Читать книгу The Billionaire From Her Past - Leah Ashton, Leah Ashton - Страница 14

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?

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.

Work has been crazy!

This director is a hard-ass. I’m working fourteen-hour days...

But always: You know I love you, right?

Right.

‘So you’ve been working hard for the past three months, then?’

She’d done the calculations. In fact, this was pretty good for him. Normally his calls were biannual. Maybe that was why she hadn’t hung up on him.

‘I have, indeed,’ he said, either missing or ignoring Mila’s sarcasm.

To be honest, Mila didn’t know him well enough to say which. Maybe that was the problem—she clung to the possibility that he was just thoughtless, not a selfish waste of a father who knew exactly how much pain he caused.

‘I’ve just landed in Sydney for the premiere of my latest.’

He always expected Mila to know everything about him.

‘Latest what, Dad?’

‘Movie,’ he said, all incredulous.

Mila rolled her eyes.

‘Tsunami. The director’s from Perth, so the Australian premiere is over there tomorrow night. I’m doing a few cast interviews in Sydney today, then hopping on a plane tonight. You won’t believe it, but I’m booked on a late flight because Serena has no concept of how far away bloody Perth is...’

Blaine Spencer just kept on talking, but Mila wasn’t paying attention any more. ‘Wait—Dad. You’re coming here?’

‘Seriously, I wouldn’t be surprised if she’d booked us a hotel in Melbourne instead of Perth. All the capital cities are the same to her—’ He finally registered that Mila had spoken. ‘Yes,’ he said, as if seeing his daughter for the first time in six years was something totally normal to drop obliquely into conversation. ‘Just for the night,’ he clarified, because bothering to extend his stay to visit with his daughter would never occur to him.

‘Okay...’ Mila said—just to say something.

‘If you want to catch up you’ll have to come to the premiere,’ he said. ‘I’m doing radio interviews tomorrow morning and then I’ll have to sleep most of the day. You know I can never sleep on a plane.’

She didn’t. She didn’t know him at all.

‘So if I can’t make it to the premiere I won’t see you?’

‘No. Sorry, darling. Can’t stay this time.’

Here it comes.

‘Pre-production has already started on my next. Got to get to work!’

It took Mila another long moment to respond. All the words she wanted to say—to spew at him—teetered on her tongue.

There was nothing unusual about this phone call. The last-minute nature of his invitation, the way he’d somehow shifted the responsibility for them seeing each other onto her, his total lack of awareness or consideration for her own plans for the weekend. Or for her life, really.

No, nothing unusual.

If—somehow—Blaine got Ivy’s phone number, or April’s, and either woman allowed the conversation to continue beyond the time it took to hang up on him, Mila knew how her sisters would respond to what was hardly an invitation.

With a no. A very clear, very definite, I’d-rather-scrub-the-toilet-than-waste-my-time-on-you no.

They would each be furious with Mila for even considering seeing him. For even answering this phone call.

The little tinkling sound of the doorbell drew Mila’s attention away from her father for a moment.

It was Seb. Of course.

He gestured that he’d wait outside, but Mila held up a hand so he’d stay. This wouldn’t take long.

‘Just get Serena to email me the details,’ she said.

‘So you’ll come?’

And there it was. The reason why she had always been going to go to her father’s premiere. That slightest of suggestions that maybe her dad had been worried she’d refuse to see him. The hint that he was genuine about this—that he really did want to see his youngest daughter.

After all, why else would he invite her?

Ugh, she should know better.

But she just couldn’t stop herself:

‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ Mila began, but her dad had already handed his phone back to his assistant. Such typical casual thoughtlessness made her shake her head, but smile despite herself.

‘Who was that?’ Seb asked as he approached the counter.

Behind them, Mila heard the familiar creak and bang of the workshop’s back door that heralded Sheri’s arrival.

‘Dad,’ Mila said simply. She’d considered lying to Seb—broken families and deadbeat parents were certainly not de rigueur for their superficial conversations of late. But then—it was Seb.