Law Of Attraction

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.

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