A Marriage Worth Saving

by Therese Beharrie

  Although she really didn’t want to, she found herself softening even more, her heart racing now for completely different reasons than a man expressing interest in her.

  ‘Are you going to stay or run?’

  She looked up at him, and though his words sounded playful, his expression told her otherwise.

  ‘Are those my only two options?’

  ‘I could offer you another.’

  She saw the change in his eyes and her body heated.

  ‘What would you do if I ran?’ she asked, hoping to distract him.

  ‘I’d run with you.’

  She resisted the urge to smile at his charm, and wondered why someone like Jordan Thomas would be interested in her? First, she was his employee. And second, she didn’t have much to offer him. What could a woman with no family and no foundation offer a man like Jordan Thomas of the Thomas Vineyard?

  Still, she found herself saying, ‘Pour me a glass of wine, Jordan.’

  He handed her a glass with a smile that had her shaking her head.

  ‘You don’t agree with my methods?’

  ‘You mean lying to get me to share a drink with you?’

  ‘Yes.’ He grinned. ‘But you can’t tell me this isn’t a welcome change to having to run around all day?’

  ‘No, I can’t.’ She sighed, and took a sip from her wine. ‘Drinking wine after a long day with a handsome man should be the only way to unwind.’

  She didn’t realise what she’d said until she saw him smiling at her, and then she blushed furiously.

  Where had that come from?

  ‘I didn’t mean—’

  ‘To tell me I’m handsome?’

  She set her wine down. ‘Yes. It’s been a long day.’

  ‘So I could ask you anything now and you would answer it?’

  ‘Maybe,’ she said softly, caught by the expression in his eyes.

  And then she wondered who this person who was flirting with this gorgeous man was. Because surely it couldn’t be tame, safe Mila. How often had she heard those comments from boys she had dated? From her foster siblings, who’d had no interest in hanging out with a girl who couldn’t bring herself to try drugs or go out drinking every night, no matter how desperately she’d wanted to be liked?

  She closed her eyes at the pain, and picked up her wine glass again. It must have been the stress of the event that had her thinking about a past she’d thought she’d left behind.

  But before she could drink her wine, Jordan took the glass out of her hand and she froze.

  ‘Do you have a boyfriend?’ he asked her, and she realised he was a lot closer than he’d been a few moments ago. Her throat dried at the woodsy smell that filled her senses, and suddenly she wished she hadn’t flirted with him.

  ‘No,’ she answered quickly, her breathing becoming more heavy than she thought could be healthy.

  ‘Good. That makes this much easier.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ She couldn’t take her eyes off him, and knew she should be worried that the realisation only caused the slightest bit of alarm in her.

  ‘Us.’ He pulled the clip out of her hair so that it fell to her shoulders. ‘I’m glad you won’t have to break another man’s heart so that we can be together.’

  ‘That’s presumptuous of you,’ she replied, though for the life of her, she couldn’t think of one reason why that was a problem. Even when he had her speaking her mind without the filter she usually employed with every word.

  He didn’t respond immediately, and she wondered if she’d said something wrong.

  And then her heart stopped completely when his hand stilled on her neck and he said, ‘It should be. Everything inside me is saying that feeling this way about someone without even knowing them is crazy. And yet I can’t help myself.’

  His hand moved to her face, and she thought that even if the sky fell down on them she wouldn’t be able to look away from him.

  ‘So tell me whether I’m being presumptuous when I say I know you feel it, too?’

  She couldn’t speak because the pieces that had been floating around in her head since they’d met—and the feelings that had become unsettled the moment he’d introduced himself—told her there was truth to his words.

  ‘You did all of this to...to see if I felt the same way?’

  ‘No.’ He smiled, and tucked a piece of hair behind her ear. ‘I did this to make you realise that you did.’

  ‘Jordan, I—’

  His lips were suddenly on hers, and she felt herself melt, felt her resistance—her denial—fade away. Because as his mouth moved against hers, her heart was telling her that it wanted to be with him. She ignored the way her mind told her she was being ridiculous, and instead ran her hands over the muscles she had admired earlier.

  With one arm he moved everything that was on the blanket away and she found herself on her back, with Jordan’s body half over hers. But she pulled away, her chest heaving as though she’d run a marathon.

  ‘This is crazy,’ she said shakily, but didn’t move any further.

  ‘Yes, it is,’ he replied, his eyes filled with a mixture of desire and tenderness.

  She raised a hand to his face, pushing his hair back and settling it on his cheek. He turned his head and kissed her hand. And in that moment, under the stars that sparkled brightly on Valentine’s Day, she realised that she might have just fallen in love with a man she had only known for a few hours.

  Even as her mind called her foolish she was pulling his lips back down to hers.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Two years later

  JORDAN STOOD OUTSIDE his childhood home and grief—and guilt—crashed through him.

