Melting the Argentine Doctor's Heart / Small Town Marriage Miracle (2 page)

They couldn’t stay.

He wouldn’t get involved—couldn’t get involved.

For the last four years he had pushed the world away, hating the pity he saw in people’s eyes, happy only when he was working on a new project, doing something to help people worse off than himself, people who wouldn’t care if he looked like Frankenstein’s monster because he was willing to help them.

He knew it was pride—foolish, stupid pride—that had made him react this way—and if he hadn’t known then his father had told him often enough—but it was the only way he could cope with his injuries and with the continued pain they caused.

But now he had a
daughter?

The child—Ella—was watching the game a group of children were playing beside the clinic, and anger rose again. He turned back to the woman who had brought this cataclysmic shock into his life, letting his anger override the surge of attraction just looking at her produced.

‘And you’ve come for what? Some grand display? Some macabre retaliation for me dumping you? You’d drag a child halfway around the world in order to punish me in some way? ‘

Now anger fired
her
eyes, Caroline’s eyes, as blue as the skies over the snow-clad mountains in mid-winter—or so he’d thought four years ago …

‘Not really,’ she said, speaking calmly in spite of that anger flashing in the blue. ‘I came to fulfil a pledge we made a long time ago. Maybe you remember it, although from what I’ve read you’ve taken it to extremes. One month a year, we pledged. One month a year we’d work somewhere in the world, treating people who didn’t have
the resources for the medical facilities most people enjoy. Until now I’ve worked my month a year in outback communities at home, helping set up different strategies to maintain good health. But when I read your clinic was always looking for volunteer doctors, I realised I could kill two birds with one stone.’

Although smiling was the last thing she felt like doing at the moment—in all the hundreds of scenarios she’d pictured of this meeting, Jorge yelling at her for dragging Ella halfway round the world had been the last—Caroline managed a smile, and waved her hand to where the taxi driver had dumped her large backpack and Ella’s smaller, koala-shaped one.

‘As you can see, I’ve come prepared. I’m here for a month,’ she finished, and felt a rush of satisfaction at the astonishment—not to mention horror—on his face.

His face!

His poor face!

Although the photo had prepared her for the scarring, seeing it, the physical manifestations of what had happened, had hit her like a punch to her stomach. For something like that to happen to a man as handsome and proud as Jorge, it was unimaginable how he had coped.

It had seemed natural when she’d read about the injuries he’d sustained, and learnt that for a time he’d thought he might not walk again, that the first thing he would have done was deny his love for her. He would have pictured her reaction to his injuries, seen himself as a burden, her love as pity, and a man as proud as Jorge would never in a million years accept pity.

So he’d sent that email?

She’d been so sure, reading the article, that this had to have been the explanation for his rejection and, furious that he’d had so little faith in her, even more angry that he’d denied Ella a father, she’d begun to make plans to get them to Argentina as quickly as possible.

Seeing him now, seeing
his
anger, the doubts that had crept in while she had been in the taxi intensified, and nausea swirled in her stomach. Yet her body ignored his anger;
it
knew he was still Jorge—the man she’d loved, still loved, it told her.

His next words slammed against her, emphasising her body’s folly, making it crystal clear that he was far from delighted to see her.

‘You cannot stay. I do not want you here.’

His voice was flat, hard and furious, although the fury was thinly veiled, no doubt tightly reined in, in front of Ella, but Caroline was not going to be put off at the first setback, no matter how much this blunt rejection might hurt. Despite her body’s automatic reaction to seeing him, she had no idea what would happen between Jorge and herself in the future but, whatever developed, she was determined Ella would know her father.

She ploughed on over his arguments.

‘The article I read said you had accommodation for a visiting doctor and Ella’s used to sharing my bed when we travel,’ she told him. ‘I figured, being a clinic, there are sure to be some trustworthy aides or patients who won’t mind babysitting if Ella’s a nuisance. In fact, I thought, as I’ll be here, once you’ve introduced me around and shown me how you work, you can spend
some time getting to know your daughter, maybe even think about introducing her to your father.’

