Falling For The Lawyer (18 page)

But with a start Alex sensed that she was no longer alone in the bathroom. Someone had entered and was calling her name quietly.

It was Sophie.

Alex stood and opened the cubicle door before emerging to see her friend’s anxious look.

“Alex, are you all right? Jonathan McKenzie came to me saying he thought you may be unwell and could I check if you were in the bathroom. Are you sick?”

“No, just exhausted.”

“You look dreadful! Come on, it’s right on five o’clock. Let’s get out of here and we can go somewhere and talk.”

Alex bit down on her lip and looked wildly at the ceiling to try and fight off the tears that threatened again. “I can’t. I have to meet Simon.”

“Can’t you put him off tonight? You clearly need some girl therapy.”

Alex shook her head in reply.

“Why not?” Sophie argued insistently. “What’s so important that you need to meet Simon tonight?”

“We broke off our engagement over the phone last night. I’m meeting him one last time so that we can deal with it face to face.”

Sophie stared at Alex in disbelief. “You’re kidding,” she whispered. Alex shook her head.

“What a nightmare,” Sophie murmured in a state of shock as she rested her hands on Alex’s shoulders. “No wonder you look like something out of the body snatchers.”

“I need a favour,” Alex asked, urgency in her voice.

“Anything,” Sophie agreed nodding.

“I need you to go and tell Jonathan I’m not feeling well and that I’m going home. Tell him it’s just a headache. Then I need you to find my handbag and bring it back here so that I can get across to the lift and meet Simon downstairs.”

“Well I’ll try but Jonathan was pretty insistent I bring you to his office. He’s not going to be happy.”

But Sophie did as she was asked and Alex was forced to wait what felt like endless minutes as she paced the ladies bathroom. When Sophie finally returned she looked triumphant.

“Mission accomplished!” she announced. “He was on the phone so I did the handbag thing first. I’ll have to go straight back now to let him know you’ve gone home. Are you going to be all right?”

Alex nodded. “Thank you, Soph. I don’t know what I’d do without you.” The two girls clung onto one another before Alex squeezed her friend’s hands, gave her a long reassuring look and then made her way quickly out of the bathroom and across to the lifts.

Once on the ground floor she found a quiet, well-concealed corner to stand in while she waited for Simon, and she was soon thanking her lucky stars she had because JP appeared out of nowhere.

With her pulse racing Alex watched him as he thrust his hands deep into his pockets and walked straight past her, across the foyer and out of the building. She could still catch glimpses of him through the revolving doors as he stood on the street outside and turned his head from side to side as though he was looking for someone, but for once his radar failed him.

He disappeared amidst the moving sea of pedestrians outside just before Simon wandered into the building. Unlike JP, Simon saw her immediately and with a haunted look he approached her and took her in his arms. Alex sunk into them, the temptation to regress back into their familiarity and safe harbour almost overwhelming. But she quickly prised herself away. She’d done enough damage in his life already and would not play with his feelings any longer.

“Where would you like to go?” he asked as they wandered out into the heat of the early evening and paused outside. Alex looked around nervously but thankfully JP had vanished.

“I don’t mind. Anywhere where we can talk and have a drink,”

“Why don’t we go down to the Frog and Toad … look, isn’t that your boss?”

Alex swung around in the direction Simon was facing. JP stood a short distance away with a hand on an open cab door as Caroline Cartwright slipped into the back seat ahead of him. He was motionless as he searched the crowded street. But his gaze bypassed Alex and Simon altogether and with that he turned and folded himself into the cab next to Caroline and slammed the door behind himself. And as he did so Alex watched on, mesmerised by the irrevocable finality of that moment, as JP’s taxi pulled out into the bustle of the traffic and disappeared.

The knocking went on and on. It merged with her dreams until finally its persistence roused Alex from the deepest of slumbers. She lay there motionless, unsure where she was and struggling to put together the pieces of her life in any kind of sensible order. But as she opened her eyes and looked around she realised she was in her own apartment. Morning light was filtering through the lush garden outside her window and casting a lime green hue throughout her bedroom.

