Desired By The Boss

Even when he dated women it was only ever for the briefest of times—brevity, he’d discovered, avoided the complications that were impossible for him: commitment, cohabiting, planning a future together...

Relationships were all about complications, and to Hugh complications were clutter.

And he was determined to live a clutter-free life.

But today contact with April’s skin had again made his blood heat and his belly tighten.

He should go.

They’d moved the box to where April had directed, so Hugh headed for the door.

‘Don’t forget your coffee,’ April said.

He turned and saw she held the two mugs in her hands—the one for him printed with agapanthus.

He should go—he could make his own coffee downstairs. There was nothing to be gained by staying, and as always he had so much on his to-do list today.

But he realised, surprised, that the boxes that surrounded him weren’t compelling him to leave. At some point the tension that had been driving him from this house had abated.

It was still there, but no longer overpowering. Nor, it seemed, was it insurmountable.

So he found himself accepting his mug from April. A woman who, with no more than her smile and against all his better judgement, had somehow compelled him to stay.

He hadn’t been supposed to stay.

April had honestly expected Hugh to take his coffee and head on down to his basement apartment.

But instead he’d taken his mug and approached the first box she’d planned to go through—its top already sliced open, the flaps flipped back against the thick cardboard sides.

For a moment it had looked as if he was going to start looking through the box. He’d stepped right up beside it, his spare hand extended, and then he had simply let it fall back against his jean-clad thigh.

Now he brought his mug to his lips, his gaze, as usual, impossible to interpret.

‘You really don’t like these boxes,’ April said. Her words were possibly unwise—but they’d just slipped out.

Hugh Bennell intrigued her. And not just his looks—or his touch, however accidental. But who he was and what all these boxes meant to him.

The boxes, of course, intrigued her too.

He shot a look in her direction, raising an eyebrow. ‘No.’

And that was that. No elaboration.

So April simply got to work.

Hugh walked a few steps away, propping his backside against the only available arm of the sofa. Boxes were stacked neatly on the seat cushions beside him.

This box was full of clothes. A woman’s. April hadn’t come across women’s clothes before, and the discovery of the brightly coloured silks and satins made her smile and piqued her interest.

She held a top against herself: a cream sheer blouse with thick black velvet ribbon tied into a bow at the neck. It was too small for April—smaller even than the sample size clothing she’d used to have sent to her by designers before she’d given up on starving herself.

‘Was this your mum’s?’ April asked, twisting to face Hugh.

She absolutely knew it wasn’t her place to ask him, but she just couldn’t not.

It was too weird to be standing in this room with Hugh, in silence, surrounded by all this stuff that meant something to him but absolutely nothing to her. And she was the one sorting through it.

Hugh didn’t even blink. ‘All clothing is to be donated,’ he said.

‘That wasn’t why I was asking,’ April said.

She tossed the shirt into the ‘donate’ box in the centre of the room. Soon after followed a deep pink shift dress, a lovely linen shawl and a variety of printed T-shirts. Next April discovered a man’s leather bomber jacket that was absolutely amazing but about a hundred sizes too big.

Regardless, April tried it on. Felt compelled to.

Was it disrespectful to try it on?

Possibly. Probably.

But Hugh was about to donate it all, anyway. He was the one who insisted it was all junk, all worthless.

Maybe this was how she could trigger a reaction from this tall, silent man?

It was unequivocally a bad idea, but she spent her days unpacking boxes and her evenings stacking shelves. Mostly in silence.

Maybe she was going stir crazy, but she needed to see what Hugh would do.

She just didn’t buy it that he didn’t care about this stuff. So far his measured indifference had felt decidedly unconvincing.

She had to call his bluff.

‘I’m not paying you to play dress-up,’ Hugh pointed out from behind her.

His tone was neutral.

She spun around to show him the oversized jacket. ‘Spoilsport,’ she said with a deliberate grin, catching his gaze.

