Melting the Argentine Doctor's Heart / Small Town Marriage Miracle (18 page)

They met Carlos at the kindergarten.

‘I wasn’t sure if I was to collect Ella,’ he explained after he’d declared delight at their new finery. ‘But as we’re all here now, and you two look so glamorous, we should all go out to lunch.’

He chose a restaurant in a park where Ella could run around, and Caroline was delighted to see that his eyes kept straying to Antoinette, puzzlement and a little disbelief in his expression, but certainly drawn to look at her again and again.

Once home, with Ella sleeping, Caroline unpacked her new clothes in Jorge’s room, then walked down the
road to the small local shopping mall and splurged on beauty products—scented bubble bath, new shampoo, moisturiser, body lotion, hand cream—things that hadn’t fitted into a backpack.

Jorge spent the morning at the laboratory where he’d been offered work, but his mind wasn’t on the guided tour he was being given, his mind was on the woman he’d left back at the house—his wife.

Had she simply got out of bed a little earlier than him to check on Ella, or had sleeping beside him proved impossible so she’d moved as soon as he’d fallen asleep?

Did it matter?

He thought it did, although he couldn’t put into words quite why.

Also niggling at him were Caroline’s words—things she’d said when he’d talked about working on genetics—talk of wasting his people skills.

He’d still see people.

‘Of course,’ he said to his guide, and hoped that was the right response for he’d lost track of the explanation the man had been giving.

‘We’ll see you next week, then,’ the man said, and Jorge realised he must have agreed to start work, more or less immediately.

He drove home, telling himself it was a good thing—it would get him out of the house. He’d come home to be close to his father so he could hardly go haring off to some other place that needed a new clinic, people skills or not.

The house was deserted, although laughter from the garden suggested at least Ella was out there. He’d shed
his suit—it felt like a straitjacket but he’d have to get used to it as his position in the laboratory would entail meeting businesspeople to plead for donations—and play with his daughter.

A faint and unfamiliar perfume hung in his room, stronger near the bathroom where he found, to his surprise, a line-up of feminine beauty products.

His heart gave such a leap he had to put his hand on the doorjamb to steady himself.

Get a grip! Just because she’s moved stuff in doesn’t mean anything.

It means she must intend staying, hope argued. Not just in the house but in his bedroom.

No, it was too much—too intrusive—not what he wanted.

‘No?’ He asked the question aloud because maybe that way he could make sense of his tortured feelings.

He wanted Caroline more than life itself, wanted to love her and be loved by her, yet it was the very depth of that wanting that made him reject the current situation—this pretence of love.

He could hardly shift her things back to the guest room she’d been given when she’d arrived.

He could sleep in his spare bedroom—plead the nightmares.

Or he could—

Be a man and stand before her—what did they say—warts and all! He had more than warts, he had scars that made doctors cringe when they first saw them.

Could he bear to see her cringe?

He rested his head against the doorjamb, breathing
in the softly scented air, his body stirring just thinking of the woman he had married.

If she hadn’t cried.

Cursing his foolishness, he pushed away, stripped off and showered, scrubbing at his puckered skin until it felt raw. Then he pulled on jeans and a sweatshirt and went to play with his daughter in the garden.

In the garden where an Antoinette he’d never seen before—a regally lovely Antoinette—was cutting roses as red as the outfit she wore, placing each bloom into a shallow basket held by his father, while further off, a splash of blue he first took to be Ella turned out to be his wife, in a shirt the colour of her eyes and a skirt with rainbow colours chasing up to match the blue.

As he watched—well, stared really—she bent to lift Ella high into the air, her face uptilted as she laughed at her daughter’s delight. It was a picture of happy families, Jorge realised, something beautiful enough for an artist to paint. The red, the blue, the flowers, the smiling, laughing people—family.

‘Papá!’

Ella saw him first and her delighted cry broke the spell that held him in its thrall. Caroline set Ella on the ground and the little girl raced towards him, flinging herself the last metre, confident his arms would catch her and hold her safe. She cupped her hands around his head so she could kiss both cheeks the way she’d learned, then she kissed him on the lips, petal-soft baby lips touching his with such trust and love his heart began to hurt again.

