Falling for the Lawyer

chapter Three


“Come on, Alex,” Sophie ordered. “Let’s go and have a glass of wine. We’ve definitely earned it today.”

Alex was typing furiously, so immersed in the task before her that she gaped at her friend for a few seconds before she was able to gather her thoughts and respond.

“Is it time to go?” Alex asked in disbelief.

“’Fraid so,” Sophie nodded in mock irony. “I know it’s a wrench to leave this place but you’ve simply got to go home sometime.”

Alex was staggered. Somehow she’d managed to get through the day after all, and although the spectre of JP McKenzie’s return had haunted her continuously she’d refused to stew on her predicament. Instead she’d put her head down and worked hard on David Griffen’s remaining current matters. JP would need to turn his mind to them in the next twenty-four hours and with all the lawyers in the office so busy she’d decided to do as much of the legwork as possible to bring them up to date.

“I can’t leave yet. I’ve got to get these memos finished.”

But Alex was fibbing. The file she was working on could certainly wait until the next day. The real reason she wanted to stay behind was because she’d resolved to have things out with JP McKenzie.

No matter what lay in store for her she refused to wait for the guillotine to fall on her job at Griffen Murphy. She’d stand up to him and demand to know what his intentions for her were, even if that meant staying back for hours until he returned—if he returned at all.

“Have you anyone else you can go with, Soph?”

“Yes but I wanted you to come too,” Sophie explained, pulling a face of exaggerated disappointment.

“How about some time later in the week instead?”

“Okay, but is that a promise?”

“It’s a promise,” Alex assured her and watched on distractedly as Sophie disappeared across the office.

She sighed then, apprehensive about how long she would have to wait for JP to return. Well, she didn’t care. If she had to wait all night and catch him the second he walked through the door in the morning then that was what she would do.

She finished the work she was doing and then did some more filing as the office began to empty. By six o’clock every last person had left for the evening—even the lawyers. Alex was beginning to think she may very well have to wait until morning to see JP after all. But then the sound of loud, chirpy whistling greeted her ears. She froze where she stood at the filing cabinet, waiting to see whether her hunch that her new boss was heading back to his office was right. It was.

With his hands deep in his pockets and a distracted look on his face, JP McKenzie sauntered through the empty department he now headed up, a moving flash of dark blonde hair and dark suit. When he caught sight of her over the partitions his gait baulked a little before a smirk rose to his lips, his pace returned and he approached her.

Alex swallowed. All of a sudden her throat felt incredibly dry as she drove her gaze straight into those cobalt blue eyes that were already becoming familiar to her. “I was beginning to think you would never get back,” she confessed out loud before she could stop herself.

“I have that effect upon people—tenterhooks, you know … I’m kidding, Alex. If I’d known you were waiting I would have come down sooner. I was just upstairs talking to Justin Murphy.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Alex replied dismissively, shaking her head a little to try and clear a way for her thoughts. The problem was that something strange seemed to happen to her brain when JP McKenzie was near, including blurting things to him she had no intention of blurting. “I didn’t mind waiting. I’d like to talk to you.”

JP looked hard at her and then cocked his head in the direction of his office. “Come on. Let’s go in here. I’m glad you stayed. We’ve got a bit to go through.”

Yes, like your job is at an end, Alex thought grimly as she wandered into his office, the panorama of the city skyline opening out beyond his enormous windows.

“It’s been a long day and I’m definitely ready for a beer. Would you like a drink?”

Alex shook her head as he went to the small bar fridge inside one of his cupboards and helped himself to a light beer. He beckoned to her to sit down but she shook her head again.

“I’d rather stand,” she said and remained where she was in the centre of the room.

He looked at her askance but didn’t reply. Instead he moved to lean back against his desk as he lifted the beer to his lips.

“I need to know what’s going on,” Alex declared in an agitated rush. “I can’t bear this uncertainty. If you’re going to fire me then just do it now and let’s have it over with!”

JP stared at Alex, choked on his mouthful of beer and carefully removed the bottle from his mouth. “You think I’m going to fire you? Now?” he spluttered.

