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