Now his wife was walking towards him, a Caroline he didn’t know.

‘Isn’t Mummy pretty?’ Ella demanded. ‘And ‘Toinette?’

‘They are both looking extremely beautiful,’ he assured Ella, giving Antoinette a perfunctory glance before settling his gaze back on Caroline.

‘Successful visit?’ she asked as she came closer, and he smelt the scent he’d picked up in his room wafting in the air around her.

Something else seemed to waft in the air around her.

Happiness?

Why?

It wasn’t that he didn’t want her to be happy, but this new Caroline was so far beyond his comprehension he had no idea how to take her.

‘Reasonably,’ he said, deciding the least he could do was answer her question. ‘They would like me to start next week.’

‘So soon?’ she said, which made him even more puzzled.

‘You’d prefer I didn’t? Would you like to spend some time with me? Like me to show you around the city, perhaps take you out to the mountains?’

She shook her head and smiled, making his stomach knot with anxiety because—well, he didn’t know why but it was knotted. Things were wrong—just look at Antoinette. And when had Caroline ever worn anything other than navy blue? Serviceable, she’d always said …

‘I thought you might need more time to think it
through,’ she said, as he set Ella on the ground so she could answer Carlos’s call to come and see a grasshopper on the rose bush. ‘More time to consider if working with microscopes rather than people was really what you wanted.’

How dared she pounce on the one issue that bothered him about the job? Righteous anger replaced the anxiety in his intestines, but then she touched his arm and added, ‘But you must do as you think best,’ which was so unlike his usual assertive Caroline that he gave a snort of laughter.

‘Oh, yes?’ He didn’t sneer but it was close and he saw the glint of reaction in her eyes.

‘Well, you know how I feel!’ she muttered. ‘It’s not as if I haven’t told you what a waste of talent and empathy it will be for you to make such a radical shift.’

It was the opening he wanted and he reached out to touch her shirt.

‘And this? Is this not a radical shift?’

He saw anger flare but she quickly doused it, actually laughing as she admitted, ‘This is just the beginning. You’ve no idea what two women not into fripperies can do when let loose in a new and utterly beautiful boutique. Antoinette and I went mad.’

She was so beautiful, laughing there in front of him, he wanted some way to grasp the moment and hold on to it for ever.

Could they ever reach the stage where they laughed like that together? Where they were at ease with each other instead of being so tense and touchy it was uncomfortable to be close for long?

She’d moved her clothes into his room.

‘I saw some of the purchases,’ he said, speaking carefully because he had no idea what had been in her head when she’d made the decision, or what it might mean.

‘Of course you would have,’ she said easily, and it seemed as if she might say more, but Ella called to him to come and catch the grasshopper for her and the moment passed.

Dinner was an unusually joyous affair.

Because the two women were still wearing their bright clothes?

Jorge couldn’t make it out, but it seemed as if the atmosphere—usually relaxed and pleasant at dinner—had taken on an extra spark. Ella showed off her manners, excusing herself when she gave a little cough. Carlos told a joke he’d heard at work, but had seemed more pleased by Antoinette’s laughter than by the general appreciation.

Antoinette and his father?

He must have been frowning over this—well, it was hardly a revelation but certainly a development—for he felt Caroline’s foot bump against his shin, and looked at her in time to catch a quick smile and a whispered ‘Later’.

The word brought goose-bumps out on his arms, although he knew it was a foolish reaction—all she meant by later was that they’d talk.

Talking was good.

‘We might take our coffee into the garden if that’s all right with you, Antoinette?’

Caroline asked the question when they returned downstairs after saying goodnight to Ella, leaving Carlos, who was designated story-reader that evening, with the little girl.

‘I will bring it out for the two of you,’ Antoinette said. ‘Carlos will have his in the library as usual.’

And ask you to join him, Caroline hoped, but she didn’t say it, not wanting Antoinette to know she’d guessed her secret love.

