‘Me too,’ James said.
Hugh pulled a face as he sat down. ‘That makes three of us.’
‘You’re joking!’ James exclaimed. ‘You! Work? What’s happened? Someone die?’
‘Not quite. But close.’ Hugh picked up his glass and downed a long, cool swallow of beer before continuing. ‘Dad’s off second-honeymooning with wife number five and I’m in charge of the ship.’
‘Should we sell our shares in Parkinson Media?’ James quipped.
Hugh shrugged. ‘I shouldn’t think so. No one could make worse business decisions than dear old Dad when he’s consumed by unbridled lust. Who knows? By the time he comes back down to earth and wants to take the helm again, I might have recouped a few of the billions he’s frittered away in the name of love. You might have forgotten, Jimmy boy, but I was dux of our school. I also graduated from uni with honours degrees in economics and corporate law. I’m not just a pretty face, you know.’
‘Now we know why your mind wasn’t on your golf today,’ said an enlightened Russell. ‘So when did all this happen?’
‘Last weekend.’
‘No wonder you’re looking a bit frazzled. I’ll bet it’s a long time since you’ve done a full day’s work.’
‘It’s been a while,’ Hugh admitted, not willing to confess that there’d been a few weeks leading up to Christmas last year when he’d gone into the office almost every day and worked his silver tail off.
The reason for this episode of uncharacteristic diligence had been extremely perverse: his PA.
Hugh hadn’t realised when he’d hired Kathryn Hart several months earlier that he might one day find her so damned sexy.
She wasn’t conventionally beautiful, certainly not pretty. Her facial features were too large, her cheekbones too high and her mouth too wide. He also hadn’t noticed her voluptuous figure at the time of her one and only interview. He’d been concentrating solely on what was contained in her excellent résumé.
Of course, he’d been in a bit of a rush at the time, his father’s decision to place him in charge of the publishing arm of Parkinson’s having come right out of the blue. Hugh hadn’t anticipated taking over anything till his father expired. Whilst Richard—Dickie—Parkinson had made sure over the years that his son and heir had had a sprinkling of experience in every facet of his very diverse company, he was not the kind of man to give over power easily.
Surprisingly, Hugh had not been pleased at this unexpected responsibility.
Not willing to totally give up the easy-going lifestyle he’d become accustomed to, Hugh had immediately sought an assistant with superb skills in the publishing field, someone competent and decisive who could cover for him when he wasn’t in the office. Kathryn Hart had seemed perfect, a cool customer who wasn’t in any way flirtatious with him, as some of the other candidates had been.
He hadn’t anticipated that Miss Capability would practically bully him into doing the job entrusted to him, or that he would become increasingly consumed with unwanted desire for her.
That was the perverse part. Because there wasn’t anything he could do about his feelings for her.
Why? Because by the time he realised he fancied her, she was engaged. Shortly to be married, in fact.
Although Hugh was considered a conscienceless rake by all and sundry, the truth was he was quite sensitive to other people’s feelings and would never pursue another man’s woman. Sex, for him, was high on his list of life’s little necessities. But only when it came without complications or consequences.
If Kathryn had been free, Hugh would simply have seduced her, making his daily trips to the office events to be anticipated with pleasure, not dread. As it was, he was forced to endure his growing desire for his PA with a level of physical frustration previously unknown to him. He’d even lost interest in other females, suddenly finding them boring in the extreme. There was only one woman he wanted right now.
And for the first time in his life, he couldn’t have her.
‘Have you moved into your dad’s penthouse as well?’ James asked.
Hugh shook his head. ‘He offered. But I declined. I prefer my own place at Bondi.’
Which he’d bought several years earlier with money he’d accumulated on the stock market, with no help from his father, financial or otherwise. He’d used the cash he’d earned fruit-picking during several summers in his university years when his friends had thought he was overseas, skiing in Europe. Instead, he’d been working his way around Australia, proving to himself that he didn’t need his father’s money to survive and that he was capable of working just as hard as anyone else.