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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.
Achild?
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.
‘Did the building project help the young men get work?’ she asked.
She was worming her way into his confidence but he couldn’t let a smile divert him, any more than he could let Caroline’s apparent interest in his building project distract him from the fact that she was here to disrupt his life.
Yet politeness meant he had to answer.
‘For some of them, it led to work.’ He kept his voice carefully neutral, and looked at a spot over her shoulder as he spoke so he didn’t have to see the so-familiar curve of her cheek, the blue of her eyes, the silver of her hair, but he’d lost her attention anyway, the child coming dangerously close to the piles of books.
‘Don’t knock them over!’
Caroline’s cry diverted his attention from battles, danger, smiling eyes and building projects, but it had come too late to stop Ella spilling one of his piles of books.
‘Not reached the bookshelves-page of your how-to-build book?’ Caroline teased, kneeling to help Ella rebuild the pile.
And this time, perhaps because she was kneeling and might not see it, he did smile.
‘Furniture is a different world, far too complex for an amateur like me to tackle,’ he said, amazed he was able to have this ordinary conversation when his insides were churning and his mind battling to reject that this was happening. ‘We were gifted some furniture, not a lot, but enough.’
Caroline finished tidying the spilt pile of books and stood up, leaving Ella wandering around the stacks in much the same way as a child might play in a maze. Although every sinew in her body was tight, the tension in the room palpable, she had to keep pretending—to keep up her end of what was really a bizarre conversation, given the circumstances. She and Jorge together after four years and they were discussing building projects!
Better than arguing, she told herself, but at the same time her heart ached for the time when she and Jorge would have laughed together over this strained and formally polite behaviour.
Laughed, hugged, kissed, made love?
But it was her turn to talk, not think!
‘Is there a big unemployment problem in the area?’
She left Ella with a warning not to touch things and crossed the room to the little kitchen nook, where he waited by the single gas ring for the kettle to boil. Picking up the gourd in which he had put the chopped-up leaves—were they called yerba? She tried to remember—for the tea, she turned it in her hands, cupping it and appreciating how snugly it fitted her hand, stirring the chopped dry leaves with the metal straw.
Eventually he answered, taking his turn in this painful pretence.
‘It’s a problem among the young people—the ones who choose not to go on to higher education,’ Jorge replied, though his inner reaction to her closeness and his fascination with the movement of her hands had delayed his reply too long. ‘In the beginning, working with the boys to make the mud bricks for the walls, I found it was a more satisfying form of physical therapy than working out in a gymnasium. Gradually it became a challenge to all of us, to build something with our own hands—something we could feel pride in. Yes, the hut is rough, the door is rough, but it is our hut and our door, and I, for one, cannot open it without a sense of perhaps not pride but satisfaction that I could, with only a little help, make myself a shelter.’
‘You started by making the bricks?’
Disbelief and admiration warred in her voice but the shrill whistle of the kettle stopped the conversation. He took the gourd from her, turning it upside down a couple of times to move the finer leaves to the top, then tipping it from side to side. That done, he poured in cold water to saturate the leaves and let it sit a minute on the table. The mechanical movement of his hands as he made the mate gave him time to think—time to tell himself her admiration wasn’t personal. She would be equally admiring of any man she knew had built his own dwelling.
Any man she knew?
He glanced at her left hand, certain he’d see a wedding ring.
No jewellery at all, but, then, she’d always shunned what she called fripperies. And if she’d married, Ella would have a father figure in her life, and there’d have been no reason for her to come.
He tipped the gourd once more so the leaves settled on one side of it, and carefully added the boiling water.
And while it steeped he shrugged off her admiration, making light of what had been a mammoth task.
‘It’s how people used to do it, and I cannot spend all my spare hours reading.’
‘Spare hours,’ Caroline replied. ‘I remember them, though the memory is hazy.’ She looked towards her daughter, then added, ‘Not that I’d swap Ella for even one spare hour.’
The remarks bothered Jorge, for all he was trying to do was keep the conversation determinedly neutral—coolly polite, nothing more. She’d sounded wistful, as if genuine regret lurked somewhere behind the words.
‘You have so little time?’ he asked, dropping a silver straw into the mate then pausing for an unseen guest to try it before handing the gourd to Caroline.
She lifted the gourd, and sipped through the straw, grimacing slightly at the taste, or perhaps the heat of the drink.
‘I pass it back to you, is that right?’ she said, and, knowing she’d remembered something as simple as the mate ceremony of sharing made his heart go bump again, but though the barriers he’d erected around his heart were as rough as the walls of his hut, he knew he had to keep them intact, heart-bumps or no heart-bumps!
His mind tracked back to the previous conversation—the question Caroline hadn’t answered.
‘You have so little time?’ he asked again.
