The Billionaire from Her Past

by Leah Ashton

  His attempts to contact her to discover the real problem had proved fruitless. She’d simply repeated her note, with slight variations, in her text messages, or simply not answered his calls at all.

  It was frustrating.

  But mostly it hurt like hell.

  He missed Mila.

  So for five days he’d worked like a man possessed—both in the Heliotrope offices and on site. Although not at the shop beside Mila’s—instinctively he knew that now was not the time to push her. After nearly twenty-five years of friendship he at least knew that.

  What he didn’t know was how he felt about that night, aside from the fact it had led to Mila’s removal from his life. He wasn’t allowing himself to think about it—and his extreme work habits had allowed him to achieve that goal.

  His priority was somehow getting Mila back in his life. That was all that mattered.

  He looked down at his plate. He’d cleared it of every morsel, but had no recollection of actually eating it.

  ‘Dessert?’ his mum asked.

  He nodded.

  So why come here tonight? To this house chock full of memories of Steph and of Mila? With every minute he was here—and with every disjointed thought that careened through his brain—it became clearer to him that it was not a coincidence.

  He’d been wary of this place for so long. Wary of the pain he was so sure it would trigger. But he’d been wrong. In this house he felt comforted by history. By memories of giggling games of hide and seek and bowls of salty popcorn in front of the VCR.

  Was that it? After five days without Mila he wanted to be near her—no matter how obliquely?

  No. Not even close.

  Finally he realised this had nothing to do with Mila.

  This had everything to do with Steph.

  Slowly he tuned back in to the conversation. His mum served up a still steaming apple pie, placing perfect little scoops of vanilla bean ice cream beside each piece.

  ‘Did you see it?’ his mum asked.

  Belatedly Seb realised she was talking to him.

  ‘Pardon me?’

  ‘The photo in that magazine. You know—the one that comes in the weekend paper.’ She paused as she pressed the lid back onto the ice cream carton. ‘The photo of you and Mila Molyneux. At a film premiere.’

  ‘I didn’t know you were seeing her,’ said his dad. ‘I’ve always liked her—a straight talker, that girl.’

  ‘She does something crafty now,’ his mum said, all conversationally. ‘Pots, is it?’

  Seb shoved back his seat, needing to stand up. ‘I’m not seeing her,’ he said.

  But once he was standing he had no further plan. Just for something to do, he grabbed his empty wine glass and put it in the dishwasher.

  Ah. This was it. This feeling when his parents mentioned Mila. That little leap in his pulse, the instant flashback to memories he’d not allowed himself to reflect upon.

  That was why he wanted to come here tonight. That was why he’d wanted to feel close to Steph...

  Because Mila wasn’t like the women he’d slept with in London.

  Mila wasn’t the first woman he’d slept with after Steph, but she was the first who mattered.

  He didn’t feel guilty—as if he’d cheated on Steph or anything. But it did feel significant. As significant as the day he’d stopped wearing his wedding band.

  Does this mean I’m really moving on, Steph?

  And was that also why he’d embargoed his own memories of that night? Had he hoped, somehow, that Mila had been like the others? Out of some form of misplaced loyalty to Steph?

  Possibly. But that was stupid.

  Had he hoped that because then it would be easy? Then he could easily argue to Mila that it had just been a bit of meaningless fun and there was no reason why their friendship couldn’t go straight back to the way it had been.

  She was the first one who mattered. What did that even mean?

  Seb had walked back to the table now and he ate his pie mindlessly, watching his ice cream become a puddle.

  After dessert he stood up again. This time he ended up at the window. Outside it was now dark, the tall trees that lined the rear fence merging into the black sky.

  ‘Honey, is there anything you want to talk about?’

  His mum’s voice was gentle, her tone reassuring.

  Seb ran his hands through his hair. ‘No.’

  This definitely wasn’t something he wanted to share with his parents: his brain full of Steph and Mila and messy confusion. He didn’t want to share it with anybody. He wasn’t good at talking about this stuff.

  After Steph’s death he’d had his PA back at Fyfe Technology find him a counsellor to talk to—it had seemed the sensible thing to do. What he would have organised for any member of his staff.

  Besides, he’d hardly had other options. With Steph’s death had come an ugly truth: not only had he not truly known his wife any more, but he was surrounded by a crowd of people who either worked for him or were nothing but the most superficial of acquaintances. His work had become his wife, his friend, his family.

  He’d had nobody to talk to—except maybe his parents. And, as desperate as they’d been to help, he just hadn’t been capable of revealing how pathetic he was, how little he’d known about the woman he’d once loved.

  There’d been Mila, too—with her regular and then more intermittent emails and social media messages. She’d been the only one who’d persisted for more than a few weeks—she tried for months until he’d eventually driven her away with his calculated rudeness.

  But he just hadn’t been able to talk to her—not then.

  He’d been broken, grief-stricken.

  Ashamed.

  So he’d gone to the counsellor his PA had booked. He’d sat in the waiting room. And then left without seeing her.

  In the end, talking had seemed impossible. So he’d remained alone and silent.

