Chapter Three
SYLVIE WORKED HER way through her list of clients until lunchtime.
Thankfully a couple of clients only needed half an hour of her time, so she was able to make up the time she had lost whilst having coffee with Jack Wilde.
It still shocked her that she had gone with him but somehow, he made her forget about her boundaries where men were concerned.
She was drawn to him against her will, against her reason and common sense.
It was like he was a mystery she wanted to solve and while avoiding him wasn’t going to solve anything, spending time with him was enticing danger into her life, the sort of danger she could do without.
On the surface Jack was confident and cocky, yet she couldn’t help feeling there was more to him than that charming, easy-going lad about town.
A depth to his character he let few people see.
He was self-reliant, resilient and resourceful as a result of losing his parents so young.
And that spoke to her, reminding her of her own loss, her own wounded inner child who had struggled to understand why her father had stopped loving her as easily as if he had flicked a switch.
Jack spoke of the loss of his parents without emotion, but she sensed the emotions were there all the same, pushed down deep inside him where they could no longer hurt him.
She recognised it because it was what she did—smothered her emotions until they were silenced.
But every now and again there was a whisper in her bones, reminding her of their presence and the damage they could do if she were to let them bubble to the surface.
Sylvie joined two of her colleagues, Natasha and Mariah, in the staff room kitchen, where they were seated chatting about a settlement they had just completed. They both looked up and smiled as she came in.
‘So, how goes the War of the Winters?’ Mariah asked.
Sylvie rolled her eyes and turned to take a coffee cup from the cupboard above the sink. Although she was not the sort of person who easily blushed, she could feel warmth heating her cheeks. Should she tell her workmates about her meeting with Jack?
‘I have a feeling it’s going to be one of those long, drawn-out affairs.
’ She poured herself a coffee and brought it over to the table and sat opposite Natasha and Mariah, cradling the cup in both of her hands.
‘Hugo Winters doesn’t seem to care how much money he spends on his hotshot lawyer as long as he gets custody of the kids.
God, I hate men who use their kids as a means to an end.
He doesn’t care about them, he only cares about winning and so does his lawyer. ’
Natasha reached for a rice cracker on the plate in front of her and nibbled on it for a moment. ‘How old are the kids?’
‘Thirteen and eleven—a girl and a boy. It’s the teenage girl I’m most concerned about,’ Sylvie said. ‘Edwina Winters was late to the mediation meeting because Mimi was refusing to go to school. Apparently, it’s not the first time either.’
Mariah let out a sigh. ‘Sometimes I wonder why I chose this career. It’s the kids that really get to me. They’re collateral damage in most cases.’
‘Me too,’ Natasha said with feeling. ‘But our legal firm’s goal is to make divorce as seamless and painless as possible and to help women rebuild their lives.’ She rubbed a hand over her swollen abdomen and shifted in her chair.
‘Are you okay, love?’ Mariah asked in concern.
Natasha took her wife’s hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze. ‘It’s just Braxton Hicks contractions. It’s pretty normal at this stage of the pregnancy.’
Sylvie couldn’t help feeling a tiny pang of envy at the love her colleagues shared.
They had been married two years and were expecting their first child in a month’s time.
While Sylvie had not envisaged marriage and children as part of her future, it didn’t stop her feeling a twinge of regret her childhood had made her so adamantly against settling down with someone.
What were the guarantees love would work out in the end?
Nearly fifty percent of all marriages ended in divorce.
How could she be sure she wouldn’t end up part of those depressing statistics?
No one gave you lessons on how to have a good marriage.
You just dived right in as most of her clients had, believing love would conquer all.
But life was not like in the fairy tales where everything turned out in the end.
The Winterses were an example of what could happen when one person lost interest in the other.
How could you ever trust the person you loved would continue to love you for as long as you both lived?
Her father had loved her and her mother until he did not.
The shock of it still stung Sylvie even after all these years.
And her mother had never recovered from that shock.
She had never dated another man, instead living a life of loneliness, still grieving the loss of her marriage and still feeling a failure, like it was somehow her fault.
