Legally Addicted - By Lena Dowling Page 0,36

once she belonged to someone, and that thought alone took her to the edge.

Brad did the rest, pushing into her with force and urgency until they came together. He shuddered with her undulating charges of electric energy until, fully spent, he folded over her, panting softly in her ear.

After kissing her hard on the lips, as if he was somehow sealing what they had just done, he withdrew.

Georgia finally opened her eyes as he removed the condom and tied it up, looking around the stark meeting room, rolling his top lip over the bottom one in a comical expression.

‘Houston, do we have a problem?’ he said.

Georgia raised her head and giggled.

‘It’s okay, I think they keep tissues around here.’

Sliding off the table, she opened a cupboard where Caro kept the water jugs and other meeting supplies. She found a box, and handed them to him, then pointed to a lidded rubbish bin in the corner.

‘Every time you sit at that table for the board meetings, you’ll think of me now,’ Georgia said, wrestling her skirt back down then bending to pick up her thong and retrieve her shoes.

‘That’s for sure. Poor Caro — but I guess what she doesn’t know…’

He set down the tissues and pulled Georgia into his arms. With a shoe in each hand, she crossed her arms around behind him and nuzzled into his shoulder, stifling a laugh when she realised what Brad was getting at. Caro’s place as board chair, at the head of the polished oval table, would have her forever positioned at the scene of the crime.

Once they rearranged their clothing, Brad steered Georgia out of the meeting room and back down towards reception. His hand was firm on her shoulder, the supportive strength fanning out from his grip giving her the confidence she needed to walk back through the reception area and pick up her briefcase on the way out.

Caro looked up from the desk to say goodbye, but wisely made no other comment.

Brad held the main door back out on to the street open for her.

‘Your place or mine?’

‘Yours.’

Out on the footpath, Brad was relieved to find that his driver was waiting right outside. This wasn’t a neighbourhood in which someone in a designer suit would want to linger. Instinctively, he pulled his jacket sleeve down over the ostentatious watch his mother had given him. Georgia looked around furtively.

He hadn’t expected that. She had grown up here, and yet even Georgia was nervous?

‘Are you okay?’

‘I’m fine.’

Despite what she said, Georgia shuddered and almost leapt into the back of the car when the driver opened the door for them.

He slipped in beside her and Georgia shuffled over, throwing her briefcase down on the floor.

‘No, you’re not okay. You’re afraid. Something upset you, Georgia — out there on the street. I saw it in your eyes. What’s going on?’

Georgia balled her hands into fists, and then looked away from him, out the window.

Brad shook his head, fully expecting the wall Georgia had built around her to come crashing back down, guillotine-like, but instead she turned towards him, looking him briefly in the eye before staring down at her hands.

‘I ran into someone here a couple of weeks back. Someone I used to know — a drug addict. He was strung out. He asked for money. I said I didn’t have any. He left. It was fine.’

‘It can’t have been fine, or you wouldn’t have looked like that back there. Tell me.’

He took her chin between his thumb and forefinger, his gaze locked on to hers.

Georgia sighed and he released her, sensing she was about to open up.

‘He, I mean Jake, was an old boyfriend of my mother’s. He…well, he was in his twenties when he lived with us. My mother was a drug addict as well.’

‘I wondered if she was an addict. I’m so sorry, Georgia. Is she…?’

‘Yeah. She’s dead — dirty needles, drugs cut with poisonous substances, or sheer carelessness. If addicts can’t get clean they all die one way or another in the end. She had a pretty good innings considering. She was in her forties when she finally overdosed. I found her. I called an ambulance. They administered Narcan, but it was too late.’

‘How old were you when that happened?’

‘Twenty — I was already in law school. I had just dropped into take her some food and check up on her, but she was already gone.’

‘Jesus. I’m so sorry, Georgia. This Jake, did he hurt you?’

‘No. He tried — plenty of