Falling for the Lawyer

chapter Nine


Alex first saw him as she wandered up the dark garden pathway towards her apartment. He was leaning back against one of the stone pillars, a foot propped back against it, his arms folded across his chest, his expression pensive.

Alex stopped dead in her tracks, her eyes trailing compulsively over the powerful thighs in his jeans and the broad shoulders filling out the grey t-shirt clinging to his upper body like a second skin. His hair was damp from a recent shower, swept back from his forehead which was unconsciously lined with worry.

JP McKenzie.

Alex swallowed as an overwhelmingly urgent need to touch him and be touched by him banished the promise she’d made less than a quarter of an hour ago to exclude him from her heart and her mind once and for all.

She shivered then and moved forward to approach him and his attention was caught. He stood up straight, arms still folded, taking in the damp hair strewn about her shoulders and the surf towel knotted about her waist.

“What are you doing here?” she snapped nervously, praying he wouldn’t notice the desire rising like a fine mist from her bare skin.

“I was worried about you.” He strolled towards her and stopped very close, breaking every unspoken social law of personal space. “You rushed out of the hotel tonight and I wanted to make sure you got home okay. Your phone’s switched off.”

“Well as you can see I’m fine,” she blurted, her pounding heart creating staccato notes of her words.

“Are you?” His voice was mellifluous and mellow, like golden syrup pouring over her skin. “You don’t look it. In fact,” he continued, taking yet another forbidden step into her personal space, “You’ve been like an emotional train wreck for most of the day.”

Meanwhile Alex was screaming silently at herself to move: sideways, backwards—anywhere to put space between them so that she could collect her resolve and get inside to make that phone call to Simon. But she was frozen in time and space as JP filled her vision, her hearing, her sense of smell. All that was missing was taste and touch and that seductive notion made her bite her bottom lip in uneasy response.

“The only person turning me into an emotional train wreck is you,” she replied but immediately regretted her words. JP would not let them go without comment and his mouth was already shifting into a satisfied smirk.

“An interesting admission,” he purred finally, the edges of his eyes crinkling in that heart-stopping way of his.

“Not one you need to take any credit for,” she argued, her chin rising so that she could look him clear in the eye.

“Oh really?”

“For some reason you’ve decided turning my life upside down should be taken on as a personal crusade,” she began, seriously unnerved by his closeness. She was also trying to ignore the fact that his eyes were shamelessly resting on her lips, already full and sensitive. “You seem to have a problem with not trying to rescue me and I seem to have a problem with … well, I have too many problems to list. But whatever is happening between us …”

“Falling in love?” JP’s cobalt blue eyes were suddenly looking about as warm and inviting as the North Sea in winter.

“Don’t,” Alex snapped and with fingers chilled from her recent swim she fumbled uselessly to get her key into the door before the whole bunch fell with a clatter at JP’s feet. He scooped them up immediately.

“Please can I have my keys,” Alex demanded hotly.

JP turned to push the key into the door but instead of standing back and letting her in he pushed it open and stepped inside, holding it back for her to pass through into the hallway.

Alex gaped at him. “I’m not going in there with you,” she objected, her heart racing at the prospect of being alone with him in her apartment. It was one thing to revolve around him in the confines of their busy office, quite another to spend time with him in her quiet, warm home with its soft lighting and romantic ambience.

“Yes, you are coming in,” he demanded. “We have to talk and if we stay out here we’ll have neighbours on our backs.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t trust you.”

“You mean you don’t trust yourself.”

He raised questioning eyebrows at her when she didn’t respond. And he was right. She didn’t trust herself around him at all.

“There’s been a significant development at work, Alex. I need you to know about it before you go back tomorrow.” There was no teasing spark in his eyes now. His mouth was a straight, hard line.

“What is it?”

“Come inside. I’m not going to discuss it out here.” He cocked his head in that way he did when he wanted her to follow him somewhere and then her legs were obeying and carrying her inside without reference to any direction from her head.

“What on earth is so important that it can’t wait until tomorrow?” Alex asked when she’d moved into the dim hallway. She didn’t like the fact that the two of them were sharing such a quiet, confined space but it was preferable to taking him any further into the intimate privacy of her small home.

“There’ll be a new partner in the litigation section tomorrow.”

