A Marriage Worth Saving

It only took him a moment to realise that she was lying about the reason she’d let Greg take the papers, not about his father’s actions.

‘Did you follow up with Dad?’ he demanded, his anger coating his real feelings about the fact that his father had been there for Mila when he hadn’t been. Or the fact that his father had been supportive at all—especially to someone who wasn’t his son. Was it just another way Greg had chosen to show Jordan how wrong his choice to leave had been?

‘Did you?’ she shot back, and Jordan stared at her, wondering again where the fire was coming from.

‘No, clearly not.’

There was a pause.

‘I think that, all things considered, we should probably postpone this meeting until a later point,’ Mark said, breaking the silence.

‘I don’t think that’s a good idea with the time frame we’re working with, Mark.’

Though denial was a tempting option, Jordan knew that he had to face reality. And it seemed the reality was that he was still married.

‘Could you please give us a few moments to talk in private?’

‘Yes, of course.’

If he was perturbed by being kicked out of his own office, Mark didn’t show it as he left the room.

The minute the door clicked closed, Jordan spoke. ‘So, my father was supposed to give the papers to Mark, who was supposed to file them. And since none of that happened, I think Mark’s right—we are still married.’

‘Yes, I think so...’

Her eyes were closed, but Jordan knew it was one of the ways she worked through her feelings. Closing herself off from the world—and in those last months they’d shared together closing herself off from him—so she could think.

The silence stretched out long enough that he became aware of a niggling inside his heart. One that told him that there was still hope for them if they were married. He didn’t like it at all—not when that hope had already been dashed when Mila had accepted the divorce.

He had filed for divorce because he’d thought that it was what she wanted—she hadn’t called, hadn’t spoken to him once after he’d walked out through the door to a life in Johannesburg. He’d taken it as a sign that she wanted the space she had asked him for to be permanent. And so he’d thought he would make it easier for the both of them by initiating the divorce, half expecting her to call him, to demand that he come home so that they could fix things.

But he’d realised soon enough that that wasn’t going to happen—when had she demanded anything from him anyway?—and he’d figured that he had done the right thing. Especially since he had been the one to make the decision that had caused the heartbreak they’d suffered in the first place.

‘Your father spoke to me about a reunion between the two of us.’

He turned his head to her when she spoke. Her voice held that same music he had heard the first time they’d met.

‘In his last few months. He wanted us to be together again.’

She opened her eyes, and Jordan had to brace himself against what the pain he saw there did to him. Against the anguish that disappointment was the last thing his father had felt about him.

He cleared his throat. ‘I suppose that gives this situation some meaning. He wanted us to plan an event like the one where we met. He knew that still being married would mean we would have to bend to his will. Unless we can show that he was unfit when he made it.’

‘I don’t think that will work.’

She shook her head, and he wondered why she kept tying her hair up when those curls were meant to be free.

‘He was completely sane—his heart attacks had nothing to do with his ability to make rational decisions.’

‘What’s rational about this?’

She lowered her eyes. ‘Nothing. Of course, nothing. But making an emotional decision isn’t against the law.’

‘It should be.’

‘Maybe.’ She looked at him stoically. ‘But he isn’t the first person to do that in this family, so I think we can forgive him.’

Jordan found himself at a loss for words, unsure of what she meant. Was she talking about when she’d asked him to go, or the fact that he had left? Regardless of their meaning, her words surprised him. She hadn’t given him any indication that she regretted what had happened between them... But then again, she wasn’t exactly saying that now either.

But still, the feeling threw him. And because he didn’t like it, he addressed the situation at hand.

‘It doesn’t seem like we’re going to get out of this before our time is up, Mila.’

‘Out of this...? You mean out of our marriage?’

Why did the question make him feel so strange?

He cleared his throat. ‘Yes. The divorce—the one we thought we had—was supposed to take six weeks, and that’s as much time as we have to make sure the will’s terms are met. So...’ he took a deep breath ‘...what would you say about putting the divorce off until we’ve planned the event, and then we can take it from there?’

She briefly closed her eyes again, and then looked at him, her expression guarded. ‘Why would I do that?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Exactly what I said.’

