felt safe from doing something she would likely regret if she were any closer.
‘The last time I messed things up between us it was because of my ex-wife.’
He spoke suddenly, and Callie didn’t know what to make of the way her stomach clenched at his mention of the woman. So she just nodded, and waited for him to continue.
‘She was one of my employees at the Port Elizabeth Elegance Hotel. I met her a few years after my father retired, when I realised that the hotel in PE was losing staff at an incredibly high rate. I arranged a meeting with HR and they sent Julia.’
Callie watched as the tension on Blake’s face tightened. She wanted to reach out to him, but she resisted. He needed to tell her about this without any help. But he had stopped talking.
She waited, then finally she asked, ‘What was it that made you fall for her?’
He looked at her, and she saw a mixture of emotions in his eyes. Emotions that almost mirrored her own. She didn’t really want to hear about what it was that had attracted Blake to this woman. But she needed to if they were going to make any progress together.
Then he exhaled sharply. ‘I don’t exactly know, to be honest with you. I guess it was because she had all the ingredients of the perfect woman. She was smart and beautiful, and I was attracted to her. But I didn’t want to date her because—well...’ he smiled wryly ‘...I was her boss.’
He continued now without any help, and she thought it was almost a compulsion for him to tell her.
‘But professionalism didn’t really mean as much to me back then, so after about six months of resisting I asked her out. And it felt good. But what drew me in was Brent—her son.’
Blake didn’t look at Callie but he paused, as though letting her process what he was telling her. She already had so many questions, but she refused to speak. Especially when she didn’t think she would have the voice to do so.
After a few more moments he continued. ‘She had always been honest with me about him. She’d told me that his father hadn’t been in the picture from the beginning and that she’d been raising him by herself. And the way she told me that...’
He leaned forward now, bracing his elbows on his knees, and Callie realised he had long ago placed his wine, untouched, on the coffee table in front of them,
‘That was, I think, what made me fall in love with her. She had this softness about her when she spoke about Brent that seemed so out of place in this woman who was all sass all the time.’
Callie didn’t realise she was holding her breath until he looked at her, and the torment she saw in his eyes made her untangle her legs from under her and move closer to him. They sat there for a while in silence, and Callie thought about what he’d said. She remembered the way his eyes had dimmed when she’d spoken to him of his mother on the boat, what felt like a lifetime ago. It was quite simple for her to come to a conclusion then.
‘She was a good mother. So different to what you’d had.’ She hadn’t realised she’d spoken out loud until he took a shaky breath.
‘Yeah, I think that was it. And when I met Brent I fell in love with him, too. He reminded me a lot of myself.’ He frowned, as though unsure of where that had come from. ‘In hindsight, I suppose I fell for Brent more than I did for Julia, but they were intertwined. And then one day I found her crying in my office. She told me that she didn’t think she was a good enough mother to Brent, that she wasn’t giving him stability because he didn’t have a father. And just like that she had me.’
He pushed off from the couch so fast that Callie felt her heart stop.
‘I thought she was being honest with me. That she was being unselfish, thinking of her son first. Maybe she was. But the way she did it...’ He shook his head.
She’d shown her son all the things Blake hadn’t had growing up, Callie thought, and wished she could have been there for him then.
‘I fell for it. I comforted her, told her she was an amazing mother, and started making plans to propose. I’d only known her for a year then, had been dating her for six months, and I married her.’
He looked at her, and she thought she saw embarrassment in his eyes.
‘I married a woman I barely knew because she pulled at my heartstrings. My father insisted that we sign a prenuptial agreement, and we did—though she made some noise about that. The right noise, too. About how we didn’t need a prenup when we were going to last. We were a family, and we were going to make it work. And for a year we did.’
He joined her on the couch again, and Callie took his hand, wanting to provide as much comfort as she could.
‘Callie, I didn’t think I would ever be as happy as I was being a husband and a father. We were a family. I had a family.’ He rubbed a hand across his face. ‘But I was in a bubble, and I only noticed the way Julia had changed when it began to affect Brent. She had become snarky and mean. Only to me, luckily, but she was doing it in front of Brent, and I could tell that he hated it. When I challenged her on it she told me it was none of my business because Brent wasn’t even my son.
He looked at her, and then lowered his eyes.
‘I tried to save the relationship—I really did. I even went so far as to look into adopting Brent. I hired an investigator to find Brent’s father so that I could ask him to relinquish his parental rights to me. I was going to surprise Julia with it. But then one night she told me it wasn’t working, and that what was happening between us was hurting Brent. That was the last thing I wanted, so I agreed to a divorce. I had just wanted to give Brent a home, a family.’
‘I’m so sorry, Blake.’ Callie spoke because she had to. She couldn’t take the pain in his voice any longer.
He looked at her now, smiled sadly. ‘Thanks, but I was in that relationship for the wrong reasons. For my own reasons. Julia had her reasons, too, so we were both wrong—though I do think she thought she was doing the right thing for Brent. She wanted to make sure that he never lacked for money.’
‘Wait—what?’
Blake shot her a confused look. And then he nodded. ‘Oh, yeah, I didn’t mention that. When we spoke about the divorce she told me she had only married me so that she could live the life she knew she and her son deserved. And then she realised that she was hurting him instead, and she didn’t want that.’ He shook his head. ‘That was pretty much the end of it.’
‘Did she get anything in the divorce?’ Callie didn’t want to ask, but it was one of the pieces of the puzzle she needed to understand him better.
‘No, the prenup prevented that. And Brent didn’t either, since the contract stated he needed to be legally mine before I was required to pay anything.’
‘Do you still see him?’
‘No, I don’t. Julia resigned shortly after we divorced and moved to back to Namibia, where she’s from.’
‘Blake...’ Callie shifted over and put an arm around him. ‘I’m sorry.’
He lifted his own arm, put it around her, and sat back so that she could lay her head on his chest. They sat like that for a while, and Callie wished she had words to say
