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Six and he’d lost an arm. And he understood her language. A well of tears threatened, which was so unprofessional. Do that and Louise would be putting her back on that train. Gulping hard, she turned to the next child. But seriously? She really had nothing to complain about.
The next half hour sped by with Ellie sitting and chatting with each child. Not all of them understood her words but they must’ve picked up on her empathy and her teasing because soon they all crowded around touching her, pointing at themselves and laughing a lot. Over the next few days she’d get to know them better as she changed dressings and helped with rehab, but this first meeting was unbelievable. She filed away each name and face so that she’d never have to ask them again. They deserved her utmost respect and she’d make sure they got it.
‘Ellie? Ellie Baldwin, is that really you?’ The male voice coming from across the room was filled with surprise and pleasure.
She snapped her head up and stared into a familiar pair of grey eyes she hadn’t seen in four years. Mind you, they’d been angry grey then, like deep, wild ocean grey. ‘Luca?’ Her heart pounded loud in her ears. ‘Luca, I don’t believe this.’
‘It’s me, El.’ No one else dared call her that. Ever.
As she stepped forward Louise was prattling an explanation about why she was here, but Ellie cut her out and concentrated on her old friend and housemate. Concentrated hard to make sure she wasn’t hallucinating. Checking this truly was Luca Chirsky, even when she knew it was the man she’d shared notes and rosters with at med school, and more than a few beers at the pub or in the house they’d lived in with Renee and another trainee doctor. Time hadn’t altered his good looks. Though he did appear more muscular than she remembered, which only enhanced the package. Bet the ladies still plagued him. Some plagues were okay, he’d once joked.
Finally she said, ‘I haven’t seen you in forever.’ Wow, this was a fantastic bonus to her trip. A surprise. She shivered. A good surprise, she told herself. ‘Who’d have believed we’d meet up here of all places?’
Then she was being swung up in strong arms and spun in a circle. ‘It’s been a while, hasn’t it?’ Those eyes were twinkling at her as they used to before she’d gone off to marry Freddy. This was Luca. He had never hesitated with telling her what he thought of her fiancé, none of it good. The thrill of seeing him again dipped. If only there were some way of keeping her marriage bust-up from Luca.
Not a chance. ‘Didn’t you say your name was Thompson?’ Louise asked from somewhere beside them. ‘I’m not going deaf as well as forgetful, am I?’
Luca almost dropped Ellie to her feet. His finger lifted her chin so he could eyeball her. ‘You’ve gone back to Thompson, eh?’ Then he deliberately looked at her left hand, which was still gripping his arm, her ring finger bare of a wedding band, and then back to lock his gaze on hers. ‘So you’re single again.’ He didn’t need to say, ‘I warned you.’ It was there in the slow burn of his eyes, changing his pleasure at seeing her to caution.
Ice-like fingers of disappointment skittered across her arms. So much for being excited to see Luca. She’d had a momentary brain fade. Having a few of them today. After all this time without any contact between them he’d gone for the jugular straight up. Guess that put their friendship where it belonged—in the past. She didn’t understand why. They’d been so close nothing should’ve affected their friendship. The last person on the planet she’d expected to find here was Luca, and he knew too much about her for these weeks to now be a quiet time. She could do without playing catch-up, or the shake of his head every time he said her surname. Luca would cloud her thinking and bring back memories of where she’d planned on being by now if she hadn’t gone and got married. Plans she’d sat up late at night discussing endlessly with him until she’d started dating Freddy.
Even now Luca’s head moved from side to side as he said, ‘Seems you’re right, Louise. Ellie Thompson she is.’
Fatigue combined with annoyance and a sense of let-down to come out as anger. ‘Are Mrs Chirsky and your child here? Or are they back in New Zealand awaiting your return?’
The expression on his face instantly became unreadable as he took a step back from her. ‘Don’t go there, Ellie,’ he warned.
So he could give her a hard time and she should remain all sweetness and light. Too bad she’d forgotten how to do that since that fateful morning she’d found Freddy in bed with more than a pillow. ‘Or what?’ she snapped. Last time they’d talked he’d been gearing up for his wedding. More like girding up. There’d been a pregnancy involved that he definitely hadn’t been happy about. Nor would he talk to her about it, or anything going on in his life then. He’d clammed up tighter than a rock oyster. Kind of said where their friendship had got to.
