Falling For The Lawyer Page 17

  It was not turning out well.

  She was already picturing herself climbing into a cab to go home alone that night. Yet she was determined to speak from the heart once and for all before he vanished out of her life for good.

  “You know it’s been more than just a one month job for me.”

  “Has it, Alex?” he threw at her immediately. “You’ve spent most of that month telling me you don’t want me in your life. What is it that you do want from me exactly? Why are you here?”

  Alex stared wildly at him. He didn’t have feelings for her after all. She was about to make a big fat fool of herself. In fact, she already had by appearing at the airport in the first place. But then without another thought she jumped into the emotional abyss of blue and bottomless icy depths lying in wait for her.

  “I needed to see you one more time,” she began unsteadily but soon summoned her courage and locked her eyes with his, her voice following in its calm wake. “I know I shouldn’t be here. You’re right. I only worked for you for a month and that’s not a foundation for anything is it? Yet despite that, I’m so sad you’re leaving JP. I’ll miss you. I’m already missing you. The last month has been the worst and yet because of you, the most wonderful of my life. Anyway, that’s all I wanted to say.”

  Alex swung around and began to walk towards the exit doors, hurriedly wiping away the tears rolling down her cheeks. She’d said what she came to say but couldn’t bear to linger for the rejection he was about to dish out.

  But in the next moment JP had caught her arm and was swinging her around. His two hands were holding her so firmly she couldn’t have moved if she’d tried.

  “If you could choose anything,” he began, his voice husky and urgent, his eyes burning into hers before he repeated himself, “If you could choose anything right now, what would it be?”

  Alex stared at him but the truth filled her heart and overflowed before she replied, “To be with you.”

  “Why, Alex?”

  “Because I love you …”

  JP gave her a half-wild look as he took her head in his hands and devoured her with his eyes.

  “Then come with me.”

  Alex was giddy. It was too much. It wasn’t happening. It sounded as if it wasn’t over, but she had to be dreaming. Any minute now she’d wake up from the dream and discover that JP was long gone from the country and from her life.

  “What?” she whispered. “How can I?”

  “This is how,” JP smiled at her, dropping his hands from her head to draw paperwork from his inside pocket and hand it to her. In a blur she could see references to E-tickets, Qantas and Alex Farrer.

  She looked up at JP in startled confusion. “You want me to come with you to England?”

  JP nodded and cupped her face with his hand. “More than anything in the world. Of course if you don’t want to then we’ll stay here. Somehow I’ll work out another arrangement for the London office.”

  “No, I want to go,” Alex gushed helplessly. “More than you can imagine. It’s important for the firm that you’re there and it’ll be an adventure for me, and going there with you is … well, it’s like a dream coming true. But are you talking about a permanent move?”

  “Maybe, but it’s up to you Al. You’ll need time to think about where you want to live and what you’d like to do in terms of work and study. Let’s go for a month or two and see how we like it.”

  “Okay then,” Alex laughed, her head swimming with the exhilarating uncertainties swarming into her life. “So I’m going to get on a plane tonight, in gym clothes?”

  “Do you get the feeling this relationship of ours is coming round to full circle? Here we are standing in a public place again and discussing your clothing options.”

  And then Alex felt it: the cold hard slap of reality showstopper. “Oh God, JP,” she whispered portentously. “What about Mum and Dad? I can’t disappear on them like this. They’re elderly and I’m the only one they’ve got.”

  With another foray into the inside of his suit jacket JP produced a passport and handed it to her.

  “Who do you think gave me this?” he explained gently. “I went to see them last week, after you’d refused a transfer away from me. I was sure that if you didn’t care for me you would have jumped at a move. But I also knew you wouldn’t want to leave your parents without their blessing, even for a short time. But they support this Alex. They both agreed it would be a great opportunity for you to live your own life for a while. Ring them if you like, they’ll tell you that themselves.”

  Alex studied the passport in a daze. It was hers. Of course it was hers. But she was having trouble believing anything at that moment.

  “I can’t believe Mum and Dad are happy about me taking off like this,” she murmured.

  “I think the clincher may have been when I told them I’d loved you from the first day we met and I couldn’t stand to leave the country without you.”

  Alex smiled at JP. “You said that?”

  He grinned back. “I did, Alex,” he whispered and taking her face again in his hands he leaned in to kiss her tenderly and slowly, driving her pulse wild and prompting her to burrow her hands inside his jacket, laying them against his warm chest. Was it really possible that she could snuggle up against him anytime she wanted from now on?

