by Annie O'Neil
He took a step back, hands raised as if admitting to an error of judgment. “You’ve done nothing, dulce. It’s me. As I said, I’m just not used to being judged.”
He turned to go. Harriet was shaking her head. No. This wasn’t right. He was speaking in riddles or covering up something deeper. Something that meant more. She couldn’t just let this go.
“Is that what you think I’m doing?” she called after him. “That I’ve flown in from my fancy hospital in London to sanctimoniously judge you?”
“No, Harriet—you’re getting the wrong idea.”
“Then how about explaining to me the right idea? Because from where I’m standing it seems you’re the one doing the bulk of the judging here.”
Unexpectedly, a broad smile replaced the tight-lipped frown dominating Matteo’s face. “Miss Monticello has called the spade a spade!” The light returned to his eyes—the spark of a challenge or the warm glow of acquiescence? It was difficult to tell and she wasn’t entirely sure if she should trust it. He beckoned for her to follow him. “Come. Come with me.”
Harriet had to force herself to pick up her feet and follow him. She didn’t much feel like jumping back on the Dr. Torres Yo-Yo ride.
He’d already made it perfectly clear where she stood with him personally. Absolutely nowhere. And if he was just going to give her the runaround professionally, there wasn’t much point in standing around calling spades much of anything.
Matteo was obviously King of the Mountain here. As he would and should be. Casita Verde was his dream child. He did the work, he secured the funding and he was more hands on than most administrators would ever dream of.
But she was hardly the first person to cross into the courtyard who wanted to know how it worked. Particularly when she was here to roll up her sleeves and help. She knew for a fact he’d had donors, visitors, people “inspecting” before. Surely there was a ream of government departments that had to come in with their clipboards, pens poised to pass judgment, ensure he was doing things to a certain standard. Had he never had anyone come along just to good old-fashioned help?
What had made him so touchy about a tiny little giggle? A self-deprecating one at that. Not that he had bothered to ask. She marched along behind him, staring at his back. An annoyingly nice back, his shoulders filling out a dark blue linen shirt as if it had been made for him. Her eyes shifted lower...then a little lower. She humphed under her breath.
He was lucky that staring at his backside was such a pleasant affair, otherwise she had a good mind to hightail it back to the airport. Maybe her sister would need her in Los Angeles...
* * *
Matteo kept checking behind him to ensure Harriet was following. Not that he would have blamed her if she’d turned on her heel and left. She was absolutely right. He was the one being difficult. Negative.
He’d had scores of people come to Casita Verde who’d wished to donate but had wanted to “see before they bought”. It was completely natural. Fair, even. And normally he never gave a monkey’s. If they gave, they gave. If they didn’t, he’d carry on. His way. What was so different about Harriet’s visit?
Well, that one was easy.
Harriet.
She was what was different.
He cared what she thought and it scared him. He had been moved when handing over the tiny infant and watching her hold it in her arms, the glow of happiness shifting from her to the child as fluidly as if it had been her own.
And seeing that pure, organic, joy...joy he would never know...brought back the endless stream of questions he tortured himself with about his sister. What if there had been somewhere she could go? What if she’d seen a doctor just once and had been warned of the dangers? It physically hurt each time he laid himself bare to the thoughts and now Harriet was seeing the side of himself he worked so hard to keep private. The side he had hoped to keep away from the people he cared about.
Maintaining a blinkered, passionate commitment to what he believed when no one else’s opinion mattered was one thing, but now? He wanted Harriet to admire what he’d done. He wanted her to admire him. And when she’d laughed? He’d taken it the wrong way. He knew he had and he could thunk himself on the head for being so hypersensitive.
Carlita’s story, ultimately, would very likely be a successful one. But it was one of thousands and, despite his desire to protect her, Harriet needed to see that many of the children born here, not to mention their young mothers, were not so lucky.