  Eventually—and it had come gradually, with no epiphany or any particular day he could remember—he hadn’t wanted to be alone any more. So he’d sold Fyfe, despite its success, because of all it had represented and reminded him of. His flaws, his mistakes, those wasted years.

  And he’d come home to be close to those who still truly cared for him. His parents. Mila.

  One night could not be the end of his friendship with Mila.

  It could not.

  He pushed open the sliding door and stepped out onto the deck. A few metres away was the glass pool fence, twinkling in the light reflected from the house. It was cool, but still, outside.

  Seb had walked a few steps when he heard movement behind him. He looked over his shoulder—his father had slid the door shut and, with a nod, left Seb alone.

  To his right was the pool house, and it felt natural that Seb went there. The wooden bi-fold doors that made up two of the walls were pushed partly open, so Seb opened one of them the rest of the way, before collapsing onto a large day bed, his legs stretched out before him.

  For a long while he just lay there, staring at the raked ceiling. He didn’t really understand what he was doing, or what he was thinking. Out here—more so than in the house—snippets of memories whizzed through his brain. Most were almost too quick to grasp—vignettes of a primary school age birthday party, Christmas lunches his parents had hosted, water bomb competitions off the diving board.

  But others lingered: Mila suggesting they jump off his mum’s exercise trampoline and into the pool. Steph claiming she could hold her breath underwater ‘waaaayyy’ longer than Seb could. The afternoons they’d been supposed to study together but had instead sprawled in the pool house, discussing everything and anything—with the earnestness and intensity of teenagers who thought they knew it all.

  In the end calling Mi
la seemed the only possible thing to do.

  She didn’t answer his first call, but she picked up after what seemed like infinite rings on his second.

  ‘I told you, Seb—’

  ‘I’m at the pool house,’ Seb said, interrupting. ‘Can you come over?’

  * * *

  Saying no hadn’t been an option.

  In fact it hadn’t even been a consideration. Which should’ve been weird, given Mila had literally been in the process of telling Seb never to contact her again when he’d asked her.

  But it was the pool house. The pool house.

  So she’d come straight over. After a quick visit to the bottle shop.

  Monique and Kevin had simply ushered her through when she’d arrived.

  She wore jeans and a singlet, and her flip flops were loud against the merbau decking, the evening air cool against her skin.

  Seb was sprawled across the day bed in almost darkness, the pool house lit only by the light from the main house.

  ‘I brought your favourite,’ Mila called out.

  He propped himself up on one elbow as she approached. ‘You drink schnapps?’ he asked, incredulous.

  ‘Only on special occasions,’ Mila said, handing him the bottle.

  She walked over to the small bar that still occupied the corner of the pool house. In the limited light she grabbed a couple of shot glasses, and noted that the alcohol was no longer locked away in some undisclosed location in Seb’s house. Instead the bottles lined a couple of shelves along the wall, no longer vulnerable to curious teenagers. No peach schnapps, though.

  Seb pulled himself up, propping his back against the plush cushions that edged the day bed. Mila crawled across the mattress to sit beside him. But not touching.

  Seb was staring straight ahead, across the pool. Silently, she handed the glasses to him and then poured them both a drink.

  ‘Why did you invite me over?’ Mila asked, then immediately downed her drink.

  Seb followed her lead, then grimaced. ‘How on earth did we drink a bottle of this?’

  ‘Why did you invite me over?’ Mila repeated, ignoring him.

  Seb finally held her gaze. She could tell he was, despite the darkness, simply by the intensity of him doing so.

  Now that her eyes had adjusted to the mix of moon and ambient light she could make out more details of his face: a few days’ worth of stubble on his jaw, lines of tension etched about his eyes and mouth.

  ‘I need to talk,’ he said. ‘About Steph.’ He swallowed. ‘I want you to talk about Steph, too.’

  The request was not unexpected, Mila knew the significance of the pool house. Knew the hundreds of memories the three of them had shared here. And of course knew the memories that should have been between only Seb and Steph.

  She’d been Steph’s best friend and they’d been seventeen. She knew Steph had lost her virginity here. She knew more details than she’d probably needed to—but then, she’d been seventeen and curious too.

  Back then she’d felt occasional flutters of jealousy—she’d carried a little torch for Seb through numerous boyfriends of her own. But she’d simply boxed up her crush, not allowing it to impact on her friendship with Steph or with Seb. It had been simply what it was. Nothing more. She’d been happy for them both.

  But now, only days after sleeping naked beside this man...days since he’d been inside her...it was hard. To be here beside this man and beside the memory of Steph.

  ‘Mila?’

  At some point her gaze had dropped to her hands. She’d knotted her fingers together, but now she disentangled them, laying her hands flat against her thighs.

  But wasn’t all of this hard? For both of them? She’d known that when Seb had asked her to come here. She’d known what she was doing, and she’d also known she needed to do it.

  For Seb and for herself.

  ‘When we were thirteen, I dared Steph to steal a bottle of purple glitter nail polish from that chemist near Teli’s Deli. Remember it?’

  Mila looked up, at Seb watching her. He nodded.

