One Night With Her Millionaire Boss

Finally, when Ned was nine years old his mother had left his father and wrenched her son away from everything he’d loved to live with her in the city. He could still remember how utterly miserable he’d been away from his pony, his dog, his pet chickens. How impossible it had seemed to have to choose between his mother and his father, both of whom he’d adored.

‘According to my boss, Hugh, this house is a wonderful showcase for your mother’s talents. It’s a shame she can’t be here to show me her work.’

‘My parents don’t live here any more. They moved to Melbourne. But right now they’re in Tuscany,’ he said.

‘Nice,’ Freya said with an undertone of longing in her voice.

Ned could have just agreed with her, skated over the truth, but he believed in being straightforward. ‘My mother is a breast cancer survivor and—’

Freya gasped and her hand flew to her mouth. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘Well, not that she’s a survivor but that—’

He had to clear his throat. ‘She’s been incredibly brave and strong. But she’s in remission, thankfully. Now she and my dad are off to see all the places they couldn’t see when Five and a Half Mile Creek was their life. No opportunity for extended vacations when you’re running a property this size.’

‘So now you’re in charge.’

‘Yes. I took over from my parents so it’s all on me now. Not that I’m complaining. I love this place.’

He watched as she looked around her with wide eyes. This was just the house and garden—impressive enough. It was unlikely he’d get the chance to show her there was so much more—the tennis court, swimming pools, an administration office, staff accommodation, historic shearing sheds, horse arena and stables, an airstrip. Thousands of acres of land and the actual creek—really more a small river—from which the property took its name.

‘It must be a big job,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But nothing I can’t handle.’

The steady hands on the reins.

That was him: steady, reliable, you-can-count-on-me Ned. No one had ever imagined he would say no to the job of running Five and a Half Mile Creek—even if it meant more time spent behind a computer with spreadsheets than on horseback. Ned had known from an early age that his destiny was to run it. There’d been no choice of career for him. He’d excelled at violin but a role in an orchestra had never been an option. Neither had studying to be a veterinarian. When he’d been asked to step up, he’d said yes.

He’d only ever strayed from his predestined path once—that crazy time when he’d been so infatuated with Leanne and spent more time in Melbourne with her than he should have. He’d been too blinded by his so-called love for her to notice his mother getting frail, his father anxious. His father had actually had to beg him to spend more time at home. When, to Leanne’s intense displeasure, Ned had dragged himself unwillingly back from Melbourne, his parents had sat him down and told him about his mother’s diagnosis.

Shattered at the news, horrified at his neglect of his duties, he had immediately agreed to move back full-time to Five and a Half Mile Creek while his mother underwent treatment in Melbourne. Foolishly, he’d thought Leanne would come with him, help him heed his wake-up call.

But she hadn’t seen his mother’s life-threatening cancer as enough reason for her to turn her own life upside down. Certainly not to give him the support he had expected would come freely from the woman he was about to ask to become his wife. He’d never noticed how cold Leanne’s eyes could be until she’d told him to hire someone to run his property because she had no intention of leaving Melbourne. He had ended it with her immediately. It had cut deep when he’d realised she wouldn’t mourn the loss of him as a boyfriend so much as the lavish expenditure she’d seen as her right.

Ned had regretted that relationship, but had never regretted his decision to do the right thing by his family. Looking back, he wondered whether, when he was a child, his unquestioning acceptance of his destiny was because he had so desperately wanted to please both parents so he could keep them in his life—right here.

But lately he was beginning to feel constricted. Even his wish-list for a wife put Five and a Half Mile Creek’s needs first. It wasn’t that he wanted to be wild and throw his wonderful life away but sometimes it irked that people seemed to find him so predictable. When had he become like that?

‘So you took over from your parents,’ Freya said. ‘Is that why your mother redecorated the house? To mark the new order?’

‘It’s a family tradition that when the son—and it’s always been a son—takes over from the father, he puts his own stamp on the place. My mother met my father when he employed her to redecorate. She came out here and—as Dad says—“captivated” his heart.’

‘Aww, that’s so romantic,’ Freya said with what seemed like genuine appreciation.

