The Billionaire From Her Past

Mila surveyed the dilapidated space. It was the exact external dimensions of her own place, and it was interesting to see how her shop would look without necessities like a staircase or—well, the entire first floor. The walls had been stripped of plaster, leaving bare brick, and there was absolutely no lighting. Now, at dusk, little light pushed through the dirty, cracked shop windows and the open doorway behind her.

Basically—it was a big, dark, empty, filthy room.

‘Well,’ she began, ‘I may need to hear a bit more of your plans before I can be appropriately impressed.’

Seb’s lips quirked upwards. God, it was so weird, seeing her old friend dressed like this. He’d always had lovely shoulders, but now they were muscled. And, yes, of course he’d always been unavoidably handsome. But more in a lean, very slightly geeky way—befitting his career in IT consulting and her memories of him tinkering with hard drives and other computer paraphernalia.

Now he looked like a man. A proper, grown-up man—not an oversized version of the teenage Seb she remembered. And not even one per cent geek.

Seb had always been self-assured, always had that innate confidence—probably partly because he had enough family money behind him to know it was nearly impossible for him to fail in anything—but mainly, Mila felt, because that was the kind of guy he was. But now there was something more. Something beyond the confidence she recognised. An...ease.

And it was an ease he had now, in his tradesman’s outfit, that she hadn’t even realised he’d lacked in a five-thousand-dollar suit.

‘Fair enough. There’s not a lot to see just yet.’ He pointed to the far wall, where a large poster-sized plan was taped to the bricks. ‘The details are there, but really it’s nothing too exciting. It’ll be fitted out for a fashion retailer I’ve got lined up—a good fit for the other shops in the terrace.’

‘Fashion? So this isn’t some new obscure location for Fyfe Technology?’

That was about as far as Mila had got in trying to work out what this was all about. A trendy suburban location for a multinational company with offices across Europe, the US and Australia and an office already in the Perth CBD? It didn’t actually make any sense. But then, she was still trying to process Seb’s new shoulders...

Another shake of her head—mentally, this time.

‘I sold Fyfe,’ Seb said simply.

It was so nonchalantly delivered that it took Mila a long moment to comprehend what he’d just told her.

‘Pardon me?’

He watched her steadily. ‘It was a difficult decision. Dad wasn’t happy at first—I mean, in many ways it was still his company, even though he’s been retired for years. But eventually he understood where I was coming from. Why I needed to do this.’

Again his arms spread out to take in the building site.

‘And this is...?’

Seb shrugged. ‘To do what you do. Follow my dreams without just sliding down my family’s mountain of money.’

Mila twisted her fingers together, suddenly uncomfortable. ‘I don’t think anyone should ever use me as a good example for anything.’

‘Why not?’ Seb said. ‘You’re doing exactly what you want to do—earning your own income and treading your own path. What’s not great about that?’

Mila laughed. ‘You’re skipping the bit where I dropped out of two different universities, at least four different vocational courses, and completely ignored the advice of basically everyone who cares about me.’

‘Exactly,’ he said, with a truly gorgeous smile. ‘And how awesome is that?’

Mila ran her hands through her hair. Yes, she was proud of what she’d achieved, and proud that she lived completely independently of her frankly obscene trust fund, but that was her... Seb was... Seb wasn’t like that. Seb had taken his family’s already successful business and blown it out of the water. He’d expanded Fyfe throughout Europe, stayed one step ahead of new technologies and made a multi-million-dollar empire a multi-billion-dollar one.

‘I’m confused,’ Mila said. ‘Steph always told me how much you loved your work. How excited you were about the company’s expansion, about—’

‘How I loved my work more than my wife?’ he said.

The sudden horrible, harsh words hung in the air between them.

‘No,’ she said softly. ‘She never said that.’

‘Not to you,’ Seb said.

Mila didn’t know what to do with what he’d said. She didn’t know what to do with any of this. It was all so unexpected, and it had been so long.

This Seb before her was such an odd combination of the boy she’d thought she’d known and this man she barely recognised. The Seb she’d known would never have sold his father’s company. But then, the Steph and Seb she’d known had been deliriously happily married. The Steph she’d known would never have taken drugs.

Emotion hung in the air between them.

