Behind the Billionaire's Guarded Heart

by Leah Ashton

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Hugh said. ‘Not now.’

  ‘No,’ April said. ‘I know.’

  For a while they both stood together in silence.

  Finally April stepped forward. On tiptoes, she pressed a kiss to Hugh’s cheek.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered in his ear, just as he’d murmured so intimately to her on so many other occasions. ‘But I promise you I meant what I said. I was more me with you than I’ve ever been. In that way I never lied to you.’

  Then she collected her packed overnight bag from a side table and headed for the door.

  ‘Just finish up today,’ he said, sounding as if it was an afterthought. ‘I’ll pay you your two weeks’ notice. Donate it to the Molyneux Foundation—I don’t care. But I don’t want to see you again.’

  April nodded, but didn’t turn around.

  Tears stung her eyes. Pain ravaged her heart.

  Oh. Finally she recognised those feelings.

  What they represented. Only they were different this time. Amplified by something she couldn’t define, but distinctly new, distinctly more than she’d experienced before.

  What she was feeling was love.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  One week later

  HUGH SAT DOWN at his desk and set his first tea of the day carefully onto a coaster.

  It was raining, and the people walking along the footpath above him were rushing across the wet pavement.

  As always, he checked his to-do list, which he’d prepared the night before.

  Except—he hadn’t.

  The notepad instead listed yesterday’s tasks. Mostly they were ticked off, but the remainder had definitely not been transcribed into a new list for today. There was a scrawl in the corner which he’d scribbled down during yesterday’s late-afternoon conference call...but it was indecipherable now that he’d forgotten its context.

  Also, surely he’d received an email about something he needed to action today? He always added such tasks to his list. He liked everything to be in one place.

  He opened up his email, searching for that half-forgotten message in his inbox. Unusually, the screen was full of emails—many unread. Time had got away from him yesterday, so he spent a few minutes now, filing and then responding to the emails that had been delivered overnight.

  Just as he remembered he was supposed to be looking for the email with information about today’s action, a little reminder box popped up in the right-hand corner of his screen: he had a conference call in five minutes.

  He had a moment of panic as he wondered what was expected of him at this meeting—he was completely unprepared—but then he remembered. It was a pitch for a totally new app concept—something he would need to approve before it could begin formal analysis, research and requirements-gathering.

  So he was fine. He hadn’t forgotten to prepare because he hadn’t needed to.

  He took a long, deep breath.

  What was wrong with him?

  He was all over the place: an impossibility for Hugh Bennell. He was always structured, always organised, always in control.

  Except when he wasn’t.

  Hugh dismissed the errant thought. He was in control. He was just...temporarily out of sorts. His mother’s house was still half full of her hoard, following the termination of April’s employment. The weight that had lifted as he’d watched the hoard being dismantled and exiting the house had returned. Oppressive and persistent.

  The termination of April’s employment.

  As if that was really what had happened.

  Again the little reminder box popped up—this one prompting him to enter the meeting. He clicked the ‘Join’ button and immediately voices filled the air around him as people greeted each other, punctuated by electronic beeps as each attendee entered the virtual meeting room.

  As always, everyone in the meeting appeared in a little window to the right of his screen. Some were talking, some had their eyes on their computers, a few were looking at their phones. Of course there was, as usual, a generic grey silhouette labelled ‘Hugh Bennell’ in place of the live video feed of himself.

  He wasn’t chairing this meeting, so he sat back as the group was called to order and the agenda introduced. First up was a staff member he didn’t recognise: a junior member of the research and development team.

  She was young, looked fresh out of uni, with jet-black hair and stylishly thick-rimmed glasses.

  She was also nervous.

  She was attempting to be confident, but a nervous quiver underscored her words. She was sharing her screen with the group, showcasing mock-ups and statistics along with competitors’ offerings that didn’t cover the opportunity she suggested they could capture. But she was still visible in a smaller window, deliberately glancing to her camera as she spoke, as if she was attempting to make eye contact with the group.

  Or with the rest of the group. She couldn’t meet Hugh’s gaze, because black electrical tape still covered his camera lens. But of course he was the one she was presenting to. He was the one who had the power to approve or reject her idea. He’d listen to the other heads of department to gather their thoughts, but ultimately it was up to him.

  The woman presenting knew that, too.

  And she was presenting to a faceless grey blob.

  He reached forward and peeled the tape off the camera. A moment later he clicked the little video camera icon that would connect his camera feed to the rest of the meeting.

  A second later, the presenter stopped talking.

  She was just looking at him, jaw agape.

  The rest of the group seemed equally flummoxed.

  Hugh shrugged, then smiled. ‘I’m nodding as you speak,’ he said, ‘because you’re doing a good job. I thought it would help if you could see that.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, immediately. ‘It definitely does. Thank you.’

  Then she started talking again, her voice noticeably stronger and more confident.

