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‘That doesn’t matter any more, Lulu,’ Mila said firmly. ‘I just want to move on with my life. Focus on my work. Be a good aunt.’ She tried to smile.
Lulu shook her head. ‘If that’s what you really want, I’ll support you. But just make sure it is what you really want. And do me a favour?’
Mila looked up at her.
‘Give yourself permission to think about what you want honestly.’
‘Yeah, I will,’ Mila responded, and then took the time to enjoy having a moment with the only person who had made her feel loved since she was sixteen.
No, that’s not true, she thought, and heard Lulu’s words about Jordan, about family, echo in her head.
Was a second chance possible?
No. She clamped down on the thought. She couldn’t go down that path. Not if she wanted to survive the task they’d been given.
CHAPTER SEVEN (#u6a39342c-daf5-5fd5-a123-2d3fa1527869)
JORDAN WAS RETURNING from his morning run just as Lulu came out through the front door.
‘Hey!’ she exclaimed when she saw him, and Jordan grinned, remembering how much fun she had always been.
She and Mila had been a bundle of light together. It bothered him to see how much of that light had dimmed in Mila, he thought as he saw her, too, and his smile faded.
‘You look great, Lulu,’ he said, focusing his attention on the pretty woman in front of him. And then he saw that she was pregnant and his heart clenched. He suddenly became aware of the way his lungs struggled for air, the way his shoulders felt heavy with grief. He cleared his throat. ‘Congratulations.’
‘Thanks,’ she said softly, and he saw the flash of concern in her eyes.
Because he didn’t need it, he forced out, ‘You finally managed to find someone who deserves you?’
‘Yeah—still my husband.’
She smiled at him kindly and then turned back to Mila, who was watching their exchange with wary eyes.
‘Let me know how this afternoon goes. Like I said, most of the vendors will be there. And I’ll track down those who aren’t.’
‘Thanks.’ Mila’s eyes warmed as she looked at Lulu. ‘I’ll see you soon.’
They both stood and watched as Lulu walked to her car, and waved at the sound of her horn. When she was no longer in sight Jordan felt his legs go weak, and he walked forward to the chair that stood next to the front door.
‘Hey...’ Mila crouched down in front of him, and as his heart palpitated and he fought for a steady breath, she took his hand and squeezed. ‘Look at me. Look at me, Jordan,’ she repeated when he didn’t respond the first time.
He lifted his eyes.
‘You’re going to be okay. Just keep breathing.’
She repeated it until finally he could feel his heart falling back into the uncomfortable rhythm it always had around her. He pulled his hand away, embarrassed at his reaction. She stood up, but his hope that she would leave it alone and go inside faltered when she took the seat next to him.
‘So it happens to you, too?’
He looked over at her, but she was staring out to where the trees lined the driveway.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Your lungs feel like they don’t work any more and your heart feels like it’s beating to keep the entire world alive.’
She still wasn’t looking at him and he eased. He didn’t know why he had reacted to Lulu in that way. He had seen other pregnant women before. Why had this one been any different?
‘It’s happened to you?’ he said hoarsely before he could stop himself.
‘Yeah, plenty of times.’ She paused. ‘It almost happened with Lulu today.’
‘Why didn’t it?’
‘I didn’t want her to think I wasn’t happy for her.’
He nodded. He understood that. And perhaps for the first time he found himself opening up the door he had locked his feelings about his son’s death behind.
‘I don’t know why this is different.’
‘Because she’s someone you know. You care about her,’ she answered softly. ‘It hits harder when it’s closer to home.’
‘Yeah, probably,’ he agreed, but something told him there was something else, as well.
‘I know what I said, but it doesn’t mean that you’re not happy for her.’
He knew she was looking at him, so he nodded, but didn’t respond. Pieces were settling in his mind from where he had locked them away. And then he spoke almost without realising it.
‘You’re right. When I saw Lulu there was a part of me that was happy for her before the doom and gloom set in.’ He realised now where the reaction had come from, and for some reason felt comfortable with saying it out loud. He didn’t care to examine why.
‘And...?’ Mila prompted softly.
‘And I felt bad about it because when we found out you were pregnant...’ he couldn’t quite believe he was saying it ‘...I was terrified.’
‘What?’ The shocked tone of her voice had his heart accelerating.
‘Of course, I was happy, too. But I was scared.’
‘You never told me that.’
‘You were so happy. I didn’t want to spoil that.’