  But then she broke away, the awful possibilities of that night surging through her. “But you left our entire future in my hands. What if I hadn’t come tonight? What if I hadn’t known you were going?”

  “I took out an insurance policy,” he smirked wryly. “I phoned Sophie.”

  Alex shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

  “I told her I had a job for her. She was to phone you and let you know I was flying home tonight. It was risky. I couldn’t be sure you’d turn up but I had to take that chance. Our flight’s not until 9.30 by the way, in case you’re thinking I was cutting things a bit fine.”

  “And Sophie agreed to do that? No questions asked?”

  JP nodded.

  “I can’t believe it. It’s not like Sophie to be such a dark horse. She didn’t let on at all, although she got off the phone in a big hurry.”

  “Well that would be because I told her to ring me back as soon as she’d reached you. You’ll have to put her out of her misery soon. I could tell she was desperate to know what was going on.”

  Alex gave JP a serious look. “What is going on JP? Why didn’t you tell me you were leaving?”

  He raised a hand to push a strand of dark hair away from her cheek. “I needed to know that choosing me was entirely your decision. Your parents and Simon have been steering your life for a long time and you’ve let them do that. I have no intention of taking over that role.”

  “I would never feel …” Alex interjected but JP lay a finger on her lips to silence her.

  “You said it yourself, the night I drove you home from your parents. Remember? You said I was laying down the blueprints for your life, just like your father and Simon.”

  “I didn’t mean you.”

  “You did and you were right to say it. I can be pushy. All those years protecting my mother had a big impact on the way I run my life. Sometimes it spills over to the people closest to me—just ask Adam and Justin; they often tell me to pull my head in when I start to take over. You’ll have to keep me to heel on that too.”

  “I will,” Alex breathed, a rush of happiness coursing through her as she listened to him talk so easily of their future.

  “I meant what I said about that first morning we met,” he murmured seriously. “I watched you for a while before I approached you on that street; you were so serene and so still in all that weather and chaos. I was glad you were going to be my PA because I desperately wanted some of that serenity in my working life, but I had no idea how much I would come to want it in every part of my life.”

  “All I know about that first day is how relieved I was when I left the boutique thinking I’d never see you again,” Alex
admitted. “The way you made me feel … it frightened the hell out of me. I’d never felt anything like that with Simon. I hadn’t even known it was possible to feel that way.”

  “I’m sorry you had to go through that with Simon, for all our sakes,” he murmured. “I wish we could have had a different beginning, and I did try and keep my distance from you. But meeting Simon that night at your parents’ house changed everything for me. I couldn’t sit back and watch you throw your life away on a loveless marriage, even though I was far from confident you’d want anything to do with me when it was all over.”

  “It was a nightmare, wasn’t it?” Alex nodded. “I was so ashamed of my feelings for you. That’s why I fought them so hard. But it was that morning with Simon at Bellevue Hill and then that night with you which changed everything for me. I knew then that I was deceiving Simon. There was a huge part of myself I’d kept hidden from him from years because I knew he wouldn’t like it. The problem was he’d ended up engaged to a girl he barely knew.”

  JP nodded. “So which girl have I got here?” he replied with a grin.

  “The one you noticed straight away. The one I’d hidden away from the world for far too long.”

  “You mean the bright, beautiful and determined Alex Farrer.”

  “I think you’ve forgotten some of the less attractive traits,” Alex laughed, but felt herself flush with his compliment.

  “Oh those!” JP declared with a guffaw. “You mean the mulishness, the quick temper and the ‘stick your head in the sand like an ostrich’ tendencies.”

  “That’s probably a fairer balance, especially as I’ll have to live with your special ways.”

  “Okay, spit them out,” he smiled challengingly.

  “Let’s see. We have the ‘my way or the highway’ approach to life, the impatience, the changeability. Vera couldn’t stand working for you, you know. She told me so,” Alex teased.

  “Aye right. So how did you stand it?”

  “Because when I’m with you I’m true to myself,” Alex began seriously. “And because everything you say makes complete sense to me. And because you’re kind and smart and decent … oh, and a great kisser too, of course.”

  JP watched her for a few moments and then pressing his lips together he gathered her up in his arms and cuddled her very close. But as if on cue an announcement called all passengers on their flight to the check-in counter.

  “We should go,” Alex murmured and JP released her reluctantly, taking her hand in his.

  After going through immigration, he headed off to the bookshop so that Alex could shop for an outfit to wear on the plane. She bought a long sleeved black fitted dress made of comfortable stretchy fabric and a pair of long black boots. She was glad to stow her gym gear in a bag. But despite immersing herself in practicalities she was still having trouble believing the incredible turn her life had taken.