  Later, once he’d approved the new app concept and wrangled his email inbox and to-do list back into order, he headed into the kitchen for another cup of tea.

  Why, after so many years, had he turned on his camera?

  Why today? And—more importantly—why was he okay about it? It should have felt significant. Or scary, even. After all, he’d been hiding behind that tape for so very long.

  Instead it just felt like exactly the right thing to do.

  He had nothing to hide. He wasn’t about to invite all his staff over to his place for Friday night drinks or anything—ever—but still...

  Revealing himself to his team, even in this small way, had to be a good thing. Revealing himself and his house.

  It felt good, actually. Great, really. As if part of that weight on his shoulders had lifted.

  Because nothing had happened. Nothing bad, anyway. Something good, definitely. The vibe of the meeting had shifted with his appearance—there’d been more questions and more discussion. It had felt collaborative, not directive as he’d so often felt in his role.

  The risk had been worth it.

  Unlike other risks he’d taken recently.

  The kettle whistled as it boiled and he left his teabag to brew while he headed for the spare room, so he could cross off that forgotten emailed task he’d eventually added to his to-do list. It hadn’t even been work-related in the end—it had just been a reminder to check if he still had the original pedals from his mountain bike, as one of the guys from his cycling group needed some.

  However, it wasn’t the container of bike parts his gaze was drawn to when he opened the cupboard door, but the simple cardboard box that sat, forgotten, on the floor.

  The original ‘Hugh’ box. Complete with two faded photos of him with his mother, a crumpled birthday card, an old
film canister and that awful finger-painted bookmark he’d made in nursery.

  He picked up the bookmark and turned it over and over aimlessly with his fingers. It was just a bookmark. It wasn’t anything special. He didn’t remember his mother using it, but she would have—just as she’d used or displayed all of his primitive artwork and sculptures when he was growing up.

  The bookmark didn’t stand out as special, or different. Or worth keeping, really.

  But April had asked the question anyway. Despite his clear directions, despite his prickliness and impatience when it came to the hoard he’d so long refused to deal with. And by asking the question April had confronted him with the hoard. She’d forced him to engage and to make decisions.

  She’d sensed that he needed to. That if he sat by passively as the hoard disappeared he would be left with a lifetime of regret.

  And she’d been right.

  He wouldn’t keep everything. He might not even keep the bookmark. But he realised now that he needed to make choices. That he needed to pay attention to his mother’s treasures and identify his own.

  Because there were some there. Reminders and mementos of the mother he’d loved with all his heart. And without April they would have been gone for ever.

  He bent down and picked up the box. He carried it back into the kitchen, placing it on the benchtop as he fished the teabag out of his mug. He sat on one of the bar stools, staring at the box, thinking as he drank.

  He’d spent the week angry because the one woman he’d ever let into his life didn’t actually exist. April Spencer had been a fraud, and no more than a facade for a spoiled, rich, selfish woman who enjoyed playing games with people’s lives.

  But that wasn’t true. That wasn’t even close to true.

  Yes, she’d lied. And it still hurt that the one woman he’d ever trusted could have treated him that way.

  But—as she’d asked him—what other choice had she had?

  He’d been up-front with all his rules and regulations, and with his immovable view on relationships. And, given he’d spent so much of his life building up barriers between himself and the world, was it fair to be surprised that April hadn’t immediately torn down her own?

  He recognised what she was doing with her April Spencer persona now: she was being an authentic, independent version of herself, without the context of her wealth or her family which he realised must colour every interaction in her life.

  They weren’t so different, really. They were both hiding a version of themselves.

  April had been hiding the old version of herself—the moneyed, privileged socialite, out of touch with reality. Yet he’d met the real April: the woman who’d challenged him, who’d made him laugh, and who had made him want to get out of his house and into the real world just so he could share it with her.

  The woman who’d cared enough about a still grieving, complicated stranger to save a child’s bookmark when it would have been so much easier to throw it away.

  Yes, she’d hidden her old self—but she couldn’t have been more honest when it counted.

  He, however, had been hiding for a lot longer than April. Hiding in his house, in seclusion, behind self-imposed rules and regulations and the piece of tape obscuring his camera.

  He’d been hiding his true self until April came along.

  He realised now—too late—that everything important in their relationship remained unchanged despite April’s disclosure. April Molyneux or April Spencer—she was still the same woman.

  The woman he loved.

  He picked up his phone.

  * * *

  The interview had felt as if it would never end.

  April sat at a narrow table that looked out over the Heathrow runway, her boots hooked into the footrest of the tall stool she sat upon.

  Her impatience wasn’t the interviewer’s fault, however.

  ‘Thank you,’ April said, briskly. ‘I look forward to reading it.’

  ‘It’ being the glossy magazine that was included in Perth’s Saturday newspaper. This was a great opportunity for the Molyneux Foundation—she needed to remember that.

