Desired By The Boss. Catherine Mann

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      They sat together, side by side at the kitchen bench, on pale wooden bar stools, scanning the photographs together.

      They’d quickly fallen into a rhythm—Hugh fed the photos through the scanner and then April saved and filed them.

      Initially she’d attempted to categorise the photos, but Hugh wouldn’t have any of that. So April simply checked the quality of the scan, deleted any duplicates and saved them into one big messy folder.

      Based on the decor of his flat, April would bet that Hugh usually carefully curated his digital photos. He’d give them meaningful file names, he’d file them into sensibly organised folders, and he’d never keep anything blurry or any accidental photos of the sky.

      But she got why he wasn’t doing that today: he was telling himself he was just going to delete them all one day, anyway.

      Was it weird that she could read an almost-stranger so easily? Especially when he was so deliberately attempting to reveal nothing.

      Possibly.

      Or possibly she was just spending too much time with young backpackers she had nothing in common with, pallets of groceries that needed to be stacked and walls of cardboard boxes? And now she was just constructing a connection with this man because in London she had no connections, and she wasn’t very good at dealing with that?

      That seemed more likely.

      But, even so, she liked sitting this close to him. Liked the way their shoulders occasionally bumped, when they’d both act as if nothing had happened.

      Or at least April did.

      What was the reason she’d given her sisters for not...doing anything with Hugh?

      Ah. That was right. She was still technically married.

      And what would she do anyway? She’d had one boyfriend. Ever. She’d kissed one boy—slept with one man. Evan. That was it. Plus, Evan had pursued her. In the way of high school kids. With rumours that had spread through English Lit that Evan liked April. Like, liked, liked her.

      She was ill-equipped to pursue a darkly handsome, intriguing, damaged man.

      But what if she turned to him? Right now? And said his name? Softly...the way she really wanted too? And what if he kissed her? How would his lips feel against hers? What would it be like to kiss another man? To be pressed up tight against another man...?

      ‘April?’

      She jumped, making her bar stool wobble.

      ‘You okay?’

      She put her hands on the benchtop to steady herself. ‘Yes, of course.’

      He looked at her curiously. Not anything like the way he had that day of the stripy top.

      Another of those damn blushes heated her cheeks. It was ridiculous—she was never normally one to blush.

      ‘In my first day-at-school photos, from Year One, I’m always with my sisters. I’m the middle child. That means I’m supposed to have issues, right?’

      She was rambling—needing to fill the tense silence. In addition to never blushing, she never rambled. She had sparkling, meaningless conversation down to an art—she’d been to enough charity functions/opening nights/award galas to learn how to speak to anyone. Intelligently, even.

      Not with Hugh.

      ‘My big sister is a typical first child. Such an over-achiever. I get exhausted just thinking about all she does. Although my baby sister has never really felt like the baby. She’s kind of wise beyond her years—she always has been. But that fits with something I read about third-born children—they’re supposed to be risk-takers, and creative, which totally fits her.’

      She paused, but couldn’t stop.

      ‘You know what middle children are supposed to be? Like, their defining characteristic? Peacemakers. I mean, come on? How boring is that?’

      She was staring at the laptop screen and all the photos of cherubic child-sized Hugh.

      ‘You’re not boring,’ he said.

      April blinked, hardly believing СКАЧАТЬ