Behind The Billionaire's Guarded Heart. Leah Ashton

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СКАЧАТЬ she could even ask herself this question. But she did. Again and again:

      Who was she?

      This woman Evan hadn’t loved enough. This woman who had been oblivious to the end of her marriage.

      Who was she?

      She was thirty-two, single and had never worked a day in her life.

      Her home had been a wedding gift from her mother.

      Everything she’d ever bought had been with a credit card linked to the Molyneux Trust. She had been indulged by a family who probably didn’t think her capable of being anything but a frivolous socialite. Why would they? She’d applied herself to nothing else. Her days had been filled with shopping and expensive charity luncheons. Her evenings with art gallery openings and luxurious fundraising auctions. She’d spent her spare time taking photos of herself and posting them online, so millions of people could click ‘like’ and comment on her fabulous perfect life.

      What a sham. What a joke.

      She hadn’t earned a cent of the fortune she’d flouted to the world.

      And her husband hadn’t loved her.

      She was a fraud.

      But no more.

      April smoothed the charcoal fabric of her pencil skirt over her thighs. It wasn’t designer. In fact it had probably cost about five per cent of the cost of her favourite leather tote bag—which she’d left back home in Perth.

      She’d left everything behind.

      She’d booked a one-way ticket to London and opened up a new credit card account at her bank—politely declining the option to have the balance cleared monthly by the Molyneux Trust. From now on she was definitely paying her own way.

      She’d also located her British passport—a document she had thanks to her mother’s dual citizenship of both Australia and the UK.

      Only then had she told her family what she was doing.

      And then she’d ignored every single one of their concerns and hopped onto her flight the next day.

      Now here she was. Three days in London.

      She’d found a flat. She’d bought reasonably priced clothes for the first time in her life. She’d researched the heck out of the environmental sustainability consulting firm where she was about to have an interview.

      Oh—as she noted her long ponytail cascading over the shoulder of her hound’s-tooth coat—she’d also dyed her hair brown.

      She felt like a different person. Like a new person.

      She even had a new name, of sorts.

      The name that was on her birth certificate and her passport: April Spencer.

      Like her sisters, she’d made the choice to use her mother’s surname within a few years of her father leaving them. But she’d never bothered having it formally changed.

      Turned out that had now come in handy.

      Today she didn’t feel like April Molyneux, the billionaire mining heiress whose life had collapsed around her.

      Today she was April Spencer, and today she had a job interview.

      And for the first time in six weeks she felt good.

      * * *

      As Hugh probably should’ve expected, it had rained through the remainder of September and then most of October. So it was a cool but clear November morning when he retrieved the tin of black paint from beneath his stairs and headed out from his basement to the front door of the main house.

      It was just before sunrise, and even on a workday Islington street was almost deserted. A couple walking a Labrador passed by as he laid out his drop cloth, and as he painted the occasional jogger, walker or cyclist zipped past—along with the gradually thickening traffic.

      It didn’t take long to paint the door: just a quick sand-down, a few minor imperfections in the woodwork to repair, then a fresh coat of paint.

      Now it just needed to dry.

      The door had to stay propped open for a few hours before he could safely close it again. He’d known this, so he’d planned ahead and dumped his backpack—which contained his laptop—in the hallway before he’d started work. Now he stepped inside, his work boots loud on the blue, cream and grey geometric tessellated tile entryway.

      He yanked off his boots, grabbed his laptop out of his bag and then on thick socks padded over to the grand staircase ahead of him. To his left was the first of two reception rooms on the ground floor—but he wasn’t going to work in there. Instead he settled on a stair third from the bottom, rested his laptop on his jeans and got to work.

      Or at least that was the plan.

      Instead his emails remained unread, and the soft beep of instant message notifications persisted but were ignored.

      Who was he kidding? He was never going to get any work done in here.

      It was impossible when his attention remained on insignificant details: the way the weak morning sunlight sauntered through the wedged-open door to mingle with the dust he’d disturbed. The scent of the house: cardboard packing boxes, musty air and windows closed for far too long. The light—or lack of it. With every door but the front door sealed shut, an entryway he remembered as bright with light seemed instead gloomy and...abandoned.

      Which, of course, it was.

      He hadn’t stepped foot in here since the day he’d moved into the basement.

      Back then—three years ago—it had been too hard. He hadn’t been ready to deal with this house.

      Hugh stood up, suddenly needing to move. But not out through the front door.

      Instead he went to the internal door only a few steps away and with a firm grip twisted the brass knob and yanked the door open.

      He hadn’t realised he’d been holding his breath—but he let it out now in a defeated sigh. As if he’d expected to see something different.

      But he’d known what was in here.

      Once, this room had been where his mother and her second husband had hosted their guests with cups of tea and fancy biscuits.

      That would be impossible now. If any antique furniture remained, it was hidden. Completely. By boxes. Boxes that filled the room in every direction—stacked neatly like bricks as tall as he was—six foot and higher.

      Boxes, boxes, boxes—so many he couldn’t even begin to count.

      Hugh reached out to touch the nearest box. It sat on a stack four high, its plain cardboard surface slightly misshapen by whatever was crammed within it.

      Some of the many boxes that surrounded it—beneath, beside and beyond—were occasionally labelled unhelpfully: purple treasures...sparkly things.

      Others—the СКАЧАТЬ