She rattled off the words, hoping she sounded calmer than she felt, which was as if she’d somehow been dropped into a washing machine—churning, tumbling, swirling.

‘You can’t work here!’

The blunt statement brought her back to earth. That was good, as she was running out of words to cover the way she was feeling. On top of that, his flat declaration revived her fighting spirit and she wasn’t giving in this time without a fight, no matter how much seeing him again was tormenting her body.

‘Of course I can.’ She shot the words at him. ‘I’ve been learning Spanish for the last three years and although I don’t know the Toba language, I assume, as they have been settled here for a couple of decades, most will speak a little Spanish. I have a visa, my medical qualifications have been approved by your medical association, and I have permission from.’ she couldn’t remember the name of the organisation ‘.something to do with the medical officer of the municipality of Rosario to do volunteer work at this particular clinic for the duration of one month.’

‘This is
my
clinic!’

Even as the words escaped his lips, Jorge realised how stupid they would sound. He didn’t need to see the smile twitching at Caroline’s lips or hear her cutting ‘Oh, really?’ to know she’d read the pettiness of it,
and
realised it was totally out of character.

So she knew she’d rattled him but, then, that was what this stupid escapade must be about—rattling him.

In more ways than one, although she couldn’t know that—wouldn’t ever know that!

Uncertain where to go next, needing time to think before he said anything more—needing, more than anything, to get away from the woman who had reawoken sensations he’d never thought to feel again—he turned to see where the child, Ella, no, he couldn’t call her that—not yet—had gone.

Although staying within sight of her mother, she had wandered closer to where the Toba children played. She watched the game, probably unaware of the sensation she was causing among the locals—a small stranger in their midst.

A
child?

His
child?

No! There was no time for wonder!

‘You have done this deliberately,’ he said to Caroline, letting his anger run free now the child was out of earshot. ‘You have come here on some mad whim, dragged a child all this way, when a letter and a photo would have sufficed. So why, Caroline? To punish me for not loving you?’

She stepped back as if he’d struck her, then straightened for the fight. He’d seen her fight before, but usually with him, not against him, fighting for the rights of others, fighting for what she called a ‘fair go’ for people who couldn’t fight for themselves.

‘And you’d have opened the letter as you did all the others, including the one I sent telling you I was
pregnant?’ Sarcasm curled like wisps of smoke around the heated words. ‘Or should I have written “Photo of your child” on the envelope so you didn’t just scrawl “Return to sender” on it and pop it back into the mail?’

She paused then stepped closer, her voice softer, the faint hint of the lemon shampoo she must still use moving in her silvery hair, floating in the air towards him.

Momentarily distracting him.

‘You, of all people, know how I felt growing up without my father,’ she continued. ‘You were the first person I ever opened up to about how inadequate I’d felt all through my teens, and the foolish things I’d done to win boys’ attention. This is not about punishment, Jorge, neither is it about you and me, or about the past. I’ve come because I thought you should know Ella exists, but more for her sake than for yours, because the one thing I don’t want for her is to grow up without knowing her father.’

She took a deep breath, as if the words, and perhaps the emotion behind them, had emptied her right out.

And remembering, he knew it could have, for he’d known her for six months before she’d talked about not having a father.

Yet even sympathy for her didn’t stop the disappointment that had seeped into him as he’d listened to the honesty of her explanation. Could he possibly have been thinking she’d come because she still loved him?

How likely would that be when his farewell email had been so deliberately cruel?

‘You should have written!’

It was weak, pathetic even, but all he could come up with as he struggled to regain some mental poise, even to find renewed anger, anything that would turn her away from here.

But in place of an objection, what flew into his mind was something she’d said earlier—something about staying here!

With him!

She intended to invade his home so she’d not only be working near him but living near him as well, her body a constant reminder, a constant distraction, a constant tease.