  The house was like many he had seen in the Stellenbosch wine lands—large and white, with a black roof and shutters. Except he had grown up in this house. He’d played on the patio that stretched out in front of the house, with its stone pillars that had vines crawling up them. He and his father had spent Sunday evenings watching the sun set—usually in silence—on the rocking chairs that stood next to the large wooden door.

  He turned his back on the house and the memories, and looked out to the gravel road that led to the rest of the vineyard.

  Trees reached out to one another over the road, the colour of their leaves fading from the bright green of summer to the warm hues of autumn. From where he stood he could see the chapel where he’d married Mila just three months after they’d met.

  He shook his head. He wouldn’t think about that now.

  Instead he looked under the potted plants that lined the pathway to the front door for the key he knew his father had kept there. When he found it he began to walk to his father’s house—except that wasn’t true any more. He clenched his jaw at the reminder of the new ownership of the house—the house he had grown up in—and the reason he was back, and turned the key in the lock.

  He heard it first—the crackling sound of fire blazing—and he set his bags down and hurried to the living room where he was sure he would find the house burning. And slowed when he realised that the fire was safely in the fireplace.

  He turned his head to the couch in front of the fire, and his heart stopped when he saw his ex-wife sitting in front of it.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he demanded before he could think, the shock of seeing her here, in his childhood home, forcing him to speak before he could think it through.

  She jumped when she heard him, and shame poured through him as the glass of wine in her hand dropped to the ground and the colour seeped from her face.

  ‘Jordan... What...? I...’

  In another world, at another time, he might have found her stammering amusing. Now, though, he clamped down the emotions that filled him and asked again, ‘What are you doing here, Mila?
’

  Her fingers curled at her sides—the only indication that she was fighting to gain her composure. He waited, giving her time to do so, perhaps to make up for startling her earlier.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked him instead, crossing her arms and briefly drawing his attention to her chest. He shook his head and remembered how long it had taken him to realise that she took that stance whenever she felt threatened.

  ‘You want to know why I’m here? In my father’s home?’

  ‘It’s not your father’s home any more, Jordan.’

  His heart thudded. ‘Is that why you’re here? Because you’ll own part of this house soon?’

  She winced, and it made him think that maybe he wasn’t the only one unhappy with his father’s will.

  ‘No, of course not. But I do live here.’

  ‘What?’

  The little colour she had left in her face faded, but her eyes never left his. If he hadn’t been so shocked he might have been impressed at her guts. But his mind was still very much focused on her revelation.

  ‘I live here,’ she repeated. The shakiness in her voice wasn’t completely gone, but the silken tone of it came through stronger. The tone that sounded like music when she laughed. That had once caressed his skin when she said, ‘I love you.’ The tone that had said ‘I do!’ two years ago as though nothing could touch them or their love.

  How little they had known then...

  He pushed the memories away.

  ‘I heard that. I want to know why,’ he said through clenched teeth, his temper precariously close to snapping.

  ‘Because your father asked me to move in with him after...after everything that happened.’

  The reminder of the past threatened to gut him, but he ignored it. ‘So after we got divorced you thought it would be a good idea to move in with my father?’

  ‘No, he did,’ she said coldly, and again shame nudged him for reasons he didn’t understand. ‘He wanted—he needed someone around when you left.’

  ‘And you agreed?’

  ‘After his first heart attack, yes.’

  Her words cut right through to his heart, and he asked the question despite the fact that everything inside him wanted to ignore it. ‘His first? You mean his only.’

  Something flashed through her eyes, and he wondered if it was sympathy. ‘No, I mean his first. The one that killed him was his third.’

  Jordan resisted the urge to close his eyes, to absorb the pain her words brought. He wondered how he had gone to his father’s funeral, how he had spoken to the few friends Greg had had left, and was only hearing about this now.

  But then, was it any wonder? a voice asked him. His father had always kept his feelings to himself, not wanting to burden Jordan with them. An after-effect of that night, Jordan thought. But there was a part of him that wondered if Greg hadn’t told him as punishment for Jordan leaving, even after his father had warned him that it would destroy his marriage—which it had. After Jordan had decided that limited contact with his father during the year he’d been gone—grief snapped at him when he thought that it had actually been the year before his father’s death—was the only way he would be able to forget about what had happened...

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ he asked, determined not to get sucked in by his thoughts.

  ‘He didn’t want you to know.’

  It was like a punch to the gut—and it told him that his father wanting to punish him might not have been such a farfetched conclusion.

  ‘He told you that, or you decided it?’

  Mila’s face was clear, but when she spoke her voice was ice. ‘It was Greg’s decision. Do you think your father’s friends would have kept quiet about it for me?’

  She waited for his answer, but it didn’t come. He was too busy processing her words.

  ‘He didn’t want you to come home until you’d decided to.’

