Legally Addicted

by Lena Dowling

  Maybe this was how life was supposed to work? Perhaps it wasn’t all struggle after all? Maybe life was meant to be a rolling cycle of the lowest of the low, and dizzying heights; the lows making the good times all the sweeter.

  ‘I was hoping we might go over the addiction centre proposal…’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  Brad began to rifle through his briefcase.

  For some reason she couldn’t breathe, as if her lungs had suddenly lost three quarters of their capacity. Her heart was still beating double time. This was it. She was about to get confirmation that her dream would be a reality.

  Better than that, she wasn’t going to have to break up with Brad once she got it. She was starting to think that she could do this ‘seeing someone seriously’ thing.

  She was doing it.

  ‘Sure. I’ve already read part of it. I’m about halfway through. Why don’t you have a swim while I finish it?’

  ‘I don’t have a costume.’

  Georgia looked around. Spencer Towers wasn’t the only tall building on the quay. A number of other buildings were lit up around them, and she preferred not to risk a charge of indecent exposure by taking a skinny-dip.

  ‘Don’t worry. Jeffrey’s thought of everything.’

  Brad reached down beside his lounger and handed up a bag. Inside she could see a towel, swimming costume and a swimming cap.

  She put down her glass in order to fish out a pink latex cap adorned with flowers.

  ‘I didn’t know they still made these things!’

  Brad laughed.

  ‘Just don’t say anything to him about it. He would be deeply offended. He prides himself on anticipating my every requirement. For Jeffrey, being a butler isn’t just a job; it’s a calling. Think of him as one of the family, he’s…’

  Brad didn’t finish the sentence, taking a swig of beer instead.

  ‘Like a father to you?’ she guessed.

  ‘Yeah. Something like that,’ Brad said, turning away, but not fast enough to prevent her seeing something in his eyes she recognised.

  Sadness.

  Why hadn’t she seen it before? Perhaps, in some ways, she and Brad weren’t really so different. Maybe it wasn’t only children at the lower socio-economic end of the spectrum who suffered the scarring effects of parental inadequacy. Until now she wouldn’t have believed she could have anything in common with a billionaire, but maybe at the heart of their respective childhoods there was a kernel of experience that wasn’t so very different. They had both been abandoned. Money, and the material things it bought, was just window dressing. Wealth couldn’t soothe pain.

  When he turned back towards her, the look was gone. He opened the document she guessed was her proposal and leafed through the pages. While he was reading, Georgia took the bag into a small screened off changing area at the side of the pool. Once she had changed into the cossie she slipped into the heated water, keeping one eye on Brad, trying to judge his reaction as he read.

  She swam a few lengths, keeping her head out of the water, and then paddled back to the edge of the pool, just below the lounger where Brad was stretched out. He sipped from a stubbie of beer, the proposal document now back on the table beside him.

  ‘So what do you think?’ she called up to him.

  ‘I think it’s got real potential, and what you’re proposing is certainly backed up by the evidence. The funding will be your biggest stumbling block. The state government might stump up with the funding for some of it, and possibly the local council as well, but the majority will probably have to come from the Federal Department of Health and Ageing and that will be a long slow process.’

  ‘I thought, perhaps, you might like to help out.’

  Georgia held her breath.

  ‘Possibly, the Spencer Trust might well contribute. I’ll have the trust secretary send you an application form, if you like.’

  Georgia let the air out of her lungs in a rush and gripped at the handrail, edging towards the short ladder out of the pool.

  Brad’s response had been indifferent, as if he had missed what she was actually asking.

  ‘Thanks, I appreciate it, but that would just be a formality, wouldn’t it? I mean, with your influence?’

  Brad, who had raised the stubbie of beer to his mouth ready to take a drink, stopped, and pulled the bottle away again, placing it on the side table beside her proposal.

  ‘No, it wouldn’t be a formality, your application would go through the same process as any other.’

  ‘But you would still use your influence to help, though.’

  Brad frowned.

  ‘No, I wouldn’t. The trust operates to strict criteria on which all requests for funding are ranked. The addiction centre would be assessed on its merits alongside the others. It would be inappropriate of me to interfere with the process, and to be honest I’m shocked that you would ask me to.’

  Brad’s tone was sharp. She had gotten used to saying pretty much whatever she liked without any risk of gaining a rise out him. The rebuke came as a shock and Georgia reacted, making no attempt to disguise the sarcasm in her voice.

  ‘Now he comes over all keen on “appropriateness”. I can assure you there was nothing appropriate about the way you lured me up to your penthouse in the first place.’

  Brad pulled himself up straighter against the back of the lounger.

  ‘It didn’t stop you coming back for more, as I recall. Look, this isn’t about us, Georgia. It’s about what’s right and fair. If I intervened to get Spencer Trust funding for your project, then someone else at least as deserving would miss out. You get that, don’t you?’

  ‘Don’t patronise me, Brad. I get precisely what you’re saying, but those people are strangers. I’m your girlfriend. You have to help me.’

  There she had said it. Admitted it to herself. That is what she had become.

  Brad’s Girlfriend.

