Behind the Billionaire's Guarded Heart

by Leah Ashton

  It had been a cringe-worthy, shamefully spoiled existence.

  ‘You understand why I need to do this, right? All of this: living here, living on my money, living without the Molyneux name?’

  ‘Yes,’ Irene said. ‘And you know I admire what you’re doing. And I’m a little ashamed of myself for being so worried about you.’

  This was cringe-worthy too—how little her family expected of her. Her fault as well, of course.

  ‘But that’s my job,’ Irene continued. ‘I’m your mum. I’m supposed to worry. And I’m supposed to want to fix things. But, if I put that aside, here’s my non-mum advice—keep the job. Keep working hard, pay off your debt and move out of that awful shared house. It’ll make me feel better once you’re living in your own place.’

  ‘Yes, Mum,’ April said, smiling. ‘I’ll do my best.’

  And then she remembered something she’d been thinking about earlier.

  ‘Hey, Mum, did you keep that type of stuff? Stuff that we all made at school—you know, gifts for Mother’s Day? Finger paintings? That sort of stuff?’

  Irene laughed. ‘No! I’m probably a terrible person, but I remember smuggling all that stuff out to the bin under cover of darkness.’

  They talked for a while longer, but later, when April had ended the call and gone to bed, her thoughts wandered back to that faded little bookmark Hugh had once given to his mother.

  Was she just being sentimental? She wasn’t sure how she felt about her mum not keeping any of her childhood art—but then, had it bothered her until now? She hadn’t even noticed. Maybe Hugh was right—maybe it was just a badly painted bookmark.

  But that was the thing—the way Hugh had reacted...the way he’d raced to see her immediately, and the way he’d washed her Dockers mug as if the weight of the world had been on his shoulders...

  It felt like so much more.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ‘HUGH?’

  ‘We must’ve lost him.’

  ‘Should we reschedule? We can’t make a decision without him.’

  Belatedly Hugh registered what the conference call voices were saying.

  He’d tuned out at some point. In fact, he could barely remember what the meeting was about. He glanced at his laptop screen.

  Ah. App bug fixes. And something about the latest iOS upgrade.

  Not critically important to his business, but important enough that he should be paying attention.

  He always paid attention.

  The meeting ended with his presumed disappearance, and his flat was silent.

  He pushed back his chair and headed for the kitchen, leaning against the counter as his kettle boiled busily.

  He’d left his tea mug in the sink, as he always did. He reused it throughout the day, and chucked it in the dishwasher each night.

  Why had he cared about April’s mug?

  He was neat. He knew that. Extremely neat. The perfect contrast to his mother and her overwhelming messiness.

  Although, to be fair, his mother hadn’t always been like that.

  At first it had just been clutter. It had only been later that the dishes had begun to pile in the sink and mounds of clothes had remained unwashed. And by then he’d been old enough to help. So he’d taken over—diligently cleaning around all his mum’s things: her ‘treasures’ and her ‘we might need it one days’, her flotsam and jetsam and her ‘there’s a useful article/recipe/tip in that’ magazines, newspapers and books.

  But he wasn’t obsessive—at least not to the level of compulsively cleaning an employee’s coffee mug.

  It had been odd. For him and for April.

  He didn’t feel good about that.

  He didn’t know this woman at all.

  That had been deliberate. He hadn’t wanted to use the Precise HR Department, or reach out to his team for recommendations of casual workers, university students or backpackers—he hadn’t wanted anyone he knew or worked with to know about what was he was doing.

  But the fact was someone needed to know what he was doing in order to actually do it—and that person was April Spencer.

  And so she knew about his mother’s hoard and would know it better than anyone ever had. Even him.

  That sat uncomfortably. Hugh had spent much of his life hiding his mother’s hoard. It didn’t feel right to invite somebody in. Literally to lay it all out to be seen—to be judged.

  His mum had loved him, had worked so hard, and had provided him with all she could and more on a minimal wage and without any support from his father. She didn’t deserve to be judged as anything less than she had been: a great mum. A great woman.

  Her hoard had not defined her, but if people had known of it...

  The kettle had boiled and Hugh made his tea, leaving the teabag hanging over the edge of his cup.

  April had offered to leave yesterday.

  But he’d rejected her offer without consideration, and now, even with time, he knew it had been the right decision.

  If it wasn’t April it would be someone else. At least April wasn’t connected to his work or anyone he knew. Anyone who’d known his mother.

  She was a temporary worker—travelling, probably. She’d soon be back in Australia, or off to her next working holiday somewhere sunnier than London, and she’d take her knowledge of his mother’s secret hoard with her.

  His phone buzzed—a text message.

  Drinks after work at The Saint?

  It was a group message to the cyclists he often rode with a few mornings a week. He liked them. They were dedicated, quick, and they pushed him to get stronger, and faster.

  He replied.

  Sorry, can’t make it.

