Legally Addicted (12 page)

‘Money. It’s your answer to everything.’

‘Is that right? Tell me then, how much is that addiction centre of yours going to cost?’

Three million a year.

She couldn’t believe it, but that’s the figure that kept coming up in the literature for centres similar to what she was recommending. Not that she would be telling him that. Not yet anyway. Now wasn’t the time to try to approach him to donate the impossibly huge sum of money she was going to have to secure for her proposal to fly.

‘It’s not the same,’ she said, trying to change the subject and divert the conversation away from her pet project. It would be far better to raise the issue in another environment more conducive to him opening his big fat wallet than a time like right now, when things were so…

Charged.

‘Really? Money spent on something you believe in, whether it’s a person or a cause, isn’t the same?

He believed in her? The statement was a ball flying out of the blindside.

No-one had ever said that before. Schoolteachers and professors had put her forward for scholarships, praised her for her academic successes, but no-one had ever outright said they had faith in her. He stared at her, his gaze intensifying until her stomach reacted, going all screwy inside. What was Brad doing? Why was he making this so damned hard? Making her feel, feel…she searched for the word.

Only one was forthcoming — barely a word even, but it fitted the feeling exactly.

Icky.

‘You believe in me?’ Before she could stop herself, the words came out incredulous, almost childlike.

Weak, Georgia, real weak.

She cringed at the sound of her own voice.

‘No, Georgia, I believe in us.’

Us.

She had never been part of a relationship significant enough that it warranted the application of a pronoun in the first person plural. No family, no relationships that could truly be classified that way; just a mother who was physically present, but emotionally absent.

There was something about that word, and the way Brad said it, that touched her soul.

She tried to come up with some smart response, but she had forgotten he still had her by the hand. He slid his fingers up over her shoulder until they caught the back of her neck. Suddenly his lips were on hers, and once she felt his body pressed against her, all sensible thought fled her brain.

As Brad’s tongue teased the inside of her mouth, Georgia let go, allowing him to guide her backwards until the top of the boardroom table made contact with the back of her legs. She let her weight fall onto the edge of the table, shimmying backwards until her legs were free to wind around him. As he leaned in towards her, one hand enmeshed in her hair, the other caressing her back, she responded, pulling him closer until she felt him hard against her. She shivered as he ran the back of his hand down her abdomen as low as it would go, teasing her there until she wriggled up out of her skirt to give him better access. He grasped her thong, ripping it down her legs and below her knees and she flicked it off, along with her shoes.

She closed her eyes, wanting to stay in this delicious fuzzy zone they had created. But Brad released her and the sound of a chair scraping across the floor forced her eyes back open. She felt the back of the chair nudge the table and she lifted her head as he straddled the seat of the chair, pulling her legs over his shoulders and dipping his head between her thighs. In response, she collapsed down onto the tabletop. She closed her eyes again as his tongue sent a cascade of sparks rising up through her centre. The sparks caught hold, building up to an inferno that set her perilously close to coming. She shivered, raking her fingernails over the surface of the table.

‘Wait, I’m going to — ’

‘Shush.’

Brad gently let her legs down and she heard the chair scrape away again, the whirr of a zipper releasing and the rip of foil. He grasped her thighs, pulling her to him and even though she was expecting it, when he entered her, she took a sharp intake of breath. He paused for a moment and she whispered sweet curses of encouragement. Somewhere at the back of her mind she was vaguely aware of pressure points where the hard wood surface connected with her shoulder, her back, and her butt, but the pleasure of every thrust was an anaesthetic taking her to a place higher than any illicit substance could.

She and Brad were an ‘us’. Her mind repeated the word until it became a mantra. For once she belonged to someone, and that thought alone took her to the edge.

Brad did the rest, pushing into her with force and urgency until they came together. He shuddered with her undulating charges of electric energy until, fully spent, he folded over her, panting softly in her ear.

After kissing her hard on the lips, as if he was somehow sealing what they had just done, he withdrew.

