Surprise Baby, Second Chance

Like moving out when she was tired of being responsible for her mother’s mental health.

Like ignoring her mother’s phone calls for almost two months after she moved out, because she thought Violet was trying to manipulate her into coming back home. When really her mother had been calling to tell her about her cancer.

She hadn’t thought anything about her relationship with Aaron had been stupid. At least she hadn’t until she’d found the lump. Until it had reminded her of how stupid she’d been by choosing not to be tested for breast cancer when her mother’s doctors had advised it.

And suddenly all the uncertainty she’d battled with in the past about her decisions had returned. Maybe they’d never really gone away. And the disaster scenario of what that lump could mean had echoed her mother’s own anxieties so closely that it had reminded Rosa that she was her mother’s child.

It would have been selfish of her to stay. To put Aaron through what she’d gone through with her mother. To put him through anything that would cause him to suffer as he had when his mother had been ill.

‘Maybe that’s for the best,’ she told him, kicking off her shoes. ‘If we don’t feel anything, we don’t get hurt. And since we’re already in this situation—’ she waved between them ‘—committing ourselves to not getting hurt doesn’t sound so bad, does it?’

* * *

He stared at her. ‘Are you...are you serious?’

‘Yes,’ she said, and lifted the plate she’d set on the table, resting it on her lap as she leaned back into the couch. ‘Doesn’t it sound appealing to you? Us not hurting each other?’

‘Is that why you left? Because I hurt you?’

She toyed with the food on her plate. ‘No,’ she said, lifting her gaze to his. ‘You didn’t hurt me.’

‘Then why did you leave?’

‘Because I would be hurting you by staying.’

‘Why?’ But she shook her head. ‘Rosa, you can’t just tell me something like that and not give me anything else.’ Still, she didn’t answer him. He clenched his jaw. ‘You don’t think you’re hurting me now? With this?’

‘I know I am.’

‘And that doesn’t mean anything to you?’

‘It...can’t.’

He wanted to shout. To demand answers from her. But that would only keep her from talking to him.

And he needed her to talk to him. He needed to know why she was saying things his wife never would have said. The Rosa he’d married would never have given up on anything. She would never have settled for backing away from the possibility of pain when there was a possibility for joy.

Or perhaps this was karma, like he’d said. Maybe this was his karma. For not acting with reason when it came to Rosa. She’d only been twenty-three when they’d married. He’d been twenty-six. Older. Wiser.

At least old enough to know that she might not have been ready to marry him. She’d still been grieving for her mother when he’d proposed. Her decision might not have been entirely thought through.

But as he thought back to the moment he’d proposed he couldn’t remember any hesitation from Rosa...

* * *

He wanted everything to be perfect. Simple but perfect. That was his plan. And, since only he and Rosa were on the beach in front of the house on Mariner’s Island, there’d be no one but himself to blame if everything didn’t go perfectly.

He took a deep breath and Rosa looked up at him. ‘Are you okay?’

‘Yeah.’

‘You’re sure?’ Her brow furrowed. ‘Because you’ve been quiet since we got here. I mean, quieter than usual.’

She gave him a small smile and his heart tumbled. Even her smile could make his heart trip over itself. No wonder he was proposing to her when he’d never thought he’d get married.

‘I’m thinking.’

‘About?’

‘This. Us.’

‘Really?’ She pressed in closer at his side when the wind nipped at their skin. It was cooler than he would have liked, but he supposed that was what he got by wanting to propose just as the sun was going down on an autumn day. ‘And what have you come up with?’

‘You’re amazing.’

His feet stopped, though they weren’t close to the place where he’d planned on proposing. This was good enough. Waves were crashing at their feet. Sand around them. The sun shining over them as though it approved of his actions.

Besides, none of that mattered anyway. Not any more. All that mattered was her. And that he couldn’t imagine another moment going by without knowing that she’d one day be his wife.

‘Well, yeah,’ she said with a smile that faded when she saw his expression. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘I have something for you.’

