Legally Addicted - By Lena Dowling Page 0,60

was for her benefit.’

‘I see sir, self-serving altruism, selfish unselfishness, if you will. Yes, I understand. I think. Actually, I’m not sure I do, sir.’

‘Damn it, Jeffrey.’

Brad took a long sip of his coffee. The last thing he needed right now was a lecture from his butler.

‘Very good, sir. I’ll be in the kitchen if you need me.’

Chapter Thirteen

The gala dinner had raised three hundred and fifty thousand dollars. With the Spencer Trust donation to match, there were enough funds to open the addiction centre for a couple of months.

They had two or three precious months to prove its worth, while Georgia and Caro made applications to all the main social funding agencies to keep it going. But the signs were positive. It was only tentative, but a local health authority had expressed interest in funding the centre for at least a year to pilot the centre’s programmes.

With the information from Caro about the Walsh finances, Georgia had finally been able to elicit statements of previously forgotten Walsh assets, including a uranium mine and an opal business that had in the past generated multimillion dollar profits, from Douglas Walsh’s lawyers. As a result, Georgia had negotiated a settlement for Ruby that ran into seven figures, resulting in a very healthy fee for the firm.

Overall, her life had never been better, but Georgia had never felt worse. It was as if she had lost something as integral as one of her own limbs, and yet, as she kept reminding herself, she had never really had Brad in the first place. Waking up in his apartment a couple of times and going on a Pacific Island minibreak hardly qualified as a full-blown relationship.

It had been almost two months since the break-up and, even with the added complication of running into Brad on a daily basis, she should have been well over him by now, but somehow, forgetting what had happened between them was much harder than she expected. Nothing like this had ever happened to her before. In the past, she had peeled men off with barely a backwards glance, whereas the residue of what had occurred with Brad had stuck as if with indelible adhesive.

‘You’ve got a walk-in. Cherie Buckland. She came in asking for Brad, but his secretary says she’s your client now.’

Miriam had swivelled around in her chair to deliver the message. Since Brad had elected to stay on in the partnership, Georgia never did manage to get her office back, and was still working out in the open-plan.

‘She is my client, or was. Brad gave her to me, so I’m not sure if he’ll want her back now.’

‘What do you want me to do?’ Miriam asked

‘Tell her I’ll see her, but get Brad in there as well.’

She would rather she didn’t have to sit through an entire meeting with him, but if Brad wanted his client back again, Georgia wasn’t going to meet with Cherie Buckland alone, only to have him later accuse her later of ripping off one of his files.

Georgia reached for the Buckland file and a box of tissues. Client meetings immediately after a break-up often got emotional and she had learned to be ready, but pushing open the frosted glass door into the conference room, Georgia was anything but ready for the scene that greeted her.

Cherie Buckland sat at the conference table. She wore jeans, a long casual slouch top and no make-up, save the remains of a previous application, which looked to be at least twenty-four hours old, now smudged dark under her eyes. Her long hair hung in unwashed ringlets. Six designer suitcases stood in a row against the far wall of the conference room and two small children played with a box of toys the receptionists kept for clients who arrived with kids.

While she had never owned designer luggage, the woman’s circumstances struck her directly in the solar plexus. Homelessness looked the same, no matter what the label on the suitcase was or even if the owner could afford a suitcase in the first place. Presumably this woman ultimately had somewhere she could go, but right now she was without a home, all her possessions piled up in some strange office.

Watching the children play, it was as if Georgia had shrunk down to kid size — her feet dangling into the gutter, her few things beside her, tied up in a supermarket bag — killing time tossing a handful of stones as she and her mother waited for the Dockton Women’s