Dangerous Affection

Chapter Seventeen

Joanne finished signing a batch of client contracts and sat back in her chair.

Weak rays of sunlight battled the slats of the window blind, projecting line grids on the opposite wall.

If she wasn’t with Shaun, she was thinking about him. Things had moved along so quickly in the space of two weeks, it helped her process it to think back to how they got there so quickly.

That afternoon in the café, Joanne had felt relieved when the conversation grew lighter. She didn’t really want to talk to Shaun about his wife and daughter. She didn’t want to be reminded that Emma was her employee.

Instead, she tried to relax and enjoy listening to Shaun talk animatedly about his photography work. She found it a refreshing change to listen to career speak about something other than the legal industry in which she herself was utterly immersed.

‘You’ve heard the phrase “a picture paints a thousand words”, right?’ he asked her after ordering them another coffee each. ‘I think that’s so true. In a good photograph, you can capture mood, feelings and emotions… Get it right and you can tell a whole story in a single snapshot.’

Joanne nodded, thinking about the handful of photographs locked in her desk at home. Photographs that showed a time when she was once happy, when she believed in a future that was never to be.

She hadn’t been able to bring herself to burn them, but she would, one day. It was essential to erasing the past and an important part of her ten-year plan. It was the final piece of a jigsaw she was trying her hardest to destroy.

Shaun waved a hand in front of her face.

‘You were somewhere else then. Care to share?’

‘Oh, just thinking about what you said, that’s all.’ She grinned widely. ‘And you’re right. The best photographs don’t need any words.’

‘What about you? Do you get satisfaction from your job?’

‘Of course.’ She nodded, pressing her fingertips against the hot cup. She’d be climbing the walls later with all this caffeine. ‘People turn themselves inside out, get into some pretty complicated situations. It’s satisfying when you can help them sort through the tangles.’

‘I bet.’ Shaun nodded. ‘I certainly don’t want an expensive legal wrangle, so I’m trying to keep things civil with Emma.’

‘Very sensible,’ Joanne remarked.

‘Not always easy, though.’

‘Well, maybe you should get yourself a good lawyer.’ She uncrossed her feet under the table and slipped off one shoe. When her foot touched lightly on his, they looked at each other.

‘Shame I can’t afford your services,’ he said softly, his eyes sparkling with mischief. ‘The papers are saying you’re a hot-shot lawyer.’

‘Maybe we can come to some arrangement,’ she said slowly.

Her heart began to bang on her chest wall, but she ignored it. Kept her face impassive and her expression amused.

‘A mutually convenient one, perhaps,’ he suggested, leaning forward on his elbows and staring into her eyes across the table.

‘I know an intimate little bar hidden away on a side street behind this place,’ Shaun suggested. She didn’t need encouraging; she wasn’t ready to part company yet. Fifteen minutes later, they’d graduated from coffees to cocktails.

‘Just so you know, my fee is usually more than a couple of cosmopolitans,’ Joanne said, her head feeling slightly fuzzy from drinking on a virtually empty stomach. She had barely touched her Danish earlier. ‘I’m not usually such a pushover.’