One Night with Her Millionaire Boss Read online

  Ned stood at the top of the steps, towering over her, even taller than he looked in the photos, with a strong-jawed face, light brown hair and clear blue eyes. She caught her breath.

  Not boring at all.

  As he took the steps in just a few long-legged strides she stood transfixed at how attractive she found him. Not her type, of course. But he was so big, so strong, so rural. In his dark blue jeans and a blue-and-black checked shirt he was totally in keeping with his surroundings with the confidence of a wealthy man utterly sure of his place in the world.

  Whereas she, scared of dogs, with a wide purple stripe in her hair, wearing skinny black jeans, a flowing black top and ankle boots that were perfectly in keeping with her inner-city Melbourne lifestyle, suddenly felt very, very out of place.

  All the old insecurities she’d battled so hard to overcome threatened to come rushing back.

  She didn’t belong here.

  Especially under false pretences—she had no intention of revealing to Ned Hudson that she’d ever known his brother Wil. She would just be Freya the photographer, do her job efficiently and head back down that driveway as soon as she could.

  * * *

  Ned didn’t know what he had been expecting the replacement photographer to be like—to be honest he hadn’t given her much thought—but Freya Delaney made him look twice. She was about his age, he guessed, petite, slender, arty in the way she dressed and quite lovely—wide cheekbones and a determined jaw saving her from doll-like prettiness. Her pale blonde hair was streaked with purple.

  She took a step towards him. ‘I’m Freya,’ she said. ‘Not Miss Delaney. And I’ll try not to be too frightened of your dog.’

  A slight breeze lifted her long lavender-coloured scarf so it wafted behind her like wings. She laughed as she tried to bat it back into place, twisting and turning as she did so. Her hair shone like a pale gold halo in the morning sun and her eyes gleamed a brilliant shade of blue. Ned wasn’t a fanciful man but for a moment she seemed like some fey, other-worldly creature who had flitted in from the rose garden behind her.

  He shook his head to clear it of the ridiculous thought.

  Where in hell did that come from?

  He held out his hand, ready to begin his ‘welcome to Five and a Half Mile Creek’ spiel but the words choked in his throat and something disconcertingly different came out.

  ‘You like purple,’ he said, indicating the purple van, the streak in her hair, the tiny purple stone in her eyebrow ring, more purple glinting at her earlobes.

  He knew the comment was inane the second that it slipped out. Damn. He could be cursedly awkward when it came to chit-chat. Her eyes widened but she politely shook his hand in a firm grasp for just the required amount of time.

  ‘Yes, I love purple,’ she said with a delightful curving of her lips. ‘It’s the colour of creativity.’ Her voice was slightly husky in an intriguing contrast to her very feminine appearance.

  ‘You’re a photographer—that makes sense.’

  She gave a small, self-deprecating shrug that he found charming. ‘Not all my photography is creative,’ she said. ‘Most of it is commercial, the highlight being a Christmas tree decorated with small cans of cat food instead of baubles.’

  He laughed. ‘Really? That sounds creative to me.’

  Again, that little shrug. ‘It did look rather cute. And I believe it sold a lot of cat food. But the shoot was hardly the highlight of my career. I hope wearing purple will better channel my creativity for my own, more artistic photography.’

  If anyone else had said that, Ned would have snorted his disbelief. But from this woman it seemed to make a curious kind of sense. She put her left hand to a purple-stoned earring without, he thought, realising she was doing so. He noticed one thing she didn’t wear was a purple-stoned ring. Any ring, in fact, on her pale, slender fingers.

  ‘Also my birthday is in February and amethyst is my birthstone.’ She paused, flushed high on her cheekbones. ‘But you don’t want to hear all that.’

  But he did. Suddenly Ned wanted to know more about Freya Delaney. ‘My mother is very creative,’ he said.

  ‘What’s her birthstone?’ Freya asked.

