The Billionaire from Her Past Read Online Free PDF Page B

she said, her big blue eyes earnest and unwavering, ‘is that I get it. These moments. Minutes. Hours.’
    â€˜Days...’
    But he stopped himself saying the rest: weeks, months... Because he’d realised it wasn’t true. Not now.
    Mila realised it too—he could tell. They stood there on the street, staring at each other with a strange mix of sadness for the beautiful, smart, funny, flawed Stephanie they so missed and relief that their lives continued onwards.
    â€˜Are you okay?’ Mila asked again.
    He nodded. The ocean had stilled. The wave of grief and guilt and loss had receded.
    She still gripped his arm. They both seemed to realise it at the same time. Her touch felt different now. No longer cool or simply comforting. Her fingers loosened, but didn’t fall away. She didn’t step back—but then neither did he.
    Her gaze seemed to flicker slightly, darting about his face to land nowhere in particular.
    When they’d been about fifteen, Mila had successfully dragged Steph into her Goth phase. Seb couldn’t remember what the actual point of it all had been, but he did remember a lot of depressing music and heavy eyeliner.
    â€˜You have incredible eyes,’ he said, without thinking.
    Those incredible eyes widened—and they were incredible...he’d always thought so—and Mila took an abrupt step back, snatched her hand away.
    â€˜What?’
    He instantly missed her touch—enough that it bothered him. Although he couldn’t have explained why.
    â€˜I was thinking of all that eye make-up you used to wear towards the end of high school. I hated it. You look perfect just like this.’
    Mila’s cheeks might have pinkened—it was hard to tell in the sunlight—but her eyes had definitely narrowed. ‘I didn’t ask for your approval of my make-up choices.’
    He’d stuffed up. There it was—that shuttered, defensive expression.
    â€˜That wasn’t what I meant. I—’
    â€˜Look, I really have to go.’ She’d already taken a handful of steps along the footpath.
    â€˜See you at tennis?’ he said. They’d organised it via text for the following evening.
    Mila didn’t look back. ‘Yes,’ she said, sounding about as excited as if he’d reminded her of a dental appointment.
    Sebastian tossed his empty coffee cup in the skip, then headed back to the building site. He might not need to be here daily to speak to the project manager, but he could find other ways to make himself useful—ideally in usefulness that involved swinging a sledgehammer.

CHAPTER FOUR
    T HE VERY LAST glimmers of sun were fading as Mila pulled into the Nedlands Tennis Club car park. A moment after she’d hooked her tennis bag over her shoulder floodlights came on, illuminating the navy blue hard courts and their border of forest-green.
    The car park was nearly empty.An elderly-looking sedan with probationary ‘P’ plates most likely belonged to one of the teenage girls warming up very seriously for a doubles match, while the top-of-the-range blood-red sports utility had to belong to one of the two guys around Mila’s age who were laughing as they very casually lobbed a ball back and forth.
    Judging by the fluorescent workwear tossed in the tray of the ute, Mila could almost guarantee those guys were wealthy FIFO workers: men—generally—who flew in to work at one of Western Australia’s isolated mines in the Pilbara for weeks at a time, living in ‘dongas’—basic, transportable single rooms—and then flying out for a week or more off, back home in Perth. It was a brutal, but extremely well-paid lifestyle—providing blue collar workers with incomes unheard of before the mining boom.
    Mila could never have done it. She’d visited the Molyneux-owned mines many times in her youth, and while she could appreciate the ancient, spectacular beauty of the Pilbara, the