‘Okay.’ Confusion lined every feature of her beautiful face, but there was trust in her eyes. He hoped he would never betray that trust. ‘Aaron?’ she asked quietly after a moment. ‘Are you going to tell me what it is?’

Instead of replying, he stepped back from her and removed the rose petals he’d been keeping in his pocket. It had been a silly idea, he thought now as the confusion intensified on her face. But it was too late to stop now.

He cleared his throat. ‘I got these from the house.’

‘You stole...petals from the garden?’ Her lips curved. ‘Just petals? Not the actual flowers?’

He smiled. ‘I wanted to take a picture of you standing in a shower of petals.’

‘Aaron,’ she said after a moment. ‘You realise you’re being weird, right?’

His smile widened. But he only nodded. She let out a frustrated sigh. ‘Okay, fine. Should I just—’ She cupped her hands and mimicked throwing the petals into the air.

‘Yes. But throw them over your shoulder.’ He handed her the petals, careful to protect them from the wind. ‘So, turn your back to me while I get the camera ready.’

There was impatience in her eyes now, but she didn’t say anything. Only turned her back to him. She was indulging him, he thought. Because that was who she was. Always putting him first, even when she didn’t understand why.

He took the ring from his pocket and took another deep breath. And then he got down on one knee and said, ‘I’m ready.’

She threw the petals into the sky and turned, a smile on her face for the picture she’d thought he was about to take. At first the confusion returned. Her eyes searched for where she’d thought he’d be as the petals swirled around them. Then, as they were carried up and away by the wind, her gaze lowered, settling on him.

She sucked in her breath and then, on an exhale, said his name. The surprise had turned into something deeper, more meaningful, as she did. And suddenly all the fear, all the uncertainty disappeared.

It was going to be perfect.

That was the last thing he thought before telling her why he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her.

* * *

No, he thought as he closed his eyes briefly. There had been no hesitation when Rosa had accepted his proposal.

But hadn’t his mother shown him that he would need to take responsibility for others at some time in his life? So why hadn’t he realised Rosa might have needed that from him too?

But now that he thought about it, he wondered if it was because he had been responsible when it came Rosa. He’d promised her mother that he would look after her. And, since he’d loved her so damn much, marriage had seemed like the perfect way to do it.

But maybe that had been his mistake.

Or maybe he was the mistake...

‘Okay,’ he said curtly, ripping himself out of the web his memories had caught him in. ‘Do you want another drink?’

She blinked at him, and then silently nodded and handed him her glass. He deliberately brushed his fingers against hers as he took it, and saw the slight shake of her hand as she drew it back to her lap.

He turned away from her, satisfaction pouring through him. Whatever it was that she was going through—whatever it was that they were going through—he hadn’t made up their attraction. And that attraction had come from their feelings for one another.

Perhaps he’d made one too many mistakes with Rosa. Heaven knew he had with his mother, so it might not have been different with his wife. But at least he could make sure Rosa didn’t forget that they were drawn to one another. Something neither of them had ever been able to deny.

And then what? an inner voice asked as he poured their drinks. Would they just become hyperaware of their attraction, since their feelings were seemingly out of bounds, and then let it fizzle out between them?

There was no way that was happening. And if they acted on it...what would that mean for him? For them? Would she just walk away from him again? Would he just let her go?

An uncomfortable feeling stirred in his stomach and he walked back to her, setting her glass down on the table to avoid any more touching. He had no idea what he wanted to achieve with her. With his marriage. And he’d never thought he would be in the position to have to worry about it.

He’d thought he’d done everything right in his life. He’d looked after a mother who hadn’t cared about looking after herself. About looking after him. He’d got a stable job. Succeeded in it. He’d fallen in love—though it had been unplanned—and he’d married.

And still everything had gone wrong.

Though, if he was being honest with himself, perhaps that had started when his mother had been diagnosed with cancer and he’d realised the extent of his mistakes.

Now, the fear that had grown in the past four months pulsed in his chest. Had him facing the fact that everyone in his life who was supposed to love him had left him. His mother. His father. And now Rosa...