  ‘You should have called me,’ he said, his voice low, dangerous.

  ‘If you hadn’t been so determined to put as much distance between us as possible—if you hadn’t let it cloud your judgement—you would have known that you should have come home even though I didn’t call you.’

  Her voice was a mirror of his own thoughts, and if her words hadn’t pierced his heart Jordan might have taken a moment to enjoy—perhaps a better word was admire—this new edge to Mila. But he was too distracted by the emotion that what she’d said had awoken in him.

  Had his desire to escape the pain of his marriage blinded him to what he should have known? That he should have come home?

  ‘So you’re back because of the will?’

  Her question drew him out of his thoughts—drew his attention to her. He took a moment before he answered her.

  ‘Yes, that sped up my return to Cape Town. But I’m here for good.’

  Jordan watched as her left hand groped behind her, and he moved when he realised she was looking for something to keep her standing. He caught her as she staggered back, his arm curved around her waist. His heartbeat was faster than it had been in a long time, and somewhere in the back of his mind he wondered if he’d really wanted to stop her from falling, or if he’d put himself in this awkward situation because...

  He stopped thinking as he looked into those hauntingly beautiful eyes of hers that widened as they looked up at him. The love that had filled them a long time ago had been replaced by such a complexity of emotion that he could only see surprise there. And caution.

  Her brown curls were tied back into a ponytail, making her delicate features seem sharper than they’d once been. But maybe that was because her face had lost its gentle rounding, he thought, and saw for the first time that she’d lost weight. Pressed against hers, his body acknowledged that her body felt different from what he remembered. The curves he’d enjoyed during their marriage were now more toned than before.

  He wished he could say he didn’t like it, but the way his body tightened told him that he would be lying if he did. The lips he had always been greedy for parted, and his eyes lowered. Electricity snapped between them as he thought about tasting her, about quenching the thirst that had burned inside him since they’d been apart...

  They both pulled away at the same time, and again Jordan heard the smash of glass against the floor. Pieces of a wine bottle lay mingled with pieces of the glass Mila had dropped earlier, and Jordan belatedly realised that he’d knocked it over when he’d moved back.

  ‘I’ll get something for that,’ she said, hurrying away before he could respond. But she didn’t move fast enough for him to miss the flush on her face.

  He stared at the mess on the floor—the mess they’d made within their first minutes of reuniting—and hoped it wasn’t an omen for the rest of the time they’d spend together.

  * * *

  Mila grabbed the broom from the kitchen cupboard, and then stilled. She should take a moment to compose herself. Her hands were still shaking from the shock of seeing Jordan, and now her body was heated from their contact.

  She hated that reminder of what he could do to her. Hated it even more that he could still do it to her, even after everything that had happened between them.

  Why had he touched her anyway? She hadn’t been going to fall—she was pretty sure about that. It had just been the prospect of him staying—her stomach still churned at the thought—that had shaken her balance. And then, before she’d known it, she’d been in his arms, feeling comfort—and something else that she didn’t care to admit—for the first time since the accident that had ruined their lives.

  She took a deep breath and, when she was sure she was as prepared as she could be to face him again, she returned to the living room.

  And felt her breath hitch again when she saw him standing there.

  He was leaner now, though his body
was still strong, with muscles clearly defined beneath his clothing. Perhaps there were more muscles now, whatever excess weight there had been once now firm. His hair was shorter, though it was still shaggy, falling lazily over his forehead as though begging to be pushed aside. And then there was his face...those beautiful planes drawn into the serious expression she was becoming accustomed to.

  ‘We need to do something about the house,’ he said when he saw her, and moved to take the cleaning items away from her.

  But he stopped when he saw the expression in her eyes—the coldness she had become so used to aiming at him to protect herself from pain—and she bent to pick up the pieces of glass.

  ‘I’ll be leaving in the morning,’ she said, grateful that he couldn’t see her face as she tidied up.

  The idea of going back to the house that reminded her of all that she’d had—and all that she’d lost—made her feel sick. But what choice did she have?

  After Jordan had left, she hadn’t been able to be alone in the place where it had all happened. So she’d escaped to their beach house in Gordons Bay for a few months, before Greg had asked her to move in with him. But the divorce meant that she no longer had any right to stay there, and since she had been renting before they’d got married the only thing she had was the house she’d lived in with Jordan. It was in her name after all.

  But what did that matter when she couldn’t bring herself to think about what had happened there, let alone live there and having to face the memories over and over again...?

  ‘That wasn’t what I meant,’ he said.

  Sure that she had got to all the pieces of glass that could be picked up by hand, she stood. ‘Not the only thing, maybe.’

  She wondered how she could speak so coolly when her insides were twisted. But then, she was used to saying things despite her feelings. How many times had she bitten her tongue or said the thing people wanted to hear instead of saying what she really thought? The only difference now was that she was actually being honest.