her friend talking about the eating disorder she’d overcome years ago? Mila remembered James’s sometimes heavy-handed tactics when it came to his sister, but Freya said that things had mellowed between them over the last year or so. Especially now that she and Zack had fallen in love and gotten married. Their twins were weeks away from being born, and the pair was ecstatic. Mila had done her best to be happy for her friend, but it struck too close to home. That could have been her and James had he not decided that a wife whose passion was working with various relief organizations would cramp his Hollywood style.
That might not be exactly true, but something had given him cold feet. He knew she wasn’t interested in being a big earner, so she’d always assumed that had had something to do with it. Only James had never seen fit to tell her why he hadn’t wanted to marry her. Just that she was better off without him.
And she was.
Definitely.
And he could keep his reasons for breaking their engagement to himself. After all, she was used to being kept in the dark. Her aunt had loved her, but in trying to protect her she’d left Mila unprepared for the shocking reality of her parents’ deaths. They hadn’t died in a car accident, like her aunt had told her. In fact, her mother had lingered for days in a hospital after being shot. Ten-year-old Mila had never even had the chance say goodbye. It had taken her a long time to forgive her aunt for that once she’d discovered the truth.
The Mila of today did not believe in holding back information no matter how unpalatable or difficult it might be. To do so was to destroy her trust. So James’s refusal to level with her had made it easy for her to walk away and never look back.
His voice came from nowhere, jerking her back to the present.
“I’ll need some scissors.” He tested the flexibility of the tubing he’d been handed.
What was he going to do with it?
Avery grabbed a pair of sharp scissors from the desk and handed them over.
Somehow wedging his large body between the leg of the desk and the wall, he grunted a quick oath at something and then remained silent for several minutes.
And the view from where she was standing was exquisite.
A length of tubing appeared on one side of the computer. “Can you grab that, Mila?”
Conscious of the pencil skirt she’d donned for the photo shoot, and praying the photographer didn’t catch a wardrobe malfunction, she knelt down and took hold of the tubing that he’d pushed beside the computer. Only it now had a dark stain on it. Red. Wet.
“Are you bleeding?”
She glanced up at Avery, who read her wordless request. Within a second or two she handed Mila a bottle of hand sanitizer and some gauze. She quickly wiped down the tubing and lobbed another question toward James. “What’s going on back there?”
“Tie it at the front of the computer.”
She frowned. How was this supposed to fix anything? “How tight do you want it?”
“Pull it taut and then start the computer up.”
Mila tied the two ends together and made a quick knot in the rubber. “Okay, let’s see if that did it.”
Pushing the start button, the screen leapt to life, along with a warning that the computer hadn’t shut down correctly.
“No kidding,” her assistant muttered, staring at the monitor.
“It’s going, James. Thank you.”
A few seconds later the man edged backward and climbed to his feet. The fingers of his right hand were pressed tightly against the sleeve of his dress shirt, where another stain had formed. “Oh, my God, what did you do?”
A series of clicks went off behind them. Mila ignored the sound.
“It’s nothing. Just found some old tack strip along the wall.”
Oh, no. The building had been carpeted when they’d first moved in. Mila had immediately gone to work removing it and then prying up the tack strip. By the end of the process she’d been dog tired, and since the office desk had always been there, she’d left the lone strip where it was. She’d forgotten all about it until now. It was a wonder Avery hadn’t cut herself on it. She threw the woman a look. “I’m sorry, I totally forgot about it.”
Her assistant gave her arm a gentle squeeze. “It’s fine. I’ve never had any problems avoiding it.”
Avery was a lot smaller than James, so that was probably true. Still, it didn’t make her feel any better.
“Let me see.” She held her hand toward him. He eyed her for a second and then shook his head.
“It’s nothing. Just a scratch.”
“Then you won’t mind if I look at it.”
His jaw tightened, but he didn’t argue with her again. He let her take his hand. The second his skin touched hers, a frisson of awareness trickled up her arm and circled her chest. She did her best to beat it back, turning his hand over to get a better look at it.
The flash of a camera went off in the background, making her suddenly aware that Morgan had been snapping away as nobody had told her not to. The last thing Mila wanted was a shot with her and James holding hands. But if she said something, he would know, so instead she found the spot where he’d cut himself. Long jagged lines ran parallel to his little finger, going up the side of his hand. Nasty looking but not deep enough to need stitches. “Have you had a tetanus shot recently?”
James’s brows went up. “Yes.”
Of course he had. He was a doctor. Her face burned, but she forced her voice to remain steady. “Avery, would you mind getting me some more gauze, please? And some alcohol from the cabinet in the exam room?”
The photographer slid sideways, her camera still up to her eye as she snapped shot after shot.
Evidently James had had enough. “I think you’ve taken enough pictures, Morgan, don’t you?”
Whether he didn’t want their picture to pop up in the society pages with speculation about them rekindling their past romance or something else, his low words had their desired effect. The woman murmured something that might have been either thanks or an apology and put her camera back around her neck. She then glanced at her watch. “Oops. I’m late for my next appointment. I’ll just grab a taxi, if you don’t mind. Thank you, though, for letting me hitch a ride to the clinic.”
James nodded, but said nothing. Freya offered to see her out.
The pair left, leaving Mila alone with her ex.
“Nice touch,” he said, indicating the hand she still held.
“Excuse me?”
“The clinic has been trying to improve my image. Evidently my bedside manner isn’t always as soft and cuddly as the board would like it to be.”
A thought came