Louise tapped her arm. ‘Come on, I’ll show you to your room so you can unpack and take a shower.’
It was the worried look Louise kept flicking between her and Luca that dampened down Ellie’s temper; nothing that Luca had said. ‘I’m sorry. I must sound very ungrateful. I’d really like to see where I’m staying.’ She didn’t want Louise thinking her and Luca couldn’t work together, because they could. It would just be a matter of remaining professional and ignoring the past. Easy as.
Luca picked up her bag before she could make a move. ‘I’ll take that.’
Louise scowled. ‘Maybe you could catch up with Ellie later when she’s had some sleep.’
To lighten the atmosphere that she’d created just by being here, Ellie forced a laugh. ‘Trust me, there won’t be any talking about anything past, present or future for the next twenty-four hours. I’m all but comatose on my feet. The sooner I can lie down, the better. I got no sleep at all on the train from Bangkok. The carriage was too noisy and stuffy.’
Luca draped an arm over her shoulders. ‘That’s what planes are for, El. They’re comfortable and fast, and the cabin crew even feeds you.’ Back to being less antagonistic, then. His use of El was a clue.
‘Remind me of that later when I come up with some other hare-brained scheme for getting home.’ She’d left booking flights as she had no idea what she might want to do next, where she might go to fill in the weeks between this job and the position she was taking up early in January. Following Louise, Luca’s arm still on her shoulders and feeling heavy, yet strong and familiar, she sucked in on her confusion. Maybe she did need familiar right now. Maybe her old friend could help her by going back over that time when she’d made the monumental error of thinking she loved Freddy more than her future and wanted to spend the rest of her life with him. Now she wanted to reroute her life and, if she stopped being so defensive, talking to Luca might turn out to be the fix she needed. If he didn’t rub her nose in what had happened, they should be able to get along just fine. Surely their past friendship counted for something?
Then heat prickled Ellie’s skin. Damn, but she needed a shower. She probably smelled worse than roadkill that had been left in the sun for days. Except this heat felt different from what she’d been experiencing all morning.
She shrugged away from Luca’s arm and straightened up the sags in her body. ‘I’m looking forward to catching up.’ She smiled at Luca. The heat intensified when he smiled back. Most unusual. Had to be excitement over seeing him again, despite the shaky start. ‘But not today.’
Might as well go for friendly; after all they used to be very good at it. There’d been a time, when they were sharing that house, that there was little they didn’t know about each other. At one point just before they’d finished their first year as junior doctors she’d wondered if they might’ve had a fling. They’d seemed attracted to each other in a way they’d never been before, and then she’d met Freddy and that had been that. Eventually she’d moved to Wellington and lost contact with Luca and the others she’d lived with for so long, until the beginning of the year when she’d caught up with Renee and now shared an apartment with her. Ellie had presumed Luca had married and become a father. Seemed she’d been wrong.
Thankfully today she could categorically state she felt no attraction for Luca at all. Not a drop. That heat had been something out of the blue. Hell, today she was struggling with the friendship thing after the way he’d looked at her with that ‘I told you so’ in his sharp eyes. It made her want to grind her teeth and kick him in the shin. It reminded her how he used to be so positive about diagnoses when they were junior doctors. That was ‘the look’ he’d become known for. Unfortunately he was more often right than wrong about everything.
Just like his prediction about her ex. Except not even Luca had got it as bad or humiliating as the demise of her marriage had turned out to be.
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_87ec051c-c577-5d69-baeb-d8cda8234cc1)
‘KNOCK ME OVER,’ Luca muttered as he stood back for Ellie and Louise to enter the small room that would be El’s home for the next month. Ellie Thompson had popped up out of nowhere in full splendour, if a little bedraggled around the edges. All that thick, dark blonde hair still long and gleaming, while her eyes watched everything and everyone, though now there was a wariness he’d never seen before. ‘Your smile’s missing.’ Did he really say that out loud?
Ellie lifted those eyes to him and he saw her weariness. ‘It’s probably back in the third carriage of the overnight train I was on.’
Somehow Luca didn’t believe her exhaustion was all to do with her trip. It appeared ingrained in her bones and muscles as well as deep in those hazel eyes, even in her soul. So not the Ellie he used to know and had had a lot of fun with. What had Baldwin done to her? Played around behind her back? That had always been on the cards. The guy had never been able to keep his pants zipped, even when he’d first started dating Ellie. It had broken Luca’s heart when Ellie had told him the guy loved her and was over being the playboy since he’d asked her to marry him. The old ‘leopard and its spots’ story. But she hadn’t wanted to hear what he could’ve told her. Then his own problems had exploded in his face and he’d been too caught up dealing with Gaylene’s lies and conniving to notice Ellie’s departure.
