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CHAPTER TWO

THE SILENCE THAT stretched through the room was marred only by their breathing.

Jordan tried to use it to compose himself, to control the emotions that hearing he was supposedly still married had drawn from him. But then, how could he compose himself when he knew there had to be some mistake?

‘I could check again,’ Mark said, when Jordan told him as much, ‘but I’m afraid the chances of there being a mistake are quite slim.’

‘But I signed the papers.’ Jordan turned to Mila. ‘You did, too.’

Her eyes, slightly glazed from the shock, looked back at him from a pale face as she nodded her agreement. He fought against his instinct to hold her, to tell her that everything would be okay. It wasn’t his job any more. Unless, he realised as his mind shifted to their current situation, it was.

‘With which law firm did you file the papers? I can have my assistant call them to ask them about it.’

‘With this law firm,’ Jordan said, his voice calm though his insides were in a twist.

Mark frowned. ‘Do you know which lawyer?’

‘With you, Mark. As you’re my family lawyer, I filed the papers with you.’

His patience was wearing thin. All he’d wanted when he’d come back was to sort out his inheritance. Once that bit of unpleasantness was done, he would be able to run his family vineyard.

It was the only way he knew to make up for the fact that he’d left without dealing with any of the unresolved issues with his father. To make it up to his mother, too, he thought, remembering the only thing she had asked of him before she’d died when he was five—that he look after his father.

He forced his thoughts away from how he had failed them both.

‘I think there’s been a mistake of some kind.’ To give him credit, Mark was trying incredibly hard to maintain his professionalism. ‘I remember you asked me to draw up divorce papers. But when I met your father to set up his will last year he said that the two of you were choosing to separate—not divorce.’

‘Wait—Greg set this will up last year?’ Mila’s voice was surprisingly strong despite the lack of colour in her face. ‘When exactly did he do it?’

‘August.’

‘That was a month after his first heart attack. And two months after I signed the divorce papers.’

‘Did they have my signature on them?’ Jordan asked, wondering where she was going with this.

‘Yes, they did.’

‘So you would have been the one to file the papers with Mark?’

If Jordan hadn’t seen her looking worse than this once before—the day of her fall—he would have worried about how muted she had become.

‘I didn’t feel entirely comfortable with that...’

Something in her eyes made him wonder what she meant, but he decided now wasn’t the right time to think about it. Not when he saw that she was struggling to keep her voice devoid of the emotion she couldn’t hide from him.

‘So we are still married,’ he said flatly.

‘No, no—I was going to drop them here after I’d signed, but then Greg asked me whether I would feel better if he did it. Because Mark was your family lawyer,’ she said quickly, avoiding his eyes—which told him she was lying.

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.’