On This Side of Paradise: A Billionaire Second Chance Romance

cHAPTER tHREE

"I need a lift this afternoon, Sheena."

"Sure, where to?"

"To my lawyers." Ava winced as she said it. "I have to sign some papers."

"What this time?" Sheena was the only one of her friends who was aware of her pending divorce. And only because she had been with Ava when she was going through the roughest patch of her life.

"Yet again, to give in writing that I am refusing his financial support."

Whatever Erico had done to her, Ava had to admit that he had, from the very first, insisted that she accept his money. But Ava had not budged from her refusal. Erico wasn't wealthy. They had spent their almost two years of marriage on a very tight budget. He had worked day and night to make ends meet. In fact, if Adalberto hadn't been his uncle, she doubted very much he would have been able to afford an attorney. Ava had felt guilty taking his money when she knew that her parents had been more than well off. Her father had retired as a professor from a prestigious university and her mother a government employee. They had, time and again tried to assist them financially while they were still playing at their marriage, but that had only stung Erico's pride and he had savagely refused take any handout from her parents. The result had been that Ava had barely managed to run her household with a pittance.

Completing her work, she exited her lawyer's offices and got into Sheena's car. She sank gratefully in the passenger seat and idly looked out. A male with dark shades was indolently lounging against a sedan in the parking lot, looking straight at her. Her gaze passed impassively but the next second she jerked straight. No, it can't be!

Sheena asked her, "Are you alright?"

"Yes, yes I am." Ava quickly recovered. No, it was just a trick of her mind. It wasn't Erico. It was some other man who had the same physique as him. A woman had alighted from the shopping mall opposite them and threw an arm around him, kissing him full on the mouth. The man kissed her back, making quite a show of it and they got inside the car.

Ava averted her gaze. Her mind was playing tricks again, this close to the divorce. She turned to Sheena.

"We are going to the get together right?"

"Oh yes." One of mutual friends had just received a promotion and he was having a small celebration in a bar not far from here.

"Siddhartha coming?"

"He said he would."

As they drove through the city, Ava let herself be drawn into her memory of laying eyes on Erico for the first time.

She had been an impressionable teenager of nineteen, in her second year of college. Up until then, she had spent her life with a million restrictions. She had been a late child; her parents had been in late thirties when they had had her. As a consequence, they had been over protective of their only daughter. They had censured her every move as much as they had indulged her. She's never had any lack of toys growing up and she had always received a hefty amount of allowance. Anything she had desired, had been brought for her. But in no way she had been a spoilt kid. In return for every kind of luxury a girl of her age could hope for, she's had to work very hard to earn those.

Both her parents' academic background had meant she'd had to put extra effort in studies. She had never come first in her class, but had always been among the top five. Along with studies, she had been subjected to music lessons from an early age, getting piano lessons, and vocal training. Not to mention weekly classes of swimming, pottery and table tennis.

Ironically, the one thing that had stolen her heart was guitar. Something her parents had thoroughly disapproved of. They had abhorred the instrument as they had associated it with rock music and indecent songs they had equaled with noise.

But despite her parents' objection, she had persisted on her desire to learn it. Her first and only rebellion, until she had met Erico.