Melting the Argentine Doctor's Heart / Small Town Marriage Miracle (6 page)

Stricken by his words, Caroline could only stare at him, until her own anger came to her aid.

‘You think I did this out of spite? Planned this deliberately to upset you? And why? To get back at you for
having dumped me? For having ignored my letters and left me with a child to bring up on my own? Believe me, Jorge, I was over that a long time ago.’

‘So why come now?’

She opened her mouth to tell the truth—to say she’d read about the extent of his injuries, seen his photo, seen the scars, and knowing him had guessed he’d pushed her away deliberately, believing her pity would be more hurtful than the pain of losing love.

But that would be tantamount to admitting she still loved him, and from his reaction to her arrival any love he’d ever felt for her was long gone.

So she told a lie, well, a partial lie, following right on the heels of the one where she was over the hurt he’d caused a long time ago …

‘I could afford it now,’ she said. ‘Suddenly I had the money to take time off work and travel. Letters hadn’t worked so I decided maybe seeing Ella would persuade you to become involved in her life.’

‘You had no money before? You always worked? And how did you manage when Ella was a baby? Did you not breastfeed her? ‘

Well, as a diversion for his grumpiness it had certainly worked, but grumpy didn’t begin to describe how the switch in conversation and those rude questions had made
her
feel.

‘It was before my father found me and made up for twenty-eight years of neglect by leaving me his money,’ she snapped. ‘I
had
to work to keep us but, yes, I was breastfeeding. My mother, when she was in remission, cared for Ella. It’s not that hard these days to freeze
pouches of milk so there was a supply for Ella during the day.’

She gave him a glare she hoped was as cold as the pouches of frozen milk, mainly because his probing had reawoken the guilt she still felt at not being able to spend more time with both her baby and her ailing mother.

He’d been leaning against his desk and now he stepped towards her and for a moment she thought he was going to touch her—maybe even kiss her—though that, of course, was nothing more than wishful thinking.

As it turned out, he stopped just out of touching distance and said quietly, ‘I do regret not being there to help you. I regret not opening the letter that would have told me of the child.’

And because her body had tensed for the kiss—as if!—she snapped again.

‘Her name is Ella! It shouldn’t be too hard for you to remember. And now it’s getting late—it’s been a big day. I need to sort out food, rescue Mima from her, and get her bathed and into bed.’

Now he did touch her, catching her arm as she spun away from him, the abrupt halting of her movement spinning her back so she landed up against his body.

His body—as hard as she remembered it—solid, chunky almost, the kind of body that would be a bulwark against anything the world could throw at her.

But that had been then, when she’d believed their love so great their souls had joined.

One slight move now and their lips would join. The air grew thick and still between them, desire throbbing in her body, a moment in time, stretching, stretching to
forever—then he steadied her and stepped away, going behind his desk, sitting down, looking at the note Juan had made about the boy.

Had she imagined the shift in the atmosphere when he’d touched her? Imagined it because she’d have liked to think their mutual attraction still existed?

‘I must find Ella,’ she muttered, and backed out of the room, only to remember something and have to return. ‘I didn’t speak to the boy’s mother about future bee stings or the danger they could be to him. Will you talk to her about having something on hand if he’s stung again? ‘

Jorge looked up at the woman who hovered in his doorway. A few minutes ago he had nearly kissed her, the impulse brought on by a simple touch—his hand going out to halt her—and now he couldn’t remember why. Something to do with her going shopping? Or had he been about to apologise for something?

He had no idea because the touch had set fire to something inside him and heat had sizzled in the air around them, thickening it like unseen smoke.

Well, he could forget about sizzle and thick air between them, she’d made it very clear she was over him long ago, yet she’d hesitated before answering that she couldn’t afford to have come sooner and he’d sensed that might only be part of the truth.

Estúpido!
That was what he was, to be feeling disappointment about these revelations. He’d deliberately worded his email to hurt her sufficiently that she wouldn’t rush to his bedside and make a martyr of herself caring for him. Not that there was much of the martyr in Caroline, she was far too practical for that,
and speaking of practical, he should go home and check what food he had. Maybe someone
would
have to go shopping.

