Listen, Lulu. That man who broke your heart? I’m working for him.
Slightly more honest.
Or perhaps …
I’m in league with the devil.
Yep. That about summed up how she felt. The visit to The Meadows with Callum that morning had been wonderful and breathtaking and confusing. When she had been lying on the grass staring up into the brilliant sky, there had been a moment. She’d goosebumped when he’d looked at her, long and intense and brooding. God yes, it was a brooding moment. She’d seen it in movies, but a look that powerful had never been aimed at her before. She was sure of it. It was almost as if he was imagining what she looked like naked. And when he’d turned his gaze on her, she’d wanted to be naked for him, more than any damn thing she’d ever wanted in her life.
A slight exaggeration maybe. She’d wanted her own business more than anything she’d ever wanted in her life. But great sex was number two with a bullet. Hell, even mediocre sex would be number two with a bullet after her years of born-again virginity.
She had to tell her sister. Maybe telling Lulu would help with the lust that was coursing through her, that she’d felt lying there on the grass as Callum had looked down at her, that had flooded her when she’d touched his arm on the stone steps.
Ava flopped onto her sofa and rested her feet on the coffee table, pushing aside a pile of gardening books with her toes. She dialled the number. She wouldn’t be able to sleep until she’d told Lulu. Who was she kidding? Sleep? After being gazed upon by the gorgeous Callum Malone? She’d be tossing and turning all night anyway.
When the call connected, Ava took a deep breath.
‘Hey, Ava,’ her sister answered.
‘Hey, Lu.’
‘What are you up to?’ Lulu sounded carefree and chirpy, which was so lovely to hear that Ava teared up a little.
‘Me? I’m working hard. You know how it goes. What about you?’
‘Well,’ Lulu sighed dreamily. ‘Everything’s good. I have some news, actually.’
Ava held her breath. The words ‘I have some news’ were usually followed by ‘I’m pregnant.’
‘You do?’ Ava squeaked.
‘Michael and I are having a weekend away. It’s all very exciting.’
Good. This was good. Ava knew it had become serious between Lulu and Michael, but they were still dating, and Ava guessed the trip might be the two of them taking the next step.
‘How exciting. Where are you going?’
‘That’s the best thing. I don’t know! Michael’s being so romantic about it all. He won’t tell me anything. He wants it all to be a complete surprise.’
Lulu was positively bubbling. Her little sister liked being looked after by men. She always had. It wasn’t a manipulative character trait or a personality flaw. She was born that way. She had always been the kind of girl, and then woman, who men simply wanted to look after. She was slight and blonde, with big eyes and a winning smile, and the combination of all that coquettishness drew men like moths to a flame. Ava had always figured it roused that caveman thing in them. That only thing Ava had ever roused in men was jealousy when she’d beat them at sport. She’d whipped the butts of boys throughout her school life: at cricket, tennis and basketball. A tear to her cruciate ligament when she was at university had put an end to her sporting career and she’d focused her energies on her studies, and then on her work. Maybe it was all that confidence and strength she projected, but men never seemed to think she needed looking after. Which she didn’t, of course, but it would have been nice occasionally to have someone do things for her.
Like cook her dinner, for example.
Callum. She shook off the traitorous thought. ‘So Michael’s doing all the planning, huh? Where do I get me a man like that?’
‘I’m lucky, Ava.’ Lulu let out a deep breath. ‘I know the past year or so I’ve been a sad sack and I haven’t been the best company or anything like a half-decent sister to you. I’ve had so many things to work out. I’ve had lots of time to look back and think about what happened and … I just want to say … I know you never wanted me to marry Callum.’
The truth of it was like an electric shock to Ava’s heart and she sat bolt upright. ‘God, Lulu … that’s not true.’
‘C’mon. I know you never liked him. From the first day I brought him home to meet you and Mum and Dad, I could tell.’
‘Well …’ Ava floundered.
‘You were kinda bitchy,’ Lulu said with a laugh. ‘And I loved that you turned all big sister, that you were trying to protect me. I really did. I know how excruciating it must have been for you to never—not once, ever—say a word.’