‘Love at first sight, according to them both.’ Another reason for him to avoid relationships based on infatuation.

Head over heels in love.

He’d learned that expression from the story of his parents’ ‘romantic’ meeting. It had never sounded particularly comfortable to him as a child. And it hadn’t worked out well for his parents; they’d always seemed to be arguing. He would stick his fingers in his ears so he didn’t have to hear their raised, angry voices.

‘But it must have been a shock for your mother moving here from Melbourne,’ Freya said. ‘It’s so far away from the city.’

He detected a little shudder of what could be distaste but might have been trepidation. His mother’s voice echoed in his ears. ‘This place is so far from civilisation.’ It had been a familiar refrain in his earlier years. One he had grown to fear, as it had usually heralded one of his mother’s departures.

How he’d hated those times. When he was pre-school age, she had taken him with her. That had meant time spent with her parents, who’d had their grandson in their house under sufferance. He could clearly remember how he’d felt like an unwelcome intruder in their house in the upscale suburb of Kew, stuffed with china ornaments just waiting to be knocked over by a lively little boy. Once he’d started school in Hilltop, the nearest town to Five and a Half Mile Creek, he’d been left with his father when his mother went to work in Melbourne.

While he loved his father, and knew his father loved him, he’d rarely seen him. Running the property was not a nine-to-five job—especially during the years-long drought that had devastated the land. Ned had been placed in the care of a series of nannies ranging from fun and caring, to indifferent, to outright incompetent—none of whom had stayed long. His animals had become his trusted friends and companions. Dogs and horses were so much more reliable than the humans in his life.

But his mother had eventually come to terms with life on the land and his father had learned to delegate and spend more time with his family. When Ned had grown up, his father had tried to explain to him that his enduring deep love for his mother and hers for him was what had driven them to reach the compromise. Ned had felt uncomfortable discussing his parents’ love life and had wanted to put his fingers in his ears against that too. More recently his dad had brought the subject up again as the reason why he was handing over the reins—so that two people still very much in love could enjoy every remaining minute of their lives together.

Still, those early painful days when his parents were sorting out their lives were behind much of his criteria for his wife wish-list. Why leave compatibility to chance?

‘Without a doubt, it is a long way,’ he said. ‘You must have left the city very early to get here at this time.’ When he visited the city, he cut down the travel time by flying his helicopter or light plane.

She shook her head and her fine hair fell softly around her face. He decided he liked the purple. ‘Too far for me to drive all that way in one hit and get here ready to work. I left Melbourne yesterday, then stayed last night at a pub in Hilltop.’

He frowned. ‘You should have let me know. We have a guest cottage. You could have stayed here. It’s very comfortable.’

She shook her head rather more fiercely than his question warranted. ‘I wouldn’t dream of imposing. The pub was fine. I also have my room booked for tonight as this shoot could run to more than one day.’

Ned opened his mouth to say next time, before realising there was unlikely to be a next time. Instead he nodded with a non-committal sound.

‘I like to work with available light. So I need to get started.’ Her voice was brisk and efficient, with that appealing edge of huskiness.

‘Do you need a hand with getting equipment in from your van?’

‘Thanks, but not yet,’ she said. ‘I need to assess the shoot first.’

‘Then let’s get going,’ he said. Looking after the photographer had seemed like an intrusion on his busy day, but suddenly it seemed it might become the highlight. He realised that these days he could go weeks without seeing anyone other than the people who worked for him. His regular trips to Melbourne to take in a concert or a band had stopped after the Leanne fiasco.

‘The house looks amazing. I can’t wait to see inside.’ Freya looked up at him and smiled.

He was mesmerised. She had a tiny gap between her two front teeth and it made her smile both quirky and sensual. This close, he noticed her eyes were blue with a darker ring around the edge that was almost purple. His gaze held hers for a moment too long yet he found it impossible to drag his eyes away.

She was beautiful.

But it wasn’t just that. He had known Freya for all of ten minutes and yet she seemed somehow familiar, as if there was an inevitability about their meeting. Her smile wavered and she frowned, obviously puzzled.