Her guard had slipped enough for him to see a complexity of emotion that reflected the complexity of their predicament.

‘I lose in this situation either way. If I help you, we’ll get the inheritance, sure, but I would still have to sell my share to you. So what do I get out of this besides spending time with the man I thought I would never have to see again?’

It took him a moment to process what she was saying, and even then he found it difficult to formulate an answer. ‘You’ll get money. I’ll pay you for the share of the vineyard my father left you.’

‘Money? Money?’ She pulled her head back as though she had been slapped. ‘I can’t believe that we’re still married.’

Her words felt like a slap to him, too, but the shame that ran through him at his own words made him realise that maybe he’d deserved it. He was surprised that she had said it—she would never have done so before—but that didn’t make it any less true.

‘I’m sorry, Mila, I didn’t mean that.’ He sighed. ‘This has been a shock to me, too.’

She nodded, though the coldness coming from her made him wonder if she really did accept his apology.

‘You know money isn’t an incentive for me,’ she said after a few moments, her voice back to being neutral. ‘Especially since selling you my share of the vineyard would mean that I lose the only thing I have left of someone I thought of as family.’

His heart ached at that because he understood it. But the logical side of him—the side that didn’t care too much for emotions—made him ask, ‘If you didn’t want to sell your share of the vineyard to me, why did you say you would?’

‘I didn’t say I wouldn’t sell. I just want you to understand what I’m giving up so that you won’t say something so insensitive again.’

He was beginning to feel like a schoolchild who was being taught a lesson. ‘What do you want, then, Mila?’

‘I want—’ Her voice was husky, her face twisted in pain. But it disappeared almost as quickly as it came, and she cleared her throat. ‘I want to sell the house and the car—everything, really, that was a part of our life together.’

Pain flared through him, and the only way he knew how to control it was to pretend it didn’t affect him at all. ‘Why?’

‘To get rid of everything so that I can move—’ She broke off, and then continued, ‘Move away.’ She said the last two words deliberately, as though she was struggling to formulate them. ‘I haven’t been able to sort things out since you left. The past year I’ve been busy. Looking after Greg, planning some events and...’

Getting over you, he thought she might say, and he held his breath, waiting for the words. But they didn’t come.

‘Your help would be useful so that by the time the vineyard is yours, I’ll have something to move on to.’

‘Where will you go?’ he asked when it finally registered that she wanted to move away.

She raised her eyes to his, and they brimmed with the emotion he thought he carried in his heart.

‘I’m still working on that part.’

Hearing her say that she was leaving was more difficult than he could have imagined. He couldn’t figure out why that was when he had done the same thing.

‘Are you sure you’re not sacrificing more than I am?’

She smiled a little at that. ‘I’m sure.’

Her smile told him all he needed to know. That he needed to help her so he could help himself. Once this was all over he would have the vineyard his parents had owned and would be able to live up to the promises he’d made to them. Maybe he would even be able to make restitution for the decisions he’d made during his short marriage and finally find some peace.

‘So if I agree to help you deal with everything from when we were married, you’ll agree to plan the event and then sell your inheritance to me?’

‘Yes.’

‘And then we’ll file for divorce again?’

‘We?’

The hope he thought he’d extinguished earlier threatened to ignite again at the uncertainty in her voice. But then he remembered that he was the one who had filed for divorce the first time, and she was probably just checking whether that would be the case again.

‘You,’ he clarified. ‘We might as well even the score since we have the chance.’

He could have kicked himself when he saw the way her eyes darkened. He wasn’t entirely sure he blamed her since his words seemed callous even to his own ears. But despite that, she nodded.

‘I guess we have a deal.’

CHAPTER THREE

THEY DROVE BACK to the house in silence.

Jordan’s presence was already turning Mila’s life upside down. He reminded her of the things she’d failed at. Of the things she had wanted since she’d realised as a child that she didn’t have a family in the way her classmates did.

Her entire class had once been invited to a party and she had begged her foster mother at the time—a perpetually exhausted woman who’d spent all her time catering to her husband instead of the children she’d been charged with caring for—to let her go.

When she’d got there Mila had seen for the first time what a real family was. She’d seen her classmate’s parents look at their child with love, with pride. Had watched them take photos together while the rest of her class played on the grass. Had seen the easy affection.