‘What’s going on here, Seb?’ Mila said, suddenly frustrated. She’d never thought she’d see or hear from Seb again. And now here he was, with unexpected apologies and painful memories. ‘Because I don’t for a minute believe that your new dream just coincidentally started with the shop next door to mine.’

A small but humourless smile. Then Seb rubbed his forehead. ‘Okay—here’s the deal. I sold the company, donated a big chunk of the proceeds to addiction-related charities and then put some aside for the children I have no intention of having—that would require a wife—but my lawyer still insisted I provide for. Then I gave myself a relatively modest loan—’ he named an amount that would buy the row of shops many several times over ‘—which I will pay back once my new venture takes off. And the new venture is a building company. I’ve started with smaller developments, like this one, although already I’m starting on bigger projects: think entire apartment blocks, maybe office towers one day.’

‘So your dream wasn’t to play with computers all day but to build skyscrapers?’

Seb shook his head. ‘No, my dream was to do exactly what my dad did, but better. Which was the problem. I’ve spent my whole life deliberately walking in my father’s footsteps. I’ve finally realised that I’m more than that. That I can build a company from the ground up myself.’ He paused for a long moment. ‘When my acquisitions team recommended I buy this place I didn’t know it was next to your shop,’ he said. ‘But obviously it came up in the research. I should’ve known, really—I remember the photos you sent through to us when you first bought it.’ His lips quirked. ‘And that was really what sealed it—’

‘So you bought this place because of me?’

‘No,’ Seb said. ‘I was always going to buy it for the right price—which I had no problem negotiating.’

There it was—a glimpse of the ruthless businessman Mila remembered. Just this time without the suit.

‘The question was whether I’d let you know I’d bought it.’

Mila looked again at the building plan. In the corner was the company logo and its name: Heliotrope Construction.

‘Steph...’ Mila breathed.

‘It’s not that original,’ Seb said. ‘But if Steph could call her fashion label Violet, I figured...’

Shades of purple—Steph’s favourite colour.

‘I like it,’ Mila said.

But Seb was moving the conversation along. ‘I did consider not being hands-on with this place, to reduce the chances that we’d bump into each other. But that would have been pretty gutless. I’ve been back in Perth a few months now. I couldn’t avoid you for ever.’

Months? Seb’s email had been six months ago, and she’d dealt with his rejection then. Even so, it stung to realise he’d been back home for so long. Somehow rejection had hurt less when he was a million miles away.

‘I thought about calling. I knew I couldn’t email you.’ He shoved his hands into his pockets. ‘But I had to apologise in person. Buying this place just forced me into action. I’m sorry,’ he said again. ‘For waiting this long. Since Steph...everything’s been messed up. I’ve been messed up...’

‘I know,’ Mila said. She got it. Or at least some of it. She did.

They were both silent for a while. Mila didn’t quite know what to think—she’d mentally classified Seb as part of her past. And now here he was—so different—in her present.

‘I hope I’m not too late,’ Seb said.

‘For what?’ Mila asked, confused.

‘To fix things.’ He was watching her steadily, his gaze exploring her face. ‘To fix us. I’d hoped—’

Maybe he’d seen something in her expression, because for once Seb looked less than completely assured.

‘You and Steph were my closest friends. Steph’s gone for ever, but we still have each other. I want you in my life again, Mila. If you’ll let me.’

Part of Mila wanted to smile and laugh, tell Seb Of course! And in so many ways that was the obvious answer.

She’d told him she’d forgiven him for his behaviour amidst his grief. But it had still hurt. A lot. Because she’d certainly had enough rejection in her life—her ex-fiancé being the latest purveyor of rejection. And part of her—the pragmatic side—just wondered what the point actually was.

Had too much time passed? Was it better that their friendship remained a fond memory? Limited only to the occasional catch-up message on social media?

Remembering how she’d felt when he’d held her hand before—the warmth and strength of his fingers and the echoing, unwanted warmth in her belly—Mila thought she definitely knew the answer.

Seb had just lost his wife. And he’d been Steph’s husband. She had no place considering the breadth of his shoulders or the strength of his hands.

She should keep her distance. Be his friend, but acknowledge that things could never be as they had been. They could never have the connection of their childhood again. It was too complicated. The emotions too intense.

