‘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.
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