she said, even louder. Dammit. âLetâs hire a court later this week. Have a hit.â
This was a genius plan. Physical distance. Smacking of objects.
âSure...â he said, sounding a little confused.
âGreat!â she repeated. âGreat!â
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.
âLater,â 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 Ivyâto explain whatever her sister had thought sheâd witnessed. Because Ivy had never known about Milaâs 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 wasnât even close to necessary that he checked in with the man each day. Richard had thirty yearsâ experience and knew exactly what he was doing. He knew more than Seb, actuallyâalthough to be perfectly honest that wasnât particularly hard for anyone in the construction industry.
This bothered Seb. Heâd known from a very young age that he would one day own his fatherâs company. Just like for Milaâs older sister Ivy it had been his destiny, and heâd done everything in his power to be worthy of following in his dadâs footsteps.
That had included actually knowing what his staff did.
Heâd graduated with honours in his Computer Science degree so he could write code like his developers. Then heâd done an MBA as heâd begun taking over from his father. And heâd attended each and every course before heâd sent his staffâwhether it be marketing, customer service, project management or system development. Heâd known that he didnât get to stop learning just because he was the boss, and he hadnât been about to waste his teamâs time on a course he wasnât prepared to do himself.
He hadnât pretended he could do every job in his mammoth companyâand he hadnât needed toâbut heâd 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 didnât 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 heâd owned with Steph prior to itsâoutsourcedârenovation, a disproportionate interest in power tools for a man who didnât have a shedâor a back garden to put one inâand many good intentions to attend a tiling/carpentry/plastering workshop one day.
Heâd always been interested in tools and building things. Heâd just funnelled it in a technological direction. Steph had encouraged him to take some time offâto do a weekend course, to paint their home rather than having professional decorators return three separate times to get the flawless finish heâd demanded. But that was the problem with being a work-obsessed perfectionistâhe hadnât been about to take time off from Fyfe.
Nothing had been worth that. Certainly not a bit of DIY.
âNot me,â Steph had told him more than once. âNot even me.â
Seb drained the last of