Now the anger came.

‘It’s impossible that you should stay here. Find a hotel in the city. I will visit you both there. You spring this on me with no warning, but I’ll not deny my child. I will make arrangements, speak to lawyers, see she is—’

‘Financially secure?’

She spat the words at him, her fury a palpable force.

‘Do you think for one moment that’s what I want? Your money? As it happens, Ella is already financially secure. The father I never knew died and left me more than enough money to keep her in luxury for her entire life, but I want Ella to have a father, Jorge, and I thought, by coming here, maybe over a month we could work out some way for that to happen.’

She stopped for breath again then added even more fiercely, ‘She needs your love, Jorge, not your money. Would that be too hard for you to offer her?’

Would it?

He looked towards the child—Ella—who was laughing as one of the children kicked a tattered ball towards her. One small foot lifted and a shiny purple shoe kicked the ball back. The Toba children all waved their arms and yelled their approval of the young, curly-headed stranger in their midst.

Jorge found his heart was hurting again.

Was the wall he’d built around his feelings crumbling so easily?

Even considering it heralded danger.

‘This is impossible! We cannot stand here, arguing. Come inside, not the clinic but my—my
home.’

He emphasised the last word in the invitation to convince himself there was no shame attached to inviting guests into his rough adobe hut, but picturing it in his mind as he’d left that morning—an unwashed breakfast bowl and spoon on the sink; piles of books like mini-skyscrapers all over the floor; his bed unmade should anyone peer through the curtain that served as a bedroom door.

The child—Ella—surely would, though an unmade bed should mean little to her.

‘We’ll have
mate,
a kind of tea. Have you had time to try it?’

Now he sounded like a tourist guide, and though she was walking behind him, little Ella at her side, he knew Caroline had heard the falseness in his voice and was smiling as she replied, ‘We’ve come straight from the airport so we’ve not had time, although I’ve heard of it.’

She’d answered like a polite tourist, although when she added, ‘Of course, you used to tell me about it, Jorge, and long for a taste of it,’ her voice was soft and he could almost believe.

Believe what?

That after four years she still felt something for him?

Imbécil!
Was he so stupid that he was thinking this way?

They’d reached his hut.
His
hut? He’d thought of it that way since the project had begun but it was never destined to be his for ever, or even for much longer. Soon it would house volunteer doctors.

Volunteer doctors! The board set up to run the clinic had agreed they would still accept volunteer help when it was offered, as well as paying a permanent doctor. Caroline must have made the arrangement through the board and somehow dates had become mixed up, which would explain why he hadn’t received notification.

He shook his head at the bureaucratic bungling that had thrust him into this situation and continued towards the hut.

At least now it had a front door, though not much of one, cut from a bigger, thick timber door one of his helpers had found in a second-hand yard. Cutting the door, like the other tasks he’d undertaken in building his hut, had reminded him how little he knew about manual labour—how easy and privileged his growing up had been.

‘Great door!’

Caroline was smiling at him, running her fingers
along the rough edges where the plane had bitten too deep into the wood.

‘All your own work? ‘

He fought the urge to smile back—and the even stronger urge to put his fingers over hers. To smile at her would be to lose, to touch her would be to surrender, and although he wasn’t sure of the battle taking place, its rules or even the battleground, he wasn’t going to lose.

‘I built the hut with some of the unemployed young men in the area, so we could all learn the traditional way of building. We try to reuse wood where we can. We cannot stop deforestation taking place, not only here but in so many rainforest areas throughout the world, but at least we should be aware that we need not add to it.’

Her smile grew softer, gleaming in her eyes where anger had been earlier, and his heart bumped once again in his chest.

Danger—that was what the bump meant. It was as good as a flashing sign saying, Beware! He straightened up, feeling the skin on his body tighten and momentary pain. Pain was good as it reminded him that he couldn’t let a smile breach his defences.