They reached the very back of the compound—not a word passing between them—and he stood for a moment in front of the door, wondering if he was being entirely fair. The turmoil he was feeling was of his own making, but any decisions Harriet made would also stem from what he did now. If she wanted to see what made him so intense, too earnest perhaps, she needed to see this.
He pushed opened the big wooden doors and watched as Harriet’s eyes all but turned into saucers. One of the many villas miserias of Buenos Aires had crept and crawled, expanding with a speed that almost frightened him, up to the very doorstep of the historic monastery that was now Casita Verde. These were just some of Argentina’s impoverished, scraping a living from the nation’s capital in any way they could. They lived in huts, lean-tos, under the open sky—anywhere they were able to, doing anything they could to survive.
There was never a chance he’d be able to help a fraction of them, let alone fully open the doors to one and all. Which was why he stayed so focused on teenaged mothers. And why he had to maintain that cool, distanced focus. Letting Harriet into his heart wouldn’t help.
He watched her take it in. The children wearing scraps of T-shirts, torn skirts, too-short trousers. The mothers kneading the day’s empanada dough in front of fires made of bits of wood scavenged from who knew where. The sprawl—the expanse of it—was breathtaking, even to him, and he saw it every day.
“We solved one problem today,” he said, “but out here lie countless more.”
“Well, then.” Harriet fixed him with her clear blue eyes, her gaze unwavering. “I guess we’d better get to work.”
CHAPTER SIX
HARRIET JUST MANAGED to dodge out of the way to avoid a high-speed game of tag weaving in and out of the courtyard’s covered walkway. School was finished for the day and the casita’s dozen or so school-aged children were burning off some excess energy. She laughed with sheer delight. Matteo might be all frowny and furrowed brow around them—all of them!—but the atmosphere he fostered was definitely child friendly. She had to give him that. She swerved again, her arm getting a silky whiplash from a pair of plaits streaming behind a beautiful eight-year-old girl.
“Mind the—”
“Ow!”
Too late. Camila, in looking behind her, had done a first-class crash into one of the walkway’s columns. Harriet was by her side in an instant. Stone columns weren’t very forgiving.
“Let’s have a look, love.” Harriet swept away a thick swatch of black fringe from the little girl’s face, only just stopping herself from wincing. One fat lip, a bloody nose and a good old-fashioned shiner coming up. “I think you and I are going to have something in common!” Harriet put on a smile.
“What?” sniffled Camila.
Harriet pointed at her own fading black eye. “You’re going to get one of these!”
Camila stopped crying long enough to give Harriet a shy grin and sweep a hand across her mouth, only to discover it was covered in blood from her streaming nose. Her eyes widened in horror and the tears began anew.
“It’s all right, Camila. No—no don’t tip your head back. It makes you swallow the blood.” Harriet made her best icky face and took one of the little girl’s hands. “Can you pinch your nose or would you like me to?”
“I can do it,” Camila whimpered.
“Good girl.”
“Why don’t you vagabonds go and see if Juanita needs some help peeling vegetables?” Matteo’s voice came loud and clear from the clinic doorway. The children responded instantly. When Matteo spoke, everyone listened. Too bad he didn’t seem keen on speaking with her. Harriet’s lips pressed together as she steered Camila towards the clinic.
Matteo had been doing a most excellent job of keeping Harriet as far away as possible from him and the clinic for the past week. She’d unexpectedly been fighting some serious jet-lag and a bit of a tummy bug so didn’t mind too much. Fighting fatigue was one thing, but wrestling with her insecurities was growing more challenging...in the kitchen, the laundry, the children’s rooms, the public rooms. Anywhere but in the clinic with Matteo. “All to get you better acquainted with how things work,” he’d said. She’d kept her expression neutral with each assignment before accepting it with a smile. He’d run out of ways to keep her out of the clinic soon enough, she’d reasoned. And it looked like patience was rewarding her today.
“Mind the step.” Harriet led Camila up the wide stone slabs leading up and into the clinic.