And yet—here he was. Right in front of her. This strange, compelling mix of the cute boy next door and this handsome almost-stranger next door.

Seb must have seen the conflict in her gaze.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘maybe I am too late.’

He was looking straight at her, but his eyes now gave nothing away. Gone was all that emotion, shuttered away.

He really wanted this, Mila realised. This was more than an extended apology or an attempt to make amends. And what was she worried about, anyway? Really?

So what if Seb still had the smile that had made her teenage self weak at the knees? She’d dealt with all that years ago. All that messy unrequited love and the whole heap of angst that came with your best friend marrying the first boy you’d fallen in love with. The first boy you’d kissed.

That had been for ever ago.

Today the butterflies in her tummy meant nothing. She was being silly. Right now Seb didn’t need her pushing him away for no apparent reason. And—frankly—she didn’t really want to push him away. She’d missed him.

‘So, do you honestly want a tour of my pottery studio?’ she asked.

Seb grinned triumphantly. ‘Lead on, Ms Molyneux!’

And of course Mila found herself smiling back.

CHAPTER THREE

‘KNOCK, KNOCK!’

The familiar female voice floated through to Mila’s shop and was promptly followed by an impatient rattling of the workshop’s back door.

‘Mila!’ Ivy called out. ‘Could you hurry, please? I really need to pee.’

Mila grinned as she hurried to greet her sister. Her nephew, Nate, was fast asleep in his pram on the other side of the fly screen, looking exactly as angelic as Ivy said he was not.

‘Mila? I mean it. I have about fifteen seconds.’

Mila dragged her gaze away from Nate to glance at her sister.

‘Maybe ten,’ Ivy clarified.

Quickly Mila flicked open the lock, and Ivy sprinted past her to the small powder room in the corner of the workshop used by Mila’s students.

‘You’ll understand one day,’ Ivy said as she slammed the toilet door, muttering something about eight-and-a-half-pound babies.

Mila stepped outside, then squatted in front of Nate’s pram. There wasn’t much space behind Mila’s shop—enough for Mila’s car, her bins, and a large collection of enthusiastically growing pot plants—all planted in an eclectic mix of pots and vessels that Mila had decided unfit for sale after firing.

Nate held Mila’s mail in his chubby fist, collected by Ivy from the letterbox beside the rear courtyard gate. Nate loved junk mail, and he was happily gazing at the lurid colours of a discount store brochure with intent.

She wasn’t exactly sure how old Nate was—nine months, maybe? He’d just started crawling, anyway, and talking in musical meaningless tones. He was so beautiful, with long eyelashes that brushed his cheeks and thick, curly blond hair. Both from his father, apparently—although Mila couldn’t yet see even a hint of Ivy’s hulking SAS soldier husband in delicate, picture-perfect Nate.

Ivy had taken to dropping by regularly—a result of Nate’s unwillingness to nap in his cot and, Mila thought, a latent ‘big sister’ instinct for Ivy to check up on her that had begun just after Steph had died. Originally it had taken the form of daily phone calls from Ivy’s office at Molyneux Tower, and had only metamorphosed into actual visits when Nate had come along and so adamantly refused to sleep.

Mila had always been close to both her sisters—but she hadn’t seen workaholic Ivy so often since they were kids living at home. And for that Mila figured she owed Nate one.

She leaned in closed to kiss his velvety cheek. ‘Nice work, kid.’

‘You know what I wish?’ Ivy asked a few minutes later, when they were settled with cups of tea on the old wooden church pew that edged one wall of the workshop. ‘That I could have banked all those hours of time I wasted over the years so I could have them now. Because, honestly, I don’t know how I ever thought I was busy before. This mum stuff is nuts.’

Mila raised her eyebrows. ‘You didn’t have any spare time to bank,’ she pointed out. Her big sister had always been the high-flying, high-achieving child in the family—groomed practically from birth to take over the Molyneux mining empire.

Ivy shrugged. ‘Maybe.’

Mila smiled. Ivy had never been good at acknowledging her obsession with work.

Her sister leant closer and spoke in a hushed tone. ‘This is going to sound terrible, but I’m really enjoying being back at work a few days a week. I can actually get stuff done. Yesterday I committed Molyneux Mining to a joint venture project with a British conglomerate. Today I’ve discovered that Nate no longer likes peas.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Mila said with a grin. ‘There isn’t actually a Mum Police.’

