Catherine Mann - Desired By The Boss

‘I know,’ she said, because of course it was true. But she just couldn’t stop. ‘You know, I don’t have any photos of myself with my mum like this,’ she said conversationally. ‘I know that because my sisters went through all Mum’s old photos when I had my thirtieth birthday party, for one of those photo-board things.’ She swallowed, ignoring Hugh’s glower. ‘I have a couple from my first day of school in Year One, but that’s about it. And I have hardly any photos of myself as a kid with my mum. It was different twenty-five years ago—people didn’t take as many photos. And it was usually Mum who took the photos anyway, rather than being in them.’

Hugh didn’t say anything.

‘I’d love photos of me like this with my mum. In fact I have more photos of me as a kid with my dad—again, because Mum was the photographer. And I don’t even like him. But I love my mum.’ She knew she was rambling, but didn’t stop. ‘So it’s all backwards, really.’

‘You don’t like your dad?’ Hugh asked.

April blinked. ‘No. He left when I was five. I hardly saw him, growing up, and I have nothing to do with him now.’

Hugh nodded. ‘My father did something similar,’ he said. ‘I never saw him again.’

He didn’t elaborate further.

‘That sucks,’ she said.

His lips quirked. ‘Yeah.’

‘But your mum obviously loved you?’

She could see his jaw tense—but then relax. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘She did.’

‘That’s why she took all these photos.’

The tension was instantly back. ‘The number of photos my mother took—and, trust me, within this house there are thousands—is not a reflection of how much she loved me, April. I’d still know she loved me if she hadn’t taken even one. They’re just things.’

April shook her head vigorously. ‘No. They’re not. They’re memories. They’re irreplaceable. What if you ever have kids? Won’t you want to—?’

‘I’m never having kids. And that is definitely none of your business.’

She didn’t understand. She didn’t understand any of this.

But he’d turned, retrieved the box from the floor. He faced her again, gesturing with the box for April to dump the photos inside.

But she couldn’t. She could not.

‘Why are you doing this?’ she asked, still holding the photos tight.

For the first time the steady, unreadable gaze he’d trained on her began to slip. In his gaze—just briefly—there flashed emotion. Flashed pain.

‘I don’t have to explain anything to you, Ms Spencer. All I want is for you to empty this house. That’s it. Empty the house. I don’t require any commentary or concern or—’

‘You want an empty house?’ April interrupted, grasping forcefully on to a faint possibility.

He sighed with exasperation. ‘Yes,’ he said.

‘Well, then,’ she said, with a smile she could tell surprised him. ‘I can work with that.’

‘Work with what?’ His expression was wary.

‘Getting this stuff out of your mother’s house.’ A pause. ‘Just not into a skip.’

‘A storage unit solves nothing. This isn’t about relocating the hoard. I want it gone.’

Again she smiled, still disbelieving, and now she was certain she was right. ‘You’re the CEO of an international software company, right?’ she said.

His eyes narrowed, but he didn’t respond.

‘So why didn’t you think to just scan all this? You could even put it all in the cloud, so you don’t even have a physical hard drive or anything left behind. It would be all gone, the house would be empty, and...’

And you won’t do something you’ll regret for the rest of your life.

But she didn’t say that. Instinctively she knew she couldn’t. She couldn’t give him something to argue with—that he could refute with, You’ve got no idea what you’re talking about.

Which would be true. Or should be true. But it wasn’t. And, no matter how weird that was, and how little she knew about this man, she was certain she was right.

When she looked at Hugh Bennell—or at least when he really looked at her, and didn’t obscure himself behind that indecipherable gaze—she saw so much emotion. So much...more. More than she’d see if he didn’t care.

She was sure there were people out there who truly didn’t care about photos and old school report cards and badly drawn houses with the sun a quarter crescent in the corner.

But one of those people was definitely not standing before her.

His gaze wasn’t shuttered now. In fact she could sense he was formulating all matter of responses from disdain, to anger, to plans for her immediate dismissal.

As every second ticked by April began to realise that she was about to be fired.

But that was okay. At least she’d—

‘That is a possibility,’ he said suddenly. As if he was as surprised by his words as she was.

April grabbed on to them before he could change his mind. ‘Awesome! I can even do it for you—it won’t add much time...especially if you can get one of those scanners you can just feed a whole heap of stuff into at once. And maybe I can take photos of other stuff? Like if I find—’

‘I’ll organise the equipment you need.’

He stepped around April, carrying the box back into the foyer. He dropped it onto the bottom step and April added the pile of photos on top.

She wanted to say something, but couldn’t work out what.

‘Hugh—’

‘It’s late,’ he said. ‘You should go home. See you tomorrow.’

Then, just like that, he left.

THE NEXT AFTERNOON Hugh set up the scanner on the marble kitchen benchtop.

April was just finishing up the second reception room. He could hear the sound of the radio station she listened to above the rustle and thud of items being sorted.

When he’d interrupted her earlier to announce his presence she’d been singing—rather badly—to a song that he remembered being popular when he was back at high school.

She’d blushed when she’d seen him. The pinkening of her cheeks had been subtle—but then, he’d been looking for it, familiar now with the way she seemed to react to him.

He reacted too. As he always did around her. Even when she’d been standing before him, hands on hips, acting as self-designated saviour of old photos, evidence of his lack of artistic ability and irrelevant school reports.

Even then—as he’d struggled with the reality that the distance down that hallway to the skip had been traversed on feet that had felt weighted to the ground with lead—and hated himself for it—he’d reacted to her.

He’d reacted to the shape of her lips, to the way she managed to look so appealing while her hair escaped from its knot atop her head, and to the shape of her waist and hip as she leant against that broom...

And then he’d reacted to her imperious words, admiring her assertiveness even as he’d briefly hated her for delaying him. He’d needed to get that stuff out of the house. Quickly. Immediately. Before he succumbed to inertia like with the other box, which—while no longer on his coffee table—still taunted him from the back of the cupboard in his otherwise spotless spare room.

But then he had succumbed to April’s alternative. At least temporarily.

If it keeps a good employee happy, then what’s the problem? I can just delete it all once she finishes.

That was the conclusion he’d decided he’d come to.

He finished hooking up the scanner to the laptop he’d previously provided for April, then waited as the software was installed.

Footsteps drew his gaze away from the laptop screen.

April stood across from the kitchen bench, smiling again. Sans blush.

She looked confident and capable and in control—as she always did in all but those moments between them he refused to let himself think about.