  Now it was his turn to shrug. ‘No idea,’ he said. It wasn’t part of the knowledge bank of a man running thousands of acres devoted to sheep and mixed grains, handling multiple high-stakes investments.

  ‘Your mother is a big name in her field. I looked her up.’

  ‘She’s pretty much retired these days.’

  Ned was proud of his mother’s achievements, the beautiful home she had created for her family on the bones of the historic property. But his mother’s creative drive had not come without its demands. Jacqueline Travis had been a city girl at the top of her career game who had fallen for a country guy—and settling down on Five and a Half Mile Creek hadn’t been without its problems. Ned knew from painful experience how difficult that had been for her, his father, and him as his mother had battled to both keep up her career and make a home out here. Periodically, she had packed up and headed back to Melbourne for weeks on end—leaving her young son torn between his mother and the home he loved.

  Finally, when Ned was nine years old his mother had left his father and wrenched her son away from everything he’d loved to live with her in the city. He could still remember how utterly miserable he’d been away from his pony, his dog, his pet chickens. How impossible it had seemed to have to choose between his mother and his father, both of whom he’d adored.

  ‘According to my boss, Hugh, this house is a wonderful showcase for your mother’s talents. It’s a shame she can’t be here to show me her work.’

  ‘My parents don’t live here any more. They moved to Melbourne. But right now they’re in Tuscany,’ he said.

  ‘Nice,’ Freya said with an undertone of longing in her voice.

  Ned could have just agreed with her, skated over the truth, but he believed in being straightforward. ‘My mother is a breast cancer survivor and—’

  Freya gasped and her hand flew to her mouth. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘Well, not that she’s a survivor but that—’

  He had to clear his throat. ‘She’s been incredibly brave and strong. But she’s in remission, thankfully. Now she and my dad are off to see all the places they couldn’t see when Five and a Half Mile Creek was their life. No opportunity for extended vacations when you’re running a property this size.’

  ‘So now you’re in charge.’

  ‘Yes. I took over from my parents so it’s all on me now. Not that I’m complaining. I love this place.’

  He watched as she looked around her with wide eyes. This was just the house and garden—impressive enough. It was unlikely he’d get the chance to show her there was so much more—the tennis court, swimming pools, an administration office, staff accommodation, historic shearing sheds, horse arena and stables, an airstrip. Thousands of acres of land and the actual creek—really more a small river—from which the property took its name.

  ‘It must be a big job,’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But nothing I can’t handle.’

  The steady hands on the reins.

  That was him: steady, reliable, you-can-count-on-me Ned. No one had ever imagined he would say no to the job of running Five and a Half Mile Creek—even if it meant more time spent behind a computer with spreadsheets than on horseback. Ned had known from an early age that his destiny was to run it. There’d been no choice of career for him. He’d excelled at violin but a role in an orchestra had never been an option. Neither had studying to be a veterinarian. When he’d been asked to step up, he’d said yes.

  He’d only ever strayed from his predestined path once—that crazy time when he’d been so infatuated with Leanne and spent more time in Melbourne with her than he should have. He’d been too blinded by his so-called love for her to n
otice his mother getting frail, his father anxious. His father had actually had to beg him to spend more time at home. When, to Leanne’s intense displeasure, Ned had dragged himself unwillingly back from Melbourne, his parents had sat him down and told him about his mother’s diagnosis.

  Shattered at the news, horrified at his neglect of his duties, he had immediately agreed to move back full-time to Five and a Half Mile Creek while his mother underwent treatment in Melbourne. Foolishly, he’d thought Leanne would come with him, help him heed his wake-up call.

  But she hadn’t seen his mother’s life-threatening cancer as enough reason for her to turn her own life upside down. Certainly not to give him the support he had expected would come freely from the woman he was about to ask to become his wife. He’d never noticed how cold Leanne’s eyes could be until she’d told him to hire someone to run his property because she had no intention of leaving Melbourne. He had ended it with her immediately. It had cut deep when he’d realised she wouldn’t mourn the loss of him as a boyfriend so much as the lavish expenditure she’d seen as her right.