  And as his girlfriend she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. How could they have any future together, if Brad didn’t understand how important establishing the addiction centre was to her? Without funding, she would get nowhere, and even though three million dollars was a lot, it was a drop in the bucket compared to the Spencer fortune. It’s not that he couldn’t pull strings to help her. She could have accepted that. But he hadn’t said that. What she heard him say quite emphatically was that he could, but that he wouldn’t.

  ‘I have to?’ Brad shook his head. ‘Caro said you were just out for the money and I didn’t believe her. But it looks like she might have been right. Did you ever care about me at all?’

  ‘Of course I care about you. I can’t believe you would even ask that.’

  Without looking in Brad’s direction, Georgia hoisted herself out of the pool, dried herself off, then grabbed her clothes out of the changing room and stalked towards the lift, still dripping.

  She knew she had sounded genuinely indignant but she needed to keep moving, to prevent the splinter of guilt pricking at her from puncturing through and moving up through her system. She did care about him, that part was true enough, but getting Brad to fund the addiction centre had been the incentive, the tipping point that tempted her to get involved with him in the first place, and she wasn’t about to admit that.

  ‘Georgia, wait, what are you doing? Let’s discuss this.’

  From the change in direction and volume of Brad’s voice, which was now coming from higher up, she could tell he had stood up out of the lounger and was walking towards her.

  ‘What is there to discuss? You know what this project means to me. You can do something to help, but you’ve categorically stated that you won’t.’

  She jabbed at the button for the lift without turning around to look at him.

  Brad was beside her now, visible in her peripheral vision.

  ‘Georgia, stop, we have to talk about this.’

  She said nothing. What was there to say? He had made his position very clear. More talking wouldn’t change that, a
nd the more they talked the more likely it would be that she would end up admitting why she had got involved with him in the first place and that when it boiled down to it, Caro was right. She was after his money.

  The lift doors finally parted and she stepped inside. Brad’s voice rose to a shout to make sure she heard.

  ‘If you leave, Georgia, if you walk out on me again, then that’s it. This thing — it’s over between us.’

  Once she heard the lift doors close behind her she turned around, pushed the emergency stop, and changed back into her clothes. Then she released the brake, pressing the button for the hotel foyer. On the ground floor she exited the lift, thrusting the damp towel into an open mouthed bellboy’s hands before running out into the street.

  Chapter Twelve

  Brad let Georgia go. He had no intention of being the one to smooth things over. Not this time. Instead, he collapsed back down into the lounger and took the top off another beer.

  If there was one thing he couldn’t stand it was the continual trickle of requests for money that the Spencer family wealth attracted. The stories were invariably sad and, if true and not some scam, were likely worthy causes, but there was something about direct appeals for money that he had always found distasteful.

  His father was self-made, from nothing. No-one had given him a hand-out, and once he became wealthy he didn’t give out something for nothing either, and Brad saw no reason to change the family policy on that.

  Instead, his mother had set up the Spencer Charitable Trust to deal with all of that. Trust staff investigated each request to ensure it was genuine, and then it was assessed against criteria established when the trust was founded. Each appeal for money was then ranked. The amount of interest that had been earned on the trust assets each year determined the total amount that could be distributed. A threshold was drawn across the list of ranked requests at the level where the funds ran out. Those above it were funded and those below it were not. It was all very simple and clear cut. That way, the Spencers were never faced with the agonising choice between funding a lifesaving operation for one person, versus funding a prevention program that might save thousands.

  Georgia had crossed the line asking him to intervene to subvert the trust processes. Worse than that, she had run out on him.

  One time too many.

  And just when he had thought they were starting to get somewhere.

  He was monumentally pissed off, and pretty soon he would be monumentally pissed.

  That’s what beer was for, and as usual Jeffrey had anticipated his every need by making sure that there was plenty of it.

  He drained his stubbie and kept working on the ice bucket until he had dealt with each bottle, falling asleep where he lay in the lounger.

  The squawking of crows and cockatoos from Sydney’s adjacent botanic gardens woke him as the sun came up. A feather doona had been laid out over him and a pillow had found its way under his head. From the warmth inside the atrium it seemed that Jeffrey had also ensured the heating stayed on all night. His papers had been returned to his briefcase and beside him, on the low outdoor table, was a carafe of water and selection of headache medication.

  As usual, Jeffrey was the only person he could rely on. Georgia hadn’t come back to apologise or work things out, as he thought she might have once she had cooled down. He had given her a choice and she had walked out on him for the last time.

  And what the hell had he been thinking, anyway? Georgia was no different to all the other women. In the end, just like them, she wanted something. A very big something — three million bucks of something.

  As much as he hated to admit it, Georgia had only wanted him for what she could do for her.

  When would he ever learn?

  He poured a glass of water and, squinting against the pain, took two aspirin, then pulled out his mobile. First he called his secretary to let her know he would be in later than usual, and then he called Dayton.

  ‘John, have you signed that dissolution of partnership agreement?’

  John hesitated. ‘I have, but I haven’t passed it on to Llewellyn yet. Why, what are you thinking, Bradley?’

  ‘I’m not going anywhere.’

  ‘Does this mean…?’