“Why wouldn’t you after this morning?”

“What exactly are you referring to? Have you passed a confidential document to an opponent? Have you stolen money from the firm?”

“No, of course not.” Alex was flummoxed. It was not the reaction from him she’d been expecting.

“Then what?”

She searched JP’s face for some indication of what he was thinking but his expression was unreadable. “This morning when I … when I told you everyone here was calling you ‘The Grim Reaper’ and that no one wanted you to start.”

His eyes crinkled at the edges. “Is that a sackable offence these days? I haven’t done an update on employment law for a while. Perhaps it’s time I did.”

“But all your talk about loyalty, dedication and team players. I thought … I was sure you were referring to me …”

JP threw back his head and laughed.

Again she was making him laugh. What was it about her he found so amusing? Sophie laughed at her too in the same way and most of the time Alex had no idea what she’d done or said that was so funny.

“Weren’t you referring to me?” Alex was beginning to doubt lots of conclusions she’d reached about him that day.

He shook his head in disbelief before he spoke. “Alex, you don’t strike me as the egotistical type to say the least. Nevertheless, you’ve got to understand you are not the centre of my universe in managing this litigation section. The fact is that I haven’t made any final decisions about staff cut-backs yet.”

“Oh, I thought …” But Alex couldn’t utter another word.

“Is that why you’ve stayed back until now, because you thought I was going to fire you?”

She nodded and he gave her a smile that was so breathtakingly gentle she thought she would melt under its warmth.

“You must have had a God-awful time worrying about it all day, not to mention that disaster in the rain this morning.”

Yet despite his gentleness Alex was beginning to panic. He was having that effect upon her once again—just like when he’d held her hand that morning, when she’d felt as though the whole world was compressing itself into one tiny space that only the two of them occupied—a space where there was no room for Simon, three years of family expectation or anything else. And once again she felt absolutely and thoroughly disgusted with herself.

“Come on, have a glass of wine. I think you might need it.” Before she could object he’d returned to the fridge, pulled out a bottle and poured her a small glass. She accepted it from him before she could think of any way of politely refusing.

“I was positive you would sack me after this morning,” Alex admitted, lowering herself unsteadily into one of the chairs near his desk. “Do you mind if I ask you something?”

He nodded, looking at her again in that deeply unsettling way of his, as if he’d never met anyone quite like her before—as though he was astounded to suddenly find her in his life.

“Why did you help me this morning but not tell me who you were? Did you know I was your PA?”

JP’s eyebrows rose and fell guiltily. “Of course I knew. I’d seen your photo on the website but I wanted to keep my options open. If I was going to fire you I didn’t want you thinking it was because you had some mud on your clothes.”

Alex threw him a sceptical look. “Is that a sincere answer?”

“What do you think?”

“I can’t tell with you.”

“The truth is I felt sorry for you. I could see you were dead worried about today and I thought you’d be less likely to accept my help if you knew who I was. But I couldn’t resist having some fun by surprising you at your workplace half an hour later. That was the unfair part of the idea. When I worked out just how unfair it was I wasn’t prepared to rattle you in front of Andrea by revealing all in the boutique.”

“It was all totally unfair,” Alex objected yet she couldn’t help smiling when she noticed the mischievous twinkle in his eyes.

He was an enigma, that was for sure. She suspected the most challenging part of her job would be learning to read his mind—if she had a job for much longer!

“The thing is,” JP started again, more seriously, “I’m glad you told me how the staff was feeling. If you hadn’t then the paranoia about me would have become worse over the coming weeks and then I’d have had no hope of anyone working with me to turn this section around.”

“But I should never have said the things I said to you this morning.”

“It was indiscreet, Alex,” he reproached. “But in the circumstances of this morning I’ll forgive you just this once if you forgive me for not telling you who I was. Do you think I had any impact this morning, with the staff I mean?”

Alex hesitated, stunned that he was asking for her point of view. “I think you’ve got them wondering.”

“What does that mean?”

“Well before you arrived they would have preferred Jack the Ripper as new litigation partner. But since your talk this morning you’ve been raised up a notch to about Charles Manson level.”