If he was just going to stand there she couldn’t cope with all this silence and gloom. Her sisters had always told her she was the sunny sister. That she could walk into a room and brighten it with her smile.

It had always sounded rather lame—and to be honest part of her had wondered what that said about her in comparison to clever Ivy or artistic Mila. Was it really such an achievement to be good at smiling?

It had been a moot point in the months since Evan had left, anyway.

Until now. Now, this darkly moody man felt like a challenge for sunny April.

Acutely aware that this might all backfire horribly, but incapable of stopping herself in the awkward silence, she playfully tossed her hair in the way of a supermodel.

‘What do you think?’

What would he do? Smile? Shout? Leave?

Fire her?

Hugh’s shake of the head was barely perceptible.

But...was that a quirk to his lips?

Yes. It was definitely there.

April’s smile broadened.

‘Fair enough,’ she said, shrugging her shoulders and then tossing the jacket into the ‘donate’ box. ‘How about this?’ she asked, randomly grabbing the next item of clothing in the box.

A boat-neck blouse, in a shiny fabric with blue and white stripes. But too small. Which April realised...too late.

Hands stuck up in the air, fabric bunched around her shoulders on top of her T-shirt, April went completely still.

‘Dammit!’ she muttered.

She hadn’t been entirely sure of her plan, but becoming trapped in cheap satin fabric was definitely not part of it.

She wiggled again, trying to dislodge the blouse, but it didn’t shift.

Her T-shirt had ridden up at least a little. April could feel cool air against a strip of skin above the waistband of her jeans.

Mortified, she struggled again, twisting away from where she knew Hugh stood, feeling unbelievably silly and exposed.

‘Stay still,’ he said, suddenly impossibly close. Behind her.

April froze. She was blindfolded by the stupid top but she could sense his proximity. His height. His width.

His fingers hooked under the striped fabric, right at her shoulders. He was incredibly careful, gently moving the fabric upwards. Her arms were still trapped. It was almost unbearable: the touch of his fingers, his closeness, her vulnerability.

She wanted him to just yank it off over her head. To get this over with.

No, she didn’t.

The fabric had cleared her shoulders now, and he moved closer still to help tug it over her arms, where the top was still wrapped tightly.

Now his fingers brushed against the bare skin of her arms. Only as much as necessary—and that didn’t feel like anywhere near enough.

He was so close behind her that if she shifted backwards even the slightest amount she would be pressed right up against him. Back to chest.

It seemed a delicious possibility.

It seemed, momentarily, as she was wrapped in the temporary dark, a viable option.

And then the blouse was pulled free.

April gasped as the room came back into focus. Directly in front of her were heavy navy curtains, closed, obscured by an obstacle course of cardboard boxes.

She spun around.

‘Thank you—’ she began.

Then stopped.

Hugh was still so close. Closer than he’d ever been before. Tall enough and near enough that he needed to look down at her and she needed to tilt her chin up.

She explored his face. The sharpness of his nose, the thick slash of his eyebrows, the strength of his jaw. This close she could see delicate lines bracketing his lips, a freckle on his cheek, a rogue grey hair amongst the stubble.

He was studying her, too. His gaze took in her eyes, her cheeks, her nose. Her lips.

There it was.

Not subtle now, or easily dismissed as imagination as it had been down in his basement apartment. Or every other time they’d been in the same room together.

But it had been there, she realised. Since the first time they’d met.

That focus. That...intent.

That heat.

Between them. Within her.

It made her pulse race and caused her to become lost in his gaze when he finally wrenched his away from her lips.

Since they’d met his eyes had revealed little. Enough for her to know, deep in her heart, that he wasn’t as hard and unfeeling as he so steadfastly attempted to be. It was why she’d known she couldn’t be responsible for the disposal of his mother’s memories.

And maybe that was what had obscured what she saw so clearly now. Or at least had allowed her to question it.