What the hell?

Did she think he was hitting on her? He dropped his gaze, took a step back.

Freya was here to fulfil an assignment on behalf of her boss. She was an employee of both Hugh Tran and of him on behalf of Five and a Half Mile Creek. And he never, ever showed personal interest in an employee.

His role here was to show her the rooms she had been engaged to photograph and then leave her to it. It was completely irrelevant whether he found her attractive or not.

More gruffly than he had intended, he asked her to follow him into the house.

CHAPTER TWO

FREYA HAD TO force her gaze away from Ned Hudson’s sensational rear view as he strode across the gravel towards the veranda. She didn’t want to appreciate the appeal of those broad shoulders, his athletic stride, his impressive butt hugged by blue jeans. Most of all, she didn’t want to acknowledge her instant and unsettling attraction to him.

For a long moment just then her eyes had locked with his and she had seen an echo of the same puzzlement she felt at the thought their meeting was somehow...significant.

It was a crazy thought and she had to shake herself mentally to get rid of it. For one thing she didn’t feel comfortable around this type of man. Ned Hudson was the heir to property and wealth equivalent to a small principality. The ‘squattocracy’ they called families like the Hudsons, in a play on the word aristocracy.

Their ancestors in the early days of the Australian colony had either been granted or had grabbed vast tracts of land—by squatting on it—that they had tenaciously held onto over the years. There wasn’t supposed to be a class system in Australia but people like the Hudsons were considered to be blue bloods, as close as Aussies got to landed gentry.

The young men she’d met from that background had been arrogant, with an overblown sense of entitlement. When she was twenty-four, she’d dated one of their kind. She’d thought Henry had been different, and had fallen for him. His snobby mother had openly disapproved of her. But Henry had stood up for her. Until she’d confided in him about her background: daughter of a seventeen-year-old single mum, brought up by her grandparents until they died, then taken into state care at the age of twelve. Everything she had achieved had come from her own hard work and initiative.

Henry had recoiled from her revelation. That she was a photographer made her cool, but her past made her decidedly uncool. He’d stuttered as he’d made it clear that, while what they had together was fun, it was important he marry a woman from the same background as his. She’d walked away, fun over.

Not that Freya ever intended to get married. She refused to give another person—especially a man—power over her life, and certainly not over her heart. She wasn’t ashamed of her past; her grandparents had been good people. But the implication that she didn’t meet Henry’s standards had stung just the same. From then on she’d stuck to dating her own inner-city, creative kind. At least she knew the possible relationship hiccups she faced with those guys. Being not good enough wasn’t one of them.

When her boss had entrusted her with this shoot, she’d gone online to research her new client, Ned’s mother. If she did the same for Ned, she reckoned she’d find private schooling for him all the way—every privilege inherited money could buy—family trusts and a very easy path in life. He seemed very much a scion of the squattocracy.

Yet her past had taught her not to instantly judge others. After all, Ned’s impossibly wealthy family had thrown the door wide open to their privileged life for her old friend Wil, a rebellious, angry teenager. That didn’t fit with the behaviour of the so-called elite she had encountered in Melbourne. She would try to keep an open mind.

She followed Ned towards the steps to the veranda, then stopped abruptly as she realised he was leading her towards where the black-and-white border collie sat. Up close, Freya could see her muzzle was silver and one of her eyes cloudy. As she approached, Molly thumped her tail on the wooden floor in greeting. But a dog was a dog and Freya wanted to keep her distance. She couldn’t help glancing nervously at the animal—something that didn’t escape Ned.

‘Molly is more likely to lick you than harm you,’ he said. ‘Slobbery doggy kisses are her speciality. But I’ll put her on her leash, otherwise she’ll want to follow you around the house. I’ll take her with me when I go back to the office.’

‘Thank you,’ Freya said on a sigh of relief. ‘I know it’s ridiculous, but I had a bad experience when I was young and I’m frightened of even small dogs.’

‘Not ridiculous at all. But you really have nothing to fear from this old girl.’