Ivy sighed. ‘Yeah, I know. There is definitely Mum Guilt, though.’

‘Hey,’ Mila said, catching Ivy’s gaze. ‘Don’t feel bad for enjoying the career you loved before Nate came along. He knows you love him.’

‘Words can’t describe how much.’ A long pause, then a wobbly bottom lip. ‘Oh, God, I’m going to blub. Now I can’t even blame breastfeeding hormones.’

Mila scooted closer to her sister so she could press her shoulder against Ivy’s as they sat together quietly with their now empty teacups.

‘Cake?’ Mila asked. ‘One of my students baked—’

The tinkling sound of the shop door being opened had Mila on her feet, giving a vague gesture towards the small fridge in the workshop kitchenette as she hurried out of the room.

‘Good morning—’ she began, then stopped. It was Seb. ‘Hi!’ she said, with a wide smile. Mila still wasn’t sure if reconnecting with Seb was a good idea—but she couldn’t deny that she was pleased to see him.

Seb lips quirked as he glanced at the forgotten teacup in her hand. ‘Busy day?’ he teased.

Mila shrugged. ‘I’ve had a flood of online orders this morning, actually, after one of my pieces was used in a feature in the latest Home + Home mag.’ She’d swallowed her pride over a year ago and accepted her sister April’s offer to feature one of her indoor planters on her hugely popular lifestyle blog. The subsequent interest from stylists and interior decorators hadn’t abated. ‘The store makes up a pretty small amount of my income,’ she continued, pointedly, ‘leaving plenty of time for guilt-free tea.’

‘That’s my favourite type of anything.’ He grinned. ‘And, really? “A pretty small amount”?’

‘Eighteen point two-three per cent. Down one point nine per cent from the previous quarter.’

‘There you go. Mila and her numbers.’

‘I had to be halfway decent at something at school, otherwise Mum would’ve completely disowned me.’ She hadn’t had much interest in anything other than maths, and had been truly terrible at pretending.

‘She probably wouldn’t have, you know.’ Ivy leant casually against the workshop doorframe, her eyes sparkling with curiosity as she glanced between Mila and Seb. ‘Probably.’

A pause, and Mila knew her sister had taken in Seb’s unfamiliar work clothes. ‘I didn’t realise you were visiting Perth. It’s good to see you.’

Under better circumstances. It went unsaid, but the fleeting reference to Stephanie still made Mila’s heart ache.

‘Not visiting,’ Seb said. ‘Back. For good.’

Those last two words he directed at Mila, and her awful, disloyal heart flipped over.

No. In the same minute her throat constricted at the memory of her friend. She was not allowed to get all fluttery about Sebastian. She crossed her arms in front of her chest, but that was completely ineffective. Instead, while Seb filled Ivy in on his new business venture, she deposited her teacup on the counter, then needlessly wiped a cloth over the vases in shades of teal and grey that were silhouetted like a skyline in her shop window.

‘Mila?’

She didn’t even look up at Seb’s voice, instead focusing her attention on a non-existent mark on a blue-green glaze.

‘I’m sorry—now isn’t really a good time,’ she said. Maybe if she appeared suitably busy he’d go away—and so would her inappropriate heart-flipping.

‘For what?’

She straightened to face him, once again crossing her arms. Aware that Ivy was watching, Mila didn’t really know what to say. What could she say? It’s not a good time for me to still be attracted to my best friend’s husband?

Accurate, but never, ever to be articulated.

At her continued silence, Seb leant a little closer. That didn’t help anything.

‘I thought you were okay with us being friends again?’

‘I am,’ she said. And she was. It wasn’t Seb’s fault she had faulty hormones—or whatever it was inside her that just would not quit when it came to Seb Fyfe.

Seb needed her right now. But she needed space. More time, maybe? To recalibrate to a world where she co-existed with Seb without the fact of his being her best friend’s husband to stall any heart-flipping or tingling of skin.

He will always be Steph’s husband.

She’d been a terrible friend to Steph for too long. That stopped now.

‘Do you still play tennis?’ she said, a bit more loudly than she would have liked.

‘On occasion.’

