The Perfect Sinner. PENNY JORDAN
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he wanted was for Maddy to be sexually demanding or sexually possessive.
He showered himself briskly, then stepped out of the cubicle, smoothing his dark, wet hair back sleekly off his face as he reached for a towel.
If he was going to go to Aspen he would need to buy himself some suitable clothes. He had read that a lot of the Hollywood set went there for the season. He started to smile as he rubbed his body dry and then padded naked across to his bed.
Max was going through some paperwork when he heard the front doorbell ring. On his way to answer it he quickly checked his appearance in the hallway mirror. He was wearing the expensive after-shave that Justine had given him and the Turnbull and Asser shirt, which had been another present from her. The gold cuff links had been a gift from another grateful client. He glanced at his watch, a Rolex that Maddy had given him as a wedding present. Justine was earlier than he’d expected her. Well, she was still going to have to make due reparation for last night and wait a little for her sex. Yes, and plead with him for it, too!
Max opened the door.
‘Crighton, may I come in?’
Without waiting for Max’s assent, Justine’s husband stepped determinedly into the hallway.
Max had met him on only one previous occasion at a dinner party given by a friend of Justine’s to which he had been invited.
Although not as tall as Max and certainly a good twenty years older, Robert Burton nevertheless possessed that aura of power and forcefulness common to most entrepreneurially successful men. He might not walk with a deliberate swagger nor verbally boast of his achievements or his wealth, but he most definitely had about him that air that warned other males that he considered himself to be their superior, and as he eyeballed Max with cool aggression as he marched past him, Max was immediately and acutely aware of a relentless dislike he could feel emanating from him.
To give Max his due, though, apart from a small betraying distortion of his pupils and a reactive tensing of his muscles, he gave no other sign that his visitor was not the person he had expected to see, even managing a passably plausible, polished wave of his hand in the direction of his sitting room as he invited, ‘Robert. Good to see you, old man. What can I do for you …?’
On the verge of walking into the sitting room, Robert Burton turned round and thoroughly scrutinized Max.
‘I’ll say this for you, Crighton, you’ve got nerve,’ he commented tersely. ‘I’m a very busy man and I don’t have time to play verbal games. Justine has told me what’s been going on and …’
‘Ah. Good.’ Max cut in on him smoothly. ‘I did counsel her to tell you that she wanted a divorce. These things are always better when the two parties concerned discuss them as adults, and—’
‘Better for the bank balances of their lawyers, yes,’ Robert Burton cut him off acidly, ‘but let’s not get side-tracked. It isn’t your professional relationship with my wife I’m here to discuss.’ He paused meaningfully. ‘I do know, like I said, what’s been going on. A friend tipped me off. Apparently you’ve got quite a reputation for bedding your female clients….’
Max gave a small shrug. ‘When a marriage is breaking down, people become emotionally—’
‘Vulnerable,’ Robert Burton supplied darkly before Max could finish. ‘But it’s hardly professional behaviour to use that vulnerability against them, is it, and I should have thought that a man in your position would have to be very careful about guarding his professional reputation. After all, that’s really what a barrister has to sell, isn’t it? His reputation is his product. Unless, of course, you’ve decided that it’s more financially profitable for you to trade on your reputation in the bedroom rather than in the courtroom. Rumour does have it, of course, that it wasn’t so much your legal skills or qualifications that got you into your chambers in the first place. Does your wife know that you regularly bed your female clients?’
‘It’s a very pleasant bonus to my work,’ Max acknowledged with a taunting smile and a small shrug, ‘and I can’t deny that it is a perk that I do find very enjoyable … after all, what normal heterosexual man would not?’
It was one of Max’s greatest assets that he possessed a remarkable gift for turning the tables on his opponents and sending back the arrows they fired at him with devastating speed and accuracy, and he could see from the betraying narrowing of Robert Burton’s eyes and the hard edge of colour seeping up under his skin that he had succeeded in getting him off guard.
‘In your shoes, I’d be rather careful about what I admit to,’ he warned Max. ‘I doubt very much you’d enjoy being on the other side of a lawsuit….’
‘No, I wouldn’t,’ Max agreed, and added urbanely, ‘but then I doubt that very many men would like to stand up in court and admit that their wives preferred me as a lover. Which reminds me, since I am acting for your wife in the subject of her divorce, I really should advise you that it is quite unethical for you to approach me….’
‘There isn’t going to be a divorce.’
Max stared at him in disbelief.
‘Justine and I have had a little talk,’ Robert Burton told him with heavy irony, ‘and we’ve decided that we’re going to give our marriage a second chance. I think that what Justine really needs is to be a mother. A woman needs a child, children, and they do say, don’t they, that the conception and birth of a child cement a couple more closely together than anything else. You’ve got children, haven’t you?’
He gave Max a challenging look.
‘Divorce can be an extremely expensive and messy business, and as Justine now agrees, it makes sense for the two of us to stay together. Oh, and by the way, there’s no point in you trying to get in touch with her. She flew out to New York on Concorde this morning.
‘I hope I’ve made myself understood,’ he told Max as he turned round and opened the door, ‘but then, I know you’ll have got my drift, won’t you, Crighton.’
As Max automatically followed him to the front door, the older man continued with obvious enjoyment, ‘Oh, and by the way, perhaps I’d better warn you, I’ve had a word with the senior partner in your chambers, alerting him to certain facts I felt he ought to know. After all, a chambers like yours trades on its reputation, and anything that might damage that reputation has to be very swiftly and mercilessly dealt with, doesn’t it … rather like anything that might threaten a man’s marriage or his financial status.
‘It’s the mark of an intelligent man, I believe, to act quickly and decisively to protect what he values.’
Max said nothing. He didn’t need to. He knew exactly what Robert Burton was saying to him. He had somehow or other persuaded Justine not to go ahead with her divorce because he had no intention of allowing her to profit financially from her marriage to him. Simpler and far more financially expeditious to remain married to her. But it was his remark about his own professional status that had alarmed Max the most, especially that comment he had made about speaking with the head of his chambers.
Although technically Max was his own boss and none of the other members had any kind of jurisdiction over his actions or his morals—in practice … Well, he would soon find out, since no doubt the subject would be raised at this afternoon’s meeting, if it was going to be raised.
‘Hell and damnation,’ he muttered grimly as he consigned Justine to the past and the long list of his ex-lovers an hour later as he left his mews house en route to the old-fashioned set of chambers in the Inns of Court where the high status of their address more than compensated for the cramped office that Max occupied.
The senior partner’s office was, quite naturally, the most luxurious: large, elegantly furnished, reeking of that unmistakable indefinable aura of old money, class and power, and Max could never walk into it without coveting it and everything that went with it. Already he had promised himself that one day it would be his.