Lovers in law

Avis Exley opened her first romance
novel at the age of fourteen and has been reading and writing them
ever since. A slave to research, she’s travelled the world in the
company of international playboys, property magnates,
ultra-successful businessmen, medieval knights and even a Viking
prince. A typical day sees Avis lying on a silken cushion and
sipping champagne whilst auditioning handsome, well-muscled men for
a starring role in her next story.

Although brought up in the English
countryside, Avis heard the streets of London were paved with gold
and headed for the capital. It was love at first sight. She
instantly fell for the city’s history, energy and iconic sights,
and she’s so proud it’s been the focus of the world during the
Jubilee and Olympic year. Now London and Britain’s lesser-known
locations provide the inspirational backdrop for the first of
Avis’s novels to be released in e-book form. Find Avis Exley’s
extracts on Tumblr, Pinterest and Facebook to see if you can fall
in Brit Love too.

This ebook is licensed for your personal
enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to
other people. If you would like to share this book with another
person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If
you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not
purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com
and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work
of this author.

E-books are so easy for
illegal sites to copy redistribute without any payment going to
authors. This e-book is only available through
Amazon
, Lulu or sites linked to
Smashwords and is not being offered for sale anywhere else. If you
downloaded this from any other website, it’s an illegal copy and
I’d be grateful to hear where you found it. [Don’t worry, I won’t
make you pay me again for it!]

If you’ve enjoyed this book, please
tell your friends about it, or lend them your e-book reader so they
can read it for free, but please don’t share the electronic file.
Pirate sites prosper at the expense of authors – so put the money
where it deserves to go and there’ll be plenty more books for you
to enjoy in the future.

Thanks so much for your help,
Avis xx
[email protected]

Copyright

2012 Avis
Exley

All rights reserved. This e-book
[or any portion thereof] may not be reproduced or used in any
manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the
author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Whilst I’d love the
characters to be real, this is a work of fiction. Except for
London’s iconic hotels and locations, all other names, characters,
events, places and brands are a product of the author’s
imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons or events is purely
coincidental.

Advisory – 18+ content. This hot
romance is intended for an adult audience only.

To make this story even more
exciting, it has its own Tumblr and Pinterest pages, with pictures
of the novel’s iconic locations and story extracts. Share the
romance by finding out more about the book’s settings and visiting
the places the characters live, work and fall in love.

Pinterest
http://pinterest.com/avisexley/
Tumblr
http://avisexley.tumblr.com/

Please friend me on Facebook
too
http://www.facebook.com/AvisExleyRomanceAuthor

Eavesdroppers rarely hear good
things of themselves. Or so the saying goes.

Although, for me, it was actually a
chance to hear something less than complimentary about someone
else.

Half the office heard the argument
raging between the two senior partners but they were so common, I
ignored it. My ears only pricked up when my name was mentioned.

“You can’t send Allie up to London
on this case.” Mr Ellis’s voice boomed down the corridor.

What case?

Intrigued, I edged closer to his
open doorway. Half of me later wished I’d stayed at my desk and
covered my ears.

“Why can’t she go?” Mr Brindley
demanded, equally loudly. “She’s a damned good lawyer. She’s quick,
intelligent, more than amply qualified…”

“…
because it’d be like
feeding her to the lions. You know that man’s reputation as well as
I do.”

What man? What reputation?

My mobile slid out of my hand, hit
the floor and the partners turned toward the noise. Both had the
grace to look guilty when they saw me. Mr Ellis smiled but he was
as reassuring as a crocodile.

“Come in, Allie. Sit down. We were
just discussing the Zeus Hotel case.”

Discussing was hardly the word I’d
have used but there are times when it’s better to stay quiet.
Particularly around the senior partners.

Instead, I sat down and did my best
not to look intimidated.

“You know the case?” Mr Brindley
guessed and I nodded.

It would be hard not to. The law
suit was massive and everyone had had a hand in it at one time or
another.

“I thought Mike was working
on it,” I said. He’d been the one putting in the long hours and
stressing about it for the last month. “Why do you want me
involved?”

“Because we don’t want any
mistakes,” Mr Ellis said. “Your academic record is unsurpassed and
you have the dedication it will take.”

I don’t mean to blow my own
trumpet, but he was right on both counts. However, when a senior
partner starts complimenting you, you know you’re in big trouble. I
looked at Mr Brindley for clarification.

“Mike broke his leg at rugby
training last night,” he said starkly. “We don’t have anyone else
to fill in at such short notice.”

Honest, if not very reassuring.

But a big case like this would look
great on my CV as well as giving me some leverage when it came to
demanding a partnership. I asked what I needed to do.

“See Mike. He’s out of hospital.
He’ll talk you through the papers.”

Great, I’ll go there as soon as
I’ve bought my lion-taming outfit, I thought.

Mike took a full five minutes to
answer the door of his flat. He hobbled in front of me back to the
living room and dropped down gratefully onto the sofa.

I took the time to appreciate his
tight, toned butt and the way his broad shoulders flexed under his
T-shirt when he rested on his crutches. He wore shorts because of
the plaster cast, and his heavily-muscled thighs with their rough
covering of hair just cried out to be touched.