It seemed to Sylvie love was a switch in some people.
They could turn it on and off at will, while others lived the rest of their lives wounded by the withdrawal of love.
Her solution was to not love anyone so much as to be devastated by their disappearance from her life.
The one and only exception she made was her love of her mother.
Her mother had made huge sacrifices for her and Sylvie knew how fortunate she was to have at least one reliable and stable parent.
Her mind drifted back to Jack Wilde and his brothers who had lost both of their parents in a plane crash on a weekend away together.
Sylvie was not a psychologist, but she suspected Jack’s cynical approach to life and his playboy lifestyle were the hoof-prints of unresolved grief.
But what was she doing thinking about Jack Wilde?
He was her legal opponent in an acrimonious divorce, so it was imperative to keep her distance, to maintain a professional attitude at all times.
‘Have you got your mask sorted for the fundraiser ball on Saturday?’ Natasha asked. ‘We’re going to give it a miss because of the pregnancy. I can barely make it through the day, let alone dining and dancing the night away.’
‘I have a Venetian mask I bought in Venice with my mother a couple of years ago,’ Sylvie answered.
Mariah got a suggestive twinkle in her eyes. ‘Are you taking a partner to the ball?’
Sylvie screwed up her face. ‘No way. I deleted all my dating apps months ago. I’ve made a vow of celibacy for six months.’
‘Do you know if Jack Wilde is going?’ Natasha asked, with a similar sparkle in her eyes as Mariah’s.
Sylvie schooled her features into an impassive expression even though the very mention of Jack’s name was enough to get her senses flustered. ‘I have no idea, nor do I care.’
Natasha and Mariah exchanged a look.
‘What?’ Sylvie asked, scowling at them both. ‘He’s probably going to bring some glamorous supermodel type as usual.’ She rose from her chair and took her coffee cup to the sink and rinsed it and left it to drain on the dish rack.
‘He’s also highly likely to make a generous donation, not that he would broadcast it like other people would do,’ Mariah said. ‘He made a huge anonymous donation last year. The biggest of any other donor.’
Sylvie couldn’t stop her eyebrows from lifting in surprise. ‘Really? How did you find out if he made it anonymously?’
‘I have my connections,’ Mariah said with a mercurial smile.
Sylvie frowned. ‘He might be generous but he’s still arrogant and annoying.’ She picked up her bag and slung the strap over one shoulder, giving her colleagues a quick smile. ‘See you in the morning.’
‘Have a good night. Are you doing anything special?’ Natasha asked.
‘It’s my hot yoga night,’ Sylvie said, already looking forward to the chance to stretch out her tight muscles. And to do something that took her mind off work…and Jack Wilde.
‘Well, at least you’ll get all hot and sweaty even if it’s not with a guy,’ Mariah said with a laugh.
Sylvie couldn’t remember the last time she had been with anyone who had the potential to make her feel hot and sweaty…other than Jack Wilde, but she was not going to think about him.
Jack stayed back at his office so he could triple-check everything Hugo Winters had given him on his financial affairs. The Winterses certainly lived a lavish lifestyle but who was he to talk? Jack was born into wealth and was aware of the privileges he had, despite the tragic loss of his parents.
He would never admit this to anyone, most especially his brothers, but he sometimes wondered if the loss of his parents had helped him rather than disadvantaged him.
He’d had to grow up and fast, learn how to navigate the world to best protect himself and his brothers from their overly critical grandfather.
It had given him a strength of will, the drive and motivation to succeed no matter what obstacles were in his way.
Out of the three brothers, his win-at-all-costs personality was perhaps a little more like his grandfather’s, but unlike his grandfather, Jack knew where to draw the line.
Would he have had that same drive if he had grown up with his two loving parents? It was so hard to say.
His parents had been loving and generous with gifts and exotic holidays and yet he had always been conscious of their devotion to each other being more of a priority than their three sons.
Jack’s grandfather Maxwell referred to Jack’s father’s love for his mother as an obsession, and he still blamed that obsession for their deaths.