  He always declined the group’s social invitations. He liked riding with them, but he didn’t do pubs and clubs. Or any place there was likely to be an unpredictable crowd—he never had, and in fact he’d never been able to—not even as a child. He avoided any crowd, but enclosed crowds—exactly as one might find in a pub—made him feel about as comfortable as a room full of his mother’s boxes.

  He actually wasn’t sure which had come first: Had he inherited his crowd-related anxiety from his compulsive hoarder mother, or had his hatred of bustling crowds stemmed from the nightmares he’d once had of being suffocated beneath an avalanche of boxes?

  It didn’t really matter—the outcome was the same: Hugh Bennell wasn’t exactly a party animal.

  Fortunately Hugh’s repeated refusals to socialise didn’t seem to bother his cycling group. He was aware, however, that they all thought he was a bit weird.

  But that wasn’t an unfamiliar sensation for him—he’d been the weird kid at school too. After all, it hadn’t been as if he could ever invite anybody over to his place to play.

  Want to come over and see my mum’s hoard?

  Yeah. That had never happened. He’d never allowed it to happen.

  His doorbell rang.

  Hugh glanced at his watch. It was early afternoon—not even close to the time when packages were usually delivered. And he certainly wasn’t expecting anybody.

  Tea still in hand, he headed for the door. It could only be a charity collector, or somebody distributing religious pamphlets.

  Instead it was April.

  She stood in her coat and scarf, carrying a box.

  A box labelled ‘Hugh’.

  * * *

  Hugh’s eyes narrowed when he saw her.

  April knew she wasn’t supposed to be down here, but she just hadn’t been able to simply send an email.

  He wore a T-shirt, black jeans and an unzipped hoodie, and he held a cup of tea in one hand. He was barefoot and his hair, as she’d come to expect, was scruffy—as if he’d woken up and simply run a hand through it. Yesterday he’d been sm
ooth-shaven, but today the stubble was back—and, as she’d also come to expect, she really rather liked it.

  Hugh Bennell seemed to be in a permanent state of sexy dishevelment, and she’d put money on it—if she had any—that he had no idea.

  But now was not the time to be pondering any of this.

  ‘Ms Spencer?’ he prompted.

  Ms Spencer—not April. He definitely wasn’t impressed.

  She swallowed. ‘I’m resigning,’ she said. ‘I didn’t just want to put it in an email.’

  A gust of wind whipped down from the street and through the doorway. Despite her coat, April shivered.

  Hugh noticed.

  He stepped back and gestured for her to come inside.

  April blinked—she hadn’t expected him to do that. She had a suspicion he hadn’t either, although his gaze remained unreadable.

  Somehow as she stepped past Hugh, slightly awkwardly with the large box, she managed to brush against him—just her upper arm, briefly against his chest. It was the most minimal of touches—made minuscule once combined with her heavy wool coat and Hugh’s combination of T-shirt and hoodie. And yet she blushed.

  April felt her cheeks go hot and her skin—despite all the layers—prickled with awareness.

  How ridiculous. Really only their clothing had touched. Nothing more.

  She forced her attention to her surroundings, not looking anywhere near Hugh.

  His basement flat was compact and immaculate. Two bikes hung neatly on a far wall, but otherwise the walls were completely empty. In fact the whole place felt empty—there wasn’t a trinket or a throw cushion in sight. The only evidence of occupation was the desk, pushed right up against the front window, and its few scattered papers, sticky note pads and pens were oddly reassuring in their imperfection.

  They were standing near his taupe-coloured couches, but Hugh didn’t sit so neither did she.

  Her blush had faded, so she could finally look at him again. Even if it was more in the direction of his shoulder rather than at his eyes. His knowing eyes?

  She refused to consider it.

  ‘Anyway,’ April said, deliberately brisk, ‘I found some more things today. A couple of photos of you and your mum and a birthday card.’

  She shook her head sharply when Hugh went to speak. She didn’t want to hear his spiel again.

  ‘And, look...maybe I should’ve chucked them out, as you’ve insisted. But then I found one of those old plastic photo negative barrels—you know? And it had a lock of baby’s hair in it.’

  She met his gaze.

  ‘A lock of hair, Hugh. Yours, I think. And then I was done. I’m not throwing that out. That’s not my responsibility, and it’s definitely not my decision.’

  She carefully put the box on Hugh’s coffee table.

  ‘So there’s the box with your things in it. You can throw it straight in the skip if you want, but I couldn’t.’ She turned around as she straightened, meeting Hugh’s gaze again. He gave nothing away. ‘I’ve finished that first reception room, and I’ve organised for the charity donations to be collected tomorrow.’

  Still in her coat and scarf, she felt uncomfortably warm—and not entirely because of the central heating.

  ‘I’d better get going.’

  ‘No notice?’ Hugh asked.

  His tone was calm and measured. He definitely wasn’t blushing, or paying any attention when April did.

  She was being ridiculous.

  ‘No,’ April said. ‘I didn’t see the point. Clearly I’m unsuitable for the position.’

  ‘What if I made the position suitable?’ he said, not missing a beat.

  ‘Pardon me?’