  The interviewer thanked her again, and then finally hung up.

  Phone still in hand, April rubbed her temples. She felt about a hundred years old—as if this week, like the interview, would never, ever end.

  But of course it would. No matter how hard each day was, inevitably it eventually faded into night and a new day would begin. She’d learnt that when Evan had left her.

  She’d learnt it again now that...

  She closed her eyes. God, how could she possibly compare one week with Hugh to fifteen years with Evan? It shouldn’t be possible.

  And yet she hurt. Badly.

  On that awful Monday she’d been a zombie as she’d finished up as well as she could upstairs, sorting through half-finished boxes, leaving detailed hand-over notes for whoever Hugh hired next.

  She hadn’t cried then. She’d thought maybe she shouldn’t. After all, it had only been a week. Surely it wasn’t appropriate to cry after such a short period of time?

  April had no idea if there were rules about such things.

  But in the end, she had cried. Silently, curled up in her single bed under her cheap doona, horrified at the prospect that her roommate would hear her.

  Crying hadn’t really helped, but she was still glad she had.

  The next day—before she’d told her sisters what had happened—she’d gone for a walk. She’d walked to the supermarket where she’d stacked shelves even that very night before and resigned.

  Then, outside the shopfront, with the large red-and-blue supermarket logo in the frame, she’d taken a selfie.

  And uploaded it to Instagram.

  I have so much to tell you! #london #newjob #newhair #newbeginnings

  And so she’d taken control of her account, sharing with her million-odd followers over the next forty-eight hours what she’d really been doing these past few months.

  She’d caught the Tube to take a photo of the glitzy apartment she’d originally rented, she’d printed out all her polite ‘we regret to inform you that you weren’t our preferred candidate’ emails and asked a random person on the street to take her photo as she waved them in the air. She’d shared the balance of her embarrassing credit card debt, and then she’d taken a photo of her scratchy, terrible bedlinen, and shared a recipe for a tomato soup and pasta ‘meal’ that had helped her spend as little as possible on food.

  She’d shared how it had felt to be rejected for so many jobs—how it had felt not to have the red carpet laid out for her as it had been so often in her life. She’d shared her shame at her lack of understanding in her privileged life, and the satisfaction she had felt from earning her very first pay-cheque.

  She’d posted about being lonely—being alone—for the first time in her life. About learning how to clean a shower, and discovering muscles she’d thought she never had as she’d stacked supermarket shelves.

  And she had apologised for not telling her followers any of this earlier, and written that she hoped they would understand. She had told them that she had needed to do this—had needed to be April without the power of her surname carrying her through her life. That she had needed to do it on her own.

  What she hadn’t shared was Hugh.

  She placed her phone back on the table, belatedly noticing a missed call notification.

  Hugh had called her.

  The realisation hit her like a lightning bolt.

  But why?

  He must have called during her hour-long phone interview, but he hadn’t left a message.

  Should she call him?

  She twisted in her seat to check the flight information screen.

  There was no time. Her flight was boar
ding soon—she needed to head for the gate.

  As she strode through the terminal she wondered why he would have called. It had been a week since she’d last seen him, and they’d spoken not a word. Why would they? Hugh couldn’t have made it any clearer: I don’t want to see you again.

  So why call?

  A silly little hopeful part of her imagined he’d changed his mind, but she immediately erased that suggestion.

  Hadn’t she learnt anything? She’d already worked it out that first night, as she’d wrapped herself in her doona, that it was just like with Evan. Hugh simply hadn’t loved or even wanted her enough to see beyond her past and her good fortune in being born into one of the wealthiest families in the world. To see who she actually was—the woman she had been with him.

  She arrived at the gate.

  Boarding hadn’t yet started, and other passengers filled nearly all the available seats. With surely only a few minutes before boarding, April didn’t bother searching for a seat. Instead she opened up Instagram, intending to respond to some of her latest comments. This past week her followers’ ‘likes’ and comments had exploded. It would seem that her riches-to-rags experience had struck a chord. Of course now she needed to harness that engagement and monetise it for the foundation. Hence the interview and—

  ‘April,’ said a low, delicious voice behind her.

  She spun round, unable to believe her eyes.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ April asked Hugh.

  He shrugged. ‘I needed to talk to you. When you didn’t answer your phone I came here. Thanks to that selfie you posted I knew where to find you. Had to buy a ticket I won’t use, though, to get to the gate—which was annoying.’

  ‘You follow my feed?’

  He shook his head. ‘No. Not my thing. But it came in useful today.’

  April needed a moment to wrap her head around his unexpected appearance. She used that moment simply to look at Hugh. At his still too long dark hair, his at least two-day-old stubble, his hoodie, jeans and sneakers.

  He looked as he had nearly every time April had ever seen him.

  He also looked utterly gorgeous.