his usual habit, Brad headed straight for the pool in the private glass atrium that covered the rooftop of Spencer Towers. He pushed off the tiled wall and swam to the shallow end, where he stood up and wiped his eyes. As his vision cleared, he noticed Jeffrey emerging from the elevator that opened onto the roof. The butler placed a tray down on a bench in the outdoor kitchen set-up, and then opened the hood of the barbeque. While Jeffrey fiddled with the dials on the front of the grill, Brad climbed up the ladder out of pool.

Good old Jeffrey. His butler had seen him heading upstairs and guessed that he would rather have a relaxed dinner of grilled steak and salad by the pool than something formal in the dining room.

Despite appearing engaged with the barbeque, by the time Brad was standing on the glazed tiles that bordered the pool, water running in torrents from his swim shorts, Jeffrey was there with a towel in one hand, a beer in the other.

The man still had eyes in the back of his head. As a child, it was almost always Jeffrey who had stepped in and scooped him up whenever rough play with a schoolfriend or an ill-conceived activity threatened to turn injurious. Likewise, when he was planning a mischief, Jeffrey always seemed to be one step ahead and there to intercept him, while his parents were usually too busy to notice.

‘Pleasant swim, sir?’

‘Great, thanks, Jeffrey. Why don’t you take a dip? I can keep an eye on the barbeque.’

Jeffrey looked up with an expression of barely concealed horror.

‘What, you don’t think I can be trusted not to burn the steak?’ Brad asked, feigning offense. Always deferential, Brad knew that he had Jeffrey trapped. Raising unbeatable arguments was, after all, his stock in trade. Jeffrey would never criticise Brad, not even his doubtful culinary talents.

‘Not at all sir, I’m sure your barbequing skills are most excellent, it’s just that it’s not appropriate.’

‘I say what’s appropriate here, now that the old man’s gone. Go on, Jeffrey. I mean it.’ Having asserted his authority, Brad knew it would also break some rule in the butler’s handbook for Jeffrey to argue back.

‘Well, if you insist, sir. It does look very inviting.’

‘I do insist, Jeffrey.’

From four thirty onwards, after Georgia had seen her last client for the day, her stomach had fluttered as fiercely as a freshly stocked tropical butterfly house, and going up in the lift to the penthouse it seemed as if the entire colony had locked onto her heart and threatened to beat it out of her chest.

It might not have been quite so bad if Miriam hadn’t dropped the L bomb before the Samoa trip. Even though Brad hadn’t told her he loved her, ever since Miriam mentioned it, and especially since they made up in Samoa, she had been worried that he might. Once she thought it, she couldn’t stop thinking it, and the idea kept popping back into her head, scaring her at inopportune moments like an evil jack-in-the-box.

Taking the risk of getting involved in a proper relationship was one thing, but declarations of the L word were unthinkable. If going back to Brad’s penthouse hadn’t also presented the opportunity to hear what he thought of her addiction centre proposal and make the case for Spencer Trust funding, she might have called time-out, baulked at the whole idea and gone home to her own apartment.

The butler opened the door in a bathrobe, his hair wet, as if she had caught him in the shower.

‘Good Evening, Miss Murray — I do apologise for my appearance. Bradley insisted that I take a swim in the pool. He is expecting you on the roof.’

Jeffrey motioned back towards the elevator behind her, stepping in to enter a code that illuminated the button for the rooftop.

She wasn’t surprised Brad encouraged the butler to use his pool. Brad actually treated his employees very well. That had been clear after another day at the resort in Samoa when she had the chance to see more of him interacting with his staff.

Moments later, the doors opened to blinding artificial light. Slowly her eyes adjusted to the lighting bouncing off the tiled area around the pool. The rooftop area comprised a covered garden centred around a swimming pool, flanked by potted palms, with a large outdoor kitchen unit running down one side.

Brad lay stretched out on lounger over a towel, his shorts damp from an earlier swim. His briefcase lay open on a side table, exposing a pile of paperwork.

‘Georgia. I hoped you’d come.’ He moved to pull himself up, but she leaned down to kiss him. He took a glass hanging from a clasp on the side of a stand holding an ice bucket and poured her a glass of bubbly.

He handed it to her and she took a sip.

Dom Perignon.

It was a shock to realise that the expensive champagne was now something she could recognise by taste alone. How had she ended up in this situation? With someone this wealthy who, against all odds, also seemed to be a genuinely decent human being? And one who was impossibly handsome, not to mention prepared to leave the firm to preserve her career? It didn’t seem possible and, just to make her situation even more perfect, she was on the verge of securing the funding for the addiction centre.

Maybe this was how life was supposed to work? Perhaps it wasn’t all struggle after all? Maybe life was meant to be a rolling cycle of the lowest of the low, and dizzying heights; the lows making the good times all the sweeter.

‘I was hoping we might go over the addiction centre proposal…’

‘Oh yes.’

Brad began to rifle through his briefcase.

For some reason she couldn’t breathe, as if her lungs had suddenly lost three quarters of their capacity. Her heart was still beating double time. This was it. She was about to get confirmation that her dream would be a reality.

Better than that, she wasn’t going to have to break up with Brad once she got it. She was starting to think that she could do this ‘seeing someone seriously’ thing.

She
was
doing it.

