and was in very real fear that she was watching after him with her tongue hanging out.
Though it took her a few diverted moments to recall why she so detested him, she finally managed. The man who was leaning over the desk, causing both the girl and the guys at Reception to go goo-goo-eyed, was no less than a physical affront to her whole belief system.
He was practically a professional groom-to-be, having been engaged to three women in seven years with very little time to himself in between. Janet had been the third, and she wondered momentarily what she had done differently that afforded her a wedding band to match the killer diamond on her left hand. But whatever it was in the end it still had not lasted.
And Romy was an anomaly in the field of divorce law. She was an advocate for marriage. She went to the nth degree to free her clients from bad marriages for the express purpose of giving them the opportunity to find true marital happiness elsewhere.
‘Are you all right, Ms Bridgeport?’ Hank asked, luring her attention back to the coffee hut.
‘Sure, fine. And you?’ She deserved the bemused blink Hank shot back.
‘I’m fine,’ he said. ‘Your order is ready. I’ve added a plateful of Melting Moments.’
‘Thanks, Hank.’
‘You knock ’em dead, Ms Bridgeport.’
‘With pleasure, Hank.’
Romy gathered the tray and turned around but Sebastian was gone. Into the conference room already, she assumed.
As she walked around the assortment of modern couches and avant-garde coffee-tables in the reception area, then through winding halls to the conference room, she hung on tight to her aversion to the man and to the tray heavy with scorching hot drinks and to the stone, which she now feared she would have to swallow to possess any real calming energy.
Two wrong turns sent Sebastian to a crèche and then to some sort of cooking class. If not for the smattering of suited men and women with yellow legal pads under their arms he would not have believed he was in a law firm. But even so, the promising impression of the place was fast overcome by more pressing matters. He knocked on the open door of the conference room and entered.
Alan stood and rushed over to him. ‘About bloody time, mate.’
‘Sorry. Events conspired to keep me anywhere but here.’
Alan laughed. ‘Sure they did.’
A tap-tap-tap on a tabletop caught Sebastian’s attention.
‘I recognise that sound,’ he said as he spun to face the source. It was Janet. And he also recognised what the tap-tap-tap meant. He walked around the table, took her hands, drew her to her feet and kissed her on the cheek.
‘You’re late,’ she said.
‘I got caught up with Delilah,’ he told her. ‘ Had to take her to afternoon kindergarten.’ It was almost the truth.
‘You and those kids. You spent more time with them than with me. You know that’s why we are here today, don’t you?’
He knew it to be true and it saddened him it had turned out that way. ‘What can I say? I think I’ve proven I’m not husband material.’
He said it with a wry smile but the reality of the situation was no laughing matter. That empty feeling he had experienced dropping Delilah off at kindergarten had only grown as the day progressed.
Janet sighed in resignation. She laid a talon-tipped hand on his cheek. ‘That’s rubbish, darlin’. You’re just not the husband for me.’
That brought on a smile. Despite the misunderstanding that had led him to believe she was the one for him, she was a good woman and more perceptive than she would have preferred to let on. But it was true, she was not the woman for him, no matter how, for their very different reasons, they had both tried to believe otherwise.
Janet lightly slapped his face before sitting down beside an intense young woman in head-to-toe black.
Sebastian had heard on the grapevine that Janet’s lawyer was a ball-breaker, a man-hater, and this one certainly looked to fit that bill. With her dark clothing, her short dark hair waxed into sharp elfin spikes, and her large eyes lathered in lashings of mascara she was almost frightening. Almost.
The haughty letters he had received through Alan from the office of one Ms Bridgeport had conjured up images of a stuffy old spinster, grey-streaked hair raked back into a bun, navy suit buttoned up to the throat. But the angry-looking pixie before him looked as though she could out-haughty even the dowdiest spinster.
‘Sebastian,’ Alan said as though reading his mind, ‘this is Gloria, Ms Bridgeport’s assistant.’
Well, maybe he would be right yet. Since they were the only ones in the room, the grey-haired spinster was probably in her office, putting in her hourly phone call to her cats, and would be with them soon, smelling of mothballs and secretly imbibed rum. He smiled at the thought.
Romy reached the doorway and saw Sebastian’s secret smile was now not so secret any more, and she was flummoxed afresh. She would have had to have lived in a cage not to have seen that smile shine from her TV screen numerous times over the last several years. Whether he had been holding up a golfing trophy or acting as spokesman for a children’s charity, that free and easy grin had been enough for her channel-flicking finger to pause over the remote every time.
Romy watched in silence as Gloria found herself on the receiving end of such a smile.
‘Gloria,’ Sebastian said and his voice was deep and tempting and complemented all the other delectable bits of him. ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you.’
But Gloria, bless her little heart, radiated resplendent disapproval. What a trooper. She gave Sebastian’s hand a perfunctory shake before letting go and wringing her hands together, erasing any sign of their contact. Romy had to stifle a laugh.
Alan caught Romy’s eye and she knew the time had come to meet the enemy. Gloria spied her at the same time and hurried to hand out the order of drinks.
‘Romy Bridgeport,’ Alan said, ‘this is my client, Sebastian Fox.’
She squared her shoulders, smoothed out her dress, and battened down the hatches. He is nothing but a heartless cad, she reminded herself, and you are going to take him down!
And as the man in question turned to face her a pair of three-foot-high twin boys bundled into the room, screaming, ‘Womy! Womy!’ in falsetto unison.
They leapt at her legs, clinging tight like limpets. Romy’s smoothed-out dress rode high up her thighs as her legs split shoulder-width apart in order for her to just about keep her balance. It was hardly the stern and intimidating impression she had been hoping to strike!
Whatever Sebastian had been expecting it had not been her. She was no grey-haired spinster, she was no angry pixie, and she was like no lawyer he had ever seen.
Romy Bridgeport was tall and slender as a reed in a form-hugging sea-blue dress that at that moment was hiked halfway up her cover-girl thighs. A matching jacket that looked as though it would considerably cover the slip of a garment was