  ‘What if I said you didn’t have to make all the decisions any more?’ He spoke with perfect calm.

  ‘So I can have a “Hugh” box?’

  He nodded. ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you’ll come sort through it each day?’

  Now he shook his head. ‘No. I’ll come and throw it in the skip each day. But at least you wouldn’t have to.’

  No. That still didn’t feel right. April wasn’t sure she could let that happen...

  Wait. It wasn’t her call. It so wasn’t her call.

  And that was all she’d asked for—not to be the decision-maker.

  The job paid well. And it wasn’t very difficult—now Hugh had removed the requirement to throw out intensely personal items.

  And she still had her credit card debt, still had a manky shared house to move out of.

  It was a no-brainer.

  And yet she hesitated.

  The reason stood in front of her. Making her belly heat and her skin warm simply with his presence.

  His oblivious presence, it would seem.

  In which case...what was she worried about?

  She knew she didn’t want to walk straight from Evan and into another relationship, and that certainly didn’t seem to be on offer here.

  Hugh was looking at her with his compelling eyes, waiting not entirely patiently for a response. He did not look like a man who enjoyed waiting.

  April smiled.

  It had been fifteen years since she’d been single. It was probably normal that her hormones were being slightly over the top in the vicinity of a demonstrably handsome man.

  It was nothing more.

  ‘Deal,’ she said.

  She had nothing to worry about.

  But then Hugh smiled back—and it was the first time she’d seen him smile both with his divine mouth and with his remarkable eyes.

  Probably nothing.

  * * *

  On the following day there was nothing to put into the ‘Hugh’ box.

  So April emailed Hugh with her daily update, put on her coat, went home to her still messy shared house and ate soup that had come out of a can while her housemates drank wine that came out of a box. Later, when her housemates headed out to a bar, April walked around the corner to her local supermarket and stacked more cans of soup—and lots of other things—until the early hours of the morning.

  The next day, at the Islington end-of-terrace house, April brewed a strong coffee in her Dockers mug, running her thumb across the chip on the handle as she always did. She then placed it on the marble benchtop just where the light hit it, artistically—or as artistically as a coffee mug could be placed—and took a photo.

  Really need this today! #workinghard #ilovecaffeine #tooearly

  Then she scheduled the post for shortly after Perth would be waking up.

  She knew she’d get lots of questions about what she was working so hard on—which was the point. And she’d be vague, and everyone would assume it was something super-exotic—like a fundraising gala event or a photo shoot.

  Not unpacking boxes in a grand old dusty house in London.

  April smiled.

  Part of her wanted to tell her followers exactly what she was doing. To tell them that she actually hadn’t been doing totally fine after Evan had left her, that she’d run away from everyone who loved her and for the first time in her life had realised how privileged she actually was.

  But the rest of her knew she had commitments. Knew that the Molyneux Foundation’s sponsors hadn’t signed up for her to have an early midlife crisis.

  And mostly she knew that she wasn’t ready to make any big decisions just yet.

  She still hadn’t really got her head around the fact that she was single.

  Of course she’d looked at other men since she’d starting going out with Evan. She’d even had men flirt with her—quite often, really. Possibly because of her sparkling personality—more likely because of all the dollar signs she represented.

  But, regardless whether she’d thought some guy was hot, or if some guy had t
hought she was hot—or just rich—it hadn’t mattered. She’d been with Evan. So she’d been able to acknowledge a handsome man objectively and then efficiently deflect any flirting that veered beyond harmless.

  Because she’d always had Evan.

  She’d always loved Evan.

  And now that she didn’t have Evan, meeting another man wasn’t on April’s radar. It hadn’t even been on her radar as something not to do—she hadn’t even thought about it. It had been too impossible.

  Until she’d met Hugh. And then it hadn’t. It hadn’t felt impossible at all.

  But it still was, of course.

  Totally impossible. As she’d reminded herself in Hugh’s flat, she wasn’t going to walk from a fifteen-year relationship into another. And—and this scenario felt far more likely—she definitely wasn’t going to walk from one rejection straight into another one.

  There were lots of things she had learnt she could cope with: having no money, working two jobs—two labour intensive jobs, no less—living in a shared house at age thirty-two and having her family on the other side of the world.

  But she knew utterly and completely that she couldn’t cope with another man rejecting her.

  I don’t love you.

  How could those words still hurt so much?

  She didn’t miss Evan. She understood that their relationship had reached its inevitable conclusion. She definitely didn’t want to be with him any more.

  But... I don’t love you.

  And he never had.

  That pain didn’t just go away.

  * * *

  Hugh was already boiling the kettle in his mother’s kitchen when April arrived the next morning.

  Her gaze flicked over him as she walked into the room, her bag slung over her long coat, her scarf in shades of green today.

  ‘Good morning,’ she said, in that polished, friendly tone he was becoming familiar with. She was good at sounding comfortable even when she wasn’t.

  He could see the questions in her gaze and the instant tension in her stride as she walked towards the bar stools tucked beneath the marble counter.