Law Of Attraction

Schooling her features into icy blankness, she turned round and walked back to the desk.

As she sat down she was briefly and uncomfortably aware of the way her skirt rode up along her thighs, but when she darted a brief glance at Daniel Jefferson he was looking at some papers on his desk, and he didn’t lift his head until she was sitting down.

As she listened to him describing each of the cases on the list she was reluctantly forced to admit that either he had a good memory for facile detail or he was deeply and genuinely involved with every case that he took on.

She preferred to think it was the former; it was after all the kind of showmanship she would have expected from someone made so much of by the media, but honesty compelled her to accept that it was probably the latter. But then, being a good solicitor did not necessarily make him a good human being, she told herself grimly.

At five to one, even though they were only halfway through the list, he stopped and told her, ‘I think that’s enough for one session. I have a business appointment this lunchtime and I doubt that I’ll be back before three, so I think it might be as well if we left the rest of the list until tomorrow.

‘I don’t know if you’ve made any arrangements for lunch, but if not we do have a staff-room upstairs.’

‘Yes, thank you. Ginny has already told me that.’

As she spoke, her voice curt and crisp, Charlotte was briefly conscious of the thoughtful look he gave her. To her intense irritation she could feel herself flushing slightly, and she knew that had her mother been present she would have chided her for her attitude.

She had brought some sandwiches for her lunch. The town was well known to her, small but busy with a very pleasant little park by the river, and she had planned originally to have lunch there.

However, it was a cool day with a grey sky and she had to admit that she would probably be more comfortable in the staff-room.

She was touched when she walked back into her office to find Ginny waiting there for her.

‘It can sometimes be awkward when you’re new,’ Ginny told her with a friendly smile. ‘So I thought I’d come and see if you wanted to go upstairs for lunch.’

‘Thank you. I’ve brought some sandwiches with me because I wasn’t sure. I had planned to eat them by the river, but it is rather cold.’

As they walked out into the corridor a woman was coming the other way.

She was taller, much taller than Charlotte, who was barely five foot three, with glossy black hair cut and permed in a dramatic style that suggested she made frequent visits to a hairdresser’s. Her make-up too was immaculate, if rather overdone for Charlotte’s taste. She was wearing a suit which Charlotte recognised as this season’s Chanel and there was a large and very ostentatious diamond ring on her ring hand.

She gave the two women a cold sharp glance and said icily to Ginny, ‘The reception desk is unattended. I’m sure Daniel won’t be pleased about that.’ And then she looked at Charlotte, her eyes hardening a little as her glance lingered just a little too long on Charlotte’s suit. Her mouth compressed and, although she said nothing, Charlotte was left very much aware of what she thought of her appearance.

As soon as she had disappeared into Daniel’s office Ginny whispered, ‘That’s Mrs Patricia Winters. The Mrs Patricia Winters…widow of the late Paul Winters.’ She grinned as Charlotte looked mystified. ‘He was a local man—a property millionaire. She married him when he was sixty-odd and she was twenty-three. Now he’s dead and rumour has it that she’s looking for a second husband and that this time she’s going for the jackpot. Looks as well as wealth.’ She rolled her eyes.

‘Poor Daniel. They’re saying upstairs in the nursery that it’s a pity that solicitors aren’t protected from their clients in the same way that doctors are from their patients.’

‘Maybe he doesn’t want to be protected,’ Charlotte suggested. In fact it seemed to her that Patricia Winters would be the ideal mate for a man like Daniel Jefferson.

‘Oh, no, he couldn’t possibly want to marry her. He’s much too nice,’ Ginny protested.

What was the man running here, a practice or a fan club? Charlotte wondered sourly. Well, she certainly wasn’t going to join. Everyone else might think he was wonderful, but she certainly did not.

‘Mrs Winters is a client, then?’ she commented as she and Ginny went upstairs.

‘Mm, although since her husband died she seems to need Daniel’s advice far more than Paul Winters ever did when he was alive.’

As she glanced out of the window Charlotte saw that there was a large Rolls-Royce parked outside. A chauffeur was opening the door and Patricia Winters was stepping inside it. Daniel was standing beside her. So that was his business appointment. Nice work if you can get it, Charlotte reflected acidly.

Wherever they were going, she doubted that they would be eating sandwiches, unless they were the smoked salmon and caviare variety, combined with a bottle of champagne and consumed in the privacy of Mrs Winters’s undoubtedly luxurious and very glamorous bedroom.

Abruptly Charlotte frowned, her face flushing a little as she recognised with some distaste the direction of her thoughts. Whatever she might think of Daniel Jefferson, she had no right to allow her imagination that particular kind of inventive licence.

