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.
Again, questions flickered in his brain. Who was she, really? How had she ended up working here?
But that didn’t matter. Their relationship was purely professional.
Really?
He mentally shook his head.
It was.
Belatedly he realised she was holding those damn photos.
‘Shall we get started?’ she asked.
This was when he should go. From her CV, he knew April was computer savvy—she’d work it out.
Instead, he held out his hand. ‘Here, let me show you.’
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