Bound By Deception Freed By Love

Bieber Waverley was having a very good day. A deft bit of manoeuvring here, a persuasive phone call there—and voilà, she’d secured a £4.5 million settlement for one of the firm’s most high-profile clients.

No court appearance. No depositions. Not a single motion filed. Just strategic brilliance and a voice like velvet over the phone.

The client had been rich to begin with, of course. Now, he was richer—and so was Harrington, Pembroke & Associates, that walked away with a neat one-third of the total.

“All hail Ms Rainmaker,” Bieber murmured with smug satisfaction as she swept into her elegant, compact, office in the heart of London’s legal district.

She was about to kick off her pumps and bask in the three-degree glimpse of the Thames from her window when she noticed a human blockade in the form of her new secretary—Phyna.

The young lady was practically vibrating with disapproval. “Your phone has been ringing off the hook,” Phyna snapped, holding out a fan of pink message slips like they were toxic. “I thought you’d never get out of that meeting.”

Bieber barely masked her irritation. Phyna had been with her for barely two weeks but had already scaled Everest in the ‘Most Annoying Person on Earth’ competition.

Condescending, gossipy, and constantly clutching her pearls over imagined impropriety, she was the workplace equivalent of a migraine.

“Who called?” Bieber asked, scanning her mental shortlist. “Clington Muller? Ryan Chase? Larry Locke?”

“No. Just one man. And it wasn't a business call, if you ask me.” Phyna sniffed. “He kept calling you Bee or something, which is terribly unprofessional. I answered, ‘Ms weaverly’s office,’ very properly, of course. But he just barreled through, Bee this and Bee that. Quite disturbing.”

Bieber stopped listening from the point where Phyna mentioned Bee. Bie. Not Bee.

A cold ripple of dread ran down her spine. Only one man ever called her that.

Alexander McQueen.

“Please, not Xander. Not today.” Her heart flipped and flailed like a fish out of water.

She’d only just said ‘yes’ to Michael Reed, political golden boy and her freshly-minted fiancé the preview day.

They were going to have clever, ethically-minded children, a Georgian townhouse in Islington, and the kind of high-octane marriage featured in The Economist's wedding section.

Perfect. Predictable. Sensible. Three words that had never, ever, applied to Xander McQueen.

“Tell me it wasn’t Xander,” she said, her voice tight.

“Oh, it was Mr Xander McQueen,” Phyna said with relish, peering at the slips. “Seven calls in two hours. Honestly, doesn’t he have a job? And what kind of name is Xander? Sounds like an app meant for transferring documents.”

Bieber clenched her jaw. “It’s a family name. It's short for Alexander Grey McQueen, the fourth.”

“Well, la-di-da.” Phyna narrowed her eyes. “Is he a friend of yours? Or maybe an old flame?”

“No,” Bieber lied instantly. “Just someone from university. Wycliffe College, Oxfordshire. We... occasionally keep in touch. Not consistently.”

Not consistently was one hell of a way to put it. Chaotic intrusion was another.

Just yesterday, she’d made a solemn vow: no more letting Xander crash into her meticulously crafted world like a wrecking ball in designer loafers. She was done. He was over.

Bieber dropped into the nearest chair, dizzy from the emotional whiplash.

Xander McQueen, back again. Always him. She had hated him at first sight. Back in their first term at Wycliffe College, he and his band of charming, over privileged rogues had sauntered around campus like they owned every courtyard and lecture hall.

She, meanwhile, had been nicknamed Egghead, a no-nonsense law & literature student with a plan and fierce desire to change the world.

He was rugby and cashmere and chaos. She was Austen and ambition and early library closures.

They were two worlds apart and would never have crossed path. But she was assigned to tutor him by the institution agency where she crashed at.

She hadn’t wanted to take the gig. But she needed the money. So she’d turned up with a stack of Shakespeare, ready to freeze him out with intellectual disdain.

Only, Xander wasn’t what she expected. Not completely. He was intriguing. He was distractingly gorgeous. But under all that swagger, there was something wounded, something unknowable.

A hint of Byron, a whiff of Hamlet, a touch of Heathcliff—without the brooding moors but with all the maddening contradictions.

He was clever, but scored less in examinations. Rich, but always skint.

He’d show up for poetry readings with hangovers and quote Keats between belches.

He was brilliant and careless, wild and soft, confident yet constantly on the brink of falling apart.

And Bieber, poor little fool, had fallen hard. She’d spent entire evenings deciphering him like a tragic Victorian novel—an emotional project she hadn’t realized she was taking on until it consumed her.

But no more. No. More. She squared her shoulders, trying to summon the steel she usually kept on standby for opposing counsel.

She was Bieber Waverley, future senior partner, soon-to-be-wife of a man poised for Parliament, builder of an orderly, respectable life.

There was no room in that life for reckless, ridiculous, heartbreak-in-waiting Xander McQueen.

So she stood, straightened her spine, and handed the pink message slips back to Phyna. “Tell him I’m unavailable,” she said calmly.

“For how long?”

She squinted her eyes in thought. Wasn't it said that discretion was the better part of valor? For her own good, she knew she had to avoid the return of trouble by all means.

Pursing her lips, she answered, “Indefinitely.”