CHAPTER THREE

ONE of the files she had been instructed to study would of course have to come under ‘A’, Charlotte reflected wryly as she glanced up towards the topmost shelf, several feet above her head, but as she chewed on her bottom lip and wondered how on earth she was supposed to get to the file she suddenly saw the step-ladders carefully stowed away in a corner.

They were the lightweight aluminium kind and easy for her to pick up and carry and open out. Anxious to collect the files and start work on reading them, she hurried up the steps, cursing under her breath as she recognised the folly of doing so in high heels and a straight skirt. She had never particularly liked heights and she realised a little queasily that in order to reach the file she wanted she was going to have to stand on the topmost step and that she would have nothing to hold on to other than the shelf itself.

Her mind filled with the horrendous mental vision of the metal rack, steps, files and all toppling over completely as she clung to it, causing her to balance herself as carefully as she could without relying on it for support.

As she looked quickly along the rack for the file she wanted she realised that she had positioned the ladders too close to the ‘AM’s rather than the ‘AN’ section that she needed.

Trust her. Now she couldn’t even do a simple job like collecting a few files efficiently. Irritated with herself and frustrated with impatience, she leaned over as far as she could, cursing under her breath as she felt her skirt pull tightly against her legs, impeding her. The file was tantalisingly close. If she could just stretch out a few more centimetres she would be able to reach it without having to go to all the bother of climbing down the steps, repositioning them and then climbing up them again.

She held her breath, stretching her body as far as she could as she reached for the file.

‘What the…?’

The shock of hearing Daniel Jefferson’s sharp exclamation made her turn defensively to face him, but she had forgotten her precarious position on the ladders, and as she turned she felt them rock beneath her with the unsteadiness of her own movements, and she knew that she was going to fall.

Only she didn’t; instead of finding herself in an ignominious heap on the floor at Daniel Jefferson’s feet, she found herself in the equally ignominious position of being held against his body as he reached out and grabbed her before she could fall.

Several equally unpalatable facts hit her at the same time: firstly that she had made a complete and absolute fool of herself and no doubt further confirmed his belief that she was not the kind of employee he wanted; secondly that as she fell she must have dislodged some of the files and that they and their contents were now lying in a puddle of papers and tape on the floor while the ladders leaned drunkenly against the shelves; and, thirdly, and most unpalatable of all, Daniel was holding her so that her breasts were virtually on a level with his eyes and, even worse, she was horribly aware of the length of dark-tight-covered thigh she was now exposing.

‘It’s OK, I’ve got you,’ she heard him telling her, as if she needed telling. She had a perfectly good set of senses and they were fast relaying to her that not only had he ‘got her’, as he had put it, but that for some extraordinary reason her body actually seemed to rather like the sensation of his solid male warmth against it.

Impossible. She didn’t even like the man, much less…She closed her eyes against the attack of vertigo that hit her as Daniel started to lower her to the ground, instinctively grabbing hold of his jacket-covered arms to combat her dizziness.

‘Are you sure you’re OK?’ she heard him asking her as her feet finally touched the floor. ‘That could have been quite a nasty accident. What on earth were you doing, anyway?’

Now that he had released her and stepped back from her so that he could look at her, Charlotte pushed the feelings she had experienced when he had held her to the back of her mind. Quite naturally, as well as shock, she was now also suffering from embarrassment and temper.

‘I should have thought that was obvious,’ she told him, ignoring the first part of his question. ‘I was trying to reach a file.’

She flushed as he looked from her to the ladders leaning against the shelves.

‘Mm…but surely not on those? Why didn’t you use the other ladders? We had them specially designed for the top shelves.’

The other ladders. Charlotte swallowed, and felt her face flame as Daniel walked past her and then closed the door to the room, so that she could see in the wall space alongside the door a pair of tall aluminium ladders.

‘As you can see, these have a guide rail on them, specifically to prevent the kind of accident you so nearly sustained.’

As she swallowed her humiliation and fury Charlotte ached to tell him that if he hadn’t startled her she would not have fallen off the ladders in the first place.

‘After all, this is a solicitors’ practice,’ he told her wryly. ‘Don’t you think we’re well aware of the dangers of litigation should our employees damage themselves in the execution of their work?’

The room was so small and he was so tall, so…so big that suddenly there didn’t seem to be enough air. Charlotte found that she was having difficulty in breathing somehow. She was aware that Daniel was watching her…that he was, in fact, she realised after one quick startled look at him, looking at her mouth.

Immediately she was filled with an irresistible need to touch her lips with her tongue-tip. Why, she asked herself savagely, to see if they’re still there? Of course they are, and what you’re doing is one of the oldest and most provocative come-ons there is. The kind of trick some third-rate film director might pull. Maybe so, but she still couldn’t stop herself from doing it, a quick reflex action, instinctive and unstoppable.