‘I was scared, too, Jordan.’ She let out a little laugh when he looked at her. ‘I didn’t know the first thing about being a mother. About being in a family.’
His mouth opened in surprise, but before she could see it, he asked, ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Because you were so happy.’ She smiled over at him. ‘I didn’t want you to think I couldn’t do it.’
Something bothered him about her answer. It reminded him of the time she’d thought he was telling her she wasn’t good at her job.
‘I never thought that,’ he said. ‘I knew you were going to be a wonderful mother.’
‘You would have been a wonderful father, too.’
‘Maybe,’ he replied.
Or maybe he would have been as emotionally unavailable as his own father had been. He frowned, but didn’t ponder it any more. Not when he was thinking about how nice it was sitting with her. The grief he’d felt at seeing the chairs where he’d spent so much time with his father for the first time after Greg’s death had faded, and he knew it was because of Mila. She was the only person besides his father that he wanted to be there with.
The realisation unsettled him.
‘Why were you scared?’ She interrupted his thoughts. ‘I mean, I know becoming a parent is scary in general, but was that the only thing?’
No, he thought, but he couldn’t bring himself to say it when he was only just beginning to realise the effect his parents had had on him. Like the fact that part of his fear over becoming a parent was because of the way his father had treated him as a child—fear that he would turn out just like that.
‘Yeah, that’s all.’
He looked over at her and saw that she didn’t believe him. Saw the flash of hurt in her eyes because of it, felt the nudge in his heart. And still he couldn’t formulate the words.
‘It didn’t seem like things went poorly with Lulu,’ he said instead, hoping for reprieve.
‘They didn’t,’ she replied in a measured tone, and he closed his eyes when he realised he might just have undone the progress they’d made. In their working relationship, he clarified to himself.
‘So, you guys are friends again?’
‘We were never not friends, it seems. She’s even been doing events for me while I’ve been...away.’
‘That’s great,’ he said lamely, and felt helpless as the tension seeped back in between them. Silence came with it, giving him enough time to berate himself for spoiling the tentative truce that they’d been starting to forge.
But he couldn’t tell Mila why he hadn’t told her everything. She didn’t know that side of his father, and he didn’t want to taint her memories of Greg by telling her about the angry person his father had been in Jordan’s youth. About the remnants of that time that had marred his relationship with his father right up to Greg’s death. And now Jordan would never get the chance to fix it, or to make up for the past year when he hadn’t been in touch...
‘Lulu told me about a food fair that’s happening this afternoon.’ She broke the silence. ‘It’s at the Johnson High School in town—and most of the vendors who were there for the original Under the Stars are going to be there. I’m leaving in an hour. You can come, if you like.’
‘I’d like that very much. I’ll go get ready,’ he said softly, grateful that she was still trying to be amicable despite his reluctance to open up to her.
As he headed to the bathroom for a shower he thought about it. He hadn’t told her much about his childhood. Their relationship had been such a whirlwind at the beginning, and he’d fallen in love with her before he’d known what was happening. And then they’d got married, just three months after meeting—Jordan couldn’t remember ever making such an impulsive decision—and Mila had fallen pregnant a few months after that.
Things had been so anchored in the future for them that they hadn’t considered their past. They hadn’t considered how the way they had grown up and how the people in their lives might have an impact on their relationship.
It made him realise that there were pieces between them that had been broken long before they’d lost their child. They hadn’t even been able to share the way they’d felt about having a baby, for crying out loud! Each of them hadn’t wanted to offend the other with their real feelings. That wasn’t a healthy relationship.
The conversation they had just had was the first open one they’d had since they’d met—at least about their pasts. Did that mean things were changing for them? Did he want them to? He couldn’t deny how being with Mila reminded him of how much he had felt for her. Maybe still felt for her...
No! He shut that train of thought down as the water hit his body. There was no point in exploring that now. His marriage was over in every way but legally. He would just focus on the event, on helping Mila, and then on running the vineyard in a way that would have made his parents proud.
He would focus on that, Jordan told himself when the hope inside him twinged.
There was no point in hoping after all that had happened between them.
CHAPTER EIGHT (#u6a39342c-daf5-5fd5-a123-2d3fa1527869)
SHE NEEDED TO THINK.
She couldn’t turn to the usual activities that helped her to do so since they all involved staying in the house with Jordan, so Mila decided to go to the place that always did.
She grabbed her jacket and walked out into the sunshine that was growing rarer the closer it got to winter. Though the cold air reminded her of the season, it brought a beauty to the vineyard that was underappreciated. Especially from here, she thought, standing atop the slope that overlooked the vineyard, just as she had the previous day with Jordan.
