Legally Addicted (8 page)

Suck it up, Georgia.

This was what was expected of a partner in a successful law firm, and if she wanted the contacts and client base that went with it, she would just have to grin and bear it.

And there was still the issue of the addiction centre proposal. Now that she knew Brad was on the board, she might not be up to what Caro had alleged, but she needed to make sure she maintained a positive relationship with him.

So play nicely, Georgia.

The trouble was she couldn’t remember the last time she had played nicely. She only knew how to play one way, and that was to survive and, if at all possible, to win.

Brad’s beach house was number forty-six. Thirty-eight through forty-four were huge modern architectural statements, bordered by six foot high security fences; the sort of houses Georgia had been expecting. Stopping outside number forty-six, however, she fumbled in the glove compartment to recheck the address that Miriam had written on a post-it note.

This couldn’t be it.

A single storeyed brick and plaster bungalow, it was flanked by a low picket style fence in the front, and a well-used access strip to the beach ran down the left side. Only the right hand boundary was demarcated by a high fence separating it from its neighbour, a massive faux Mediterranean style white monolith of a mansion to the right.

She checked again. Number forty-six was right. This was it.

Unsure what to wear to a Spencer ‘barbeque’, and not wanting to look shabby or be outdone by Brad’s date, she had gone for a flattering black halter neck cotton dress with a string of pearls. She might have to turn up single, but that didn’t mean she had to look pitiable into the bargain, but now, looking at the modest home, she unhooked the pearls and threw them into the glove box beside the post-it.

With its absolute beachfront position, the block of land would have been worth a six figure sum on its own, but the house was completely out of place amongst its neighbours. Walking up to the front door, which was resplendent with a patch of peeling paint, the real estate speak phrase of ‘do up or demolish’ came to mind. Georgia put down the overnight bag she had packed, took a deep breath and knocked on the door.

‘Glad you could make it, Georgia, welcome to my beach hut,’ Brad said unselfconsciously, after he had wrenched the sticking door to get it open past halfway.

He hugged her and gave her two polite air kisses. The sensation of being pressed against his hard body coaxed hers into life. Turning her head sideways to avoid taking a face plant right into his chest, she caught a whiff of his all too familiar cologne. The scent of freshly cut sapling came with a memory that almost knocked her feet out from under her, and she resisted the urge to grasp on to him for support.

Mercifully, he released her to take the overnight bag and she stepped back before her hormones fired up any more and drove her headlong into trouble.

Feminine laughter emanated from a room behind them, reminding her that they were not alone, and she shook herself out of the last of her little daydream.

He’s out of bounds, and anyway he’s with someone, remember?

Brad looked back over his shoulder.

‘The Daytons and Llewellyns are already here, but let me show you to your room first.’

In contrast to the scruffy exterior, the inside of the house had been redecorated in a modern beach house aesthetic. Bare boards and whitewashed walls started in the hallway and continued into the bedroom. The retro furniture had been stripped back to natural wood and the bed was a minimalist slat bed. Nothing about the style of the beach house meshed with what she had seen of the rich decoration in Brad’s penthouse.

‘No ensuites, I’m afraid, but there are two bathrooms.’

Brad pointed to a pile of fluffy towels at the end of the bed.

He set down her small suitcase, and she noticed the faded t-shirt, moulded to his toned abdominals, was fraying at the neck and around the sleeves. His lean powerful legs were partially covered by long board shorts, stopping just above the knee, which likewise sported a couple of small holes from wear.

Ditching the pearls had been the right move.

‘You look lovely by the way, Georgia.’

‘Thanks,’ she said, trying to will the heat that was marching up the back of her neck to pivot right back on around and down again. It wasn’t so much the compliment that was making her blush as it was the awkwardness of standing beside a bed with Brad, her mind flooding with memories of the last time they had been in a bedroom together. She looked around the room searching for something to make a neutral comment about, a picture, a lamp, anything, but before she could come up with something to say, Brad motioned for her to follow him back out into the hallway.