He couldn’t deny that he was the problem any more.

CHAPTER FOUR

‘SO, WHAT HAVE you been doing these last four months?’

Somehow, she managed to keep her tone innocent. As if she wasn’t asking because she desperately wanted a glimpse into the life he’d made without her.

It was veering into dangerous territory, that question, and yet it was the safest thing Rosa could think to ask. Something mundane. Something that didn’t have anything to do with what they’d been talking about before.

Feelings. Emotions. Their relationship.

But the expression on his face told her that perhaps the question wasn’t as safe as she’d thought. Still, he answered her.

‘Work.’

‘Work?’ When he didn’t offer more, she pressed. ‘What about work? New clients?’

‘New clients.’

She bit back a sigh. ‘And?’

‘We’re expanding.’

‘Oh.’

Expanding? He’d never spoken about the desire to expand before. His law firm was one of the most prestigious family practices in Gauteng. He had wealthy clientele, made sure his firm helped those in need, and he’d always spoken about how content he’d been. Proud, even. So why was he expanding?

She waited for him to offer an explanation. He didn’t. And she didn’t have the courage to ask him. Not when she would have known if she’d just stayed.

‘You?’

Her gaze sprang to his. She hadn’t expected him to engage. ‘I’ve been working on a new line. Evening gowns.’

‘Like the one you’re wearing.’

‘Exactly like the one I’m wearing. For women like me.’

His eyes swept over her, heating her body with the faint desire she saw on his face. He was controlling it well, she thought. He never had before. She’d always known when Aaron desired her. It would start with a look in his eyes—much more ardent than what she saw there now—and then he’d say something seductive and follow his words with actions.

She’d loved those times. Loved how unapologetic they had been. How freeing. And since they both had problems with being free—no matter how much she pretended that she didn’t—those moments were special.

And now she’d lost them.

‘It’ll be popular.’

‘I hope so.’ She paused. ‘I did a sample line. I’ve been promoting it on the website for the past month, and it’s got some great feedback. I might even do a showcase.’

‘I told you it would be great.’

‘You did.’

Neither of them mentioned that for years he’d been telling her that she needed to make clothes for herself. For others like her. But that wasn’t why she’d got into fashion. At least, not at first. She loved colours, patterns, prints. She loved how bold they could be, or how understated. She loved the contrast of them—the lines, the shapes.

She hadn’t wanted to confine herself when she’d started out. She’d wanted to experiment, to explore, to learn about everything. And, because she had, she now had momentum after being labelled a fresh and exciting young designer. Enough that she could finally design the clothes she wanted to. For women who looked like her. Who were bigger. Who weren’t conventionally curvy.

She’d shared all her worries, her fears, her excitement with Aaron. And she wanted nothing more than to tell him about the challenges, the joys she’d had creating this new line now.

But the brokenness between them didn’t lend itself to that discussion.

Her heart sank and her eyes slid closed.

How had her safe question led to this?

* * *

Watching her was going to be the only way he’d figure out what was going on in her head. It was clear she wasn’t going to tell him. And, since he hadn’t exactly been forthcoming himself, he could hardly ask her what was causing the turmoil on her face.

But he couldn’t be forthcoming. How was he supposed to tell her that his expansion plans had started the moment his mother had informed him of where Rosa was? He hadn’t been interested in finding her...at least, that was what he’d told himself. But then he’d received Liana’s email telling him Rosa was in Cape Town.

And suddenly he was planning to expand his firm to Cape Town.

How was he supposed to tell her all that?

‘Oh, look,’ she said softly, her gaze shifting to behind him. The pain had subsided from her face—had been replaced by wonder—tempting him to keep looking at her.

Dutifully—though reluctantly—he followed her gaze and saw that she was watching the rain. He didn’t know what she found so fascinating about it. Sure, it was coming down hard, fast and every now and then a flash of lightning would streak through it. But still, it looked like rain to him. Regular old rain.

And yet when he looked back to Rosa’s face he could have sworn she had just seen the first real unicorn.

