Legally Addicted - By Lena Dowling Page 0,52

with a schoolfriend or an ill-conceived activity threatened to turn injurious. Likewise, when he was planning a mischief, Jeffrey always seemed to be one step ahead and there to intercept him, while his parents were usually too busy to notice.

‘Pleasant swim, sir?’

‘Great, thanks, Jeffrey. Why don’t you take a dip? I can keep an eye on the barbeque.’

Jeffrey looked up with an expression of barely concealed horror.

‘What, you don’t think I can be trusted not to burn the steak?’ Brad asked, feigning offense. Always deferential, Brad knew that he had Jeffrey trapped. Raising unbeatable arguments was, after all, his stock in trade. Jeffrey would never criticise Brad, not even his doubtful culinary talents.

‘Not at all sir, I’m sure your barbequing skills are most excellent, it’s just that it’s not appropriate.’

‘I say what’s appropriate here, now that the old man’s gone. Go on, Jeffrey. I mean it.’ Having asserted his authority, Brad knew it would also break some rule in the butler’s handbook for Jeffrey to argue back.

‘Well, if you insist, sir. It does look very inviting.’

‘I do insist, Jeffrey.’

From four thirty onwards, after Georgia had seen her last client for the day, her stomach had fluttered as fiercely as a freshly stocked tropical butterfly house, and going up in the lift to the penthouse it seemed as if the entire colony had locked onto her heart and threatened to beat it out of her chest.

It might not have been quite so bad if Miriam hadn’t dropped the L bomb before the Samoa trip. Even though Brad hadn’t told her he loved her, ever since Miriam mentioned it, and especially since they made up in Samoa, she had been worried that he might. Once she thought it, she couldn’t stop thinking it, and the idea kept popping back into her head, scaring her at inopportune moments like an evil jack-in-the-box.

Taking the risk of getting involved in a proper relationship was one thing, but declarations of the L word were unthinkable. If going back to Brad’s penthouse hadn’t also presented the opportunity to hear what he thought of her addiction centre proposal and make the case for Spencer Trust funding, she might have called time-out, baulked at the whole idea and gone home to her own apartment.

The butler opened the door in a bathrobe, his hair wet, as if she had caught him in the shower.

‘Good Evening, Miss Murray — I do apologise for my appearance. Bradley insisted that I take a swim in the pool. He is expecting you on the roof.’

Jeffrey motioned back towards the elevator behind her, stepping in to enter a code that illuminated the button for the rooftop.

She wasn’t surprised Brad encouraged the butler to use his pool. Brad actually treated his employees very well. That had been clear after another day at the resort in Samoa when she had the chance to see more of him interacting with his staff.

Moments later, the doors opened to blinding artificial light. Slowly her eyes adjusted to the lighting bouncing off the tiled area around the pool. The rooftop area comprised a covered garden centred around a swimming pool, flanked by potted palms, with a large outdoor kitchen unit running down one side.

Brad lay stretched out on lounger over a towel, his shorts damp from an earlier swim. His briefcase lay open on a side table, exposing a pile of paperwork.

‘Georgia. I hoped you’d come.’ He moved to pull himself up, but she leaned down to kiss him. He took a glass hanging from a clasp on the side of a stand holding an ice bucket and poured her a glass of bubbly.

He handed it to her and she took a sip.

Dom Perignon.

It was a shock to realise that the expensive champagne was now something she could recognise by taste alone. How had she ended up in this situation? With someone this wealthy who, against all odds, also seemed to be a genuinely decent human being? And one who was impossibly handsome, not to mention prepared to leave the firm to preserve her career? It didn’t seem possible and, just to make her situation even more perfect, she was on the verge of securing the funding for the addiction centre.

Maybe this was how life was supposed to work? Perhaps it wasn’t all struggle after all? Maybe life was meant to be a rolling cycle of the lowest of the low, and dizzying heights; the lows making the good times all the sweeter.

‘I was hoping we might go over the addiction