JP laughed. “Okay, quite some way to go then but what should I do to get them on side—you know them better than I do?”

Alex felt a warm tingling in her cheeks. Her new boss was asking her opinion about a management issue—she couldn’t quite believe it.

“Why don’t you organise something the whole litigation section can join in on—where everyone has to work together as a team—I don’t know … a footy match, something like that.”

JP nodded thoughtfully, his mind clearly ticking over at her suggestion.

“How did you get such a bad name as a boss anyhow?” Alex asked as she felt the wine begin to ease the tension out of her taut and tired muscles.

“Maybe because I don’t suffer fools,” he declared suddenly, reverting back to command role. “But I suspect the truth is that someone who’s fared badly with me in the past has spread some exaggerated rumours. Regardless though, I have a job to do here and I intend to do it. I’m not here to work on my popularity rating. By the way, where’s my other PA?” He glanced towards the door as though Vera Boyd might suddenly materialise there.

“Vera’s on two weeks leave. She gets back the day after tomorrow.”

“I see. How do you two split the work up?”

‘Vera splits things up and I get the dregs’, was what Alex wanted to say. “Um, we just split it up between us, depending on how busy things are.”

“Aye, right,” JP replied and looked doubtful. All over again Alex felt her hopes sink as she remembered the firm’s policy—no more than one PA per lawyer. Just because he wasn’t going to fire her for spreading malicious gossip about him to perfect strangers in the street didn’t mean her job was secure indefinitely.

“What do you do if Vera’s covering the workload?”

“I work on precedents during the quiet times,” Alex explained, hoping that wouldn’t damage her prospects of holding onto her job. He could very well decide that a PA with enough time on her hands to create useless precedents was a PA he didn’t need to waste a wage on.

“Precedents! What are you talking about?” JP asked with a sudden flare up of irritation. “I was told this section didn’t have any precedents apart from out of date court documents.”

“I started preparing them at the beginning of the year,” Alex replied, convinced she’d just signed her own job’s death warrant. “Vera was handling all of David’s work on her own so I had time.”

“Let me see them.”

“What, now?”

“Aye, now.”

Alex sat down in front of JP’s computer and her fingers began to move across the keyboard as he stood behind her so that he could watch the screen.

“Here they are,” she said finally. “We have a high turnover of junior lawyers who wander around the office looking for precedents they can use and I thought it would be helpful to put some standard documents together for them in plain English.”

“I see,” he murmured and leaned over her shoulder to read through the list. “Letter advising on mediation, containing Calderbank offer, proposing settlement conference, service of process, categories of documents for discovery, undertakings as to damages.”

On and on he read, occasionally asking her to bring up a document so that he could skim its contents. He wanted to see everything, from documents in support of bankruptcy and winding-up proceedings to the various deeds of settlement and releases.

“Where did you get these from?”

“I kept an eye out for the good ones which came through David’s office. Some came from the lawyers in this section. The rest I had to beg, borrow or steal from other sections.”

“Has anyone approved these?”

“Not yet,” Alex replied, remembering the various times she’d asked David Griffen to consider doing that, but it had never happened, probably because she’d always been verging on the invisible when it came to David

“All right then. I’ll get a senior associate onto it tomorrow.”

Alex twisted in her chair to look up at him. His features were rigid in concentration as he continued to scan the documents before him.

“You’re kidding!” she challenged.

“No I’m not kidding. They’re a valuable resource and as you say, a guide for the younger lawyers. At the end of the day everything has to be signed off by a partner but these will be a great time saver.”

JP straightened then and moved across to the window. He was evidently deep in thought, his back to Alex as she shut down his computer. She drained the last of her wine from her glass and unsure what she was supposed to do next rose to her feet. She began to move towards the door but JP swung around.

“Where are you going?” he snapped.

“I thought that was it for tonight.”

“But I need you to talk me through current matters.”

“Now?”

“No, no, of course not. You go home,” he shot back irritably with a wave of his hand towards the door. “There’s probably a negligence claim on my desk that’s about to explode but we won’t let that stand in the way of clock-watching!”