She got up and walked in her beautiful gown to the glass doors, laying a hand on them as though somehow that would allow her to touch the rain. It was surprisingly tender, but he refuted that description almost immediately. What he was witnessing wasn’t tender. How could his wife watching the rain be tender?

But he couldn’t get the word out of his mind as she spent a few more minutes there. Then she walked to the light switch in the kitchen and turned it off. The entire room went dark and she murmured, ‘Just for a moment,’ before returning to her place at the door.

He still wasn’t sure what was so special about it. About watching the rain in the dark. But her reaction had cast a spell around him. And now he was walking towards her, stopping next to her and watching the rain pour from the sky in torrents.

‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen a storm more beautiful,’ she said softly from beside him.

‘An exaggeration,’ he commented with a half-smile.

She laughed. Looked up at him with twinkling eyes. ‘Of course it is. But I like to think that I use my opportunities to exaggerate for effect. Is it working?’ she asked with a wink.

His smile widened and, though his heart was still broken from her leaving, and his mind was still lapping up every piece of information she’d given as to why, as they looked at each other, he was caught by her.

He told himself it was the part of him that wanted things to go back to the way they’d been before. The part that mourned because it was no longer an option. Not with how things had shifted between them. Not when that shift had confirmed that they were no longer the same people they’d been before she’d left.

And still he was caught by her.

By her brown eyes, and the twinkle that was slowly turning into something else as the seconds ticked by. By the angles of her face—some soft, some sharp, all beautiful.

He didn’t know why he still felt so drawn to the woman beside him when she wasn’t the woman he’d fallen in love with any more. Or was it himself he didn’t recognise? He’d spent the four months since she’d left racking his brain for answers about what had gone wrong. And what he’d come up with had forced him to see himself in a new light. A dim one that made him prickly because it spoke of things he’d ignored for most of his life.

‘Why do you still make me feel like this?’

He hadn’t realised he’d spoken until her eyes widened. His gaze dipped to her mouth as she sucked her bottom lip between her teeth. It instantly had his body responding, and he took a step towards her—

And then suddenly there was a blast of cold air on him and Rosa was on the balcony in the rain.

‘Rosa! What are you doing?’

But she turned her back to him and was now opening her palms to the rain, spreading her fingers as though she wanted to catch the drops, but at the same time wanted them to fall through her fingers.

‘Rosa!’ he said again when she didn’t answer him. But it was no use. She didn’t give any indication that she’d heard him.

He cursed and then took off his shoes and stepped out onto the balcony with her, hissing out his breath when the ice-cold drops immediately drenched his skin.

Her eyes fluttered open when he stopped next to her, and he clearly saw the shock in them. ‘What are you doing?’

‘The same thing as you, apparently,’ he said through clenched teeth. ‘Care to explain why we’re out getting soaked in the rain?’

‘I didn’t think you’d—’ She broke off, the expression on her face frustratingly appealing. Damn it. How was that possible when their lives were such a mess?

‘Rosa,’ he growled.

‘I wanted to get out of that room,’ she said. ‘I wanted to breathe in proper fresh air and not the stifling air in that room.’

‘That room is over one hundred and fifty square metres.’

‘You know that’s not what I meant,’ she snapped. ‘I just felt...trapped. With you. In there.’

‘You felt trapped with me,’ he repeated.

‘No, not like that,’ she said. ‘I felt... It’s just that room. And the fact that resisting you—resisting us—is so hard. Everything between us is suddenly so hard.’ She let out a sound that sounded suspiciously like a sob. ‘Mostly I feel trapped by what I did to us.’ She closed her eyes and when she opened them again he felt the pain there as acutely as if it were in his own body. ‘I threw what we had away.’

He took a step forward, the desire to take her into his arms, to comfort her compelling him. But then he stopped and told himself that he couldn’t comfort her when he didn’t know why. That he couldn’t comfort her when, by all rights, she was supposed to be comforting him.

She’d left him behind. She’d hurt him.