“That’s the news that couldn’t wait?”

“Her name’s Caroline Cartwright,” he continued in a flat voice as though she hadn’t spoken, as though he was willing himself to continue despite anything she might say.

Caroline, Alex thought to herself. Why was that name ringing a bell? Then it came back to her. Of course, the woman in the boutique and Marie from the legal centre had both asked after a ‘Caroline’ in his life.

“Until recently Caroline and I were in a serious two year relationship.”

Alex searched his face for some indication of what he was feeling but it was a still mask in the grey light, the picture of control and neutrality. She just wished she could say the same about herself but she couldn’t, for at that moment she was feeling very strange indeed.

The problem was she’d never, ever thought about JP in terms of anything but what he was to her. From day one he’d made her feel as though she was indispensably central to his life and yet it was a completely stupid and naïve notion. The truth was she’d never been anything to him but his PA: not his girlfriend, his wife, his lover, not even his friend.

“Are you okay, Alex?” He was looking at her very closely. She averted her look from his to avoid revealing the disquiet rumbling away inside her.

“Recently,” Alex echoed hopelessly, hating herself for the effect his news was having upon her. She was engaged to Simon and this man was her boss. How could his personal life mean anything to her?

“Strictly between you and me, the original plan was that Caroline was going to head up litigation here. I was to stay in the UK and run the London office. Somehow we were going to try and maintain a long distance relationship. The fact that we believed we could do that probably didn’t bode well for the long term. Anyway, we split up a few months ago and she decided to stay in London after all so I offered to come here to get litigation on its feet. It suited me anyway because I wanted an opportunity to work with Justin and Adam.”

“I see,” Alex whispered, nodding distractedly. “How long is Caroline staying?”

But what she didn’t ask and what she really wanted to know was whether he was about to disappear back to London and out of her life as suddenly as he’d blown into it?

“I haven’t spoken to her but I’m told she wants to join the office here permanently. She’s arriving tomorrow to discuss it with my partners and me. I had no idea she would do this, Alex. Not even the other partners knew until she phoned Justin this morning. But what I really need you to know is that my relationship with her is over, no matter what you might think to the contrary.”

“You don’t have to explain anything to me.”

“Of course I have to explain,” he replied, exasperation sharpening his tone. “There’s something happening between us Alex and denying it won’t make it go away.”

“Oh God, stop it!” Alex blocked her ears with her hands, her heart beating wildly as the tension mounted painfully at her temples. “You’ve let me know about Caroline and I appreciate it. But could you please leave now? You shouldn’t be standing here in my hallway like this with all the lights off.”

JP eyed her thoughtfully as he slipped a hand deep into one of his pockets. But then he shifted his stance and was reaching out for the door handle.

Alex could hardly breathe as she watched him. He was going to leave her, just as she’d asked. Within seconds she would be alone again, safe from the abyss of desire and temptation he’d been leading her inexorably towards. But then his hand stilled on the door handle, his eyes dark and fathomless, the hard angles of his jawline more rigid than ever. He leaned towards her a little and instinctively she drew back against the wall.

“First you have to tell me you don’t want me to stay.”

“I don’t want you to stay,” she whispered, her voice rasping as she basked in the heat of the desire burning white-hot in his eyes.

“Liar,” he declared. “Tell me you don’t want me to touch you.”

“No, I don’t want you to,” she replied, shaking her head quickly but then a gasp broke free from her lips as his warm hands slid around the cool skin at her waist. His eyes lowered then as he shamelessly drank in the curves of her figure, looking at her near-naked body in a way no man had ever looked at her before.

Her eyelids dropped shut as she desperately tried to shut JP out so that she could remember who she was, what her responsibilities were, and then act decisively to counter the path he was leading her down. But closing her eyes only deepened her confusion as fingertips drifted away from her waist to trace a sensual, suggestive trail backwards and forwards, just above her bikini line.

“JP, you really need to leave now,” she whispered and opened her eyes but it was too late. His other hand was now sliding decisively around her waist; he had no intention of going anywhere.

“I made a decision earlier tonight, Alex,” he whispered with a slow shake of his head. “I’m not backing off from this anymore because we belong together and you know it.”