  And JP was having the same trouble as he watched Alex wander back towards the bookshop to meet him. She was swinging her bag by her side and walking tall. Then she was running a relaxed hand through her long dark hair so that it fell away from her face, casting her eyes curiously over the shop window displays on her left.

  She clearly had no idea she was catching the eye of every single person she passed simply because she walked with such elegant grace. Yet before him was the girl who just weeks ago had been hiding herself from the world under more than just layers of mud, oil and nondescript clothing. In fact, she’d been so well hidden that the girl herself had almost forgotten she existed.

  Alex noticed him waiting for her and smiled. Then she was in his arms and they were holding on to each other as though they hadn’t seen each other in weeks before she pulled away and stroked the renegade lock of hair away from his forehead.

  “I love you, JP McKenzie,” she said tenderly.

  He sighed a deep, satisfied sigh, and said, “Aye, Alex Farrer. I love you too.”

  ALSO AVAILABLE FROM ESCAPE PUBLISHING…

  His Brand of Beautiful

  by Lily Malone

  Christina Clay only wants the best when it comes to her family’s iconic Australian wine company, and Tate Newell has the best marketing brain in the business. But there are some people in the world Tate doesn’t want to work for and Clay Wines’ eccentric chief executive is high on his list. Christina collects causes like some women collect shoes, and every time she opens her mouth, he’s reminded of the one person he wants to forget.

  Sometimes, to get a woman out of your head, you have to let her in.

  Before Christina can say Crocodile Dundee, she’s in a two-seater plane flying into the heart of central Australia to visit Tate’s childhood roots: the remote cattle station his family still own and run. It’s a ‘research project’ he says, to see just how ‘wild’ she wants her new wine brand to be.

  Battling the demons of a previous miscarriage, Christina soon has a project of her own in mind when it comes to Tate, and less than a day into her outback research trip, her ovaries are ticking. She wants a baby and a brand. And in Tate, she’s found the one man who can give her both.

  Click here to buy His Brand Of Beautiful from Amazon.com

  Click here to buy His Brand Of Beautiful from Amazon.co.uk

  Makeover Miracle

  by Charmaine Ross

  Abbey Miller and her friend Jennifer have been picked from a live audience to take part in reality television show Makeover Miracle. This is Abbey’s worst nightmare, and brings back deep memories of being teased and the brunt of cruel jokes. The last thing Abbey wants is her soul to be laid bare for the whole of Australia to see, but being the true friend she is, she agrees to help Jennifer, who desperately wants to change her life.

  Quinn Campbell, the producer of Makeover Miracle can see Abbey crumbling live on stage, and after she vomits into a wastepaper basket, goes to her aid, not expecting see such a sad, haunted look in her eyes. There’s something about Abbey that reaches out to him. The look in her eyes brings back long buried memories of his sister and his failure as a brother to help her.

  This is a story about one woman’s journey through harsh emotional abuses and the man who is able to make her believe in herself. Set against the beautiful Dandenong Ranges, Makeover Miracle is a story about forgiveness, understanding, personal growth and, of course, falling in love with that one special person.

  Click here to buy Makeover Miracle from Amazon.com

  Click here to buy Makeover Miracle from Amazon.co.uk

  Under the Hood

  by Juanita Kees

  When Scott Devin buys a struggling car dealership in semi-rural Western Australia, the last person he expects to see in charge is a stilletto-wearing, mini-skirted foreperson. Exactly the distraction a struggling, male-dominated workshop doesn’t need! But there’s more to TJ Stevens than meets the eye.

  TJ Stevens has two major goals in life: to preserve her grandfather’s heritage and protect her teenage rehabilitation program — and she’ll go to any lengths to do it. Scott Devin’s presence is a threat to everything she’s worked hard to achieve, so keeping him at arms length shouldn’t be a problem…or will it?

  Click here to buy Under The Hood from Amazon.com

  Click here to buy Under The Hood from Amazon.co.uk

  LOVED THE STORY?

  WE WANT YOUR FEEDBACK

  Take our short survey to

  claim a FREE eBook!

  BEGIN SURVEY

  ISBN: 9780857990334

  Title: Falling for the Lawyer

  Copyright © 2013 by Anna Clifton

  All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written perm
ission of publisher, Harlequin Enterprises (Australia) Limited, Locked Bag 7002, Chatswood D.C. NSW, Australia, 2067.

  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

  ® and ™ are trademarks of Harlequin Enterprises Limited and are used under license to the Publisher. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered in Australia, New Zealand, the United States Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries.

  www.escapepublishing.com.au