Legally Addicted - By Lena Dowling Page 0,18

and she could have sworn there was a glint in his eye.

That was all she needed; Brad thinking she was hot for him.

‘A little. The aircon mustn’t be working properly.’

‘Hmm, seems okay in here to me,’ Brad said absently, turning his attention to his in-tray, swivelling backwards to pull a file out, and then placing it back down on the meeting table as if he were about to wrap up the conversation and return to his own work. ‘Well that’s everything I have. Unless there’s anything else you want to raise with me, then I guess I’ll see you at the sleepover, Georgia.’

Sleepover.

The word sent her mind hurtling backwards, sweeping her up, and laying her down on his obscenely large bed.

That evening, Brad poured himself a glass of his favourite pinot and settled in to do the mountain of paperwork that Spencer Corp’s company secretary had sent over, but his mind was not on the documents in front of him.

After calling Georgia into his office earlier that afternoon and taking the first tentative step towards passing over some of his excess files, he had watched her return to her desk through the glass panel in his office wall. The woman’s perfect figure, and the way her hips moved as she walked, had done terrible things to his guts — wrenching up memories. Now that they were working together those memories were turning up often, uninvited, and goading him to take inappropriate action.

Not that he would.

He would keep his hands off her. But the more he saw of Georgia, the more he began to think that it couldn’t hurt to create opportunities where she might be induced to take matters into her own hands.

Georgia wasn’t easy to read which, since he had run into her at the Dockton Women’s Shelter, he now presumed was a product of her past. Growing up in a rough neighbourhood at least explained the cactus-like reactions she had to his family’s wealth, and the need to keep her head down and out of trouble had no doubt taught her to keep up that poker face of hers.

But whenever he complimented her on her work her face coloured up just a little, and the corners of her mouth twitched upwards slightly like she was trying not to show she was pleased. On that first day at the office when he suggested that they keep their professional life separate from whatever was going on between them, she hadn’t denied that something was going on. Nor, for that matter, was his office overly hot. If anything, it was an icebox. He had complained about the poorly placed aircon vent right above his meeting table a couple of times since he had moved in to his new office.

Gathering those pieces of circumstantial evidence together, and despite the rather frosty reception she had given him over losing her office, he was confident that Georgia’s initial attraction, the one that had persuaded her to accompany him up to his penthouse, was still there.

Covered up with professional concerns maybe, but still there.

All in all it was a good start. Now he just had to organise this strategy weekend in a way that would create the sort of opportunity he had in mind.

Giving Caro the impression that they would be spending the weekend together had been a spur of the moment decision. The way Caro had spoken to Georgia at the shelter — he couldn’t understand it. Caro was in no position to come over all superior when it came to less than salubrious family circumstances. He had been tempted to put Caro in her place, but he doubted Georgia would thank him for it. She had managed Caro very well on her own, using her presence at the board meeting to get what was obviously her own item on to the agenda.

Caro had shut her down, but not before everyone on the committee got to hear Georgia’s idea. Georgia was impressive, and not just in ways that he felt squarely in the men’s hosiery department every time he got within a few feet of her.

‘Bad day, sir?

Brad set his wine glass down on the desk.

‘You could say that, Jeffrey. More like a bad week, and I can see that with this extra Charitable Trust work, I’m going to get bogged down if I’m not careful. Caro Marsden is banging on about organising a gala fundraiser of all things, and yesterday I lost my biggest client. Not just a family client, either. I managed