At least a trip to the market would take him out of Caroline’s orbit for a while.

With that decided he headed back to the hut, to find Caroline stripping the extremely grubby clothes off an extremely grubby small child.

‘I played with the kids, Hor-hay,’ Ella told him. ‘Mummy should have changed my shoes first so my good shoes didn’t get dirty but Mummy says we can clean them, and I can kick the ball a very long way.’

He looked at the naked child and felt a pang of some indescribable emotion deep inside him. Part ownership, although he knew no one could own another person, and part pride, that he had helped create this perfect little being, and part something else—wonder was the closest he could come to it.

‘I have a big tub outside the back door where I do the washing. Do you want to have a bath in that?’ he asked, pleased now he’d insisted on building his hut in the old way with the bench and tub outside. Beyond it he’d put in a shower, but the tub was where the local people bathed their infants.

‘Will you help?’ Ella asked. ‘I can do my tummy and my legs and toes and arms and fingers,
and
my ears.’ She threw a glare at Caroline as she added the last bit and he realised it must be a source of argument between them. Was she enlisting his aid against her mother? Could three-year-olds be so manipulative?

‘Manipulator
par excellence,’
Caroline said drily, rolling the dirty clothes into a ball. ‘Watch yourself! ‘

‘I can do ears if you need help,’ he told Ella, who was practising the new word she’d just heard. ‘Manpitor,’ issued from the small lips, the determination in her practice so charming, so delightful, his chest went tight with pain.

Again!

‘I’ll boil some water for the bath,’ he said, needing to get away for a minute while he took stock of his feelings. It was okay to fall in love with his daughter, he told himself, but now he’d admitted that he found fears rising in the joy—fears for her safety, fears for her health, nameless fears.

The trouble was, falling in love with anyone, particularly a daughter, hadn’t been part of his life plan.
His
life plan, carefully considered over months of difficult operations, painful treatment and rehabilitation, had been to avoid all emotion in the future. To cut himself off, not from feeling for others, from empathy, but from personal emotional involvement. His father’s love he could handle. He could even cope with Antoinette’s fussing for she’d been their housekeeper since he was a child, but beyond the safe realm of family, he didn’t do emotion any more.

Or hadn’t up until now, when the figure of a little girl earnestly practising the word ‘manipulator’ had stolen his heart.

‘Right, I’ve run cold water in the tub—actually, it’s lukewarm and she probably doesn’t need too much hot in it.’

Caroline was standing behind him in the small kitchen area, Ella on her hip, a small, super-absorbent towel and a wash-bag in one hand.

‘I can do better than that for towels,’ he said, trying to come to terms with the sheer normality of Caroline’s behaviour. She was calmly going about what had to be done as if she hadn’t just arrived from halfway around the world and been reunited with her former lover, who had shown no sign of welcome, and now had to bathe her daughter in an outside tub.

Though the Caroline he’d known had rarely let anything faze her so it was only to be expected that she was calmer than he was, which, in itself, was enough to stir his anger again.

He carried the kettle out to the tub and poured the hot water in, a little at time, testing it in between. That done, he took the kettle back inside, away from small probing hands—fear again—and went to the big camphor-wood chest that had been his mother’s, finding a thick, soft, white towel for his daughter.

Thoughts of his mother stilled his anger. How she would have loved this grandchild who might, in some way, have made up for the fact that she hadn’t been able to have more children after him. He tucked the towel under his arm and went out to face the two females who had turned his life upside down. He couldn’t be angry with the small one, but reserved the right as far as Caroline was concerned.

‘Wow! Lovely white towel, so much better than our make-do ones.’

Her delight seemed genuine, and she finished washing
the soap off Ella and lifted the little girl out of the tub, handing her to him, so he wrapped her tightly and carried her inside, a warm, damp, squirming bundle of delight, chatting to him about the bath and ears and a towel she had at home.

‘With princesses on it,’ she finished, as he set her down on the big armchair to dry her properly.

‘Princesses?’ he queried.

He heard a soft warning, ‘Don’t ask,’ from behind him, but it was already too late.

