Chapter One
SYLVIE RATHBONE WOKE to the sound of jackhammers for the fourth time that week.
Not the kind of jackhammers inside her head after a big night out with her co-workers, but the construction kind.
Next door. Not that she’d had any big or small nights out lately.
Her work as a divorce lawyer gave her little opportunity for partying.
Or dating. But that was her choice—a dating drought brought on by dealing daily with couples at war.
Call her cynical but love seemed to her a fleeting emotion that couldn’t withstand the vicissitudes of life.
Sylvie tossed off the bedcovers and winced at the sound of a pneumatic drill right outside her bedroom window.
How long did it take to renovate a house, for pity’s sake?
This mind-scrambling, eardrum-bursting racket had been going on for nine months.
What were the owners building? The Taj Mahal?
Sylvie twitched the curtains aside to take a peek.
The Victorian townhouse, which was adjacent and the twin of hers, was thankfully inching closer to completion but it seemed every tradesperson had turned up this morning for the final touches.
She hadn’t met the owners—no one seemed to know who was throwing a frightening amount of money at the Mayfair townhouse.
Not like she could talk. Her house cost her a fortune three years ago, but owning her own home had been top of her to-do list since she was ten, and not a day went past when she wasn’t thankful for her home and the one she had bought for her mother.
Sylvie turned from the window with a smile of satisfaction on her face.
Even ear-splitting drills and jackhammers couldn’t put a dent in her pride about rising above her poverty-stricken background to becoming one of London’s most successful family lawyers with her own all-female practice.
Who was it who said success was the best revenge?
Sylvie didn’t care who said it, but she hoped her pond scum father had heard it.
Half an hour later, Sylvie walked into the reception area of her law firm.
Samira, one of the two secretaries, looked up from her computer and grimaced.
‘Edwina Winters is here,’ she said in an undertone, as the clients’ waiting room was only a short distance away.
‘She insisted on seeing you. Apparently, her husband has changed lawyers again.’
Sylvie frowned. ‘Who’s he got now?’
Samira gave her a look that sent a prickling shiver tiptoeing up the back of Sylvie’s neck and over her scalp. ‘Jack Wilde.’
Sylvie had perfected her poker face over the years of being a lawyer.
Even long before her legal training, she had learned to disguise her emotions behind a mask of composure no young child should ever have to wear.
But hearing Jack Wilde’s name this early in the morning without a shot or two of caffeine on board was too much to handle without a tiny hairline crack in her poise.
‘O-kay…’ Sylvie let out an uneven breath, her pulse beginning to pound at the thought of another battle with Jack. She lost the last two court cases she’d had with him as her opponent. Could this be third time lucky for him? Was she in for another public humiliation?
Jack was a good lawyer who always fought hard for his clients.
But then, so did she. Jack might be an attack dog lawyer, but she was a terrier with a bone and it took a hell of an opponent to get it off her.
Trouble was, Jack Wilde was a hell of an opponent.
Sylvie refused to think of him as her nemesis.
She had faced down many arrogant male lawyers who thought they could wipe the floor with a young woman who only just scraped in at five foot five.
‘I’ll see Edwina in consulting room five,’ Sylvie said. ‘Can you call my first client and warn them I’ll be a few minutes behind schedule?’
‘Sure, will do.’
A short time later, Sylvie sat opposite a tearful Edwina Winters, who launched into a litany of her soon-to-be-ex-husband’s bad behaviour.
Listening to the list of narcissistic actions of Hugo Winters made Sylvie all the more determined to fight for Edwina and her two children to make sure they were not damaged by the war between their parents.
Children were often the invisible victims in an acrimonious divorce and because Sylvie had lived experienced of it, she could pick up the signs at the get-go.
‘So, the last mediation session,’ Sylvie interjected gently, trying to nudge her client out of the victim role and into a more proactive stance. ‘How did it go? Were you able to come to any agreement on custody?’
Edwina blew her nose on a tissue and then tucked it up her sleeve.
‘It was a disaster. Hugo painted me as a hopeless mother and then he stormed out and said he wouldn’t be in another mediation session without his lawyer present.
I found out last night he sacked his previous one and engaged the services of Jack Wilde. ’
She started to cry again and hunted for her tissue and once she located it, wiped at her streaming eyes. ‘E-everyone knows he’s lethal in court. I’ll lose custody of my babies. Hugo will tell Jack Wilde a whole pack of lies about me to paint me as an incompetent mother.’
‘It might not get to court if we ask for another mediation session with both lawyers present,’ Sylvie said, even though she was dreading any sort of session with Jack Wilde.
But she figured it would be a lot less stressful facing him in a mediation meeting than in court like the last two times.
The mediation sessions were private, court on the other hand was public.
She could do without another public humiliation at Jack’s hands.
Edwina wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand and Sylvie pushed a box of tissues on the desk closer to her.
‘I’m trying to keep costs down but Hugo seems determined to take this all the way to court.
How will I survive it? He’s always handled the finances in our marriage.
I have no idea how to find the funds to pay for months and months of legal advice.
I’ve had to borrow heaps off my parents, but they can’t really afford it and I’m not sure I’ll be able to pay them back. ’
‘We have a payment scheme in place for people in your situation,’ Sylvie said, thinking of her mother back in the day when there was no help at all. It was one of the things she was most proud of in her practice.
She wasn’t running a charity by any means but she wouldn’t allow her clients to be left destitute either.
She and her colleagues kept costs down, especially for clients who were struggling, but Sylvie still was mindful she had a law firm to run with all the overheads of any other business.
‘But try not to worry about that for the moment,’ she went on.
‘Let’s aim for another mediation session and take things from there. ’
Edwina dabbed at each of her eyes in turn and gave Sylvie a strained smile. ‘Thank you for seeing me. I know you have back-to-back clients but I just couldn’t get through another day of worry. I can’t eat, I can’t sleep and I didn’t know what else to do.’
Sylvie rose from her chair, signalling the end of their session. ‘I’m here for you anytime, Edwina. That’s my job. I’ll get my secretary to inform you of the date and time of the next mediation session. Take care of yourself.’
Once Edwina left the consulting room, Sylvie sat back down on a chair with a thump.
She was already forty minutes late for her next client and she still hadn’t had a shot of caffeine.
Industrial-strength jackhammers were beginning to sound inside her head and she let out a strong curse word.
‘You are not going to win this time, Jack Wilde,’ she said to the four book-lined walls that surrounded her. ‘No freaking way.’
A week later, Sylvie arrived early to the mediation counsellor’s rooms but Edwina Winters had texted to say she would be late due to a hold-up with her teenage daughter’s school drop-off. Jack Wilde sauntered into the waiting room two minutes after Sylvie sat down, but he too was on his own.
‘Good morning, Ms Rathbone,’ he said with a glinting smile that made her spine tighten with awareness.
His voice was rich and deep, with a gravel and honey thing going on and a generous dollop of Devonshire cream.
The sort of voice she could listen to and fantasise about things she had no business fantasising about—especially with him.
She had heard his Shakespearean court room voice and still been affected.
He was mesmerising in every possible way a man could be. Damn him.
Part of the reason she avoided him was because she didn’t trust herself around him.
She found it hard not to stare at those incredible blue eyes.
Found it near impossible not to gaze at his beautifully sculptured mouth that hinted at the potent sensuality of his nature.
A notorious playboy who could have any woman he wanted was not Sylvie’s idea of a date and yet…
and yet…her pulse raced every time she saw him.