He stroked his dog gently around the head with strong, callused hands. How could such a big man be so tender? He looked at Molly with unabashed affection in his eyes and the dog looked adoringly back. How would it feel to have a man look at her like that—open, honest, not afraid to show his feelings? It was something she had never experienced.

‘I want to believe you, but I’m happy to keep my distance from her all the same,’ she said.

After Ned attached the dog’s long leash to a metal ring on the wall, he glanced at his watch. ‘I know you’re keen to get going so we’d better get you started.’

Freya reached into her tote bag and pulled out a sheaf of printouts. ‘Your mother sent a detailed room-by-room shoot list. If you could point me in the direction of the rooms she mentions, I’d appreciate it.’ There was no need for him to babysit her.

‘Let me have a look,’ he said, reaching for the papers and flicking through them. ‘Okay, so you need a guide through all this.’ He smiled. Again she had to stop herself from staring at him. He had the kind of warm smile that reached his eyes; big, white perfect teeth; a generous mouth. It was impossible not to respond with a smile of her own.

‘Maybe. The house looks enormous and I don’t want to get lost or get the rooms wrong.’

‘Just follow me,’ he said.

Ned pushed open the grand double doors and ushered Freya through ahead of him. With a sense of anticipation, she stepped into a wide corridor, the walls panelled, the wooden floors covered in beautiful, oriental rugs. She paused to glance up at ornately moulded ceilings, and breathe in the scent of beeswax polish and roses from the enormous vase of red blooms on the entry table. As she followed Ned down the corridor, he flung open doors that led into a grand, formal living room with large marble fireplaces and an equally grand dining room.

‘This is the more formal part of the house,’ Ned explained.

He spoke with a justifiably proprietorial air. What must it be like to have this magnificence as your birthright? It was a far cry from her grandparents’ two-bedroom terrace house in the shadow of the brewery where her grandfather had worked for most of his life.

‘As a kid I thought it was all stuffy and boring,’ he said. ‘Now the house is mine, I like those rooms just the way they are.’

‘Me too,’ she said. Apart from the beauty of the workmanship, the rooms and their furnishings symbolised wealth, continuity, stability—all things she had never experienced.

Ned headed towards the end of the corridor. ‘Here’s where you’ll find the rooms that have had a total makeover. Along here are the family room, the music room, my study, the room that was Mum’s studio, and the new kitchen. Mum really went to town to give the house a completely new look for what she calls “the new era of Ned”.’ He rolled his eyes and Freya smiled.

‘You didn’t want someone other than your mother to work on the house?’

‘She’s my mother but she’s also Jacqueline Travis, one of Melbourne’s top interior designers who loves this house and who knows me very well. Why entrust the design to an outsider? I knew she would do a better job than anyone else.’

‘There’s that,’ Freya said. He must have a good relationship with his parents to be so confident. If so, she envied him. She’d scarcely known her mother, and her father not at all.

He laughed, a deep, full-bodied laugh as engaging as his smile. ‘To tell you the truth, I’ve always been more interested in the outdoors. Refurbishing the stables? I’m your man. I have no interest whatsoever in fabric swatches and colour chips, and the proportions of table lamps. My only stipulation was hard-wearing, comfortable furniture a man could throw himself into without fear of breaking anything.’

Ned was a big man, tall and well built. His shirt sleeves were rolled up to reveal muscular, tanned forearms. His shirt did nothing to disguise a powerful chest. She refused to let her thoughts stray to the rest of his body.

He was a client.

‘A wise idea,’ she said, suddenly short of breath. Again she had to drag her attention away from him and towards the rooms she had been commissioned to photograph. He was hot, in an understated way that made him seem a degree hotter every time she looked at him. ‘Please lead on, you’ve got me intrigued.’

The first room he showed her was a spacious informal living room. French doors led to the veranda, and a view to pear trees, resplendent in multi-hued autumn leaves. The interior design, while it paid homage to the history of the house, was fresh and contemporary and eminently liveable. Immediately Freya could see angles and details she wanted to capture through the lens of her camera.

Ned gestured to a large, high-backed easy chair covered in a deep blue linen fabric. ‘My favourite chair,’ he said.

