A thought he had no business dwelling on.
“Can you both turn toward the front? I’d like a couple more in this room before we move on.”
They both swiveled on their heels and faced the photographer.
“So do you think you can replicate this over at my clinic?” he asked.
She threw him a glance, the brow from earlier edging back up. “Beaches and palm trees won’t exactly match the theme you have going on over there, would it? What do you call it, by the way? Moneyed Green? Or are you just hoping artwork like this will highlight the differences between your clinic and mine—your patients and mine?”
The camera went off again.
Damn the woman. A muscle in his jaw clenched. “I was trying to pay Bright Hope a compliment. Forget I asked.”
Fingers landed on his forearm, and her eyes closed for a second before reopening. “I’m sorry, James, that was inexcusable of me. Can we start over?”
It was far too late for that. But if cold indifference was the way she wanted to play this game, then she would find he could match her, ice chip for ice chip. Except she’d never been an ice queen. Far from it. In fact, he’d always liked Mila’s hot temperament. It had matched the places she’d been. Stoked his own internal fires.
But he’d better figure out how to extinguish that particular flamethrower. And soon. First, though, he had to get rid of that damned camera, which seemed to be recording their every expression.
* * *
She’d almost blown things. As Mila gave James and his photographer the grand tour, and it wasn’t much, with the tiny size of her clinic and the money crunch they’d been under for the last few months, she tried her best not to let her animosity toward him show any more than it already had. Six years after the fact, she should be over their breakup. But his comment about her decorating choices had made it fizz up like the head on a beer. And he hadn’t even meant it as a cut.
She drew in a deep breath. It was up to her to calm the waters.
Only how was she supposed to do that when the waters churning inside her were gray and choppy? And with that photographer giving him the eye for most of the visit?
She pushed open the door at the far end of the hall. “And this is our business office.”
The head of her young assistant, Avery Phelps, popped up from behind her rickety desk, her brown eyes widening. She backed out of the narrow space on her hands and knees and climbed to her feet, tugging the hem of her blouse down over her tanned midriff. “Hey, Mi. Sorry. I was just trying to get this stupid cord to stay in place for once.”
“The computer again?”
“Yes. And I lost an hour’s worth of work this time.”
Mila groaned as she glanced at the empty screen of the computer monitor. “I’m so sorry. I keep meaning to have someone come out and take a look.” It was still weird to her to have to rely on technology to keep up with things when she was used to taking patient notes on actual paper, with an actual writing instrument. She preferred jotting things down, it seemed more personal.
But she couldn’t ask Avery to do that when things in the US were all done via computer. The young woman had been with Mila from the very beginning, when she’d rushed into Bright Hope as the frantic single mom of a very ill three-year-old girl. It had turned out Sarah had type one diabetes. Once they’d gotten her blood-sugar level under control, Avery had wanted to give something back and had insisted on donating several hours a week to the clinic—after working her own full-time job. She’d been at Bright Hope ever since, eventually becoming an employee rather than just a volunteer, and Mila had no idea what she’d do without the woman.
“Do you want me to take a look at it?” James’s voice rumbled over their heads.
Yeah, it would have been pretty tempting to ask him to crawl around underneath that desk, but she was afraid her body would go haywire and send out pheromonal signals that could be detected for miles. “It’s just a loose power cord but every time the desk jiggles, the power blinks in and out, and Avery loses data.”
He gave the old machine a dubious look. “Not good for your system. Do you have any tape?”
“Tried that a couple of times.” She was proud of herself for being one step ahead of him. Although it was really Avery who had thought of that. And how embarrassing was it to have this exchange in front of a camera?
“How about surgical tape? Or even phlebotomy tubing?”
How was that supposed to work any better than what they’d already tried?
Before she could ask, Avery said, “I’ll get you some. Anything to keep the darned thing going.”
Mila made a mental note to get someone techy out to look at the machine. The last thing she wanted was for James to have to come out to fix things.
Like her practice itself? If Freya hadn’t gotten him to agree to pump some funds into Bright Hope and allow her to open a branch inside The Hollywood Hills Clinic, people like Avery would have very few options. Mila had gone through most of her inheritance in the years since her aunt had passed away. Not that she missed the money. She didn’t. But she missed what it could do.
Within a minute her assistant had come back with a roll of latex tube tourniquet and wide surgical tape. “Pick your poison.” Avery said it with a smile, but a shiver went over Mila. Maybe because her poison had been James once upon a time. And like a slow-acting toxin, he’d killed the part of her heart that she’d handed over to his care.
“Let’s try the tubing first.”
Freya, who’d been silently watching the exchange, smiled. “My brother the handyman. Always trying to fix what’s broken.”
Was her friend talking about the eating disorder she’d overcome years ago? Mila remembered James’s sometimes heavy-handed tactics when it came to his sister, but Freya said that things had mellowed between them over the last year or so. Especially now that she and Zack had fallen in love and gotten married. Their twins were weeks away from being born, and the pair was ecstatic. Mila had done her best to be happy for her friend, but it struck too close to home. That could have been her and James had he not decided that a wife whose passion was working with various relief organizations would cramp his Hollywood style.
That might not be exactly true, but something had given him cold feet. He knew she wasn’t interested in being a big earner, so she’d always assumed that had had something to do with it. Only James had never seen fit to tell her why he hadn’t wanted to marry her. Just that she was better off without him.
And she was.
Definitely.
And he could keep his reasons for breaking their engagement to himself. After all, she was used to being kept in the dark. Her aunt had loved her, but in trying to protect her she’d left Mila unprepared for the shocking reality of her parents’ deaths. They hadn’t died in a car accident, like her aunt had told her. In fact, her mother had lingered for days in a hospital after being shot. Ten-year-old Mila had never even had the chance say goodbye. It had taken her a long time to forgive her aunt for that once she’d discovered the truth.
The Mila of today did not believe in holding back information no matter how unpalatable or difficult it might be. To do so was to destroy her trust. So James’s refusal to level with her had made it easy for her to walk away and never look back.
His voice came from nowhere, jerking her back to the present.
“I’ll need some scissors.” He tested the flexibility of the tubing he’d been handed.
What was he going to do with it?
Avery grabbed a pair of sharp scissors from the desk and handed them over.
Somehow