She had spent that entire afternoon watching them, wondering why no one else was when this family was clearly doing something out of the norm. But when Mila had been the last to be picked up, she’d seen the way the other parents had treated their children. She’d realised that that was normal, and that she was the one with the special circumstances.

Her longing for family had started on that day, spreading through her heart, reminding her of it with every beat. Since she had lost her child, those beats had become heavy with pain, with emptiness. And it would only be worse now that Jordan was back.

Since he was back for good, she would have to leave the house she’d been staying in for almost a year. Though she’d known she couldn’t stay there for ever, she had hoped for more time than she’d got. Not only because she didn’t know where she would go—again, the thought of returning to the house where she’d lost their baby made her feel nauseous—but because it had come to feel like the home she’d never had. But then, Mila had also hoped for more time with Greg—especially since she’d finally managed to pierce that closed-off exterior of his...

But that was the least of her concerns now that she’d found out she and Jordan were still married.

It was the hope that worried her the most. Hope had been her first emotion when she’d heard the news, and it had lingered until Jordan had brought up filing for divorce again. It reminded her of how receiving those papers for the first time had destroyed her hope for reconciliation. And rightly so. She shouldn’t be—wasn’t—interested in reconciliation, however easy it might be to get lured back into the promise of a life with Jordan.

But that wasn’t what he wanted, or he wouldn’t have left so easily. And that, she told herself, was exactly why she needed to protect herself from him. That was why she had accepted Jordan’s suggestion that she be the one to file the divorce papers this time. She needed to remind herself that their life together—at least in a romantic sense—was over.

She didn’t want him to know how difficult things had been for her since he’d left, even though she had almost told him about it in Mark’s office. About how selling their possessions had nothing to do with moving away and everything to do with moving on. But because she couldn’t bear to expose herself to him she’d lied instead. Though now that she thought about it perhaps moving away was the first step to moving on...

Either way, she needed his help. She couldn’t go back to their house—she would never think of it as hers, even if it was in her name—alone. She couldn’t face it by herself. And she had to face it. She had spent long enough grieving for the family she was sure she would never have now. She knew the loss of her son would stay with her for ever, but she was determined to make something out of her life. To prove that she would have been a worthy mother...

‘Do you want to talk about how everything will work?’ Jordan asked, almost as though he knew that she’d been thinking too much and wanted to distract her.

‘You mean how we’ll plan the event?’ she asked, and looked out of the window to the vineyards they were passing.

Stellenbosch had always felt like home to her, even when she hadn’t had a home. The minute she had driven down the winding road that offered the most beautiful sights she had ever seen—the peaks that stood above fields and fields of produce, the kaleidoscope of colours that changed with every season—a piece had settled inside her. That had been the first time she had visited the Thomas Vineyard.

‘That’s part of it, of course. But I was speaking about all the details. Like where you’re going to stay, for example.’

She sighed. She had told him that she would leave Greg’s house that morning, and when she’d said it she’d thought it was the best way to force herself to face going back to their house. But her deal with Jordan meant that she could delay that a little longer, and immediately the ball in her chest unravelled.

Though that didn’t mean she could stay at the farmhouse.

‘I can still leave today.’

She could stay at a bed and breakfast, she thought, forcing herself to ignore the pain in her chest. She didn’t need to be thinking about how leaving would sacrifice her only connection to Greg—to the memories of family and the love she’d never thought she deserved. She also didn’t need to remember that she’d spent little time working since the accident, which meant her bank account was in a sorry state.

‘You don’t have to,’ he said stiffly, and she turned to him.

‘What do you mean?’

‘It might make more sense for us to stay together.’ Jordan’s eyes were fixed on the road. ‘We have six weeks to sort this event out. Being in the same space will make it a lot easier.’

There was Mr Logical again, she thought, and unexplained disappointment made her say, ‘I can’t stay in the house with you there, Jordan.’

She saw him frown. ‘Why not?’

Because there’s too big a part of me that wants to play house with you again, she realised.

