The CEO(29)

‘I’m proud of you,’ Lulu said down the line. ‘For once, you’re thinking with your head instead of your heart. Good for you.’

Thinking with her head instead of her heart? If her sister only knew the truth.

Lulu began giggling down the line. ‘I have one question. How will you cope?’

Ava smiled. ‘I think taking his money will help considerably, don’t you?’

Afterwards, when Ava stopped her mind whirring with all the possibilities of what she might do to Callum’s house, she remembered.

She grabbed her phone and found the photo, the one Callum had taken at The Meadows.

And her heart froze.

He’d zoomed in close on her face. Her lips were slightly parted, her chin tilted down and her gaze direct down the lens at her photographer.

That look on her face, the one Callum had seen as he’d framed her carefully, was of a woman in deep lust.

And he’d seen it.

What the hell had she done?

*

Chris, Callum, Cooper and Ellie stood huddled around a small black-and-white image.

‘Look at that. That’s our kid.’ Chris slipped an arm around Ellie’s shoulders and pulled her in close, kissing her gently on the forehead. ‘This is hot off the presses, taken yesterday. Not a bad shot, although the framing is terrible.’

Ellie poked him in the ribs. ‘Once a snapper, always a snapper.’

Callum crossed his arms. ‘You lured us both here with the prospect of sharing some news. You two being pregnant is not news.’ He nodded towards Ellie’s bulging belly.

‘No false pretences, I promise,’ Ellie said slightly breathlessly. ‘We do have news. New news. We wanted you both here to tell you.’

‘We’re having a girl!’ Chris announced proudly.

‘Oh, brilliant,’ Cooper said as he hugged his brother and slapped him three times on the back.

‘Thank God for that,’ Callum said as he reached down to kiss Ellie’s cheek. ‘The last thing this family needs is more men, right?’

Callum and Chris hugged each other, too.

‘That’s exactly what I said when Chris acted just the tiniest bit disappointed at hearing the news.’ Ellie took the picture from Chris and when he pulled out a chair from their kitchen table, she gratefully accepted it.

‘You’re such a reporter, wife. You never let the facts get in the way of a good story, do you?’

Chris positioned himself behind Ellie and stroked her hair gently as she looked up at him and reached for his hand. Callum had never seen his big brother so happy. He’d given up his dangerous career. Married Ellie. Was building a family. Everything was working out for him.

Which only reminded Callum that his attempt at that kind of life had failed. And why? Because he’d been blind. That’s why.

‘Hey Cal, you want a beer?’ Cooper was at the fridge and without waiting for a reply, he handed Callum a bottle of imported beer and cocked his head to the back door. Callum followed him to the tiny garden out the back of Chris and Ellie’s house. There were tall palms at the back fence and old red brick paving half-covered in moss. A wooden bench looked splintered and rickety and garden beds were neglected. He wondered where Chris and Ellie’s daughter would play in a space so small? He doubted that even Ava could make a silk purse out of this sow’s ear.

There she was again, in his head. Just like she’d been since The Meadows.

He turned back to his brother and they clinked their bottles together. The noise echoed in the little garden and they stood together for a long moment, craning their necks to get a glimpse of sky.

It had been a long time since they’d shared a beer or much of anything else. Callum was used to the fact that they were identical, even though their hair was different these days, but he knew other people still found it fascinating. The media had been especially intrigued when they were younger and footloose, but they’d both put strategies in place to stop the intrusion. Callum had spent years trying not to give the media anything to gossip about—not that the strategy had worked particularly well when his marriage had ended—and Cooper had lived away from Sydney for so long that he now made the sports pages more often than the gossip pages. All of which meant that Callum had absolutely no freaking idea what was going on in his brother’s life that made his return to California so urgent.

Callum cocked his head towards Chris and Ellie still sitting inside. ‘You can’t even wait for the kid to be born?’

‘You know I’d like to, but I can’t.’

Callum waited a moment before asking, ‘What’s her name?’

Cooper looked at his brother distractedly. ‘What?’