Freya could just imagine him sprawling there, long limbs splayed out, the master of his house. ‘It looks strong, yet good-looking too and I suspect it would be very comfortable.’ Like you.

She bit her lip to stop the words from creeping out unbidden.

What was wrong with her?

Apart from him being a client, this guy was so not her type.

‘It is,’ he said. ‘Not that I have an awful lot of time for relaxing. It’s a particularly busy time of year with planting and preparations for winter.’

Freya was ignorant of country ways. But this property was vast, and Ned was in charge of it all. She doubted he got down and actually sheared sheep or mended fences. His role would surely be an administrative one. Wasn’t a lot of farm routine governed by computers and machines these days?

As he showed her through the rest of the rooms, she checked them against the client’s shoot list, getting more and more excited. ‘I hope I can do the house justice with my photography.’ She had shot some of the finest homes in Melbourne, but to her this was the most beautiful, the most inviting. It was a shame it was a million miles from nowhere.

‘I’m sure you will,’ he said. ‘Hugh Tran wouldn’t employ anyone who was anything short of exceptionally talented.’

‘That’s nice of you to say so.’

‘He’s a friend of my mother’s. I’ve known your boss all my life.’

‘I intend to repay his confidence in me,’ she said. ‘What about the upstairs? There aren’t any bedrooms on the shoot list. Did your mother forget to—?’

‘She hasn’t touched upstairs.’

Did she not have time to work on those rooms before she got ill? Freya didn’t like to ask. ‘Really?’ was all she said.

‘None of those rooms have had a makeover yet.’ He paused, shifted from foot to foot and, for the first time, looked slightly uncomfortable. ‘My mother says it’s up to my...my...future wife to have the bedrooms the way she wants them.’

‘Oh,’ Freya said, surprised at the flash of regret she felt. ‘You’re engaged?’

‘No.’ He paused. ‘But I’ll get married some day. Five and a Half Mile Creek needs an heir.’

His offhand comment might have been made as a joke, but it shot her right back to horrible Henry and his talk of marriage as if it were a breeding programme.

‘Of course,’ she said a little stiffly.

‘What about you?’ he said.

‘Me? Engaged?’ She shook her head. ‘Nowhere near it.’ No need to tell him that she never wanted to get married or why. Or that she hadn’t dated for six months. She was here as a photographer, not to swap life stories with the owner of the house.

‘How long have you been working for Hugh?’ he asked.

‘He took me on as his assistant straight out of university. I was lucky to get the chance to work with someone as highly regarded as he is.’

He frowned. ‘Surely more than just luck?’

She shook her head. ‘Pure luck, really, that I encountered him. When I was a student I was waitressing at a café near his studio. He was a regular.’

She’d put herself through a creative arts degree and had had to scrape for every cent. But she didn’t have to share that with Ned. Or further emphasise the differences in their social standing.

‘His studio in Richmond?’

‘Yes. I had no idea who he was but used to chat with him when I served him his coffee.’

‘I bet he had a muffin every day.’

‘You know that?’

‘My mum and I lived with Hugh and his partner Gordon for a while when I was young and—’ Ned stopped abruptly, as if he regretted the words.

‘Really?’ Freya said, intrigued.

‘Long story,’ he said, tight-lipped. If she knew Ned better, she might have tried to cajole the story out of him. But it wasn’t her place to do so.

‘Hugh and Gordon are generous and kind,’ she said, her voice trailing away, inviting him to say more.

‘Yes,’ he said, refusing to be led. What was that long story about?

Fatherly wasn’t quite the word to use about Hugh and the way he’d looked out for her from the get-go. But he was so much more than a boss.

At first she’d been wary of the photographer, as she had tended to be of older guys showing interest in much younger women. But Hugh had proved to be genuine.

‘He knew I was a creative arts student—the campus was nearby,’ she said. ‘But it wasn’t until I asked if I could photograph him for an assignment—he has such an interesting face—that I found out who he was and he discovered I was majoring in photography. He posed for me, and the shoot turned out so well I won a university prize for it.’