Electricity practically crackled between them. It seemed ludicrous that she hadn’t known before. That she’d ever doubted it.

Hugh Bennell wanted her.

And she wanted him. In a way that left her far more exposed than her displaced T-shirt.

But then he stepped back. His gaze was shuttered again.

‘You okay?’ he asked, his voice deep and gravelly.

No.

‘Yes,’ she said, belatedly realising he was referring to the stripy top and not to what had just happened between them.

Way too late she tugged down her T-shirt, and blushed when his gaze briefly followed the movement of her hands. Then it shifted away.

Not swiftly, as if he’d been caught out or was embarrassed. Just away.

He didn’t look at her again as he went over to the box April had been emptying.

Without hesitation he reached in, grabbing a large handful of clothing and directly deposited it into the ‘donate’ box. Then, with brisk efficiency, he went through the remainder of the box: ancient yellow newspapers to the recycling pile, a toaster with a severed electrical cord to the bin, encyclopaedias with blue covers and gold-edged pages on top of the clothing in the donation box.

April had been boxing books separately, but she didn’t say a word.

The donation box was now full, already packed with yesterday’s miscellanea, and Hugh lifted it effortlessly.

April followed him into the foyer and directed him to where she’d like the box left, ready for the next visit by the red-and-white charity collection truck.

‘Thank you,’ she said.

He shrugged. ‘I just want this stuff gone.’

She nodded. ‘I’d better get back to work, then.’

Finally her temporary inertia had lifted, and reality—the most obvious being that it was her job to empty these boxes, not Hugh’s—had reasserted itself.

Although amidst that reality the crackling tension between them still remained.

April didn’t know what to do with it.

Hugh seemed unaffected, but April knew for certain that he wasn’t unaware.

‘These clothes aren’t my mum’s,’ he said suddenly. ‘I have no idea who they belong to. I have no idea what most of this stuff is, or why the hell my mum needed to keep it all so badly.’

April nodded again. His tone had hardened as he spoke, frustration fracturing his controlled facade.

‘She was more than all this stuff. Much more.’ He shook his head. ‘Why couldn’t she see that?’

Hugh met her gaze again, but April knew he’d asked the most rhetorical of questions.

‘I’ll get this stuff out of your house,’ she said. She promised.

‘Her house,’ he clarified.

And then, without another word, he was gone.

CHAPTER FIVE

HUGH HADN’T SLEPT WELL.

He’d woken late, so he’d been too late to join the group he normally rode with on a Wednesday, so instead he’d headed out alone. Today that was his preference anyway.

Because it was later, traffic was heavier.

It was also extremely cold, and the roads were slick with overnight rain.

London could be dangerous for a cyclist, and Hugh understood and respected this.

It was partly why he often chose to ride in groups, despite his general preference for solitude. Harried drivers were forced to give pairs or long lines of bikes room on the road, and were less likely to scrape past mere millimetres from Hugh’s handlebars.

But other times—like this morning—his need to be alone trumped the safety of numbers.

Today he didn’t want the buzz of conversation to surround him. Or for other cyclists to share some random anecdote or to espouse the awesomeness of their new carbon fibre wheels.

When he rode alone it was the beat of his own pulse that filled his ears, alongside the cadence of his breathing and the whir of the wheels.

Around him the cacophony of noise that was early-morning London simply receded.

It was just him and his bike and the road.

Hugh rode hard—hard enough to keep his mind blank and his focus only on the next stroke of the pedals.

Soon he was out of inner London, riding down the A24 against the flow of commuter traffic. He was warm with exertion, but the wind was still icy against his cheeks. The rest of his body was cloaked in jet-black full-length cycling pants, a long-sleeved jersey, gilet and gloves.

Usually by now the group would have begun to loop back, but today Hugh just kept on riding and riding, heading from busy roads to country lanes, losing track of time. Eventually he reached the Surrey Hills and their punishing inclines, relishing the burning of his lungs and the satisfying ache of his thighs and calves.