It felt as if it were a lot longer than that. So much had happened since then. She’d done a lot for the event, yes, but she had also learned a lot about herself. About how much she wanted to look worthy, and how she had sacrificed her relationships in pursuit of that. About how much what people thought about her affected her behaviour—and how she couldn’t bring herself to acknowledge that to herself, or to the people who cared about her.
Perhaps it was because there hadn’t been many people who cared about her when she was growing up. She’d had ten different foster families over her years of being in foster care, and she couldn’t remember even one of them fostering because they actually cared about the children they were looking after.
It meant that she desperately wanted to feel loved, to feel needed. But it also meant that she didn’t know how to turn to people when she needed them. Her conversation with Lulu had shown her that those were opposing desires, since the people she wanted to feel loved and needed by needed to feel that, too. And, since she struggled to do that, she only succeeded in pushing them away. It was a vicious cycle, and if she was being honest with herself, it was another reason the loss of her baby had broken her.
When she’d fallen pregnant so quickly, so unexpectedly, she had let herself hope for a family. She was going to have a child—someone who would need her without conditions. Someone who would know that she needed them, too, without her having to say it. That was what family was, wasn’t it?
But she had also been scared that she wouldn’t be a good mother. And of the way having a baby would change her life. In some ways it had been a remnant of her fears about marriage. Her pregnancy seemed to have sharpened them, causing her to worry that they’d moved too fast.
So she had clung to her job, working just as hard as she had before she’d fallen pregnant to prove to herself that things wouldn’t change that much. She’d ignored Jordan’s suggestion that she move more slowly, that she take time to adjust to the changes her body and their lives were going through.
And then she’d fallen down the stairs and her baby had been born prematurely, only surviving for seventeen minutes in the world Mila was supposed to have prepared him for. Her mourning had been part grief at her loss, part guilt at the fact that she hadn’t slowed down. That she’d put her selfish fears first.
And in her grief she’d realised how unimportant those fears had been. Having a family—having her son—had always been the most important. She’d pushed Jordan, Greg and Lulu away because that realisation had come too late, and she hadn’t wanted to be reminded of how stupid she’d been.
So she’d locked her hopes for a family away, convincing herself that she could survive without one. And she would cling to that belief so no one would get hurt again because of her. It didn’t matter what Lulu said about second chances and Mila wanting more. Wanting more didn’t matter. Not any more.
Besides, she and Jordan just weren’t right for each other. She absently rubbed at the ache that throbbed in her chest at the thought as she remembered their interaction earlier. She’d had no idea he was as affected as she was by their baby’s death, and she felt awful about it. She could still see the way the colour had leached from his face when he’d realised Lulu was pregnant, could still remember how erratic his breathing had been.
It always gave her an objective glimpse into what other people felt when she went through her own episodes, and it wasn’t good. And, though she still felt guilt about it, knowing that he struggled, too, made her feel a little better about how she was coping. It made her feel, for the first time since her life had imploded in front of her, as if she wasn’t alone.
But that didn’t mean anything other than shared experience, she thought firmly. She and Jordan hadn’t even shared the way they’d really felt about having a baby. And then she had told him about why she hadn’t, about why she was scared, and he had still refused to share his feelings with her. It reminded her of how little she actually knew about him...
No, she concluded. They weren’t right for each other. And no matter what her heart said she couldn’t be with someone who didn’t want to let her in.
‘Going down?’ a voice asked behind her, and she turned, her heart in her throat until she realised that it was Frank, not Jordan behind her.
‘No.’ She smiled at him and checked her watch. ‘I have under thirty minutes before I need to leave to do some work on the event. There’s no time for me to get lost in the fields today.’
Frank nodded and just stood behind her, and his steady presence gave her a feeling of calm.
‘Something’s wrong,’ Frank said, still staring out to the fields.
She bit her lip when Frank’s lack of eye contact reminded her of how uncomfortable he was talking about anything personal, and answered him. ‘Nothing out of the ordinary.’
Not if you counted a will forcing you to reunite with a not-so-ex-husband as ordinary.
‘You sure?’
‘Yes.’ She turned to him now, and saw the concern on his face. ‘I’m not going to break down because Jordan is back, Frank.’
Frank sank his hands into his pockets and shifted his weight. He hated interfering, she thought, and her heart warmed even as she wondered why he thought he needed to.
