Law Of Attraction. PENNY JORDAN

and the frustration of the last few humiliating months boiled up inside her in a fierce surge of emotion directed at the man standing opposite her.

      It was all right for him. He, no doubt, had never put a foot wrong, never made a mistake, and he had certainly never suffered the humiliation of losing almost everything…career…home…lover…

      Not that she and Bevan had actually been lovers in the physical sense, oddly enough. After his passionate and fervent pursuit of her he had become so engrossed in reorganising her career and her image that somehow there had never seemed to be any time for them to actually become lovers. Whenever they went out, it had always been with a crowd of Bevan’s friends, high-profile men and women from the same world he himself inhabited, who talked coolly of burn-out and ‘yuppie flu’ and who seemed to take the view that finding time to develop personal relationships was somehow something that did not fit into their plans for their lives.

      Charlotte had gone along with it because…because Bevan had swept her off her feet, she admitted miserably.

      She heard Daniel Jefferson asking if there was anything she needed.

      If there was anything she needed…Yes, she needed her self-respect back, she thought bitterly. She needed to salve her pride, to feel that people believed in her, that they trusted her professional ability. She needed all those things and more, but she was not going to get them from this man.

      She gave him another cold, tight smile.

      ‘No, there’s nothing I need,’ she told him carefully. She fully understood what he had said to her. If he would give her the list of files he wanted her to study…

      She was damned if she was going to ask him where to find the files, she reflected ten minutes later.

      The list had apparently been on his desk and when he had opened the communicating door so that he could go and collect it she had been surprised to discover that his office was not a bit as she had imagined. The furniture was slightly old-fashioned, comfortable easy chairs either side of a fireplace, a heavy partners’ desk in front of the window and, most incongruously, a large wooden box of children’s toys in one corner.

      ‘I find them useful when I’m dealing with divorce cases,’ he told her, seeing her look at them. ‘Very often if I’m acting for the woman she brings her children with her. It helps to distract them.’

      What she hadn’t seen in his office, though, had been any evidence of any filing cabinets.

      Perhaps she could ask this Margaret Lewis when she met her, or perhaps she could ask Ginny the receptionist.

      The communicating door was still open. Charlotte longed to close it, to shut herself off from the man working in the adjacent room, the man who trusted her so little that he had had her placed here under his visual jurisdiction, but even such a small choice as closing a door was not hers to make, she fumed bitterly. She was an employee now, dependent on the whims and the commands of others.

      At half-past ten she heard a knock on her outer office door. When she got up to answer it the woman standing outside introduced herself as Margaret Lewis.

      She was in her fifties, tall with thick strong hair and a warm smile.

      If she shared Daniel Jefferson’s lack of faith in Charlotte’s professional competence she certainly wasn’t betraying it, and as she accompanied her up the stairs Charlotte felt herself begin to relax slightly, for the first time that morning.

      ‘We’re quite a small, close-knit unit here,’ Margaret told her as they went upstairs. ‘I like to think that it comes from the firm’s originally being started by a woman.’

      ‘A woman!’

      Charlotte paused on the stairs to stare at her.

      Margaret smiled.

      ‘Yes. Lydia Jefferson started up in practice here just after she had qualified, when she was unable to get work with any established practice. A very adventurous step for a woman in those days.’

      ‘Lydia Jefferson?’ Charlotte questioned. ‘Then she must have been…Was she related to Daniel Jefferson in some way?’

      ‘His great-aunt,’ Margaret confirmed. ‘She had been retired for several years when I first came to work as an office junior, but she still took a very strong interest in the practice. In fact it was she who first encouraged me to take my own articles and to qualify. She and Daniel were very close. When he was quite small, still at junior school, she used to bring him down here with her sometimes.

      ‘She had very strong views on women’s rights to control their own lives and she was vehement in her support of the underdog. Daniel is very like her in that. Much more so than his father, who, although kind, was much more the traditional stereotype of the country solicitor.

      ‘Daniel was a brilliant student and many people thought he should have opted to become a barrister, but he was always determined that he wanted to work here, continuing the tradition established by his aunt.’

      ‘But surely now with all the publicity surrounding the Vitalle case he must at least be tempted to take advantage of his success and perhaps move the practice to London?’

      Margaret shook her head.

      ‘Oh, no, Daniel would never do that,’ she told Charlotte calmly. She said it so positively and with such faith and affection that Charlotte felt her resentment against Daniel Jefferson surge rebelliously inside her. It was all right for him. He had had everything handed to him on a plate. All he had had to do was to qualify and then to step into the comfortable world waiting for him. A world laboured for by a woman…

      A woman who had succeeded as she had not, and against far greater odds, Charlotte reminded herself miserably as they reached the top of the stairs and Margaret Lewis opened a door on the landing.

      Inside the large sunny room eight people sat at desks working. The room buzzed with the hum of computers and electronic equipment. All along one of the shorter walls were racks containing the familiar packages of papers and legal briefs tied with pink ribbon.

      It was obvious immediately that the people in the room were extremely busy and yet the atmosphere was one of relaxed happiness, a young woman leaning over the shoulder of a male colleague, teasing him about something as she helped him with a query.

      There was, Charlotte recognised, a bright-eyed quality and an enthusiasm about the occupants of this room that said how much they enjoyed their work, and there was also an alertness about them, an eagerness that she recognised as the kind of enthusiasm possessed by those who were the best of their peer group.

      Without knowing any of them, she immediately knew that these trainees were all of them high achievers, quick, intelligent, hard-working, much as she had once been herself, but they had something she recognised that she had never really had: they were free of the anxiety that had plagued her almost from the moment she had set up her own practice.

      If they knew about her professional history they were certainly not showing it, as Margaret introduced them to her and they reacted with what appeared to be genuine warmth.

      One or two of the boys eyed her short skirt appreciatively, but no one displayed any antagonism or unpleasantness towards her.

      ‘Bless ’em,’ Margaret commented after she had closed the office door and was standing on the landing with Charlotte. ‘They’re a hard-working lot, but inclined to get a little high-spirited at times. Daniel believes in giving them as much responsibility as they can handle without overburdening them, and I must admit it’s a recipe they seem to thrive on. What we prefer to do is to assign someone to a specific case, so that he or she can see the whole thing through rather than merely acting as a clearing house for the mundane background work.

      ‘When you come to start work on Daniel’s files you’ll find inside the cover the name of the trainee assigned to that case, and any work you want doing you can either instruct the trainee concerned direct or, if you prefer, you can route your instructions through me.

      ‘I