‘The others are in bedrooms further down, the room next to yours is mine, and the one directly across the hall is your closest bathroom,’ he called back over his shoulder, carrying on into the living room.

After the obligatory introductions to the wives, an older man who had been working in the adjoining kitchen pressed a glass of sparkling wine into her hand. She looked around for a place to sit. With two full sized sofas occupied by John Dayton and his wife Beverley, and Roger Llewellyn and his wife Vera, there appeared nowhere free.

‘Here, come and sit beside me, Georgia. I promise I won’t bite.’

Brad patted the space beside him on a smaller two-seater. Make that a one-and-half-seater, she thought as she sat down and her thigh brushed his. He didn’t flinch and with little space to move, she was trapped against him. The heat emanating from his leg travelled through her thigh, circulating outwards and causing an unexpected sensation higher up.

She looked around, but there were no other guests. It seemed as if Brad didn’t have a date for the weekend after all. Her head said it didn’t matter, while her body, stupidly happy that she didn’t have to suffer seeing him with someone new, hummed an entirely different tune.

‘So what’s the story behind this place, Brad? It’s got a stunning view, but I’m sure it wasn’t what any of us were expecting as the beach house of the son of the late king of Sydney construction.’ Llewellyn piped up, asking what Georgia, and probably everyone else, was thinking.

Brad stretched out and leaned back, so that he was pressed even more tightly against her.

‘This is where it all begun. When Dad completed his apprenticeship he started his own building company and saved up for this place and all of the land around it. Then he applied to have the zoning laws changed and when that eventually came through he was able to subdivide the block into twenty plots. He built one house to sell in order to make the money to build the next and so on. All the houses started out looking like this, but most have now either been replaced, or modified and extended so much you wouldn’t know.

His guests gave polite smiles, nevertheless confused as to why the house had not been given more of a facelift like its neighbours. Brad shrugged, stood up, and headed for a set of French doors that opened on to a deck facing the beach.

‘See this first mark here,’ Brad pointed to a gouge a couple of feet up off the floor on the doorframe. It was the first of several other horizontal marks. ‘That is how tall I was when Dad sold his first house.’

Imagining Brad as a toddler melted something solid in Georgia’s chest. It was hard to visualise anyone as powerful as Brad as ever having been innocent or vulnerable, but seeing him like this, in understated surroundings, it was if he had been laid bare. The pride in his voice as he talked about the oldest shabbiest house in the street caught something in Georgia’s throat, and she quickly took a gulp of her wine rather than analyse what the feelings might be about.

‘Oh, and I’m sure you would have been the most darling baby too. What do you think, Georgia?’ Beverley Dayton asked.

Georgia took another long, deliberate sip of her drink, giving her time to think. She was about to deflect Beverley’s question by saying he was probably a little devil when Vera Llewellyn answered for her.

‘Cute as a button — I’ll bet he started charming the ladies in kindergarten.’

Brad rolled his eyes and laughed the comment off.

‘Alright men, what do you say to making fire and charring some fish?’

‘Sounds good to me,’ Llewellyn said, climbing to his feet first, with Dayton following after him, trailing Brad outside through the double doors to a barbeque out on the deck.

‘What about you, Georgia?’ Beverley asked as the men went outside. ‘Do you have a husband?’

‘No, I’m still single.’

‘Are you? Well, how fortuitous. Bradley would be an excellent catch,’ Vera chimed in.

‘I couldn’t. We work together.’ Georgia shook her head.

‘Work together?’ The two women exchanged a look. ‘How do you think we met our husbands?’

Georgia wanted to point out that it was different when a partnership was at stake, but that would have ruffled the women’s feathers. If they met their husbands at work, she guessed they must have been secretaries. The paralegals and legal secretaries kept the firm running, and the loss of a good executive assistant was always a blow, but it was hardly equal to the dissolution of a partnership.

Instead she took the bait.

‘How did you meet your husbands?’

‘Let me tell you, working together didn’t stop John. He practically chased me around his desk didn’t he, Vera? Not that I wasn’t happy to be caught,’ Beverley said.