Placing her bag on the desk, he turned for the door. ‘We’ll catch up when you’ve had forty winks.’
‘Make that a thousand and forty.’
‘You okay, El? Like, really deep down okay?’ he asked, worry latching on to him. They might’ve been out of touch but she used to be his closest friend. He’d never replaced her and would still do anything for her—if only she ever asked.
Her eyes were slits as that hazel shade glittered at him. ‘Never been better,’ she growled. ‘Now, can you leave me to settle in?’
‘On my way. Or do you want me to show you where the showers are?’
‘I’ll do that.’ Louise stepped between them. Putting a hand on his arm, she pushed lightly. ‘Go check up on little Hoppy.’ Then her phone rang and she stepped away. After listening for a few seconds she said, ‘Hang on. Sorry, Ellie, I’ll be a couple of minutes. Aaron left the shopping list in the kitchen.’
Ellie’s shoulders slumped as she watched Louise bustle away. ‘All I want is a shower and some sleep.’
Luca’s heart rolled over for her so he reached out for her hand and gently tugged her close. ‘Come on, grab your toiletries and that towel and I’ll show you where to go.’
She did as he said, silently. What had that man done? Or was this truly just jet lag and a sleepless night on the train making her like this? ‘El, while you’re showering I’ll make you a sandwich and grab a bottle of water. You must be starving.’
‘You still call me El.’ Now there was a glimmer of a smile touching her lips. ‘I’m fractionally shorter and nowhere near as beautiful as the model you wanted to compare me with. I’m fatter too.’
‘The hell you are. You’re thinner than I’ve ever seen you.’ And he didn’t like it.
The smile fell away, and she shivered. ‘I needed to lose weight.’
‘I’ll have to start calling you stick insect.’ He grinned to show he was teasing, something he’d never had to do before when they’d spent a lot of time together. But he needed to know what was going on. Something had happened to her. He’d swear it.
‘I’ve been called worse.’ Distress blinked out at him.
He opened his mouth without thinking about what he’d say. ‘Who by?’ When she winced he draped an arm over her shoulders to hold her in against him as they walked along the path to the ablutions block. ‘What did that scumbag do to you?’ he asked next, struggling to hold onto a rare anger.
Just like that, crabby Ellie returned. Her back straightened as she yanked her shoulders free of his arm. The face she turned on his was red and tight, her eyes sparking like a live wire. A dangerous live wire. ‘You haven’t told me if your wife’s living over here with you.’
She fought dirty, he’d give her that. Her being Ellie, that meant she was hiding something. Stepping farther away from her, he waved along the path. ‘Third door down are the showers. I’ll get one of the kids to put that sandwich and water in your room.’ He spun away to stride towards the clinic, where he could bury himself in patients’ problems and not worry about what might’ve happened to Ellie. Strange, but for a long time he hadn’t thought about what Gaylene had tried to do to him all those years ago, certainly not since he’d arrived here. It wasn’t as though Ellie and Gaylene went hand in hand, but the friendship he’d had with El had gone belly up at that time.
‘Luca.’ A soft hand touched his biceps. ‘Luca, stop, please.’
He turned midstride to face Ellie, and instantly his anger dissipated. It wasn’t her fault that he’d been made a fool of way back then. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Me, too.’ Ellie huffed a long sigh. ‘I got such a shock seeing you across the room, and I don’t seem to have returned to normal since. I don’t want to fight with you. We were never very good at that, and starting now doesn’t make a lot of sense.’
‘I guess four years is a long time, with many things having gone down for each of us. Let’s go back to when we were happy being pals and downing beers as if it was going out of fashion on our days off.’ He’d like that more than anything right about now. A cold beer—with his pal. They had a lot of catching up to do. And not just the bad stuff.
Ellie nodded slowly. ‘That’d be great. A friend is what I really need more than anything.’
Don’t ask. ‘Done.’ He followed through on his previous thought. ‘Get some shut-eye and tonight we’ll go to a bar in town for a reunion beer or two. Then you can catch up on some more sleep before you start to get to know your way around here. How does that sound?’ He held his breath.
