Melting the Argentine Doctor's Heart / Small Town Marriage Miracle Read Online Free Page B

really remember her very much because she went to be a star in heaven when I was only two.’
    The child’s innocent remark made Jorge glance up at Caroline and saw pain whiten her cheeks, the wound of her mother’s death still raw, but the child—Ella—was talking again and he turned back to her, fascinated by the resemblance to his younger self, captivated by a small person who was now telling him about the big plane that had flown up in the sky.
    ‘Not high enough to see my two grandmas who are stars,’ she explained seriously, ‘but too high to see down to the ground except when we went over some mountains before the plane came down again. Mummy says you used to go walking in those mountains and maybe when I’m a bit bigger I could go too.’
    Not all the words were crystal clear but her story still came through, each syllable tightening a band around his chest, the innocent chatter of the child all but suffocating him.
    ‘Mummy talked about me?’ he asked, though he knew it was wrong to question a child this way.
    ‘She told me lots of stories about her friend Hor-hay who worked with her in—’
    She broke off to look up at Caroline.
    ‘Where was it, Mummy?’
    ‘Africa,’ Caroline supplied, and the restraint in her voice suggested she’d have preferred to put her hand over her daughter’s mouth to stop the revelations rather than helping out with the conversation.
    ‘Afica!’ Ella declared triumphantly, then she pointed at the gourd, still in Jorge’s hand. ‘Can I have some of that?’ He passed the gourd to her, letting her hold it butkeeping his hand on it as well. He was vaguely aware of Caroline’s anxious ‘Is it cool enough now?’ but mostly he was swamped by unnameable—even unfathomable—emotions as, for the first time, he shared
mate
with his daughter.
    ‘Yuk!’
    So she didn’t take to it, but that mattered little. She would, in time, grow accustomed to the taste.
    In time?
    Was he seriously considering getting involved in this child’s life?
    How could he, living as he did, virtually a hermit?
    But even as the objection surfaced he remembered that his bare existence in this place where he felt most at peace was coming to an end—and soon. Nine days from now the local government was taking over the clinic, and he was returning to Buenos Aires to be with
his
father, to live with the man who had first taught him the strength of love.
    Ella was telling him an involved tale about a doll Caroline had made her leave at home, but the words barely penetrated, his brain swamped by the revelation that peace might be achievable in other places if the right elements were in place—elements like a wife and a child…
    Not without love, common sense reminded him. In his search for peace after the accident he’d tried relationships without love, and peace was the last thing they had brought him.
    Impossible, too, that Caroline could love him. Not after the way he’d treated her. Uncertain of his future,thinking he might be an invalid for life and not wanting to tie the woman he loved to him, he’d deliberately worded that email to kill whatever love she’d felt for him, driving a spear of harsh, hurtful words into her heart.
    Caroline’s heart ached as she watched father and daughter together. With her usual sunny disposition, once Ella had felt comfortable in the hut she was chatting away to Jorge as if she’d known him for ever. If only she had! If only Jorge had been there to share the early joys and triumphs, though he’d have been there for the bad times too, in that case, the endless sleepless nights, the time they’d battled croup, her mother’s death.
    Don’t think about that now—think positive, think forward. There are obviously two bedrooms in this hut, so I
will
work with him. One month isn’t long but surely it will give me time to learn if what he said was true, or if it was his stupid pride that split us up.
    ‘Caroline?’
    His voice suggested he’d spoken while