by Leah Ashton
The car park was nearly empty.An elderly-looking sedan with probationary ‘P’ plates most likely belonged to one of the teenage girls warming up very seriously for a doubles match, while the top-of-the-range blood-red sports utility had to belong to one of the two guys around Mila’s age who were laughing as they very casually lobbed a ball back and forth.
Judging by the fluorescent workwear tossed in the tray of the ute, Mila could almost guarantee those guys were wealthy FIFO workers: men—generally—who flew in to work at one of Western Australia’s isolated mines in the Pilbara for weeks at a time, living in ‘dongas’—basic, transportable single rooms—and then flying out for a week or more off, back home in Perth. It was a brutal, but extremely well-paid lifestyle—providing blue collar workers with incomes unheard of before the mining boom.
Mila could never have done it. She’d visited the Molyneux-owned mines many times in her youth, and while she could appreciate the ancient, spectacular beauty of the Pilbara, the complete isolation somehow got to her. Out there you were over one thousand five hundred kilometres from Perth, and not much closer to anything else.
Ivy loved it—she’d married her new husband there, after all. And April did, too, regularly ‘glamping’ with her husband in remote Outback locations and posting dreamy, impossibly perfect photos on social media. But Mila always felt that she must be missing some essential Molyneux genes. The mining gene, or the iron ore gene, or even the red dust and boab tree gene.
Because Mila was never going to follow in her big sisters’ footsteps. Regardless of her uninterest in her education for all of her childhood and the early part of her twenties, it just wasn’t who she was. The industry and the land—that was everything to the Molyneux empire... Mila just didn’t fit.
Seb still hadn’t arrived, so Mila leant back against the driver’s side of her modest little hatchback, the door still warm from the day’s glorious spring sun. The two probable FIFO guys had become more serious, and their banter and laughter was now only between points. She vaguely watched the ball ping between them without really following what was going on.
Mila had long believed that there was a lot more of her father in her than her mother. She even looked like Blaine Spencer—except without the blond hair. She definitely—or so she’d been told—had her father’s intense blue eyes. ‘Eyes that’ll make the world fall in love with him’—that was what a film reviewer had said, in the ancient newspaper cutting that Mila had found in a book years after he’d walked out on them when she was only a toddler.
She’d burnt that review—at an angry sixteen—when her father had once again let her down. Not that it mattered. She could still recall every word.
A car slid into the parking spot directly beside her—a sleek, low, luxury vehicle in the darkest shade of grey. Seb climbed out, turning as he shut the car door to rest his forearms on its roof.
He grinned as he looked at Mila across the gleaming paintwork. ‘Ready to be run off your feet?’ he asked.
The lights in the car park were dim, leaving his face in both light and shadow. Even so, Mila could feel his gaze on her like a physical touch. She shivered as his gaze flicked downwards, taking in her outfit of pale pink tank top and black shorts, and then down again to her white ankle socks and sneakers.
Did his gaze slow on her legs?
She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. Nope. It did not.
Just as he’d definitely meant nothing when he’d said incredible and perfect yesterday.
Mila forced a laugh. ‘Last time I checked I still lead in our head-to-head.’
His laugh was genuine as he reached into his car for his tennis bag. He tossed it over his shoulder as he walked around the car to her. ‘That doesn’t sound right to me.’
He was dressed casually, all in black: long baggy running shorts and a fitted T-shirt in some type of sporty material. It revealed all sorts of somehow unexpectedly generous muscles: biceps and triceps and trapeziums...
The genius of her idea was now clearly questionable.
‘Trust me—’ Her voice sounded high and unlike her own. She cleared her throat. ‘Trust me—you know how good I am with numbers.’
He shrugged and smiled again, and the instant warmth that little quirk of his lips triggered was unbelievably frustrating.
Mila strode towards the courts, opening the door within the tall cyclone fence and barely waiting for Seb to step through before walking briskly to the court they’d hired.
To be honest, she didn’t remember the exact head-to-head score between them. When they’d started lessons together in primary school Mila had been the stronger player. She probably still was—it was just that eventually Seb had become actually stronger than her. And significantly taller.
At some point she’d known exactly how many sets she’d won against Seb—she’d kept a tally all the way through high school and into uni, enjoying their semi-regular matches because, if she was truthful, it had been the one thing she’d done just with Seb. For Steph had been many things, but definitely not an athlete.
But somewhere along the line Mila had forgotten her hard-earned leading score against Seb. Now, as she dropped her bag at the side of the net, and then fished out her water, racquet and a skinny can of new tennis balls, she searched her memory for a hint—but there was nothing. She might be leading by one or a hundred—she had no idea.
Like so much that had once been important to her when it came to Sebastian and Stephanie, over time she’d allowed it to become less important. And eventually to fade completely away.
Seb stood on the opposite side of the net, his racquet extended, the strings flat, ready for Mila to place a couple of tennis balls on its surface.
He raised an eyebrow. ‘You all right?’ he asked.