  ‘That’s right — as of now, there’s nothing going on between me and Georgia, so there’s no reason for me to leave the firm for her peace of mind. I’m staying put. If she doesn’t like it, then she knows what she can do.’

  ‘Roger and I would be very sorry to lose you from the partnership, Brad. Of course Georgia’s excellent, but she doesn’t have the same pulling power when it comes to the star clients, so I know I speak for both of us when I say that we’re more than happy to forget the dissolution of the partnership.’

  ‘Thanks, John. I appreciate it.’

  ‘What do you think Georgia will do?’

  ‘What she does is up to her, but my guess is that her career is far too important for her to leave. I’ll have no problem keeping it professional.’

  ‘I see. Well, I must say I’m relieved to hear that.’

  Brad switched off his mobile before Dayton could say anything else. The last thing he needed right now was a post-mortem about what had happened between them.

  He was about to struggle up out of the lounger when Jeffrey appeared with a tray of breakfast. He gulped down half a cup of coffee then grabbed a piece of the toast to eat en route to the shower. If he hurried, he could still get into the office and make his morning appointments.

  ‘Anything I can do, sir?’ Jeffrey said, as Brad stopped halfway out of the outdoor chaise, stooped over, his stiff joints refusing to straighten out.

  Brad thought for a moment.

  ‘Get me a list of every eligible female rich-lister under forty. I’ve got to find a date for this bloody gala now, preferably someone with her own money.’

  ‘Oh dear. I am sorry, sir, I had rather thought this last woman was different.’

  ‘So did I, Jeffrey. So did I.’

  Georgia leaned down and bumped her head against her desk a couple of times.

  ‘You did it, didn’t you?’ Miriam asked, placing a stack of files in her in-tray.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You asked Brad for the money, didn’t you?’

  Georgia didn’t answer, bumping her forehead a third time like a talisman, as if self-flagellation would somehow bring the situation to rights.

  ‘Sort of — damn it — yes.’

  ‘Georgia! I warned you.’

  ‘I know, I know. You warned me, and now I have no chance with this addiction centre proposal. If it even gets on the shelter board agenda, Caro Marsden will shoot it down, and without support from Brad the idea will be more extinct than the Tasmanian tiger.’

  ‘Oh well. At least you still have Brad.’

  She shook her head.

  ‘It’s over.’

  ‘Oh, Georgia. I am sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be. At least now I don’t have to go to that stupid shelter fundraiser. I think Brad would have been expecting me to go as his date.’

  ‘Let me guess, after work you’re planning to go home, change straight into your jammies, eat takeaway food, followed by a tub of ice-cream, all sitting in front of trash TV.’

  Miriam’s many talents had suddenly expanded to include the art of clairvoyance. That was pretty much exactly what Georgia had in mind for her evening.

  ‘Possibly.’

  ‘Or you could go by your gorgeous self, flirt your arse off and make Brad Spencer jealous as hell.’

  ‘But I haven’t got anything to wear.’

  ‘Says the woman who uses her secretary as her personal stylist. Come on, grab your coat and your plastic, and we’ll go find something.’

  Eight hours later Georgia was standing in the kitchen at the gala dinner as Caro Marsden thrust a server’s apron at her, the money Miriam had convinced her to spend at Castlereagh’s now completely wasted under a cotton full-length grocer style apron.

 
‘Thank you so much, Georgia. When one of the servers let me down I didn’t know what to do, but when Brad arrived with Paris Walsh on his arm, I realised you must have come on your own and wouldn’t mind helping out.’

  Bee-atch.

  Why had she agreed to this? Right now jammies, ice-cream and trash TV had never looked so good.

  So, Brad hadn’t wasted any time, and he was fishing back in familiar waters. Well, good. He should stick to his own species. He had no business going downtown if he couldn’t cope with what he found there, or exploded at the simple suggestion he should increase the charity he directed to the less fortunate. She had been beginning to think he was different from all the other rich hypocrites she had ever encountered. Luckily she found out the truth before it was too late.

  ‘I’ll put you on table eight,’ Caro said.

  Georgia fully expected table eight to be Brad’s table, her life was going that well. Being forced to serve Brad and his date would just top everything off, but by some miracle, a loophole in Murphy’s Law had opened up and she was assigned to another table further back. She kept her eyes firmly on the party she had been assigned and avoided looking around.

  Instead, she concentrated on what she had to do, making sure everyone at her table got the correct meal and that the glasses were topped up. She was so caught up in her serving duties that she didn’t have time to stop to listen to the speeches between courses, but as she took a plate of profiteroles from the tray she was carrying, ready to set it down in front of a guest for dessert, she heard her name.

  ‘Georgia, yes — that’s right, you, Georgia.’

  The spotlight that had been on Caro, who was playing mistress of ceremonies up on the stage, skittered across the room and alighted on Georgia. For once she couldn’t control her facial expression. Her mouth gawped with mortification, and the audience laughed. Over two hundred sniggers, all in unison, all directed at her. It was like the nightmare of her childhood writ large, playing on the big screen. Georgia wanted to run and hide, throwing herself under one of the tables, but the spotlight somehow had her rooted to where she was standing.