“One bloody nose and a possible black eye coming up!”
Harriet realized she wasn’t just speaking to Matteo but a young woman as well. Almost painfully thin, she was visibly pregnant—perhaps a few months—and sitting in the room’s only chair with her arm by the blood-pressure cuff. Must’ve been a check-up.
“Oops.” She turned back to Camila, whose blood was now pooling on the floor. “You’ve got to keep hold of that nose for a good ten minutes, love. Can—?”
“Shall I...?” Matteo’s patient moved to get up, gasping with pain as her legs and hips took her standing weight. She pressed her hands to the arms of the chair for support.
“No, you don’t,” Matteo interjected, putting a hand on her shoulder. “You stay put.” He turned and pulled a length of blue toweling off a rack and grabbed some antiseptic spray, making quick work of the pool of blood as Harriet went down on her knees to take over the nose-pinching job with a handful of tissues to catch any overflow.
“I want to lie down.” Camila was crying again.
“No, love. You can’t lie down yet. Not until we stop the bleeding and check everything’s all right.” Harriet gave the girl’s cheek a soft brush with the backs of her fingers as she scanned the small room. The only other place to go was the delivery room and keeping that sterile was essential. The casita’s need for a bigger clinic and more exam rooms, was pretty obvious right now. Something she would’ve understood straight away if Matteo had deigned her worthy to help him out over the past week!
“We’ll go next door.” Matteo made the decision for her. Surprise, surprise. “You all right to handle this?”
“I think I can just about handle a bloody nose,” Harriet couldn’t help retorting. She’d been doing a ridiculous amount of tongue biting over the past week, but Matteo was crossing a line now. He had no right to question her nursing skills. She’d worked too hard to let someone—let him—patronize her just because she wasn’t on her home turf and he had issues about being judged. She was here to help, for heaven’s sake, and he was ruddy well going to get the message if it killed her!
“Fine.” Matteo’s voice said the opposite—but she had a patient to see to, and so did he. No time for egos. Even someone as bull-headed as he was turning out to be should recognize that.
Harriet held Camila to the side as Matteo removed the blood-pressure cuff from the young woman’s arm. Signs of pain shot across her eyes again as she pressed her hands to the chair to rise. Interesting. Unusual. When the woman—girl?—began to walk, Harriet thought it was more of a pronounced waddle than would normally be expected for someone who didn’t look to be much past the five-month mark. Her mind whirred and reeled through a catalogue of symptoms and possible afflictions. Could it be osteomalacia? Harriet had never seen an actual case of the brittle-bone disease in a pregnant woman before. It was rare—but it happened. And if... Her eyes scanned from the woman’s ashen face to her clenched hands and... No. She was probably just leaping to conclusions, too keen to prove to Matteo she was more useful in the clinic than out.
“Let’s get you up on the exam table, shall we?” Harriet rose, finding herself playing out an awkward shifting of one person past the other as they tried to move to their new locations. The limited space found her brushing against first the young woman and then Matteo. The woman stopped for a moment to catch her breath just as Matteo was passing Harriet. Their eyes caught and for the first time since she had arrived Harriet felt that instant click of connection that made everything else fade away. Matteo appealed to her on so many levels and it shook her to realize emotion could have such depth. Such a physical impact. Did he feel the same? She searched his green eyes for answers, not even sure herself what the questions were. Her breath caught in her throat as an urge to touch him threatened to engulf her well-honed common sense.
“’Arriet!” Camila whimpered.
Harriet shook her head and returned her focus to her young charge. One thing she knew for sure. Matteo wouldn’t rate anyone who put feelings over their work. Such an arm’s-length approach for a man who was so devoted to his cause. She couldn’t imagine doing her job without pouring her entire heart into it. How he stayed so reserved was beyond her. She turned just as the door to the delivery room clicked shut. He, it appeared, found it as easy as pie. She pictured throwing a huge cream pie right into his gorgeous, all-knowing face and smiled.