With a groan she rolled over. The sleeping pill she’d taken the night before was drugging her every thought and movement. But with a dull ache pounding away inside her she started to piece together the night before with Simon and a renegade tear of emotional exhaustion rolled down her cheek.

The knocking began again and Alex eased herself up into a sitting position in her bed. Then she heard a voice at the door and it was with relief that she guessed it was Sophie.

“Alex, wake up now! I know you’re in there!” she yelled.

With heavy legs and an addled head, Alex placed her feet gingerly on the floor and stumbling out to the front door opened it to find Sophie’s expression tense and expectant.

“Last night you looked rung out with exhaustion. Now you look as though you’ve had an overdose of sleep.”

“I took a sleeping pill,” Alex explained, turning around and traipsing back inside to turn the coffee machine on. Sophie followed.

“How are you?” she asked tentatively. “How was last night?”

“Dreadful,” Alex admitted wretchedly. “He was crying. I was crying. It was just appalling.”

“How is he taking it?”

“Good and bad,” Alex recounted bleakly. “He said he’d sensed something was coming, that I seemed unhappy, but he wasn’t sure whether it was just the changes at work.”

“Was he angry?”

Alex thought over Sophie’s question, trying to make sense of her disheveled memories. “No, more resigned,” she replied eventually. “He said he’d felt he’d been clinging on to me for some time, as though I was trying to escape. Imagine that Sophie, it must have been awful for him.”

“I know it’s hard to get your head around things this morning but he will get through this Al. He’s an attractive guy and he’ll meet someone who’s better suited to him—it’s just a matter of time.”

“He has already,” Alex admitted. She needed Sophie to know so that the news, when it eventually reached her friend’s ears, would not be a shock. “He and Monique are going to start spending time together.”

Sophie’s hand rose to cover her mouth as she gaped at Alex. “Are you serious?” she asked finally and Alex nodded.

“When did that start?”

Alex turned away to steam up some milk.

“He told me it had been creeping up on both of them for awhile. Monique had made no secret of the fact she was crazy about him and I’d been making him feel unhappy and unwanted for ages.”

“How do
you
feel about it though?”

“It feels strange but I know I’ll be fine about it with time,” she confessed, feeling a surge of relief on that point at least. “I know Monique will make him happier than I ever could.”

“No regrets then?”

“About breaking off the engagement—none. About the way I treated him—plenty.”

“Don’t be too hard on yourself. You didn’t plan for it to turn out like this.”

“That doesn’t change the fact that because of me Simon’s wasted three years of his life.”

“I’m sure he doesn’t look at it that way.”

“Then he should, because I am to blame for it,” Alex declared.

“Alex, life’s not a machine. It doesn’t always go the way we want it to because sometimes other things take over. Speaking of which, you’ll have to hurry up after that coffee and get dressed. That indomitable boss of yours has got a bee in his bonnet about this rugby match today and your name’s on the list.”

Alex groaned. She’d forgotten all about the match and wondered whether she would ever throw off the effects of the sleeping pill so that she could run around a sports field that morning.

“You’ll have to be a saint to keep working for him you know,” Sophie added thoughtfully as she sipped her freshly brewed coffee. “He’s so grumpy sometimes. You should have heard him when I told him you’d left for the day yesterday … oh, I had to tell him about you breaking up with Simon, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Alex reassured her, knowing he’d guess as much within about five minutes of seeing her—she could hide nothing from him.

“But then he can be very persuasive too when he wants to be,” Sophie prattled on distractedly. “I told him you had a headache but he didn’t accept it. He just kept firing questions at me until I heard myself telling him you were under a lot of pressure because you were calling off your engagement. Come to think of it, I don’t remember how he managed to prise it out of me.”

“He’s a litigator. That’s his job.”

“I wouldn’t like to be cross-examined by him if my reputation was on the line,” Sophie mused out loud. “Anyway, he backed right off and was quite pleasant once he heard the reason you’d left. He seemed to accept that breaking off an engagement was a good excuse for a PA to flee from work.”