‘For any particular reason?’ Jorge asked as they settled in the deep padded wooden chairs on the back patio.

‘Because it’s pleasant, and some flowering plant here perfumes the air at night and, to be honest, because it offers privacy in a neutral situation.’

‘Neutral situation?’ he queried.

‘As in not a bedroom,’ Caroline qualified, although she thought he would have guessed, and on top of that she was now feeling extremely nervous about the conversation she felt they had to have.

Would she have to start it?

He’d seen the clothes—mentioned them—so surely he’d bring the subject up again.

He didn’t, of course. Nothing was ever that easy.

‘I thought if we were to have a real marriage I should share your bedroom, that’s why I moved my clothes.’

The words blustered out and hung in the scented air, sounding pathetic as their echoes rang in Caroline’s ears.

Silence stretched.

Jorge was in touching distance. She could reach out
and take his hand, but something in the silence kept her still, as if movement of any kind might break something fragile.

‘Why did you cry?’

The question was so totally unexpected it took her a moment to work out what it meant.

Cry?

When had she cried?

Back when she’d had that cruel rejection for sure, but recently?

In front of him?

‘Last night!’ he clarified, and she felt a rush of shame that she’d forgotten how pathetically she’d reacted to him coming to bed in a nightgown.

‘Oh, Jorge,’ she whispered, and now she did reach out and take his hand, coffee forgotten. ‘How could I not cry, remembering how it had been between us? How could I not cry when what I wanted more than anything in the world—even more, perhaps, than finding a father for Ella—was to lie in bed with you again, skin to skin, and there you were in a nightshirt.’

‘You wore a nightgown!’ he retorted, his voice harsh though why she couldn’t tell.

But she smiled as she answered him.

‘And fully expected you to tear it off me—or at least remove it somehow. Such a flimsy garment would have been no challenge to the man who could strip me naked within seconds when we were both excited.’

More silence told her she’d done the wrong thing,
reminding him of what had been between them, but they couldn’t stay in the hole they’d dug for themselves, and it seemed she was the one who had to climb out first.

‘Y
OU
need to know some things,’ she said, letting go of his hand and standing up so she could move as she talked, the emotion churning inside her too strong for her to be still.

‘The first is that your email struck so deep into my heart I thought I would never recover. The things you said, the words you used—they were good, Jorge, if your intention was to kill my love for you. But without that love I was lost, while finding that love had been false—if I believed your words—was even more shattering, soul-destroying. Discovering I was pregnant meant I had to find a way back into the real world, which I did.’

She paced some more, knowing this next bit was where she gave her heart away, where she opened herself up to more pain if Jorge’s words had not been false.

‘I suppose my life was settling into some kind of a pattern when my mother died and it took another turn, especially when I came into money from my father. Then I read the article about the clinic on the internet—yes, I ran a search on your name from time to time, pathetic though that might sound. It wasn’t so much the story of the clinic that got to me, but the picture.’

He should walk away now, Jorge decided. Make an excuse. Get away from her. Already her words had brought back so much remembered pain, both physical and emotional, he was wound as tight as a tourniquet.

He didn’t
have
to listen.

Didn’t want to hear the pain in her voice, pain he had caused.

But she was speaking again—speaking of the article, the picture.

‘I read the article, saw the picture, and I knew,’ she said, coming to stand directly in front of him. ‘I knew the day they told you the extent of your injuries you’d decided I’d pity you and you sent that email.’

Now she knelt before him, not touching him but close enough to touch.

‘I was so angry with you, Jorge, so angry with your stubborn Latin pride, that you’d hurt me and deprive Ella of a father, and turn your back on people because you weren’t as whole or as beautiful as you once had been. And don’t try to deny it. Oh, some of the words you wrote might have been true—maybe you didn’t ever love me—but you turned away from me because of something as superficial as a few scars. You thought my love was so weak? Did you think it couldn’t cope with a man injured helping others to a better life? Did you think so little of me?’

He couldn’t speak, certainly couldn’t deny her accusations for he’d thought all those things—except the one about not loving her. He couldn’t let that go.