At last. A full-blown Ellie smile came his way, like warm hands around his heart. ‘Perfect.’ She started to move past him.
Luca suddenly felt the need to tell her. To get it out of the way, because it would hang between them like an unsolved puzzle if he avoided the issue, and he didn’t want that. ‘I never married her.’
She nearly lost her balance, and when she raised her face to him her eyes were wide. But she kept quiet, waiting for him to finish his story.
As if that could be told in thirty seconds, but he supposed he could give her the bones of it. ‘She terminated the baby. Said she’d met someone else and didn’t want to take my child into that relationship.’ If it had been his child. She hadn’t exactly been monogamous with him. He would’ve insisted on a DNA test being done but he’d been trying to trust her and accept what had happened.
He’d always been supercareful about using condoms during every liaison. But no child of his would ever grow up without his father at his side, and that edict had taken him straight into Gaylene’s hands—until she’d found a richer man. Luca’s hands fisted on his hips, as they always did when he thought about that selfish woman. The only good thing she had done was remind him exactly why he had no intention of ever, ever getting married or having children.
‘You always said you weren’t going to marry or have children. I was surprised when I heard about the circumstances of your wedding, but so many people get caught out by an unplanned pregnancy.’ Ellie leaned against him. ‘I should’ve phoned then.’
But by then he’d told her what he thought of her marrying Baldwin. He got it. She’d still been angry with him. ‘We were both tied up with our careers and finishing exams, not to mention other things. There was a lot going on.’ I wouldn’t have told you anyway. Like I’ve never told you about my father and my grandfather and how they let down those nearest and dearest big time. How my father took his would-be father-in-law’s propensity for deserting his wife and children to a whole new level. Some things were best kept in the family.
Ellie nodded. ‘Our friendship was under a fair bit of strain, if I remember rightly.’
‘You do.’ But he wouldn’t raise the subject that had come between them again. Not today anyhow. ‘Go shower and head to bed. Your eyeballs are hanging halfway down your face. I’ll warn everyone to be quiet around your room.’
‘Nice. How come I didn’t scare the kids, then? I must look very ugly.’ Her smile slipped as a yawn gripped her.
‘They’re a lot tougher than you’d guess.’ Luca felt his usual sadness for these beautiful and gentle people who dealt with so much, then he glanced at Ellie and brightened. ‘But they’re also very like kids anywhere in the world when you buy treats or play cricket with them.’ Things he was always indulging in.
He felt his heart lurch as Ellie stepped through into the ablutions block and shut the door. El. His dearest friend. Damn, but he’d missed her, and he was only just realising how much. No one quite poked the borax at him the way she had whenever he’d got too serious about something she’d deemed to be ridiculous. She was usually spot on too. But now something was definitely not right. He’d never seen her so beaten, as though all the things she held dear and near were gone. Somehow, sometime, over the coming weeks he’d find out, and see if he couldn’t help her to get her spark back.
* * *
Ellie woke to knocking on her door. Where am I? She looked around at the children’s drawings covering the walls and it all came back in a hurry. Vientiane. The amputee centre. She stretched her toes to the end of the bed and raised her arms above her head. She’d slept like the dead and now felt good all over, ready to start her job in this country that was new to her.
Knock, knock.
‘Who is it?’
‘Chi. Luca said you have to get up. I’ve got you more water.’
Luca. So that hadn’t been a dream. She’d be excited about catching up with him if she didn’t know he’d want all the details about her failed marriage. He wasn’t going to get them but he’d persist for days; she just knew it. Then again, he had told her why he wasn’t married. What a witch that woman had turned out to be. Terminating their baby with no regard for its father. That was beyond her comprehension. But then she’d never faced a similar situation. Freddy had made certain she didn’t get pregnant.
‘Ellie?’
‘Sorry, come in.’ Ellie shuffled upright and leaned back against the wall as Chi entered.
‘Luca said you’re going out at seven o’clock.’ The girl spoke precisely and slowly as if searching for the right words.
Damn, she’d forgotten Luca’s suggestion of a beer in town. Taking the proffered bottle of water from Chi, she snapped the lid open and said, ‘Thank you, Chi.’
The girl beamed as Ellie poured the cool liquid down her parched throat.
‘What time is it?’ she paused long enough to ask.
‘Half past six. Are you still tired?’