And yet there he was, outside, soaking wet in the rain because of her.

He moved back. Ignored the flash of hurt in her eyes.

‘We’re going to get sick if we stay out here,’ he said after a moment.

‘So go back inside,’ she mumbled miserably.

It was a stark reminder that she hadn’t asked him to come outside in the rain with her. And it would be logical to listen to her and go back inside.

Instead, he sighed and held his ground. Tried to commit the experience to memory. He suspected that some day he’d want—no, need—to remember this moment, however nonsensical it appeared to be.

To remember how she looked with her curls weighed down by the rainwater, the make-up she wore smudged dramatically on her face. How her one-of-a-kind dress clung to her beautiful body, reminding him of all that he’d had.

To remember how this—standing on a balcony while it poured with rain—spoke of her spirit. The passion, the spontaneity. How he’d never consider doing something like this and yet somehow he found it endearing.

Heaven only knew why he wanted to remember it. Because the feelings that accompanied it gutted him. The longing, the regret. The disappointment. Heaven only knew why he was thinking about how incredibly beautiful she was when empirical evidence should have made him think otherwise.

‘Why are you looking at me like that?’ she demanded.

The misery, the pain in her voice had disappeared. Had been replaced with the passion he was used to.

‘Like what?’

‘Like that,’ she told him, without giving any more indication of what she meant. ‘You know what you’re doing.’

Was he that obvious? ‘I’m waiting for you to decide to go inside.’

She stepped closer to him. ‘No, you weren’t.’

‘You’ll get sick.’

‘And you won’t?’ He lifted his shoulders in response. She took another step forward. ‘You’re not helping me feel any less trapped than I already do, Aaron.’

Again, he shrugged. Again, she took a step forward.

‘And you’re not as unaffected by all this as you’re pretending.’

‘What are you doing?’ he asked, clasping her wrist just before her hand reached his face. Somehow, she’d closed the distance between them as she’d said her last words without him noticing.

‘I’m trying to show you that you’re not as aloof as you believe,’ she said, and dropped her hand with a triumphant smile. ‘I told you.’

He didn’t reply. He couldn’t do so without telling her that she was right—unaffected was the last thing he felt. But he showed her. Slid an arm around her waist and hauled her against him.

‘Maybe you’re right,’ he said, his voice slightly breathless, though measured, he thought. But he could be wrong. Hell, he could have been imitating the President of South Africa right then and he wouldn’t have known. ‘Maybe I was thinking about the first time we kissed.’ He dipped his head lower. ‘You remember.’

It wasn’t a question. And the way her breath quickened—the way her hand shook as she wiped the rain from her brow—confirmed it.

* * *

‘Aaron, wait!’

He turned back just in time to see Rosa running towards him. His stomach flipped as it always did when he saw her. And he steeled himself against it. He couldn’t fall into the attraction. He hadn’t for the last year. He could survive whatever she was running to tell him.

‘Would you give me a lift home?’ she asked breathlessly when she reached him. As she asked—as he nodded—a menacing boom sounded in the sky before rain began pouring down on them.

‘Here, get in,’ he said, starting towards the passenger’s side of the car. But she put a hand on his chest before he could make any progress, and he held his breath.

Control. Steel.

‘No,’ she replied tiredly. She leaned back against his car, dropping her hand and lifting her head to the sky. ‘No, this is exactly what I need.’

‘To be drenched in rain?’

She laughed huskily and need pierced him. ‘No. Just...a break.’

‘Hard day?’

‘Isn’t every day?’

She glanced back at the hospital where her mother was staying overnight. His mother had a chemo session but she’d left the book she’d wanted to read at home. And since Rosa’s mother—Liana’s usual companion—had started a new course of treatment, she wasn’t in Liana’s session to keep her company.

And because Liana knew Aaron would do anything to make what she was going through easier, she’d asked him to fetch her book.

‘But today was particularly hard,’ Rosa continued with a sigh. ‘I had to meet a deadline for a couple of designs. And my creativity hasn’t exactly been flowing over the last few months.’

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