‘Sure. I’ve already read part of it. I’m about halfway through. Why don’t you have a swim while I finish it?’

‘I don’t have a costume.’

Georgia looked around. Spencer Towers wasn’t the only tall building on the quay. A number of other buildings were lit up around them, and she preferred not to risk a charge of indecent exposure by taking a skinny-dip.

‘Don’t worry. Jeffrey’s thought of everything.’

Brad reached down beside his lounger and handed up a bag. Inside she could see a towel, swimming costume and a swimming cap.

She put down her glass in order to fish out a pink latex cap adorned with flowers.

‘I didn’t know they still made these things!’

Brad laughed.

‘Just don’t say anything to him about it. He would be deeply offended. He prides himself on anticipating my every requirement. For Jeffrey, being a butler isn’t just a job; it’s a calling. Think of him as one of the family, he’s…’

Brad didn’t finish the sentence, taking a swig of beer instead.

‘Like a father to you?’ she guessed.

‘Yeah. Something like that,’ Brad said, turning away, but not fast enough to prevent her seeing something in his eyes she recognised.

Sadness.

Why hadn’t she seen it before? Perhaps, in some ways, she and Brad weren’t really so different. Maybe it wasn’t only children at the lower socio-economic end of the spectrum who suffered the scarring effects of parental inadequacy. Until now she wouldn’t have believed she could have anything in common with a billionaire, but maybe at the heart of their respective childhoods there was a kernel of experience that wasn’t so very different. They had both been abandoned. Money, and the material things it bought, was just window dressing. Wealth couldn’t soothe pain.

When he turned back towards her, the look was gone. He opened the document she guessed was her proposal and leafed through the pages. While he was reading, Georgia took the bag into a small screened off changing area at the side of the pool. Once she had changed into the cossie she slipped into the heated water, keeping one eye on Brad, trying to judge his reaction as he read.

She swam a few lengths, keeping her head out of the water, and then paddled back to the edge of the pool, just below the lounger where Brad was stretched out. He sipped from a stubbie of beer, the proposal document now back on the table beside him.

‘So what do you think?’ she called up to him.

‘I think it’s got real potential, and what you’re proposing is certainly backed up by the evidence. The funding will be your biggest stumbling block. The state government might stump up with the funding for some of it, and possibly the local council as well, but the majority will probably have to come from the Federal Department of Health and Ageing and that will be a long slow process.’

‘I thought, perhaps, you might like to help out.’

Georgia held her breath.

‘Possibly, the Spencer Trust might well contribute. I’ll have the trust secretary send you an application form, if you like.’

Georgia let the air out of her lungs in a rush and gripped at the handrail, edging towards the short ladder out of the pool.

Brad’s response had been indifferent, as if he had missed what she was actually asking.

‘Thanks, I appreciate it, but that would just be a formality, wouldn’t it? I mean, with your influence?’

Brad, who had raised the stubbie of beer to his mouth ready to take a drink, stopped, and pulled the bottle away again, placing it on the side table beside her proposal.

‘No, it wouldn’t be a formality, your application would go through the same process as any other.’

‘But you would still use your influence to help, though.’

Brad frowned.

‘No, I wouldn’t. The trust operates to strict criteria on which all requests for funding are ranked. The addiction centre would be assessed on its merits alongside the others. It would be inappropriate of me to interfere with the process, and to be honest I’m shocked that you would ask me to.’

Brad’s tone was sharp. She had gotten used to saying pretty much whatever she liked without any risk of gaining a rise out him. The rebuke came as a shock and Georgia reacted, making no attempt to disguise the sarcasm in her voice.

‘Now he comes over all keen on “appropriateness”. I can assure you there was nothing appropriate about the way you lured me up to your penthouse in the first place.’

Brad pulled himself up straighter against the back of the lounger.

‘It didn’t stop you coming back for more, as I recall. Look, this isn’t about us, Georgia. It’s about what’s right and fair. If I intervened to get Spencer Trust funding for your project, then someone else at least as deserving would miss out. You get that, don’t you?’

‘Don’t patronise me, Brad. I get precisely what you’re saying, but those people are strangers. I’m your girlfriend. You have to help me.’

There she had said it. Admitted it to herself. That is what she had become.

Brad’s Girlfriend.

And as his girlfriend she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. How could they have any future together, if Brad didn’t understand how important establishing the addiction centre was to her? Without funding, she would get nowhere, and even though three million dollars was a lot, it was a drop in the bucket compared to the Spencer fortune. It’s not that he couldn’t pull strings to help her. She could have accepted that. But he hadn’t said that. What she heard him say quite emphatically was that he could, but that he wouldn’t.

‘I have to?’ Brad shook his head. ‘Caro said you were just out for the money and I didn’t believe her. But it looks like she might have been right. Did you ever care about me at all?’

‘Of course I care about you. I can’t believe you would even ask that.’

Without looking in Brad’s direction, Georgia hoisted herself out of the pool, dried herself off, then grabbed her clothes out of the changing room and stalked towards the lift, still dripping.

She knew she had sounded genuinely indignant but she needed to keep moving, to prevent the splinter of guilt pricking at her from puncturing through and moving up through her system. She did care about him, that part was true enough, but getting Brad to fund the addiction centre had been the incentive, the tipping point that tempted her to get involved with him in the first place, and she wasn’t about to admit that.