Legally Addicted - By Lena Dowling Page 0,30

her back out again, but Georgia was already rolling out of it. He managed to grasp her arm with his fingertips, but she shook herself free, and then she was gone.

The next morning, after stuffing the few things she had brought with her back into her overnight bag, and before the sun had even come up, Georgia had escaped the Spencer beach house. She left so early that she managed to make the drive back to her apartment in Sydney’s Northern Suburbs on almost deserted roads.

Now, sitting alone in her kitchen going over what had happened, Georgia drummed her fingers on the counter beside the phone. Ever since she arrived home she had been pacing the apartment, her nerves strung out like wire under tension. This thing with Brad had gotten way out of hand. She needed to talk to someone, but who? Miriam was the closest thing to a real girlfriend that she had, but they rarely rang each other; mainly chatting at work, or during their lunch hour shopping trips, or sometimes after work if they went to a chick flick together. She hesitated a moment more and then dialled Miriam’s mobile.

‘Hi, it’s Georgia,’ she said, screwing up her face. What the hell did she think she was doing reaching out to anyone for help, let alone her secretary?

‘God, Georgia, this better be good, what time is it?’

She looked at the digital clock that glowed on her microwave. Seven o’clock on a Sunday morning. She had forgotten how early she had to get up to avoid running into Brad, and what good time she had made with the road clear of the usual weekday commuter traffic.

‘Sorry, I had an early start.’

‘Is everything okay, Georgia? Are you still at the beach house?’

Miriam’s tone was accusatory, as if she already suspected she had bailed.

‘Everything’s fine but I came home early.’

‘Because?’

‘We’d done the formal stuff and the partner’s meeting, and things got weird with Brad.’

‘You slept together again, didn’t you?’

‘I think he might have feelings for me,’ Georgia said, hoping the revelation would head off Miriam’s questions.

‘How long did it take you to work that one out, super-sleuth?’

‘You know? Did he say something?’

‘It’s not anything he’s said. It’s what he does — the looks he gives you, and the amount of times he seems to have found a reason to pass by your desk to shoot the breeze. Now back to my original question, you slept with him again, didn’t you? And let me guess, then you took off?’

‘What makes you say that?’

‘Because that’s what you do, Georgia. ‘Love ‘em and leave ‘em’ is your signature and I’m the one who has to block your calls, make up the excuses, and generally try to put off any man who starts to show too much interest afterwards,’ Miriam said quietly.

‘So what if I did bail?’

‘Uh huh. Thought so. So how was it? The sex, I mean.’

‘Okay, the sex was great. Amazing, actually.’

Not that she had been prepared to admit that to Brad.

Georgia tried and failed to repress the memory of it. She would rather not remember how good it had been, and particularly not the gutter talk. Cutting loose and talking like that during sex worried her, like she had regressed back to her roots and somehow reverted to her poor-druggie-trash upbringing. She usually supressed any urge to talk dirty, but for some reason she felt comfortable enough with Brad to let herself go, and he had really gotten off on it as well. It was like they had some raw honesty between them that they hadn’t had before. Not that she had been prepared to say that when he went way too far and probed her about what their sleeping together meant. He had tried to cover it up, like he didn’t have any feelings for her, but she knew from the way that he had said it, that he had been serious.

‘So what’s the problem then?’

‘You know what the problem is. I can’t risk everything now to get into anything with him.’

Even though seeing a completely new side of Brad at the beach house had turned her view of him upside down, at least partly assuaging her concerns about the huge disparity between their incomes, there was still the issue of her career to think about.

‘You even paused for enough time to consider getting serious with Brad?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘When did you last give even a nanosecond of thought to getting involved with anyone?’

As usual, Miriam was right. Georgia couldn’t