Vera pointed an accusing finger at the other woman.

‘That’s not quite the way I recall it. You lured him into the stationery room at the office Christmas party, as I remember.’

The women cackled in unison.

‘This would be the perfect place to lure Bradley.’ Vera swept her hand out towards the golden beach that came right up to the veranda and the waves crashing beyond it.

Watching Brad working the barbeque against the backdrop of the sparkling blue ocean, Georgia hardly needed a reminder about the perfect views on offer. She silently conceded that if she was planning to make a move on Brad, this would be the place to do it.

But she wasn’t. Even with the added incentive of making Brad more amenable to supporting her addiction centre proposal, it wasn’t worth the risk to her career. If she and Brad got together and then broke up, as the partner with the lower earning capacity it would be her Dayton and Llewellyn would be asking to leave.

Georgia knocked back the rest of her drink, and keeping half of her attention on the older women’s conversation, managed to maintain one eye on what the men were doing outside.

As Brad turned to John and Roger from time to time to listen or say something, she couldn’t help but wonder what they were talking about, and if business decisions were being made without her. Irritated to be stuck with the wives, she kept smiling through gritted teeth, asking Beverley about her family. It was an act of desperation to keep the conversation going but one that struck on the woman’s favourite topic of conversation. Beverley was still wittering on about the achievements of her various grandchildren when Brad came back into the living room, tongs in one hand and a plate of cooked seafood in the other.

Having gathered everyone in the dining area, the elderly caterer seated the guests, placing Georgia at one end of the long rustic timber table, looking straight down at Brad at the other end. It was strange seeing him so at home in such comparatively humble surroundings. How did this Brad fit with the one who lived in an ostentatious penthouse, and owned a healthy chunk of Sydney’s corporate real estate?

The food was pleasant; typical barbie fare. The dessert consisted of shop-bought Pavlova and berries, and all of the wine was moderately priced plonk that she could have picked up from her local bottle store.

This relaxed Brad, serving up overdone, barbequed food to his guests, and topping up everyone’s glasses like any regular host, could have been the typical Aussie bloke next door. He was a totally different man to the designer suited, gemstone studded Brad who arrived at the office each day.

After the meal Brad pushed back his chair and walked over to an oak dresser. Opening one of the drawers, he pulled out a box of cigars and a bottle of spirits.

‘Apologies ladies, but we’re going to retire to the veranda to talk shop for a while.’

Georgia’s hackles rose. She wasn’t about to be sidelined again.

‘I assume you mean for me to join you as well?’ She hadn’t meant to say it with quite so much ‘tone’, but the two couples’ heads lurched together in unison like spectators at a tennis match, first towards her and then at Brad, waiting for his reaction.

‘Of course, Georgia. You are one of the partners after all.’

‘Good, because I wouldn’t want to be excluded from any more decisions.’

‘I can assure you no decisions have been made without all of the partners present, including you.’

‘Then what were you talking about before out there?’

She jerked her hand, palm upwards in the direction of the veranda.

‘The usual things men talk about around a barbeque: sport, cars, the state of the share market, but so far we haven’t discussed anything to do with the long-term future of the partnership.’

His response was cool yet pleasant. Something about Brad’s unfailing manners in the face of conflict always managed to annoy the hell out of her.

‘I’m pleased to hear it.’

There was an awkward silence. Roger cleared his throat as if he was about to say something and then thought better of it. The others looked down at the table.

‘Good, so that’s decided then, Georgia will be joining us on the veranda,’ Brad said finally. ‘I must apologise in advance though, Georgia, because while the cigars are optional, the aged single malt and the mosquitoes are compulsory, and with all of us out there, Vera and Beverley will get to eat all the chocolate.’

‘Oh we don’t mind at all, do we Vera? It will give us more time to catch up,’ Beverley said, smoothing things over further.

Relieved smiles broke out around the table. It was a good save and she should have been grateful, but social humiliation of any kind cut too close to the bone. She clenched her napkin into a ball and forced a smile.