Lulu was right. Ava had never said a word, the reasons for which were so damn complicated. ‘It was your heart and your choice,’ Ava finally said, trying to keep her voice flat and unemotional.
Lulu sighed. ‘There was nothing you could have said anyway that would have stopped me, but I know now you were right.’
Ava squeezed her eyes closed and pinched the bridge of her nose. Lulu had mostly kept her own counsel about the break-up. So why this, and why now? Admitting she shouldn’t have married Callum felt cruel. Not that Lulu intended it that way, but it stung.
‘Did you love him?’ Ava swallowed the gulp in her throat, hoping like hell the past tense in her words was correct. This was the most open discussion she’d had with her sister about her marriage break-up. Lulu had kept things close, private, to herself, while she and Callum were in the middle of the heartbreak. She’d never told Ava exactly what had happened. Clearly, it was too big and too painful to reveal.
‘I thought I did. But if that were true …’ Lulu paused. ‘Oh, never mind. I can see it now, how huge that mistake was, and it hurts to look back on it. I’m not proud of what happened, but maybe I had to go through that to accept this happiness with Michael. This is real, Ava, what I have now. What we share is so different and a million miles away from what Callum and I had.’
‘I’m glad you’re happy, Lulu.’ And Ava genuinely was. But. There was a ‘but’. She felt a big old pang of defensiveness about Callum. He’s not that bad, she wanted to say. In fact, he’s pretty damn wonderful. But how could she say that to her sister after what he’d done? And anyway, what did Ava know about married life? Or marriage to Callum? How on earth would she know what he was really like outside the strictly defined confines of her fantasy about him? Sure, he seemed like a wonderful man. But perhaps he was something different when you got to know him. Was he uncaring? Mean? Inconsiderate? Distant? Clearly something had gone wrong between them and Ava was a firm believer in the ‘it takes two to tango’ school of relationship advice. But Ava had never uttered a word of that theory to her sister and wasn’t about to start now.
‘I am happy, Ava,’ Lula said and there it was, that unintentional girlish giggle in her voice. How was it fair, Ava wondered. Lulu had married Callum and was now with the lovely, if slightly too normal, Michael. She’d had two shots at love and happiness and the whole damn thing.
Ava was still waiting for hers. Her problem was that she’d never met a man who’d measured up to who Callum Malone was in her head. She’d seen everyone through that lens. And it hadn’t done her any good.
‘Oh no,’ Lulu gasped. ‘I don’t know how we got into this conversation. I didn’t mean to go over all that old history. You called me, didn’t you? Did you have something to tell me or were you just calling for a gossip?’
Ava steeled herself. It was time to bite the bullet. ‘I’ve got some news, actually. I’ve been meaning to tell you something. I’ve got this amazing new landscaping job lined up that I’m really excited about. Callum has contracted me to do his Coogee house.’
‘Oh.’ Lulu’s voice was small and faraway.
‘Look, I really hope it isn’t weird for you, but it was an offer too good to refuse. He’s paying very well and Andy and I could do with the work.’
‘But … but I thought you hated him, Ava?’
/> ‘Apparently not enough to say no to landscaping his garden. His multiple gardens.’ And then the guilty words came out in a rush as Ava flopped backwards on her sofa and stared at the ceiling. ‘He’s offered me really good money and a recommendation to the big end of town.’
‘I’m proud of you,’ Lulu said down the line. ‘For once, you’re thinking with your head instead of your heart. Good for you.’
Thinking with her head instead of her heart? If her sister only knew the truth.
Lulu began giggling down the line. ‘I have one question. How will you cope?’
Ava smiled. ‘I think taking his money will help considerably, don’t you?’
Afterwards, when Ava stopped her mind whirring with all the possibilities of what she might do to Callum’s house, she remembered.
She grabbed her phone and found the photo, the one Callum had taken at The Meadows.
And her heart froze.
He’d zoomed in close on her face. Her lips were slightly parted, her chin tilted down and her gaze direct down the lens at her photographer.