“Now, then, Camila. Let’s take a look at your sweet little button nose!”
* * *
“Your blood pressure and other stats seem fine, but I’m concerned about the amount of pain you are feeling. It’s mostly in your hips, you say?”
“Sí. But today I have started feeling tingles in my hands and feet. It’s why I came along.”
Matteo abstained from launching into his usual speech about how she should’ve come along the instant she’d learned she was pregnant. He would’ve been able to supply her with essential vitamin and mineral supplements, information about the pregnancy, started the wheels rolling on the adoption process if that’s what she was hoping for. He wished the girls knew the door was open to them at any time. An imagine of Harriet standing in the doorway of the casita, a soft smile playing along her lips as she opened her arms wide in welcome eclipsed his thoughts. Her golden hair, lit by the sun. Those blue eyes of hers— Mierda! He shook the picture away.
Focus, man!
Having Harriet here was creating fault lines in a decade’s worth of intense single-mindedness. Without it he wasn’t sure he would be able to... Enough! He took the girl’s hand in his, kneading, prodding, trying to see if there was anything obvious causing the tingles. Shingles, diabetes, a mini-stroke, all things that could dramatically affect both her health and her unborn child’s. He mouthed a silent curse as he continued the examination. If she’d come earlier this could’ve been prevented but Theresa was here now. It would have to do.
A soft knock on the door caught his attention. Locks of Harriet’s honey-blonde hair were just visible in the small opening.
“Sí? What is it?”
“Sorry...um...sorry, Dr. Torres. May I have a quick word?”
“Can’t it wait?” His tone was sharp, one he didn’t like to hear coming from himself. Especially in front of a patient.
“No.”
There wasn’t even a glimmer of a waver in her tone. He pushed his irritation into his emotional garbage chute and forced himself to regroup. Harriet was a nurse who more than understood medical protocol. She wouldn’t have interrupted unless she’d felt it was necessary. He excused himself to Theresa and walked into the other room where Camila was now lying, head elevated, on the exam table, holding an ice packet to her bruised eye and cuddling a small blanket Harriet had twisted into the shape of a poodle. How did she know how to do that
sort of thing?
“Sorry to interrupt.” Harriet kept her voice low. “You’ve probably already got your diagnosis for your patient, but I couldn’t help but wondering if she wasn’t showing signs of osteomalacia.” Her eyes met his, nervous expectation playing across them as she waited for his response. He began to dismiss her suggestion but stopped himself. Tingling hands. A distinct waddle when she walked, often indicative of tiny cracks in her hip bones. Pale skin, making it very likely that the healthy percentage of Vitamin D a person should absorb through the skin wasn’t present.
He gave her a curt nod. He should have connected the dots himself. “Good call. I’ll make her an appointment at the hospital. We don’t have the facilities to do all the mineral tests and X-rays she’ll need.”
“I’ll go along with her, if you like.”
Matteo pulled himself up to his full height. The alpha male in him bridled. He was capable of looking after his patients—as he had done for many years—without her help, thank you very much! The pragmatist in him countered that someone needed to be at the clinic. He still wasn’t ready to figuratively or literally hand over control to anyone else. This was his baby. His effort to make peace with the past. No one but him could understand how the clinic needed to run to right the wrongs.
“That would be very helpful.” He gave a grimace and a nod of assent, then tacked on, “Thank you,” to take off the edge.
Just a few more weeks. For the love of all things beautiful! He’d made love to this woman not a handful of weeks ago! A moment of weakness when he’d let someone see a glimpse of the man he used to be. He glanced at Harriet again before returning to the delivery room. Confusion played across her features. He needed to stop being such a jerk. None of this was her fault. All his idiotic behavior was rooted deep within him, surfacing too often over the past week. Just a few more weeks. And then she’d be gone. Back in England where— Dios... He pressed his forehead briefly on the door before turning to face Theresa. He might like not having Harriet here, but he already knew that having her leave was going to be worse.