“I don’t call going home at seven-thirty clock-watching but perhaps they do things differently in the UK. Perhaps PAs don’t go home at all!”

JP looked at her in bafflement as though trying to register where he was before dropping his eyes to his watch. “Of course, sorry. It’s late. I must be operating on UK time. You go home, yeah?” he ordered with his usual ending for emphasis, changing tack to one that was conciliatory again.

“Aren’t you going now too?” she asked more mildly, feeling guilty about ticking off her new boss when he was clearly as strung out as she was. “Despite what I just said I actually can stay if you need me.”

“No need.” Striding back to his desk he began to sort through files. “I’ll check now for any bombs that might go off tomorrow.”

“I can show you those straight away,” Alex offered as she approached the desk and picked up a file. “By far the most urgent matter is this one. It’s a passing-off and Trade Practices matter. The client phoned today. He’s given instructions to brief counsel to commence injunction proceedings as David advised last week. I’ve prepared a brief …”

“You’ve prepared a brief?” JP gaped at her in open astonishment. “Why didn’t you have one of the lawyers do it?”

“I asked but none of them could get to it before tomorrow. We’ve all been very busy in here over the last few weeks with David going. This is just a … start ….” She handed the brief to JP and he began leafing through it as she perched on the side of the desk.

“This is more than just a start—this is nearly there,” he murmured when he’d spent the better part of five minutes reading through it. He raised his eyes from the file to meet hers with a penetrating look, his lips pursed and his eyebrows drawing together thoughtfully. “You’ve even prepared the Observations—my first impressions are they’re first rate.”

“They’re just in draft …” she began but trailed off. Despite the fact he seemed happy with her work, perhaps she’d overstepped the mark. Perhaps she should have left the brief for the lawyers. But then another day would have passed before the brief was ready and the client’s chances of winning the injunction could have been undermined by the delay.

“Okay what else?” he asked as he turned back to the files on his desk.

Alex gave him a potted version of each matter in descending order of priority until he held up his hand.

“All right. That’s enough for me to be going on with tonight. I’ll leave work on your desk for tomorrow. I’m stuck in a meeting all morning from eight so it will be good to know you’re getting on with things.”

He ran his hand back through the dark blonde cowlick of hair that fell forward across his forehead. He then sighed out loud and even though she’d only just met him Alex could read the acute tension about his eyes.

“I’m going to need a lot of support from you over the next few weeks, Alex,” he began in serious appeal. “My partners are going to line me up in endless meetings and I’m worried about those matters of David’s I haven’t been able to get on top of yet. I’m deadly serious when I say I need you to be my eyes, my ears and my warning bell in this practice. The work you’ve done today tells me you can give me the support I need. Can I trust you to do this?”

Alex opened her mouth to reply but no sound came out so she closed it again.

“Why are you looking at me as though I’ve got two heads?” JP asked.

“It’s just that I haven’t had that level of responsibility in this job before and …”

“Why not?”

“David Griffen didn’t …”

“Well I’m not David Griffen,” JP tossed at her impatiently. “Based on what I’ve seen today I’ve decided you should have that level of responsibility and more. Are you up for it or not?”

“Of course but …”

“Good —then there’s no need for buts.” JP walked behind his desk, threw himself into his chair and dragged the top file in the pile towards him—he had hours of work ahead of him that night and as far as he was concerned their conversation was over.

It had been an abrupt ending to a gruelling day, yet Alex floated out of the building that night and she was in no doubt as to why. JP’s belief in her was as pure as oxygen and sucking in great, greedy gulps of it she experienced a sense of soaring optimism as she never had before.

All of a sudden worries that had been eating away at her insides for months felt as though they were ebbing away. Suddenly, everything and anything seemed possible. Simon would understand that her dreams of a career at Griffen Murphy could fit into their plans for marriage and family. And Alex Farrer would have the guts to slowly but surely turn the tide of events that three years ago had begun to overwhelm her life. All she needed to do was believe in herself—as purely and simply as JP McKenzie did that night.