Legally Addicted - By Lena Dowling Page 0,43
that at least with him she had nothing to fear.
Jeffrey slipped noiselessly into the room with his morning coffee on a silver tray. He set the cup down on the nightstand and handed Brad a card.
Damn.
The Spencer Corp board secretary had organised an extraordinary meeting. The message noted the reason.
Spencer Corp Boardroom. 7.30am. Agenda: Issues at Spencer Resort Samoa. Breakfast provided.
He had been putting it off, but the issue of the falling occupancy rates in Samoa now obviously demanded his attention. It wasn’t a crisis, yet. The resort was still generating a profit — barely — but he needed to ensure that strategies were in place to protect Spencer Corp margins so they weren’t eroded any further.
He heard the shower running in the ensuite moments before Jeffrey emerged from the attached dressing room to lay out his clothes for the day. It was going to be an early start. Sleeping Beauty was going to have the bed to herself.
‘Tell me you didn’t wear jeans to Café Macquarie,’ Miriam said, part way through the interrogation about her dinner date with Brad, and before her assistant would hand over her messages or her coffee order. Georgia suspected that the placement of the coffee on the opposite side of her secretary’s workstation and out of Georgia’s reach had been a deliberate strategy.
‘OMG. You did, didn’t you? You thought Café Macquarie was a café. You really have got to get out more.’
Georgia bristled, sensing her assistant building up to another lecture about working too hard, but then Miriam’s phone rang.
‘Don’t move a muscle, I want details,’ Miriam said, pushing the answer button on her phone, taking the call through her headset.
‘Dayton Llewellyn Murray, Georgia Murray’s office, how may I help you? Yes, Mr Spencer.’
Georgia automatically looked over in the direction of Brad’s office, but it was empty.
‘Sure, I can check her diary for you.’
Georgia mimed ‘give the phone to me’ hand signals, but Miriam carried on talking.
‘Yes, Georgia’s weekend is free.’
‘Of course, Mr Spencer, I’ll check.’
Miriam pressed the mute button on the phone.
‘He wants to know if you can go away with him for the weekend.’
‘I don’t know, Miriam. Tell him that I’ll have to think about it.’
Going away for the weekend was a significant step along the path of seriousness. She would have to chew it over before she could commit to something like that.
Miriam released the mute button and recommenced speaking, ‘Georgia says she would love to.’
‘Miriam, I can’t believe you just did that!’ she said, as her secretary ended the call.
‘Well, someone had to save you from yourself. You need to stop working so hard, Georgia. Just relax and give this thing with Brad a fair go. I’d jump at the chance to fly by corporate jet to the Spencer’s Samoan Resort for the weekend. You know you want to.’
Miriam folded her arms, leaned back in her chair and tilted her face upwards towards Georgia in a silent challenge.
‘Is that what you just agreed to on my behalf — a trip to Samoa?’
‘You can bet your sweet life I did, or you might have said no, and as I was just saying less than five minutes ago, you need to get out more.’
‘Can I have my messages and my coffee now please?’ Georgia said, exhaling huffily through her nose as she snatched the coffee and the pile of handwritten notes as soon as Miriam retrieved them from the other side of her desk.
Georgia’s first thought was to call Brad back and cancel, but the more she considered it, the more a tropical island resort seemed to be exactly the sort of environment most conducive to gaining his financial support for the addiction centre before she found a way to gracefully extricate herself from the situation she had gotten into.
This time when she had woken up in Brad’s apartment, with its over the top décor and the butler fussing over her, only hours after the hideous encounter with Paris Walsh at the restaurant, she finally realised how much she had been kidding herself. There was no way she belonged in Brad Spencer’s life
She would play along for as long as it took to get the financial backing she needed for the addiction centre. After that, all bets were off. She was never going to fit into Brad’s world, especially if meant Caro and Paris and their clones were always around to rub her nose in it.
Later that afternoon, when Brad sent a limo instead of a taxi to take her home to