Georgia finally opened her eyes as he removed the condom and tied it up, looking around the stark meeting room, rolling his top lip over the bottom one in a comical expression.

‘Houston, do we have a problem?’ he said.

Georgia raised her head and giggled.

‘It’s okay, I think they keep tissues around here.’

Sliding off the table, she opened a cupboard where Caro kept the water jugs and other meeting supplies. She found a box, and handed them to him, then pointed to a lidded rubbish bin in the corner.

‘Every time you sit at that table for the board meetings, you’ll think of me now,’ Georgia said, wrestling her skirt back down then bending to pick up her thong and retrieve her shoes.

‘That’s for sure. Poor Caro — but I guess what she doesn’t know…’

He set down the tissues and pulled Georgia into his arms. With a shoe in each hand, she crossed her arms around behind him and nuzzled into his shoulder, stifling a laugh when she realised what Brad was getting at. Caro’s place as board chair, at the head of the polished oval table, would have her forever positioned at the scene of the crime.

Once they rearranged their clothing, Brad steered Georgia out of the meeting room and back down towards reception. His hand was firm on her shoulder, the supportive strength fanning out from his grip giving her the confidence she needed to walk back through the reception area and pick up her briefcase on the way out.

Caro looked up from the desk to say goodbye, but wisely made no other comment.

Brad held the main door back out on to the street open for her.

‘Your place or mine?’

‘Yours.’

Out on the footpath, Brad was relieved to find that his driver was waiting right outside. This wasn’t a neighbourhood in which someone in a designer suit would want to linger. Instinctively, he pulled his jacket sleeve down over the ostentatious watch his mother had given him. Georgia looked around furtively.

He hadn’t expected that. She had grown up here, and yet even Georgia was nervous?

‘Are you okay?’

‘I’m fine.’

Despite what she said, Georgia shuddered and almost leapt into the back of the car when the driver opened the door for them.

He slipped in beside her and Georgia shuffled over, throwing her briefcase down on the floor.

‘No, you’re not okay. You’re afraid. Something upset you, Georgia — out there on the street. I saw it in your eyes. What’s going on?’

Georgia balled her hands into fists, and then looked away from him, out the window.

Brad shook his head, fully expecting the wall Georgia had built around her to come crashing back down, guillotine-like, but instead she turned towards him, looking him briefly in the eye before staring down at her hands.

‘I ran into someone here a couple of weeks back. Someone I used to know — a drug addict. He was strung out. He asked for money. I said I didn’t have any. He left. It was fine.’

‘It can’t have been fine, or you wouldn’t have looked like that back there. Tell me.’

He took her chin between his thumb and forefinger, his gaze locked on to hers.

Georgia sighed and he released her, sensing she was about to open up.

‘He, I mean Jake, was an old boyfriend of my mother’s. He…well, he was in his twenties when he lived with us. My mother was a drug addict as well.’

‘I wondered if she was an addict. I’m so sorry, Georgia. Is she…?’

‘Yeah. She’s dead — dirty needles, drugs cut with poisonous substances, or sheer carelessness. If addicts can’t get clean they all die one way or another in the end. She had a pretty good innings considering. She was in her forties when she finally overdosed. I found her. I called an ambulance. They administered Narcan, but it was too late.’

‘How old were you when that happened?’

‘Twenty — I was already in law school. I had just dropped into take her some food and check up on her, but she was already gone.’

‘Jesus. I’m so sorry, Georgia. This Jake, did he hurt you?’

‘No. He tried — plenty of times, but I was always two steps ahead of him.’

Georgia lent against his shoulder and gripped his arm with both hands. He breathed in her sweet fragrance; fruity and floral, it reminded him of something innocent and precious. Something he had an overpowering need to protect.

‘Good,’ he said, and not just because Georgia was safe. He was pleased not to have to find this Jake and take care of him; conduct that would be considered unbecoming of a solicitor.

Not that censure by the esteemed New South Wales law society would be sufficient deterrent, if it came to that. He might not be ready to divest himself of the Spencer family fortune for Georgia, but at that moment, with the perfumed scent of her hair in his nostrils and her warm body clinging to his, he couldn’t think of anything else he wouldn’t do for her.