  Ned had regretted that relationship, but had never regretted his decision to do the right thing by his family. Looking back, he wondered whether, when he was a child, his unquestioning acceptance of his destiny was because he had so desperately wanted to please both parents so he could keep them in his life—right here.

  But lately he was beginning to feel constricted. Even his wish-list for a wife put Five and a Half Mile Creek’s needs first. It wasn’t that he wanted to be wild and throw his wonderful life away but sometimes it irked that people seemed to find him so predictable. When had he become like that?

  ‘So you took over from your parents,’ Freya said. ‘Is that why your mother redecorated the house? To mark the new order?’

  ‘It’s a family tradition that when the son—and it’s always been a son—takes over from the father, he puts his own stamp on the place. My mother met my father when he employed her to redecorate. She came out here and—as Dad says—“captivated” his heart.’

  ‘Aww, that’s so romantic,’ Freya said with what seemed like genuine appreciation.

  ‘Love at first sight, according to them both.’ Another reason for him to avoid relationships based on infatuation.

  Head over heels in love.

  He’d learned that expression from the story of his parents’ ‘romantic’ meeting. It had never sounded particularly comfortable to him as a child. And it hadn’t worked out well for his parents; they’d always seemed to be arguing. He would stick his fingers in his ears so he didn’t have to hear their raised, angry voices.

  ‘But it must have been a shock for your mother moving here from Melbourne,’ Freya said. ‘It’s so far away from the city.’

  He detected a little shudder of what could be distaste but might have been trepidation. His mother’s voice echoed in his ears. ‘This place is so far from civilisation.’ It had been a familiar refrain in his earlier years. One he had grown to fear, as it had usually heralded one of his mother’s departures.

  How he’d hated those times. When he was pre-school age, she had taken him with her. That had meant time spent with her parents, who’d had their grandson in their house under sufferance. He could clearly remember how he’d felt like an unwelcome intruder in their house in the upscale suburb of Kew, stuffed with china ornaments just waiting to be knocked over by a lively little boy. Once he’d started school in Hilltop, the nearest town to Five and a Half Mile Creek, he’d been left with his father when his mother went to work in Melbourne.

  While he loved his father, and knew his father loved him, he’d rarely seen him. Running the property was not a nine-to-five job—especially during the years-long drought that had devastated the land. Ned had been placed in the care of a series of nannies ranging from fun and caring, to indifferent, to outright incompetent—none of whom had stayed long. His animals had become his trusted friends and companions. Dogs and horses were so much more reliable than the humans in his life.

  But his mother had eventually come to terms with life on the land and his father had learned to delegate and spend more time with his family. When Ned had grown up, his father had tried to explain to him that his enduring deep love for his mother and hers for him was what had driven them to reach the compromise. Ned had felt uncomfortable discussing his parents’ love life and had wanted to put his fingers in his ears against that too. More recently his dad had brought the subject up again as the reason why he was handing over the reins—so that two people still very much in love could enjoy every remaining minute of their lives together.

  Still, those early painful days when his parents were sorting out their lives were behind much of his criteria for his wife wish-list. Why leave compatibility to chance?

  ‘Without a doubt, it is a long way,’ he said. ‘You must have left the city very early to get here at this time.’ When he visited the city, he cut down the travel time by flying his helicopter or light plane.

  She shook her head and her fine hair fell softly around her face. He decided he liked the purple. ‘Too far for me to drive all that way in one hit and get here ready to work. I left Melbourne yesterday, then stayed last night at a pub in Hilltop.’

  He frowned. ‘You should have let me know. We have a guest cottage. You could have stayed here. It’s very comfortable.’

  She shook her head rather more fiercely than his question warranted. ‘I wouldn’t dream of imposing. The pub was fine. I also have my room booked for tonight as this shoot could run to more than one day.’