Had I met Mike in a bar, I’d
have jumped him, no question. Great looking guy. Sexy eyes. A body
that would keep a girl warm all night long.

But I have one golden rule. I don’t
play that close to home.

Legal ethics
puts the clients off limits and I don’t sleep
with colleagues either. When I make it to the top, I want everyone
to know I did it with my brain – not with any other part of my
anatomy.

“I hear congratulations are in
order,” Mike said, wincing in pain as he put his foot back up onto
the coffee table. He dropped his crutches onto the floor and gave
me one of his megawatt smiles.

“
Bad news travels fast.” I
said. “Or faster than you do anyway.”

Mike laughed. “I wouldn’t exactly
call it bad news but I can’t pretend I’m not relieved to be off the
case.”

I wasn’t expecting this. Mike
was ferociously competitive and he’d normally be pulling out all
the stops to get a piece of a big law suit like this. My lawyer’s
intuition made me cautious.

“Why do you say that?”

“It’s a complex case. The
stress is getting to me, that’s all.”

It wasn’t like level-headed
Mike to crack under the pressure. This was more serious than I’d
thought.

“It’s about time someone told me
the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth,” I said,
giving him my best cross-examination stare.

Mike gave me another of his
heart-racing smiles and I wondered about maybe bending my own
golden rule just once. After all, for an injured man, it could be
deemed an act of mercy.

Mike shrugged.

“The Zeus Development Company
built a multi-million pound leisure complex on Cyprus three years
ago.” he began. “Last year, massive cracks appeared in the walls.
We’re acting for British-owned Zeus who are suing the Greek
builders for negligence.”

“I read that much in the file,” I
said. He wasn’t getting away that easily. “I’m here to find out
what the paperwork won’t tell me. It has to be something big to
stress you out this much.”

He shook his head. “This is nothing
to do with the case. It’s personal. You need to make up your own
mind.”

The last piece of evidence
clanged into place. “This about Radford Byrne,” I guessed. A lawyer
to the core, I didn’t miss the way Mike avoided eye contact. I
drove in for the kill. “Ellis was shouting about feeding me to the
lions. I assume Radford Byrne is the beast he was talking
about.”

Realising I wouldn’t leave until
I’d heard the worst, Mike told me what I wanted to know. He didn’t
bother to sugar-coat it either.

“Radford Byrne is the best
barrister money can buy. Brilliant. Intelligent. Terrifying in
court.”

“And terrifying outside of it too,
by the sounds of it.”

“Add to that, self-opinionated,
egotistical, overbearing and arrogant and you might be getting
nearer to the truth.”

“You’re really selling him to
me.” I swallowed the lump in my throat. “He sounds like a
sweetheart.”

“He didn’t get to the top of his
profession by being nice.”

Mike took a painkiller and
grimaced. I wasn’t sure whether it was because of his leg or
because of some painful memory related to Radford Byrne.

“The problem is, Byrne’s always
right,” he went on. “And he’s a genius at what he does. But he
expects everyone else to be as sharp as he is.”

“I can be sharp,” I said.

“You’d better be. Or else.”

“Or else, what?” I wondered whether
I really wanted to know.

“He’ll tear you apart. And don’t
think he’ll go easy on you just because you’re a woman.”

Radford Byrne was sounding more
like a lion by the minute. I gave my all for the office but drew a
line at dismemberment.

“So you’ve worked with him before?”
I guessed.

“Once. Just after I qualified.” The
memory obviously still smarted because Mike flinched. “I misfiled a
report on one of his cases. Byrne shouted so loudly, a court usher
came into the robing room to check I was all right. I thought he
was going to punch me.”

I laughed at the thought of brash,
confident Mike reduced to a quivering mass. “I’ll learn by your
mistakes.”

“You’d better.” He wasn’t joking.
“Radford Byrne is the most difficult man in the world to work for
and he’s a perfectionist. He’ll expect the same from you.”

“Anything else?” I have to admit,
by now I was afraid to ask.

“Don’t take anything personally.
He’s not treating you badly – he just doesn’t treat anyone else any
better.”

Not exactly inspiring words to send
me up to London two days later but I’m a big girl and can take care
of myself. Most of the time, anyway.

I’d spent the past thirty-six hours
familiarising myself with the file, going over every page until I
could recite sections of it in my sleep. What I didn’t know about
concrete could have been written on the back of a postage stamp.
And as I have a photographic memory – always an advantage – I found
it easy to recall the most obscure dates and facts. I’d even gone
as far as reading Radford Byrne’s textbook on building disputes
and, if pushed, I could probably quote him chapter and verse.

He wouldn’t find me making rookie
mistakes or misfiling reports.

The taxi dropped me a few
minutes before nine near Temple, home to many of London’s
barristers, and the kind of place where you expect to find Charles
Dickens around every corner. Radford Byrne’s chambers stood in the
corner of a large, cobbled courtyard where a board outside listed
counsel in order of seniority. As a queen’s counsel, or silk, one
of Britain’s higher tear of barristers, Radford was predictably
near to the top. As Mike had said, he probably hadn’t risen that
far up the list through being nice.