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.’
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?
Charged.
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.
‘Speaking,’ she told her father’s personal assistant.
For a moment—a long moment—she considered hanging up. It was exactly what her sisters would do. But then Blaine Spencer wouldn’t bother calling them, would he? He knew which daughter put up with his lies and broken promises.
‘Just put my dad on,’ said Mila.
This one. This gutless, hopeful, stupid daughter.
‘La-la!’
‘Mila,’ she corrected, as she did every time. ‘I’m not three, Dad.’
The age she’d been when he’d left.
‘You still are to me, darling girl!’
Every muscle in her body tightened just that little bit more.
‘Any chance you could call me yourself, one time?’ she asked, not bothering to hide her frustration. ‘You know—find my name in your contacts, push the call button. It’s not difficult.’
‘Now, don’t be like that, Mila, you know how hard I work.’
There it was: The Justification. Mila always capitalised it in her mind.
Why didn’t you call for <insert significant life event>?
But you said you’d come to <insert significant life event>.
And then The Justification.
You know how hard I work.
Or its many variations.
You can’t just pass up opportunities in this industry.