‘Great!’ she said, even louder. Dammit. ‘Let’s hire a court later this week. Have a hit.’

This was a genius plan. Physical distance. Smacking of objects.

‘Sure...’ he said, sounding a little confused.

‘Great!’ she repeated. ‘Great!’

Then finally he left, with a tinkling of the doorbell, and from Mila a significant sigh of relief.

Ivy marched over, every inch the billionaire businesswoman demanding to know exactly what was going on. But before she could open her mouth a low, sleepy cry reverberated from the workshop.

‘Later,’ Ivy threw over her shoulder as she jogged back to Nate.

Seemed Mila owed Nate another one: Nice work, Nate.

Now she had time to work out something to tell Ivy—to explain whatever her sister had thought she’d witnessed. Because Ivy had never known about Mila’s unrequited teenage crush. Nor April, for that matter.

And no one was ever going to find out about this silly adult version either.

* * *

Seb propped his shoulder against the front wall of his shop. Inside, the sounds of building activity thumped and buzzed through the open door, and a lanky apprentice chippy carted rubble in white plastic buckets to the large skip that hunkered at the kerb.

His meeting with the foreman had gone well. So well, in fact, that Seb knew it wasn’t even close to necessary that he checked in with the man each day. Richard had thirty years’ experience and knew exactly what he was doing. He knew more than Seb, actually—although to be perfectly honest that wasn’t particularly hard for anyone in the construction industry.

This bothered Seb. He’d known from a very young age that he would one day own his father’s company. Just like for Mila’s older sister Ivy it had been his destiny, and he’d done everything in his power to be worthy of following in his dad’s footsteps.

That had included actually knowing what his staff did.

He’d graduated with honours in his Computer Science degree so he could write code like his developers. Then he’d done an MBA as he’d begun taking over from his father. And he’d attended each and every course before he’d sent his staff—whether it be marketing, customer service, project management or system development. He’d known that he didn’t get to stop learning just because he was the boss, and he hadn’t been about to waste his team’s time on a course he wasn’t prepared to do himself.

He hadn’t pretended he could do every job in his mammoth company—and he hadn’t needed to—but he’d figured he should be able to walk into any meeting, at any Fyfe office in the world, and not feel as if his staff were talking in a foreign language.

He still had a long way to go when it came to his new venture.

It bothered him that he didn’t know enough about joists and sub-floors and ceiling-fixing and roofing and I-beams and...

In fact, his entire prior experience in the building industry involved demoing the bathroom of the London flat he’d owned with Steph prior to its—outsourced—renovation, a disproportionate interest in power tools for a man who didn’t have a shed—or a back garden to put one in—and many good intentions to attend a tiling/carpentry/plastering workshop one day.

He’d always been interested in tools and building things. He’d just funnelled it in a technological direction. Steph had encouraged him to take some time off—to do a weekend course, to paint their home rather than having professional decorators return three separate times to get the flawless finish he’d demanded. But that was the problem with being a work-obsessed perfectionist—he hadn’t been about to take time off from Fyfe.

Nothing had been worth that. Certainly not a bit of DIY.

‘Not me,’ Steph had told him more than once. ‘Not even me.’

Seb drained the last of his coffee, his fingernails digging ever so slightly into the takeaway cup’s corrugated cardboard outer shell. He stared at nothing—at the sky, at the passing traffic—and finally at the stencilled company name on the side of the battered skip, letting his gaze lose focus.

He’d read somewhere—or heard, maybe, on a podcast or something—that grief hit you like a wave. At first the waves just kept on pounding. Pounding you down and down, with barely a breath of air before you were sucked back under again. But then, over time, the gaps between the waves would grow. They would still hit just as hard—and be just as shocking—but in between you could begin to breathe. To exist again.

Sometimes you even got better at handling the waves, at bracing yourself and swimming back up to the surface. Not every wave though. Some would always sneak up on you and drown you as brutally as the first.

Every memory of Steph...every reminder of his many mistakes...what he could have done...should have done... It wasn’t getting easier.

Seb had discovered that the waves didn’t stop coming. He had just got better at swimming.

Footsteps drew his attention back to his surroundings. He looked up to see Mila striding along the footpath, her gaze on the screen of her phone. Her eyes flicked upwards as she approached, and the moment her gaze locked on his it skittered away again.