She nodded firmly. ‘Yes,’ she said—and she was, she realised. ‘But I was thinking...let’s wipe our scores. Start with a clean slate.’
She couldn’t change the past—and, while it might be complicated, she did have this second chance with Seb.
His smile was wide. ‘I like the sound of that,’ he said.
Mila dropped the tennis balls onto his racquet, then stuffed two in her pockets as she headed for the baseline.
‘Although,’ he called out as she pivoted to face him, ‘it’s pretty sad that you can’t just admit I was winning.’
And Mila laughed as she smacked a forehand in his direction to start their warm-up.
Maybe this wasn’t such a terrible idea, after all.
* * *
This had been a terrible idea.
‘Three-love,’ Mila announced gleefully as they changed ends. Her eyes sparkled beneath the floodlights as they crossed paths at the net.
From now on all efforts related to repairing his friendship with Mila would definitely require more clothing.
How had he ever forgotten those legs? They went on and on...
Well, no, he hadn’t forgotten them. He was human, after all. He hadn’t married Stephanie and then instantly become blind to beautiful women. Certainly not to Mila. But before it had been an objective realisation: Mila Molyneux has rather nice legs. Kind of like: The sky is blue. I don’t like raw tomato. My mum cooks the world’s best spaghetti and meatballs. That type of thing.
Certainly nothing more.
Certainly not this...this visceral reaction to the curve of thigh and calf. This tightening in his belly...this heat to his skin. As sudden and as unexpected as a punch to his stomach.
It was his serve. He took a deep breath as he bounced the ball a handful of times before rocking back onto his heel as he tossed the ball high into the night sky.
Thwack.
Ace. Good.
‘Fifteen-love.’
But was it sudden? This reaction?
He hadn’t let himself analyse what he’d
said yesterday, or questioned his choice of words. He’d told himself he’d just been speaking the truth when he’d told Mila her eyes were incredible. That she was perfect.
Hadn’t he always thought so? Objectively, of course. So why verbalise those facts now? Especially when she’d been standing so close to him. Close enough that it had only been after she’d walked away that he’d realised his heart-rate was decelerating, that his body had registered more than simple comfort in her proximity.
Thwack.
The ball landed so far past the service line that Mila didn’t bother calling it. Instead she grinned, catching his eye as she took a couple of steps forward, ready for a less powerful second serve.
Thwack.
He’d hit it even harder than his first serve, his tennis tactics being the furthest thing from his mind.
‘Out!’ Mila said, as it landed a ball-width too wide of the centreline.
She still hit it back, and he blocked it with his racquet, bouncing it a few times before shoving the ball in his pocket.
‘Fifteen-all.’
Mila held up her hand before he went to serve again, to indicate that he should wait. He watched as she fussed with her hair, pushing it behind her ears and sliding in the clips that kept it out of her eyes. There was absolutely nothing provocative about what she was doing—if he ignored the pull of her singlet against her skin as she raised her arms. And the shape of her waist and breasts that the thin material so relentlessly clung to.
Which, despite his best efforts, he could not.
He turned away abruptly, and for the first time in his life smashing his racquet into the unforgiving surface of the court seemed an excellent option. He could almost feel it—the satisfaction of channelling his body into destroying something rather than generating seriously inappropriate thoughts about Mila.
His friend. His friend.
Stephanie’s best friend.
No, he wasn’t going to ruin his racquet—just as he would never allow himself to ruin things with Mila. He would not and he could not.
Not much was clear to him any more except two things: his new business and his need to have Mila back in his life. Platonically. Because even if Mila saw him as more than the once awkward, occasionally pimply teenage nerd who had lived next door—which seemed unlikely—a relationship was not an option anyway.
With Mila or with anyone.
He stepped back to the baseline.
Thwack.
Ace.
‘Thirty-fifteen.’
There had been women since Stephanie. Two, to be exact. Meaningless, nothingness. Found in a fog of grief in London bars without even the decency to remember their names. He’d woken up alone and even emptier—so he’d stopped.
It had been months since the last. Almost a year.
Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.
Winner—down the line.
‘Forty-fifteen.’
So he’d failed at casual sex and he’d clearly failed at marriage. He could barely remember the last time he’d slept with Stephanie—he’d always been working away, or late. Too late. And when he had been home there had still been distance between them. He’d fobbed Steph off when she’d attempted to address it. He couldn’t remember how many times.
He did remember the shape of her body as she’d slept alone in their bed, her back towards his side. Always.
He’d refused to make time for Steph and he’d stubbornly ignored—or at best minimised—her concerns about their relationship. The lack of communication. The lack of intimacy. Their effectively separate lives.
The concerns of the woman he was supposed to love.
What sort of man did that make him?
A man who hurt the people he loved. A man who shouldn’t do relationships. A man who’d driven his wife to make catastrophic choices.
Thwack. Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.
Mila had chased his cross-court forehand down and thrown up a high lob. He ran to the net, waiting for the ball to fall and for the opportunity to smash that ball into oblivion. He had his racquet up, ready.