Ella was telling him about the princesses she knew, Cinderella—'that’s like my name'—Ariel, and someone else he couldn’t make out.

She hadn’t realised how much it would hurt, Caroline thought, as she rummaged through the backpack for Ella’s pyjamas, to see Jorge interacting with her daughter.

Their daughter.

She wasn’t jealous, or at least she didn’t think she was, but seeing them together made her ache for all the time the pair had missed out on—all the bath times and story times and playtimes—the good times and the not so good.

‘No sense in getting maudlin,’ she muttered to herself, and she left the sanctuary of the bedroom and returned to the living room, handing the pyjamas to Jorge and trying not to be affected when his hand shook slightly as he took them.

But that slight tremor in his hand made her realise just how great an emotional upheaval this must be for
him, finding out he had a daughter, seeing the child, interacting with her.

Now, don’t go feeling sorry for him. The mental warning was firm, but it didn’t hold much strength. In fairness, she had to admit that he seemed to be handling the situation superbly.

The thought saddened her. His interaction was all with Ella—he was doing all he could to win her confidence—which, she thought gloomily, was wonderful. She, Caroline, might not have existed, except as someone to field his anger when he allowed emotion to creep through his iron-hard control.

Back when he’d touched her in his office, she’d thought that control might crack—had sensed something arc in the air between them—but she’d obviously been wrong and it was just as well because had they kissed, how well could she have hidden her own feelings?

Dismissing kisses from her mind, she concentrated on practical things.

‘A meal? You said you have food, but I have some packages of noodles that only need boiling water added. I can fix that for Ella.’

‘Noodles, noodles, I want noodles,’ the little girl sang.

Her father looked up from the pyjamas he was turning over in his hands, Ella still towel-wrapped in front of him.

‘Pyjamas?’ he queried. ‘It is only six o’clock.’

‘She goes to bed at seven,’ Caroline told him, though now she was remembering other things Jorge had told her about his country—about people not eating dinner
until nine or ten at night, nightclubs opening at midnight but people rarely going there before two in the morning.

‘But then there’d be no time for a promenade and ice cream,’ he protested.

And right on cue, Ella bounced up and down, dropping the white towel on the packed earth floor of the hut, shouting, ‘Ice cream, ice cream!’

‘Tonight she will have to promenade in pyjamas,’ Caroline said firmly. ‘We have limited clothes and I washed the ones she had on today while she was in the bath and she’ll need the clean set for tomorrow. Two clean sets tomorrow, judging by today’s playtime.’

Jorge nodded and began the task of getting an excited, squirming child into pyjamas and finding the right holes for the right buttons in a garment that seemed to be nothing but holes and buttons.

‘She’s a restless sleeper—that’s why she needs a sleepsuit.’ Caroline knelt beside him to change a few buttons into the right holes, but it was a mistake. Try as she might to deny it, the attraction she had felt towards Jorge almost from their first meeting was still as strong as ever—perhaps even stronger, now that he was off limits.

Was
he off limits?

He was as far as she didn’t intend revealing her feelings for him, but personally off limits? Was he in a relationship? And if so, how would the revelation of Ella’s existence affect it?

The thought of him in a relationship—normal though that would be—sent an icy chill racing through her
blood. She straightened up and told Ella to get a book from her backpack then faced her child’s father.

But how to ask?

‘Is this going to be a problem for you in your personal life?’

She blurted it out, and could practically see the question hovering in the air between them so hurried on. ‘I mean, the article said you were a bachelor but that doesn’t mean—I mean, you might have married and divorced, have other children. Is this a personal disruption for you?’

He scowled at her.

‘You mean is finding out I have a child not enough of a personal disruption, but might it affect a whole family? And you didn’t consider that before your mad dash across the Pacific?’

‘The article
said
you were a bachelor!’ Caroline repeated, standing up for herself, although inwardly cursing herself for not thinking it through before she’d rushed into her arrangements. ‘And if you have a girlfriend or a partner, surely that’s okay. Even other children. Eventually Ella would have to meet them and they meet her, so what harm is done?’