That look on her face, the one Callum had seen as he’d framed her carefully, was of a woman in deep lust.
And he’d seen it.
What the hell had she done?
*
Chris, Callum, Cooper and Ellie stood huddled around a small black-and-white image.
‘Look at that. That’s our kid.’ Chris slipped an arm around Ellie’s shoulders and pulled her in close, kissing her gently on the forehead. ‘This is hot off the presses, taken yesterday. Not a bad shot, although the framing is terrible.’
Ellie poked him in the ribs. ‘Once a snapper, always a snapper.’
Callum crossed his arms. ‘You lured us both here with the prospect of sharing some news. You two being pregnant is not news.’ He nodded towards Ellie’s bulging belly.
‘No false pretences, I promise,’ Ellie said slightly breathlessly. ‘We do have news. New news. We wanted you both here to tell you.’
‘We’re having a girl!’ Chris announced proudly.
‘Oh, brilliant,’ Cooper said as he hugged his brother and slapped him three times on the back.
‘Thank God for that,’ Callum said as he reached down to kiss Ellie’s cheek. ‘The last thing this family needs is more men, right?’
Callum and Chris hugged each other, too.
‘That’s exactly what I said when Chris acted just the tiniest bit disappointed at hearing the news.’ Ellie took the picture from Chris and when he pulled out a chair from their kitchen table, she gratefully accepted it.
‘You’re such a reporter, wife. You never let the facts get in the way of a good story, do you?’
Chris positioned himself behind Ellie and stroked her hair gently as she looked up at him and reached for his hand. Callum had never seen his big brother so happy. He’d given up his dangerous career. Married Ellie. Was building a family. Everything was working out for him.
Which only reminded Callum that his attempt at that kind of life had failed. And why? Because he’d been blind. That’s why.
‘Hey Cal, you want a beer?’ Cooper was at the fridge and without waiting for a reply, he handed Callum a bottle of imported beer and cocked his head to the back door. Callum followed him to the tiny garden out the back of Chris and Ellie’s house. There were tall palms at the back fence and old red brick paving half-covered in moss. A wooden bench looked splintered and rickety and garden beds were neglected. He wondered where Chris and Ellie’s daughter would play in a space so small? He doubted that even Ava could make a silk purse out of this sow’s ear.
There she was again, in his head. Just like she’d been since The Meadows.
He turned back to his brother and they clinked their bottles together. The noise echoed in the little garden and they stood together for a long moment, craning their necks to get a glimpse of sky.
It had been a long time since they’d shared a beer or much of anything else. Callum was used to the fact that they were identical, even though their hair was different these days, but he knew other people still found it fascinating. The media had been especially intrigued when they were younger and footloose, but they’d both put strategies in place to stop the intrusion. Callum had spent years trying not to give the media anything to gossip about—not that the strategy had worked particularly well when his marriage had ended—and Cooper had lived away from Sydney for so long that he now made the sports pages more often than the gossip pages. All of which meant that Callum had absolutely no freaking idea what was going on in his brother’s life that made his return to California so urgent.
Callum cocked his head towards Chris and Ellie still sitting inside. ‘You can’t even wait for the kid to be born?’
‘You know I’d like to, but I can’t.’
Callum waited a moment before asking, ‘What’s her name?’
Cooper looked at his brother distractedly. ‘What?’
‘The reason you’re going back to SoCal. It’s gotta be a woman, right?’
Cooper shook his head. ‘You have no idea.’
‘Please. You’re my twin brother. You think I’m an idiot? I know you. You’ve always thought with your dick. It’s what makes you you. And since I know that you have some measure of respect for us as your brothers, I know that the only thing that could possibly drag you away from the arrival of your first niece is a woman.’
‘Cal …’
Callum clinked bottles with his brother. ‘I like to be right.’
Cooper trailed a hand through his hair. ‘She’s a friend. That’s all.’
Callum laughed. ‘You? Friends with a woman? Now you really are bullshitting me.’
