Legally Addicted - By Lena Dowling Page 0,32

the information he needed about Georgia. Any request for money gave him a sick feeling inside. Even though it went with the territory, he would never be able to get used to it. A request for money was usually the first signal that a friendship or relationship wasn’t genuine, and he was about to get used for something.

‘Okay. It was worth a try.’ Miriam laughed, as if she had never expected to get away with her clumsy attempt to shake him down anyway. ‘First you need to get her to let you in, to open up to you about her past and what it is that frightens her so much about getting into something serious.’

‘So how do I do that?’

‘If I knew that, one of the multitudes would already be dating her. That’s for you to figure out. I only know how I got through to her, but I’m guessing you aren’t into chick flicks, women’s fashion, or girl talk.’

She was right about that.

‘Any other pointers?’

‘You have to find a way to make her feel like the battle is over and she’s made it, preferably in a public way that gets acknowledged. Georgia is very driven, and until she feels she’s got where she’s going, I don’t know where a man would fit into her life.’

‘And?’

‘You have to support her, especially against anyone who runs her down, or who casts aspersions on her unfortunate background.’

‘From what I’ve seen she seems strong enough to stand up for herself.’

Miriam rolled her eyes.

‘She is, but that’s not the point. Even the most capable woman appreciates it when Sir Galahad shows up occasionally.’

‘Anything else I need to know?’

‘No, that about covers it.’

‘That’s all?’

Miriam inclined her head towards him with an expression that seemed to be querying the level of his IQ.

‘Yeah, okay, that’s probably enough of a tall order,’ he said, after reflecting on the enormity of the task.

‘Good luck. You’ll need it.’

Left with that rather demoralising vote of precious little confidence, Brad returned to skimming Georgia’s entry in the office calendar on his computer. She had the usual array of client appointments and court appearances. The only non-work related entries were the nights she was rostered on at the women’s shelter. He pulled up his own diary. Every other shift coincided with the shelter board meetings.

Maybe, in that environment near where she had grown up, he could get her to relax and talk about herself.

After Georgia had almost opened up to him outside at the beach house, before Dayton and Llewellyn arrived and ruined the moment, it had dawned on him that although he might have seen every inch of her body, he hardly knew anything about her. Engineering a meeting on her own turf might be a good way to get her to let her guard down.

Chapter Eight

Georgia sat at the reception desk of the shelter where she was doing the evening shift. With a heavy court schedule over the last couple of days she had managed to avoid meeting Brad, but she knew that with her shift coinciding with the shelter board meeting, her luck was probably about to run out.

Oh well. She had to face him some time.

At least with several international studies on addiction centres spread out in front of her, she had plenty she needed to be concentrating on other than the awkwardness of having to speak with Brad for the first time since taking off on him.

Again.

If Caro Marsden wanted a formal business proposal then that is what she would get. She wasn’t going to give the woman another excuse to refuse to put her ideas in front of the shelter board.

Georgia chewed the end of her pen. Summarising the findings from the studies into short and punchy sentences wasn’t coming easily. Ever since the weekend, her concentration had been all over the place. Earlier that afternoon, a family court judge had been forced to repeat himself three times after Georgia’s mind had gone AWOL, deep into the heart of Spencer Town.

Ever since she had seen the new, authentic Brad in his basic unpretentious beach house, it was as if she had been balanced on a knife edge.

She felt like she was trapped, at the top of a precipice contemplating a base jump and the equal chances that her parachute would open giving the exhilarating trouble free ride that Miriam was plumping for, or jam up, resulting in a smash up of epic proportions that would leave her rebuilding her career.

All of which assumed, of course, that