  Ned opened his mouth to say next time, before realising there was unlikely to be a next time. Instead he nodded with a non-committal sound.

  ‘I like to work with available light. So I need to get started.’ Her voice was brisk and efficient, with that appealing edge of huskiness.

  ‘Do you need a hand with getting equipment in from your van?’

  ‘Thanks, but not yet,’ she said. ‘I need to assess the shoot first.’

  ‘Then let’s get going,’ he said. Looking after the photographer had seemed like an intrusion on his busy day, but suddenly it seemed it might become the highlight. He realised that these days he could go weeks without seeing anyone other than the people who worked for him. His regular trips to Melbourne to take in a concert or a band had stopped after the Leanne fiasco.

  ‘The house looks amazing. I can’t wait to see inside.’ Freya looked up at him and smiled.

  He was mesmerised. She had a tiny gap between her two front teeth and it made her smile both quirky and sensual. This close, he noticed her eyes were blue with a darker ring around the edge that was almost purple. His gaze held hers for a moment too long yet he found it impossible to drag his eyes away.

  She was beautiful.

  But it wasn’t just that. He had known Freya for all of ten minutes and yet she seemed somehow familiar, as if there was an inevitability about their meeting. Her smile wavered and she frowned, obviously puzzled.

  What the hell?

  Did she think he was hitting on her? He dropped his gaze, took a step back.

  Freya was here to fulfil an assignment on behalf of her boss. She was an employee of both Hugh Tran and of him on behalf of Five and a Half Mile Creek. And he never, ever showed personal interest in an employee.

  His role here was to show her the rooms she had been engaged to photograph and then leave her to it. It was completely irrelevant whether he found her attractive or not.

  More gruffly than he had intended, he asked her to follow him into the house.

  CHAPTER TWO

  FREYA HAD TO force her gaze away from Ned Hudson’s sensational rear view as he strode across the gravel towards the veranda. She didn’t want to appreciate the appeal of those broad shoulders, his athletic stride, his impressive butt hugged by blue jeans. Most of all, she didn’t want to acknowledge her instant and unsettling attr
action to him.

  For a long moment just then her eyes had locked with his and she had seen an echo of the same puzzlement she felt at the thought their meeting was somehow...significant.

  It was a crazy thought and she had to shake herself mentally to get rid of it. For one thing she didn’t feel comfortable around this type of man. Ned Hudson was the heir to property and wealth equivalent to a small principality. The ‘squattocracy’ they called families like the Hudsons, in a play on the word aristocracy.

  Their ancestors in the early days of the Australian colony had either been granted or had grabbed vast tracts of land—by squatting on it—that they had tenaciously held onto over the years. There wasn’t supposed to be a class system in Australia but people like the Hudsons were considered to be blue bloods, as close as Aussies got to landed gentry.

  The young men she’d met from that background had been arrogant, with an overblown sense of entitlement. When she was twenty-four, she’d dated one of their kind. She’d thought Henry had been different, and had fallen for him. His snobby mother had openly disapproved of her. But Henry had stood up for her. Until she’d confided in him about her background: daughter of a seventeen-year-old single mum, brought up by her grandparents until they died, then taken into state care at the age of twelve. Everything she had achieved had come from her own hard work and initiative.

  Henry had recoiled from her revelation. That she was a photographer made her cool, but her past made her decidedly uncool. He’d stuttered as he’d made it clear that, while what they had together was fun, it was important he marry a woman from the same background as his. She’d walked away, fun over.

  Not that Freya ever intended to get married. She refused to give another person—especially a man—power over her life, and certainly not over her heart. She wasn’t ashamed of her past; her grandparents had been good people. But the implication that she didn’t meet Henry’s standards had stung just the same. From then on she’d stuck to dating her own inner-city, creative kind. At least she knew the possible relationship hiccups she faced with those guys. Being not good enough wasn’t one of them.