But midway up Box Hill, with his brain full of no more than his own thundering heartbeat, he stopped. On a whim, abruptly he violently twisted his cleats out of his pedals and yanked hard on the brakes until his bike was still. Then, standing beside his bike, he surveyed the rolling green patchwork of the Dorking valley as it stretched towards the South Downs beneath a clear blue sky. Out here, amongst woodland and sheep-dotted fields, London was thirty miles and a world away.

What was he doing?

He didn’t have to check his watch to know he’d missed his morning teleconference. He’d miss his early-afternoon meetings too, given it would take him another two and a half hours to get home again.

Reception would be patchy up here, he knew, but still, he should at least try to email his assistant—who worked remotely from Lewisham—and ask her to clear his calendar for the rest of the day.

But he didn’t.

He hadn’t planned to ride this far, but he’d needed to. He’d needed to do something to ease the discontent that had kept him awake half the night—much of it spent pacing his lounge room floor.

Hugh didn’t like how he felt. All agitated and uncertain.

He usually lived his life with such definition: he knew what he was doing, why he was doing it, and he always knew it was the right thing to do. Hugh made it his business to plan and prepare and analyse everything. It was why his business was so successful. He didn’t make mistakes...he didn’t get distracted.

His mother’s house had always been the exception.

When she’d died he’d considered selling it. He’d been living in his own place in Primrose Hill, not far away.

But back then—as now—he just hadn’t been able to.

For a man who prided himself on being the antithesis of his mother—on being a man who saw no value in objects and who ruthlessly protected his life from clutter—his attachment to the house was an embarrassing contradiction.

But he knew how much that house had meant to his mum. He knew exactly what it had represented.

For his mother it had been a place of love, after so many years of searching.

And for Hugh it had been where his mother had finally lived a life free of clutter—a life he had been sure she’d lost for ever. For more than a decade she’d been happy there, her hoard no more than a distant memory.

And so he’d kept it.

He’d ended up hoarding his mother’s hoard. There was no other way to explain his three-year refusal to dispose of all that junk.

Even now, as April Spencer attempted to clean out his mother’s house, he couldn’t let it go.

A stranger—April—had seen that.

Why else would she be going to such lengths to save sentimental crap unless she’d sensed that he wasn’t really ready to relinquish it?

And she was right. The original ‘Hugh’ box still remained as April had left it, cluttering up his coffee table in all its ironic glory.

He just hadn’t been able to walk to the skip behind the house and throw it all away. It had felt impossible.

How pathetic.

Yesterday he’d helped April move those boxes in an effort to normalise the situation: to prove to himself that his visceral reaction to them could be overcome. Except he hadn’t considered April. He hadn’t considered his visceral reaction to her.

He hadn’t considered that, while he might be able to dismiss his attraction to her as nothing when he spent only short periods of time with her, more time together might not be so manageable.

Because more time with her meant he’d seen another side of her: a mischievous forthrightness that really shouldn’t have surprised him, given her refusal to follow his original instructions.

And he liked it. A lot.

He’d also liked it—a lot—when she’d got tangled up in that shirt.

He’d liked being so very close to her—close enough to smell her shampoo and admire the Australian tan revealed below her bunched up T-shirt. Close enough to feel her shiver beneath his touch. To hear the acceleration of her breathing.

In those long moments after he’d helped her out of the blouse it had been as intimate as if he’d actually undressed her.

It had felt raw and naked—and incredibly intense. As if, had he touched her, they would’ve both lost control completely. And for those long moments he’d wanted nothing more than to lose control with April Spencer.

But Hugh Bennell never lost control.

And so he hadn’t. He’d taken a step back, even though it had been harder than he would’ve liked.

He’d assessed the situation: April worked for him.

His priority was cleaning out his mother’s house, not fraternising with his employees.