‘A little bit, but eight hours is more than enough for now. I wouldn’t have slept tonight if you hadn’t woken me.’ As Chi sat down on the chair in the corner Ellie asked, ‘Where did you learn to speak such good English?’ The girl looked so cute in her oversize shirt and too-small trousers.
‘Here. The doctors and nurses teach me.’ Pride filled her face, lightened her eyes.
‘How long have you been in the centre?’ To have learned to speak English to a level she could be understood without too much difficulty she must’ve been around the medical staff a long time.
‘I was this high when I came with my brother.’ Chi held her hand less than a metre above the floor. Ellie guessed she was now closer to one hundred and twenty centimetres. ‘Long time ago. My brother was this high.’ Half a metre off the floor.
‘Is your brother still here, too?’
Chi blinked, the pride gone, replaced with stoic sadness. ‘He died. The bomb cut off his leg and the blood ran out.’
Ellie shuddered. Reality sucked, and was very confronting. Flying fragments of metal did a lot of damage, and were often lethal. It had been a spur-of-the-moment decision to come here. When she’d heard about Sandra’s family crisis she’d thought about the weeks looming with nothing to keep her busy before she took up her next job and put her hand up. Helping people in these circumstances was so different from working in an emergency department back home, where life was easier and a lot of things like medical care taken for granted. Here people, many only young children, were still being injured, maimed or killed by bombs that had been left lying around or shallow buried decades ago.
‘Louise and Aaron adopted me. My mother and father are gone, too.’
How much reality should a child have to deal with? Leaping out of bed, she scooped the girl into a hug. ‘I’m so happy to know you, Chi.’
‘Knew I couldn’t trust a female to get my message across without stopping to yak the day away.’ Luca stood in the doorway, his trademark grin including both her and Chi in that comment.
With sudden clarity Ellie understood how much she’d missed that grin and the man behind it. Missed their conversations about everything from how to put a dislocated shoulder back into its socket to which brand of beer was the best. They’d argued, and laughed, and fought over whose turn it was to clean the house. They’d cheered each other on in exams while secretly hoping they did better than the other.
She ran to throw her arms around him. ‘I’m glad I’ve found you again.’
‘I’m glad, too, because tomorrow’s your turn to do the washing.’ He laughed against the top of her head.
His hands were spread across her back, his warmth seeping into her bones and thawing some of the chill that had taken up residence on the morning she came home from work to find Freddy and Caitlin in her marital bed, doing what only she should’ve been doing with her husband. She breathed deep, drawing in the scent that was Luca, her closest friend ever, and relaxed. Friends were safer than husbands and sisters, the damage they wrought less destructive.
‘I have missed you so much.’ I just hadn’t realised it. How dumb was that? Who forgot someone important in their lives because they’d fallen out about a man? Not any man, but Freddy. Luca had been right about him, but she wasn’t going to acknowledge that. She couldn’t bear to see the ‘I told you so’ sign flick on in his eyes again. Not yet anyway. Even if she could laugh because he’d won that argument there was too much pain behind it for her to be ready to make light of what had happened. That day would probably never come. ‘We should never have stopped texting or emailing even when we were in different cities, no matter what we thought about what the other was doing.’
Luca swung her around in a circle, her feet nearly taking out the bed and then the chair with Chi sitting on it. ‘I do solemnly swear never to stop annoying the hell out of my best buddy, Ellie, ever again.’
‘Look out.’ Chi leaped on top of the chair out of the way of Ellie’s legs. ‘Ellie makes you crazy, Luca.’
Ellie was put back on her feet and then Luca grabbed Chi and swung her in a circle. ‘You’re right, she does. I’d forgotten how to be crazy until today.’
Chi giggled and squirmed to be put down. ‘Ellie, can I be your friend, too? I want to be crazy.’
‘Absolutely. We’ll be the three crazies.’ Ellie reached for the girl and hugged her tight, trying hard not to let the lurking tears spill. What a day. What a damned amazing day. She’d found Luca, gained a new friend and was starting to feel a little bit like her old self. A teeny-weeny bit, but that was a start.
‘Okay, crazies, time Ellie got ready to go out. Chi, I’m sorry but you’re too young to go to a bar, but I’m sure we’ll find somewhere else to take you while Ellie’s here.’ Luca cleared his throat and when Ellie looked up she’d swear there was moisture at the corners of his eyes, too.
