Hired: The Boss's Bride. Ally Blake

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      Cruising the backstreets of inner-east Melbourne in her very hot, very pink, very expensive-to-maintain Corvette, Veronica slipped down a gear, slowed, pushed her sunglasses onto her forehead, and made sure she was in the right place before curving neatly and noisily onto High Street, Armadale.

      Her hair flapped about her ears as she trundled at a snail’s pace behind a tram. Together they passed historic shopfronts, antique stores, upmarket boutiques and art galleries nestled comfortably next to one another along the elegant oak-lined street. Four-wheel drives lined up nose to tail with German-made luxury cars and the people stepping in and out of them all looked as if they’d just come from the salon via a shopping trip in Milan.

      ‘You’re not on the Gold Coast any more, Ms Bing,’ Veronica said out loud, before sliding her sunglasses back into place.

      The tram creaked to a stop, and so did her Corvette. Veronica let her head fall against the headrest and looked up into the bright blue sky. A web of tram cables glittered over her head and she had to blink against the bright sunlight flickering through the wide gaps.

      She sniffed deep, letting the sights and sounds of Melbourne, the town in which she’d been born, come back to her after a good six years away. She wondered how it would treat her return: with wide-open arms, or with a cliquish turn of its graceful head?

      She hoped the former because the job she was in town to interview for—in-house auctioneer for an established and esteemed art gallery—sounded just perfect. It was temporary, it was immediate and it meant working with a close friend she hadn’t seen in yonks. And super especially it was located at the other end of the country from her last job. And thus her last boss.

      Thoughts of her dash from Queensland with nothing but a suitcase and her car and the exultant resignation message she’d left on Geoffrey’s answering machine, made her next breath in a tad shaky. But not because she was worried; because she was free.

      So what if she was jobless and homeless? So what if this job opportunity Kristin had mentioned in passing on the phone the week prior was the only opportunity currently on her horizon? So what if her next car payment was due in less than a week and her bank balance was laughable?

      She caught her reflection in the rear-vision mirror and checked her lipstick. ‘No pressure,’ she said, a wry smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.

      The tram heaved to a start. Veronica saw her chance to slip past while the cumbersome trolley slowly got up to speed, then she purred off down the road on the lookout for what Kristin had described as a two-storey, redbrick building, the façade of which was reminiscent of an old fire station. The Hanover House Art and Antique Gallery.

      * * *

      Mitch Hanover paced behind the oversized reception desk of stately Hanover House, the enduring antique and art auction business his family had owned for generations.

      ‘So what is the time?’ his assistant, Kristin, asked.

      He looked up from the watch he’d been staring at for the past thirty-odd seconds and stared through the large arched front windows to the street outside. ‘It’s late. She’s late. I thought you told me this friend of yours was a pro.’

      Kristin angled her hip against the edge of the desk and glowered at him. ‘I said she was the answer to all your dreams. If you saw “pro” in that, then who am I to argue?’

      He growled at the back of his throat, and then gave up when he remembered who he was talking to. ‘You do realise she’s my last interview, do you not? We are going to have to choose a new auctioneer by the end of today or next week’s pre-show will have to be cancelled.’

      He didn’t need to add that if the pre-show was cancelled, the show itself would soon follow. And after that would fall the business itself. Everyone in the building knew it. Knew it, dreaded it, yet somehow expected it.

      Kristin, imperturbable as always, grinned. ‘Don’t panic, Mitch. She’s perfect. So perfect that within the hour you’ll be eating humble pie. You just wait and see.’

      He narrowed his eyes, his hogwash radar prickling feverishly in the back of his head until it resulted in a headache.

      Trying to distract himself, he picked up and began playing with an ancient fountain pen that looked as if it had seen better days. Better centuries, in fact. Why people liked collecting relics of the past, he had no idea. The future was his game.

      He put the pen back where he found it.

      ‘And stop frowning,’ Kristin said. ‘Unfair as it is on the whole men age far better than women but that doesn’t mean you want to hurry the process.’

      ‘Has it ever occurred to you that I only frown when you’re in the room?’

      ‘Never. You need a massage. Or a week off. Ever been camping? Communing with nature can be very relaxing. No? Then how about dinner with someone who can string a sentence together without prefacing every other word with an “um”. Serial-dating walking clichés will age you even more than frowning overly much ever could. I read that somewhere recently.’

      ‘Maybe you’re the one who ought to be looking for a new job,’ he said with the kind of humourless smile that usually sent his minions running to their desks in fear.

      Kristin merely blinked. ‘Why on earth would I do that?’

      Mitch gave up and ran a hand over his forehead, surprised to find just how deep the furrows in fact were. ‘When’s my next appointment in the city?’

      Kristin poked at some buttons on her BlackBerry. Her eyes widened a tad, but when she looked back to him she was the picture of innocence. ‘You have plenty of time. Relax.’

      Relax? As if he could relax. He’d been blithe for far too long, spending years in London greedily gobbling up emerging markets, IT and telecommunications companies into the Hanover Enterprises fold and all the while Hanover House, the one-time jewel in the crown of the Hanover family business, the business his parents had poured their hearts and souls into before retirement, had been run deep into the ground by lax and old-fashioned management.

      He felt the imminent failure of the foundation business like a heavy weight upon his already overloaded shoulders. Now he was back, now he had nothing tying him to London anymore, now he was CEO of Hanover Enterprises, he couldn’t relax while something his parents loved so dearly upped and died.

      The growl of a high-end sports car split the taut silence and he glanced up to see a hot-pink Corvette slip into a tiny no-parking space right in front of the gallery.

      ‘Idiot,’ he said beneath his breath, the expulsion of the word relieving his stress a little bit. The council was so hot in this part of town the guy’d be towed within the hour. He knew well enough. It had happened to him twice.

      The engine cut off, leaving the blare of some awful eighties party track pulsating through the gallery windows before that too shut off, leaving the room filled with its usual musty silence.

      Kristin suddenly made an excited squeak and pushed past him as she ran outside. She hit the Corvette and leant in so far to hug the occupant her feet came off the ground and Mitch had to avert his gaze so as not to see if her stockings were full or held up by suspenders.

      Then it hit him. The idiot driver had to be Veronica Bing. His final СКАЧАТЬ