  ‘I never thought she’d do it, but she did. No one noticed...no one knew. For about five minutes we thought we were the biggest, coolest rebels ever. And then we felt terrible. Steph started crying.’

  Mila’s lips quirked upwards. She was remembering how they’d sat under the shade of a Moreton Bay Fig at a park nearby, their ill-gotten contraband lying on the grass between them.

  ‘Then I started crying too, and we ended up going home and telling Ivy. Ivy made us go back to the chemist, tell the manager what we did, and pay for it. She never told our parents, never told anyone. We didn’t tell anyone, either.’

  ‘Not even me?’

  Mila shook her head. ‘No.’

  Seb smiled. ‘Steph told me that story.’

  ‘No!’ Mila said, genuinely shocked. ‘We had a pact!’ She said it with all the latent indignation of her thirteen-year-old self.

  He shrugged. ‘We’d had too much to drink at a party in London one night. I can’t remember why it came up. She made me promise never to tell you I knew, and she was mortified she’d told me.’ He smiled. ‘But I always did wonder—why didn’t you tell me back then?’

  ‘There were always some things that were just between Steph and me.’

  For a while they sat in silence. Long enough for Mila to tune in to the sounds around them: the regular chirp of crickets, hidden somewhere in the lush gardens, Rustling leaves. And, further away, the muffled sounds of the occasional car travelling down the street.

  ‘Did she tell you about us?’ Seb said, then cleared his throat. ‘That she wasn’t happy?’

  Automatically Mila went to shake her head—but then she realised that a denial would not be entirely truthful. ‘We didn’t speak often over the past few years,’ she said. She’d do anything to turn back time and change that. ‘But when we did we used to talk for hours. She’d talk about her business, about where you were living, about all the new people she was meeting. And about you. A lot. She was so proud of your success.’

  Mila paused. Although they sat side by side Mila was looking straight ahead, her gaze focused on the perfect glass-like surface of the pool.

  ‘But our conversations became shorter as they became further apart. And I started to notice that I had to ask about you. You didn’t seem to be such a large part of the life that she was sharing with me. I noticed that, but I didn’t question it.’

  ‘Why not?’ Seb asked, but with only curiosity, not censure.

  ‘Because she sounded happy. Maybe I thought she would mention it herself if there was a problem—or a problem she wanted me to know about.’ Now Mila turned towards Seb, tucking her legs beneath her. ‘I guess that says a lot about how our relationship changed. I was only sharing the highlights of my life, too. Not the messy bits.’

  Seb just watched silently as she spoke, his expression unreadable.

  ‘But mostly,’ Mila said, ‘I don’t think I really believed it. I mean—you were both so happy. So perfect together.’

  ‘We were far from perfect.’

  ‘I should’ve asked her—’

  ‘You wouldn’t have had anything to ask if I’d been a better husband.’

  ‘I’m sure it wasn’t all your fault,’ Mila said gently.

  ‘Based on all the conversations you had with Steph about our relationship?’ His words were flat. Brutal.

  ‘Ouch.’

  Seb ran his hands through his hair. Now he was looking out at the pool. ‘I’m sorry. I’m being unfair.’ He sighed. ‘Objective me can quote all sorts of clichés about relationships being a two-way street, or say that it takes two to tango... But I was there and I knew things were breaking—that they were broken. And I did nothing. I just went to work each day, carrying on li
ke normal.’

  ‘What did Steph do to try and save your relationship?’

  Seb didn’t like that question. It was apparent in every instantly tense line of his body.

  ‘She tried harder than me. She tried to talk about it, but I didn’t want to know. She organised counselling, but I’d always cancel.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’ve asked myself that a million times,’ he said, with a rough facsimile of a laugh. ‘At the time it was basic denial. I just didn’t want to deal with it. But obviously it was more than that. Of course I knew that it was over. But I didn’t want to think about what that meant. Steph and I had set up a life together. We’d left our families behind. And we’d been more successful than in our wildest dreams. If we broke up, what would happen to the perfect life we had? If the relationship that had been core to our success failed, what did that mean for everything else? I’d been with Steph for half my life. My success seemed intrinsically tied up with hers and with her.’ He sighed. ‘So that’s what it came down to. Fear of failure. Pretty pathetic, huh?’

  Mila didn’t say a word, just allowed Seb’s words to keep on flowing.

  ‘When I noticed how much she was going out, how many nights she’d get home at crazy hours, I did ask what she was doing, but she assured me all was well. I knew it wasn’t, but she was still going to work each day, her business was still doing so well...’ He shook his head. ‘What does that say about me? That I’d use capability for work as an indicator she was okay? Part of me knew it was destructive behaviour, knew that we were in the death throes of our marriage. I think she knew, too. But we were both just too busy to get around to ending it, to dealing with the end of Stephanie and Sebastian. It seemed impossible.’

  He swallowed.

  ‘I think she might have been seeing someone, actually. We had a memorial service in London, and there were a group of friends there I didn’t recognise. I hated them instantly, because I associated them with what her life had become—the parties, the drugs. But they weren’t what I expected—they looked like professionals. Young, financially secure. Which made sense. Steph overdosed in a penthouse in South Kensington, not in a gutter.’