‘Excuse me, Mark?’ Mila said, ignoring the way her stomach jolted as Jordan’s eyes zoned in on her. ‘The will says that I’ve been left half of Greg’s portion as his “daughter-in-law,” right?’ When Mark nodded his head, she continued. ‘So, since Jordan and I aren’t married any more, won’t that give Jordan grounds to contest the will?’
And leave me out of it?
Mark’s eyebrows rose. ‘When did you get divorced?’
‘About a year ago.’ Jordan spoke now, and his eyes were hopeful when Mila lifted her own to look at his face.
She knew that she shouldn’t take it personally—if Greg’s will could be contested they would both get what they wanted—but her heart still contracted.
She diverted her attention to Mark, saw him riffling through the papers in front of him, and felt concern grow when he lifted one page, his face serious.
‘Is there a problem?’ she asked.
‘I’m afraid so.’ Mark looked at them both and laid the page back down. ‘Before we send the beneficiaries copies of a will, we check all the details we can for accuracy. Your marital status was one of them and, well...’ He gave them both an apologetic look. ‘According to the court records of South Africa, the two of you are still very much married.’
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