Falling for the Lawyer

chapter Fourteen


Playing Russian roulette with life was not for the faint hearted. Alex was discovering that very quickly. But as she sat in the backseat of the cab on her way to the airport she revelled in the fact that at least now she was the one tossing the gambling chips into the game of life—it was nothing short of exhilarating.

But her odds in the game she was in couldn’t be good. Even putting aside the unpredictable reception she might receive from JP, whether she would find him out at the airport was less than certain. International departures were chaotic at the best of times and he could have checked in by now and be waiting in some flight lounge she couldn’t get into.

Her other problem was time. From memory, check-in for international flights was ninety minutes before departure. If he was going at eight then he’d have to check-in by six-thirty. It had just gone six o’clock so she would be running very close to missing him completely.

To make matters worse it seemed every red light was plotting against her. She squirmed and wriggled impatiently, willing each one to return to green immediately. Over and over again she silently cursed the poor driver for his adherence to the road rules and his careful driving. Yet eventually he swung up into the departures drop off zone and handing him notes to more than cover the fare she jumped out of the cab without waiting for change and ran into the terminal.

Searching the airport crowds like a strobe light she did some quick circuits around the long, snake-like queues of people winding backwards and forwards in front of the check-in desks, their luggage piled high in front of them. But there was no JP.

Scanning the screens listing departures she found a Qantas flight bound for London that was due to leave at eight. That had to be the one he was going on and yet she’d circled the whole Qantas check-in area several times and there was still no sign of him.

With a galloping pulse and a nervous gait to her walk she paced anxiously through the crowd, searching hopelessly for that mop of dark blonde hair, the chiseled jawline and cheekbones, the penetrating blue eyes. Yet with every passing minute hope was dying inside her. He simply wasn’t there, and no amount of roaming through the crowd would change that.

As anger dissolved into despair she finally sunk down onto a chair and dropped her head into her hands. JP had clearly gone through immigration and would not be coming out. Very soon he’d be on a plane heading back to the UK leaving more questions than answers plaguing their short relationship. And with searing pain ripping her apart she wondered whether she’d ever see him again.

“Do you mind if we sit down?”

Alex sat up and removed her hands from her face to see a young mother with two small children standing in front of her.

“No, no, of course. Please do,” Alex replied quickly as she shifted herself up to one end of the bench. The woman gave her an appreciative smile and Alex returned it before gazing out across the crowd again. And that was when she saw him.

JP McKenzie was strolling around the check-in area, not more than ten metres away from her. He was without luggage and his hands were resting casually in his pockets as though he might be looking for someone. Alex climbed slowly to her feet but then she couldn’t move any further. She didn’t have to.

As though sensing the weight of her gaze at his back he swung around and spotted her immediately.

Alex watched him in disbelief, doubting her own eyes. But then she knew she could never have conjured up the expression on his face as he regarded her thoughtfully; he was giving nothing away.

Alex folded her arms. Now that she’d found him she felt grumpy again. But then a smirk crossed JP’s mouth and he crossed his own arms, mimicking her own feisty stance, tilting his head to one side in challenge.

She walked towards him and he eyed her curiously, his gaze drifting over her figure in her gym gear. She stopped about a metre in front of him, her arms still crossed, her lips pressed together in taut repression of the anxiety and ecstasy of seeing him again.

“What can I do for you?” he asked smoothly.

“Can’t you guess?” Alex snapped, revealing more nervousness than she wanted to.

“Enlighten me,” he crooned, his dark blue-eyed look resting heavily upon her.

“An explanation would be nice,” she blurted. “About how you feel comfortable leaving like this without letting me know you’re going.”

JP regarded her with a mixture of amusement and seriousness. “It was all very sudden.”

“That doesn’t explain why you didn’t tell me you were leaving. You have my phone numbers.”

JP regarded her with a cool stare and shrugged. “Do you think it was absolutely necessary? You’ve only been working for me for a month, after all.”

Alex smarted at the rejection and looked away into the crowd to collect herself before going on.

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.”