Besides, he suspected his reaction to April was somehow tangled up with his reaction to the boxes. Because it wasn’t normal for him to have such a magnetic pull towards a woman. He was generally far more measured when he met a woman he liked. In fact he always ‘met’ the women he dated online.

It allowed for a certain level of...well, of control, really. He could set his expectations, as could the woman he was speaking too. There was never any confusion or miscommunication, or the risk of having anything misconstrued.

It was incredibly efficient.

But starting with physical attraction...no.

Although it had been difficult to remind himself why as he’d paced his parquet floor at three a.m.

His mind had been as full with thoughts of April as with his continued frustration over the house and all its boxes.

Mostly with April, actually.

The softness of her skin. The way her lips had parted infinitesimally as they’d gazed into each other’s eyes. And that urge to lean forward and take what he knew she’d been offering had been so compelling it had felt inevitable...

No.

And so his bike ride. A bike ride to clear his mind of the clutter his mother’s hoard and April were creating.

It had been a good plan, Hugh thought as he got back on his bike.

A total fail, though, in practice, with his brain still unable to let go of memories of warm skin and knowing blue eyes as he rode back down the hill, alongside the song of a skylark caught up in the breeze.

Mila: OMG Gorgeous!

April: That’s one to save for his twenty-first! :)

April typed her instant messaging response to Ivy’s gorgeous photo of her son, Nate, covered in bubbles in the bathtub. It felt like for ever since she’d spoken to both her sisters together.

April: How are sales going, Mila?

Mila had recently started mass-producing some of her ceramic work to keep up with sales at her small boutique pottery business.

Mila: Pretty good. I’ve experimented with pricing a bit. I’m still not sure how much people value handmade. So far it seems that the hand-glazing is the key, because...

Mila went into quite a lot of detail—as Mila always did when it came to her business—and then posted some photos she’d taken in her workshop.

April had always been proud of Mila—of both her sisters. She’d always admired how Mila had been so adamant that she’d build her business without the financial support of their mother, but until now April had never really had an issue with spending her family’s money herself.

In fact it had taken her until her mid-twenties before she’d realised she should be doing a lot more with her good fortune than attending parties and buying everything she liked on every fashion festival catwalk.

And so she’d started the Molyneux Foundation.

She’d deliberately chosen not to be the face of the foundation because it wasn’t about her. In fact she’d asked her mother to be the patron. But there was no question that it was April driving the foundation. It had become her project and, along with a small team, she’d made sure the foundation had continued to grow—and for every dollar donated to the foundation Molyneux Mining matched it twice over.

April had experimented with a few different ideas for the foundation—a website, later a blog—and by the time Instagram had gained popularity April had known exactly how to monetise it best to help the foundation. She’d had her team reaching out to any company that sold a product she could include in a photo, and she’d carefully curated the images to ensure that she mixed promotional pictures seamlessly in with those that were just her own.

And it had worked. She didn’t think her mum had expected it to take off the way it had when April had talked her into the two-to-one deal, but it was certainly too late now!

She was incredibly proud of all the foundation had achieved, and of her role in that. But she’d still really just considered it a little side project. She was as hands-on as needed, but it was hardly a full-time job. She’d still had plenty of time to shop and socialise—and until Evan had left her it had never occurred to her to live without the Molyneux money.

The Molyneux money to which she had contributed in absolutely no way at all.

And the brittleness of all that—the fact that without the Molyneux money she had literally nothing...no means to support herself...not one thing she’d bought with money she’d actually earned herself—was quite frightening.

Ivy: How’s the new job going?

April: Good. Mostly. Lots of boxes.

She’d love to post a photo to show the magnitude of the hoard to her sisters, but photography was one of the many things expressly forbidden by the confidentiality agreement she’d signed. Along with any discussion of the contents of the boxes.

April: My boss is interesting.

She’d typed that before she’d really thought about what she was doing.

Ivy: Oooh! Interesting-interesting? Or INTERESTING-interesting? ;-) ;-) ;-)