Chapter Nine

The second time Georgia woke up in Brad’s ostentatious apartment she wasn’t nearly so daunted by it. She had only chosen to come to his place so she could leave if she needed to, but when they arrived back at his penthouse for round two of what they had started at the shelter, Brad admitted that he actually hated the over the top decoration, and that he kept it to please his butler.

Butler?

How was she supposed to feel about that?

The old guy who had been serving the food at Brad’s beach house, the one she had mistaken for a caterer, had woken them with a cup of coffee on a silver tray. She hadn’t meant to stay so long but she had fallen asleep. The next thing she knew, after only a split second’s worth of surprise at finding two people in the bed, the butler was asking ‘what type of beverage madam would require’.

And this time, when she slipped into the living area to collect up her clothes, she found them in a neatly folded pile on the sofa with her thong sitting on top.

‘OMG!’

Hearing the exclamation Brad came running into the living room, his arms up in fists as if he was ready to defend her. He had been like that ever since she told him about Jake, keeping her close and cradling her in his arms all night. She had never felt so safe as she had with Brad.

‘What’s wrong? Oh, the clothes thing.’

He chuckled, relaxing his arms down by his sides. Yes, he does that sometimes. Don’t worry; he does all my laundry, including my smalls. Nothing shocks him. Jeffrey was responsible for my potty training too as I recall.’

She laughed.

‘Jeffrey, the butler? I thought you would have had a nanny?’

‘Well, the first one was very attractive and after my mother found her in bed with my father that was it — no more nannies. Jeffrey sort of stepped into the breach. He was like a mother, father, and valet all rolled into one.’

‘Poor little rich kid deserted by his parents and left to the servants to raise.’ As soon as the taunt was out of her mouth she regretted it, but he didn’t react and for once, it didn’t annoy her. She expected that from him now. Brad, she realised, was calm under fire. It was only when she was threatened that he seemed to go into red alert mode.

‘Pretty much.’

His tone was not so much annoyed as bitter. She gave him a questioning look, but he ignored her expression, pulling her to him. He kissed her, then pulled away.

‘I’ve got to go. There’s something important I want to sort out at the office, right away. Jeffrey will make you breakfast if you want it. He’s usually in the kitchen at this time of day.’

‘When will we…’

‘See each other again? I think that’s pretty much up to you. Far be it from me to try to distil what this means, but if you turned up again here for dinner this evening I wouldn’t be disappointed.’

Ouch.

She supposed she deserved that. Georgia slumped down on to the couch.

Was she really doing this? Seeing someone? Properly seeing someone, not just casually, and someone who was rich enough to employ a butler into the bargain?

‘Can I bring you some breakfast, madam?’

She turned to the older man who had come into the lounge and commenced dusting ornaments on the marble mantelpiece above a gas fireplace.

‘Jeffrey, can I ask you something? Do you like being a butler? Is it okay for you here?’

‘Oh yes, my life here has been wonderful. After the way I grew up, well you wouldn’t understand and that’s a good thing, but gaining the security of a live-in job that came with a ready-made family was priceless. I don’t think Bradley would mind me saying he’s almost like a son to me.’

‘The way you grew up — I don’t mean to pry. But were you poor?’

‘Desperately poor — but we didn’t need to be. My father had a reasonable job as a mechanic, but he was an alcoholic so we lived hand to mouth, as they say.’

‘I do know what that’s like. Exactly what that’s like.’

‘Oh, my poor dear. Well, you’ve fallen on your feet here. Bradley adores you.’

Bradley adored her? Her insides contracted, and not with hunger. She clasped a hand to her throat. The thought was terrifying.

The butler’s face clouded over.

‘Oh dear, I hope I haven’t said the wrong thing. Let me get you breakfast. Everything looks better on a full stomach. Nothing is too much trouble. Waffles? Full English? Continental?’

The old man was jabbering. She should put him out of his misery.

‘Do you have puffed wheat, the kind with honey on?’