“I guess I’ll find out pretty soon whether or not he still feels that way,” Alex replied dubiously.

But as Alex stood under her hot shower a short time later she began to wonder why, given the turmoil of the last few days, she was feeling a very new and very strange sense of lightness, as though someone had lifted a hundred kilos of weight from her shoulders. And despite her apprehension about facing JP that day the feeling of lightness was growing steadily with every passing minute. And only then did Alex understand what it was.

She wasn’t worrying about disappointing anyone anymore.

She remembered that feeling of long ago when her life had been simple and anxiety free. But at some point over the last few years she’d taken on the enormous burden of trying to be too many things to too many people—no more.

Sophie was right. Simon would be okay; she knew that. The only person she had to make sure she didn’t let down now was herself, and she was determined that would never happen.

JP had summed it up two nights before when he’d told her he wanted to see her fight for what she wanted. Well, from this day onwards she would do just that. She would seize her dreams and make them a reality, no matter how impossible the odds. In her own quiet way, she knew her life was going to be very different.

Now all she had to do was bottle that feeling and radiate it around herself. And she’d start that very morning with JP because she knew she wanted him to be a part of her life more than anything else in the world.

There was just one problem—a small chink in her new armour of optimism. Sure, she may have decided she wanted JP but that didn’t mean he was there for the taking. After all, two nights ago they’d mutually banished one another from their personal lives for good. And yesterday he was disappearing in cabs to mystery destinations with his all too recent ex-girlfriend.

Well too bad. When she walked into that office today it would be as though she were meeting him again for the first time. She would hold her head high and be utterly professional. Being with JP on any level was the only thing that mattered, even if the only relationship he would offer her was as her boss, and probably only briefly at that.

Cathy, the firm receptionist, beamed at the two girls as they walked into Griffen Murphy Lawyers half an hour later.

“They’ve all gone!” she announced before the girls had time to speak. “Everyone from commercial and litigation has headed over to the rugby field already. You’ll have to hurry up,” she advised, calling out good luck as they disappeared back into the lift.

Less than ten minutes later, as she and Sophie made their way down through the Domain parkland beyond the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Alex could see a crowd had already gathered beside the rugby field. Small groups of staff from the firm were lazing about on the hill next to it and enjoying the warm, soon to be blistering, summer sun. However, there were two other groups kitted out in sports gear who were milling about next to the sidelines. Even from a distance Alex could tell they were swapping tactics and pep talks.

She saw JP almost immediately in the middle of one of the groups. He was wearing a footy singlet and shorts, and although not the tallest man in the litigation team his sheer size seemed to dwarf them all. He emanated power from the bulk of his shoulders, chest and arms, soon to be called into impenetrable rigidity when the game began. Alex remembered what his protective motives were for first developing that build and wished she could return to that night in his car when he’d shared them with her, especially now that she might never share an intimate moment like that with him again.

Alex approached the group. A couple of the team members stood back to let her join in and at that moment Michael Porter, often short on office etiquette, let out a long, cool wolf whistle for her benefit.

“It’s okay!” Alex announced as she took up a position in the circle and rubbed her hands together before continuing with a grin, “You can all relax. Your star player has arrived.”

She beamed at everyone and then drove her gaze at JP. He was already busy checking out her outfit: lightweight black shorts, singlet top and running shoes.

But JP sensed instantly there was something else that was different about Alex Farrer that morning. For a start, there was an easy confidence about her he’d never seen before. She was holding herself tall and upright and her eyes were shining as she took in everything going on around her. In fact, everyone was looking at her because she was simply compelling to watch.

“Exactly how many games of football have you played in your lifetime, Alex?” Michael Porter teased.

“Absolutely none!” she declared and smiled self-deprecatingly.

“But as the boss says,” Michael continued with a cheeky grin. “Alex can swim like a fish so in the event of a tsunami across this rugby field we’re set!”