‘Fuck you,’ Cooper smiled.
‘I’m not buying it.’
‘Again. Fuck you.’
‘So what’s her name, this “friend”?’
‘Maggie.’
‘And what’s so important going on with Maggie that you can’t delay things a week or so?’
Callum didn’t have to say out loud what they both knew: that losing their father made it more important than ever to come together as a family, to hold tight to what bonded them, to make new links with each other now they were men.
Cooper walked to the recycling bin parked at the back of the house near the narrow walkway down the side, opened the lid and tossed his bottle in. Callum threw his to Cooper who caught it without looking and deposited it inside, too.
When he rejoined Callum, his face was serious. The joke in his eyes had disappeared and he ran a hand through his hair.
‘There’s a kid.’
Callum’s spine stiffened. ‘You are fucking kidding me. You have a kid?’
Cooper raised a hand. ‘Wait a goddamn minute. It’s not my kid. It’s her son. Evan. He’s got this thing coming up at his elementary school and he doesn’t have a dad who’ll be there, so it’s me. That’s why I’m heading back to San Clemente.’
‘For the kid.’ Callum could barely believe what his brother was telling him.
‘Yep.’
‘For the kid who’s not yours.’
‘That’s right, bro.’ Cooper held his chin high and defiant, challenging his brother to say one more thing, to have one more go at him. But Callum was going to do no such thing. Their own father had been an absent and distant man, more preoccupied with his business that his children while they were growing up. He’d demanded they all be sent to boarding school down in Melbourne when they reached high-school age, a fight their mother had thankfully won. When she died, it was too late so they’d remained at The Meadows until they’d all been able to escape. Callum respected his brother’s choice. If Cooper was now being a father to this kid, helping this woman Maggie with her son, then that was more honourable than their father had ever been.
‘Well.’ Callum slapped Cooper on the back. ‘I never pictured you taking responsibility for too much of anything except yourself.’
Cooper turned to him. ‘You having a go at me for the
millionth time about leaving you to run Malone’s on your own?’
‘I’ve got good cause. You and Chris had your fun for all the years you were roaming the planet and now you’re both settling down. Well, good for you both. I missed out on all that because I was running the fucking company while Dad was screwing who knows who and you two were off cheating death and avoiding sharks. Oh no, I’m not bitter and twisted.’
Cooper’s face slowly transformed into a grin. ‘Man, you need to get laid.’
Callum felt the tension in his shoulders and in his clenched jaw. Ava. There she was again, in his head. ‘You think?’
‘It was good to see Ava again. At the funeral. You know, there’s something about that woman. I don’t know, something … feisty. If I was staying in Sydney …’ Cooper’s voice trailed off and he raised an eyebrow at his brother.
‘But you’re not, are you?’
‘No.’
Sometimes Callum wished his twin brother didn’t know him quite so well.
Chapter Ten
‡
‘Here they are. My plans for your home, Mr Malone.’
Ava picked up a large white cardboard tube. Flipping off the plastic seal at one end, she slipped out a large white piece of paper and spread it out on Callum’s dining table. She reached for her mobile phone and placed it as a weight at one end so the paper didn’t roll back up and held out her hand to Callum, palm up. He reached into his trouser pocket for his phone and handed it to her. She placed it on the other end and it helped hold the plans steady and flat.
It was Saturday morning, still way too early for her first cup of coffee, and Ava was distinctly conscious of the lack of caffeine in her system. She was about to show her plans to Callum for the first time. She’d arranged the meeting for the weekend, figuring it would be the best time to catch him. Surely corporate takeovers and international construction deals didn’t happen on a Saturday morning in Sydney when the sky was blue and the ocean calm? She hadn’t slept well the night before, anticipating seeing him again, and when sleep had finally come, she’d been so dead to the world that she’d overslept and had been so worried about being late that her hair was still slightly damp from her shower and she’d left it loose to help it dry. It now cascaded down her shoulder, totally impractical, getting in the way of her professional presentation to her newest client.
The CEO (The Millionaire Malones Book 2) Page 8