Up, up, up...
Down, down, down...
And then, powered by every single uncomfortable, unpleasant, unwanted emotion inside him...thwack.
It was the perfect smash—right in the corner on the baseline. Mila had no chance to reach it but she tried anyway, stretching her legs and arms and her racquet to their absolute limit.
Then somehow all those outstretched limbs tripped and tangled, and with a terrible hard thump Mila tumbled to the ground, skidding a little on the court’s unforgiving surface.
Sebastian was in motion before she’d come to a stop, his feet pounding as he ran to her.
Mila had levered herself so she was sitting. She held up her palms, all red and scratched.
‘Ow,’ she said simply, with half a smile.
Seb dropped down beside her. ‘Are you okay?’ It took everything he had not to gather her in his arms. He worriedly ran his gaze over her, searching for any sign of injury.
Mila stretched out both her legs experimentally, then wiggled her ankles in a circle.
‘All seems to be in order,’ she said, looking up at him.
‘Not quite,’ he said, and it was impossible to stop himself from reaching out and turning her arm gently, so Mila could see the shallow scratches that tracked their way along the length of her arm. Tiny pinpricks of blood decorated the ugly red lines.
‘That looks worse than it feels.’
‘You are one tough cookie, Mila Molyneux,’ he said.
She smiled—just a little. ‘Sometimes.’
Like yesterday, their eyes met. And once again Seb found himself lost in her incredible blue eyes. This time there was no pretending he was being objective, that he was admiring Mila simply as his strong, beautiful friend.
No, the way he felt right now had more in common with his fourteen-year-old self. Like then, his hormones were wreaking havoc on his body, his brain firmly relegated in the pecking order.
He’d forgotten. Forgotten what it was like to look at Mila this way, to see her this way—to want her this way. It had been so long.
But how was she looking at him? Not with the disgust he’d expected, that he deserved for ogling his friend. More like—
A loud whoop from the neighbouring court ended the moment before it had fully formed. Seb looked up. The two young guys had finished their match, and the shorter of the two was completing a victory lap around the net.
Meanwhile Mila had climbed to her feet.
‘Three-one,’ she said firmly, with not a hint of whatever he might have just seen in her eyes. ‘My serve.’
CHAPTER FIVE
MILA’S PHONE VIBRATED quietly beneath the shop counter as she carefully wrapped a customer’s purchase in tissue paper.
The older gentleman had bought a quite extravagant salad bowl, with an asymmetrical rim and splashes of luminous cerulean glaze. For his granddaughter, he’d said, who had just moved out of home along with a mountain of the family’s hand-me-down everything. ‘I want her to have a few special things that are just hers alone.’
After he’d left, Mila retrieved her phone and propped her hip against the counter. It had been a busy Friday, with a flurry of customers searching for the perfect gift for the weekend. She still had half an hour before Sheri arrived to take over the shop while Mila taught her afternoon classes—and so half an hour before she’d get to eat, as her rumbling tummy reminded her.
Lunch?
The text was from Seb, as she’d expected.
Sure. Pedro’s?
Text messages from Seb had become routine in the two weeks since their... Mila didn’t even know how to describe it.
Strained? Tense? Awkward?
C
harged.
Yes, that was probably the correct word to describe their tennis match.
Fortunately Sebastian seemed equally as determined as she was to pretend nothing charged had happened, and instead had determinedly progressed his quest to repair their friendship.
That, it would seem, involved regular deliveries of her favourite coffee—double-shot large flat white—and just a few days ago had escalated to a lunch date.
They’d had lunch at a noisy, crowded, trendy Brazilian café—Pedro’s—a short walk from her shop and his building site, and the impossibility of deep conversation or privacy had seemed to suit them both just fine.
Not that Seb showed any hint that there was anything more to their friendship than...well, friendship. And a pretty superficial friendship, if Mila was honest. They weren’t quite spending their time discussing the weather...but it wasn’t much more, either.
At times there was the tiniest suggestion of their old friendship—they’d laugh at each other’s slightly off-kilter jokes, or share a look or a smile the way that only very old friends could. But those moments were rare. Mostly there was a subtle tension between them. As if they had more of those close moments either one of them might read more into it. As if maybe their friendly looks would morph into something like what had happened when she’d fallen playing tennis. When she’d seen something in Seb’s gaze that had made her insides melt and her skin heat.
And as by unspoken consensus that hadn’t been a good thing, a slightly tense and superficial friendship was what they had.
Which was good, of course. It meant that once Seb had processed his tumult of grief and guilt and loss their rehashed friendship would drift again. There would be no more tension and no more confusing, conflicting—definitely unwanted—emotions.
And her life would go back to normal.
Her phone rang, vibrating in her hand as it was still on silent. It wasn’t a number she recognised.
‘Hello?’
‘Mila Molyneux?’ asked a female voice with a heavy American accent.
Mila’s stomach instantly went south. She knew exactly who this was.