‘It’s too complicated. This whole thing with us still being married...’ Her head pounded at the knowledge and what it meant. ‘It’s a lot to deal with. It would probably be best if you and I lived separately.’

He didn’t respond as he turned onto the gravel road that led to the house that would soon be theirs. She used the time to remind herself that she had been at a standstill for a year. She couldn’t keep letting the tragedies in her life or her dreams for a family hold her back. It was time to move on, and living with Jordan—even if it was practical, considering her current financial situation—didn’t seem to be the way she would do it.

But then she thought about the deal she had made with Jordan—about how he was going to help her sell all the things from their marriage if she helped him—and she began to wonder if living together and planning the event was the way she was going to move on.

As though he knew her thoughts, Jordan repeated, ‘I think you should stay. We’re planning an event that will happen in the next six weeks. We need to get your house and your car sold—things that might take a lot longer than six weeks—but we can start now. And we can definitely get everything in the house sold before then.’

Which should help her financial problems, she thought.

‘Handling all of it will be a lot easier if we could do it from the same place,’ he said again.

It made sense, she thought, but cautioned herself not to make a hasty decision.

‘I’ll think about it,’ she said, even though the rational part of her told her she should say no. ‘But I’ll stay here until I’ve made a decision.’

‘Okay,’ he responded politely, and though she didn’t look at him, she frowned at his acquiescence.

The Jordan she knew would have pushed or, worse, would have made the decision for her. Was he giving her space just so he’d get what he wanted? Or was it genuine? She couldn’t decide, but he had pulled up in front of the house now, and her attention was drawn to the raindrops that had begun to fall lightly on the windshield.

They made a run for the front door.

‘Where you’ll be staying isn’t the only thing we should talk about,’ he said, once they were inside the house.

Mila turned to him when she’d taken off her coat. The light drizzle had sprinkled rain through his hair, and her fingers itched to dust the glittering droplets away.

Another reason I should stay away from you.

‘Yes, I know.’

She moved to the living room and started putting wood in the fireplace. It had become a routine—a ritual, almost—and it comforted her. Perhaps because it was so wonderfully normal—so far from what she’d grown up with. ‘We need to talk about the event—about how we’re going to plan something I did in six months in just over one.’

She saw a flicker in his eyes that suggested that wasn’t what he was talking about. She supposed she had known that on some level. Which was why she had steered the conversation to safer ground. To protect herself. Now she just had to remember that for the entire time they spent together...

* * *

‘Is it possible?’ Jordan asked, watching Mila carefully. Something about her was different, and it wasn’t only her appearance. Though as she sat curled on the couch opposite him—to be as far away from him as she could, he thought—the cup of tea she had left the room to make a few moments before in her hand, he could see that the old Mila was still there.

His heart throbbed as though it had been knocked, and he found himself yearning for something that belonged in the past. His present—their present—involved planning an event to save his family’s vineyard. And his family no longer included the woman he had fallen so hard for, despite every logical part of him...no matter what his heart said.

‘It’s going to be difficult,’ she conceded, distracting him from his thoughts.

‘What do you think we should start with?’ he asked, deciding that the only way he could focus on their business arrangement was by talking about business. But then she shifted, and the vanilla scent that clung to her drifted over to him. Suddenly he thought about how much he had missed it. About how often he’d thought he’d smelled it—had felt his heart racing at the thought that she’d come to find him—only to realise that it had been in his imagination...

‘Well, the conditions of your father’s will stipulate that we try to replicate the original Under the Stars event as much as possible. But, considering the season...’ she looked out at the dreary weather ‘...I’m not sure how successful that will be.’

As she spoke she ran a finger around the rim of her cup. It was a habit for her—one she reverted to when she was deep in thought. Once, when he’d teased her about it, she’d told him that one of her foster mothers had hated it when she’d done it. The woman had told her that she was inviting bacteria, and that Mila shouldn’t think they would take her to the doctor if she got sick.

It was one of the rare pieces of information she had offered him about her childhood, and she had meant for him to be amused by it. But instead it had alerted him to the difficulty of her past. Since he knew how that felt, he had never pushed her for more information.

‘I don’t think he thought this through,’ he said, to stop his thoughts from dwelling further, but only succeeding in shifting them to his father.

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