Alex shook her head in anxious denial but his body pressed closer to hers, now shaking uncontrollably. She watched his hard, poised mouth, willing it to meet hers as she swallowed, her lips parting involuntarily as his thumb trailed across their shape in a gentle, yet proprietary gesture.

“You’ve completely done my head in, you know that don’t you?” he murmured, his voice hoarse and unrecognizable as his other hand slid up her bare back and underneath her bikini strap, a look of deep satisfaction shining in his eyes as he watched her helpless quiver at his touch.

“We can’t do this, JP! I don’t want this.”

“Perhaps you want this then.”

His mouth brushed against hers very lightly before he drew away to watch her reaction. And evidently satisfied with what he saw he caught and released her mouth again, and then over and over, tantalising her without pity.

And right then Alex knew that JP knew she’d never, ever been kissed like that before; not with such provocative ease, tempting her further and further into a black hole of sweet, heady need for what he could make her feel that night, if she would only give in to what was happening between them, once and for all.

But she wouldn’t do that. Her mind reached out to Simon and their years of commitment that had nothing to do with the tempest of feeling and sensation engulfing her that night. But JP was watching her with such fierce intensity again she couldn’t hold a thought for more than a split second; each one was drifting away as quickly as it had arrived as she watched an unrelenting and hypnotic pinprick of light emerge from his dark eyes.

Finally his gaze dropped, moving remorselessly across her figure before his hands lifted to cradle her face, tilting it purposefully towards his. And with a barely audible groan his mouth seized hers, demanding that her own yield and succumb to his immediately. In the next moment their mouths were searching each other’s and in mindless, disembodied response Alex heard a moan rise up from deep within herself as she responded with uncontained fervour. On and on it went, an exquisite journey of discovery as their tongues met and he sighed helplessly into her mouth as Alex revelled in the power she knew she held over him.

But she was equally lost within his power too, for heat was raging in waves across her skin, plummeting like a fireball of need and desire into her lower stomach and thighs as his hips pinned her against the wall and shifted restlessly against hers. And with their mouths clinging together, his hands buried themselves in her hair as hers crept stealthily beneath his shirt to explore the depression below his broad chest muscles and the ridges of his flat, hard stomach. In the next moment she’d found the button and zipper of his jeans and was unfastening them as swiftly and decisively as if she had unfastened them a hundred times before.

And it was then Alex knew JP had found a woman within her she’d never known existed before. A woman she feared and yet understood. A woman he knew was his soul mate.

JP tore his lips from hers and cradled her head in his hands.

“Wait, Alex,” JP panted, his chest heaving with tormented desire. “I don’t want to go on with this unless you can tell me it’s over with him once and for all.”

But then they both jumped violently. Alex’s home phone was ringing out into the night like a jarring peal of accusation. They stared at each other as mutual acknowledgement seeped through their expressions: Simon.

“Don’t answer it!” JP’s hips pinned her against the wall with fresh purpose.

Alex squirmed uselessly to be free of his weight. “Please, let me go,” she begged. “It’s Simon. If I don’t answer he’ll know something is wrong between us. I can’t do that to him.”

“Something is wrong,” JP snarled. “You’re in love with me, Alex, not him. Choose between us—now.”

Was she being ripped in two? God help her but it felt like that. On the other end of the phone was a man who for years had loved the compliant, perfect Alex she’d offered up to him and the world. But in her arms was the man who saw her just as she was, complex and so very imperfect, yet he wanted her body and soul. It was then she knew that her choice was not about JP or Simon, it was about choosing herself—once and for all.

“Let me go, JP!” she cried out, unable to shift his weight and becoming frenzied as she realised Simon would not wait on much longer.

JP withdrew his arms from around her waist and stepped back. Alex rushed to the phone as it rang out and reached for the receiver. But her fingertips paused on top of it as she was struck down by indecision.

Her eyes swept in panic to JP who was standing just metres from her, his face set with grim, obdurate lines as he fastened his jeans, slowly and deliberately. They were frozen in time, the phone ringing out as his gaze searched hers savagely. Then he muttered words which she knew would chill her to the bone for as long as she lived: “If you answer that phone it’s over for us, and I won’t be back.”

But Alex’s hand had already closed around the receiver and was lifting it slowly to her ear.