The woman had a system for everything. And her bossiness was oddly compelling. He couldn’t hardly help himself. What if he crossed the divide between them, his hands sliding around her waist, turning her to him?
‘What about Raoul and Fabio?’ he bit out.
‘Don’t worry about them,’ Flávia answered merrily, her back still to him. ‘They’re over there making their own shelters from scratch. When you’re done here, get them to show you how they strip vines to make ropes, and saplings like little joists.’
He looked around. Far away, but not far enough.
‘They’re building a damned house,’ he exclaimed.
‘More of a tree house, but I agree it’s pretty impressive. Now, I chose this because it’s a good spot. You have two fairly straight trees a decent distance apart over there, and two more just here. You’re taller than me, so you take that pair over there.’
Dutifully, Jake ignored the protestations of his taut body and moved out to the farther set of trees, taking the bound-up tarp with him. He watched her smoothly unravel the cord from her own and began to copy. It didn’t unravel quite so smoothly. Which might have been his lack of technique, or it might have been the fact that his mind was still elsewhere.
‘Sorry.’ She didn’t make much of an effort to conceal her amusement. ‘I tried to make it idiot-proof, but I guess I should have made it urbanoid-proof, too.’
‘I’m glad I entertain you,’ he remarked wryly.
‘Okay, so loop it around one tree, as high up as you can reach, and tie it off using those knots we were practising with Brady the other night.’ She deftly tied one of hers down to demonstrate, then stretched the line out and tied the other end off on the other tree.
Now, watching Flávia tie off another knot on another tree, Jake copied, possibly a little bit clumsily, yet bizarrely he wasn’t hating the experience half as much as he’d feared he would. Especially when she crossed over to him to check his handiwork; the coconut scent of her hair, piled up on her head for practicality, pervaded his nostrils. His body went into overdrive yet again.
Good God, what the heck is it about this woman?
‘Not bad.’ She nodded. ‘Not bad at all. Now, you need to open out the basher—the roof—and tie it off on some other trees. I have extra cord if you’re missing a tree on one side and need me to make an extension.’
He looked around, trying to get a feel for it in his head, then set to work. Oddly, he was beginning to enjoy it. Whether it was because he could imagine teaching these skills to Brady or, more selfishly, because he enjoyed shaking Flávia’s image of him as a city slicker, he didn’t care to evaluate too deeply.
‘Done,’ he declared, looking up proudly. Where he had a roof—albeit a good one—she had a whole system in place, including a mosquito net, and what looked to be a hanging line for all her gear. ‘My God, have you finished already?’
‘I’ve been doing this a long time.’ She laughed. ‘Come on, we’ll work together. You take one end of the mosquito net and I’ll take the other. They can go below the tie-offs for the roof, but when you tie the tape ends of the hammock around the trees, they’ll need to go above the cord for your net and your roof. Got it?’
‘Got it,’ he agreed.
It was incredible watching Flávia work. Like poetry. And he, who was accustomed to all manner of dexterous operations, might as well have been putting up his sleeping system with his thumbs and his toes.
But then, suddenly, it was done. A roof, a mosquito net and a hammock, all complete.
‘Okay, here’s some extra cord. You can tie that off up near the apex of your tarp, but inside the mosquito net, then you can hang your gear off that during the night and nothing will get in there. And whilst you do that, I’m going to try and find some dry firewood so that we can light a fire.’
‘Using what? Two sticks?’ he teased.
Flávia arched her eyebrows at him.
‘I can, if I really need to. But I’m usually more organised than that, urbanoid. I carry a lighter and a few strips of rubber. That gets a fire started pretty nicely, even if the firewood is wet, as it so often is in the forest.’
‘Then what?’
‘Then you cook me dinner,’ she told him happily, grabbing her machete and heading into the jungle.
He lifted his head.
‘What are we supposed to eat?’
‘Rat,’ she called over her shoulder. ‘I’ll hunt them, you’ll cook.’
And he was left staring at her in disbelief as she plunged into the undergrowth, her sexy posterior practically wiggling at him as she moved.
* * *
In the end, she had lit a fire, taken a small pan from out of her rucksack and a couple of sealed ration packs, and they’d eaten a pre-prepared meal. But it had occurred to Jake that this prank-style Flávia was a different Flávia again from either the one with her family, or the one at the hospital.
And it had sent a bizarre sense of possessiveness through him that he seemed to be the only person—at least outside of her family—to see this side of her. Another layer to his fierce, strong selvagem.
The real Flávia Maura.
And when she looked at him, and laughed as though he was the only man in the world, he’d had to contend with a great fire roaring through his veins, proclaiming things it had no right to as he looked at her.
Mine. Only mine.
And telling himself it was sheer insanity did nothing to dampen the flames. They’d only been fanned the more she’d opened up her world to him. As though letting him in to another universe inside of her that no one else ever got to experience.
It felt inevitable that something more would happen—needed to happen—between them. He felt the inexorable draw and, rather than fight it, he found himself welcoming it.
Flávia was like no one else he’d ever known. Even here, and now, he knew he’d never meet anyone like her ever again.
They’d even been onto Fabio and Raoul’s tree house with Raoul’s high-tech camera and seen some of the jungle’s nocturnal creatures, including a crab-eating fox, a prehensile-tailed porcupine and a fight between a wandering spider and a raid of army ants.
‘Brady would go mad for this,’ Jake had said in awe.
And so Flávia had given such vivid detail to each and every one of them, things that he could pass on to his sponge-like nephew, that he’d found himself lost in her passion. More and more, he could see what she saw in Brady that he had missed all these months.
It didn’t make him feel good.
Now, lying in his hammock, in the relative dark with nothing but the sounds of the jungle around them, and the crackling of the fire, it felt almost intimate. Raoul and Fabio were close enough for safety but not so close that they could hear any conversation he and Flávia might have.
And right now, he was glad of it, because he was still grappling with the questions running around his head.
‘A penny for your thoughts,’ she said softly. ‘I think that’s the phrase?’
He shouldn’t answer, and yet Jake found himself opening his mouth. As if he was the kind of man who found it that easy to talk.
Except, with Flávia, he was turning into that man. And he couldn’t help but think that it wasn’t a bad thing.
‘I think I’m beginning to understand Brady’s obsess...fascination,’ he corrected, ‘for this stuff. Just like you.’
‘Just like me,’ she concurred quietly.
‘I wouldn’t have seen it, if you hadn’t come along.’
He knew he would never have made the admission back in so-called real life. But here, now, he could say it to the stunning, starry night sky—a sky like none he’d ever seen before. The lack of light pollution, just as Flávia had said.
And he could say it to Flávia.
‘I think you would have.’ He could hear the so
ft smile even in her voice. ‘It just might have taken you a bit longer, and you wouldn’t have known what you were looking for.’
‘I want to believe it. But I’m afraid, in this, that view affords me too much credit.’
‘Then look at it this way. You’ll never have to find out because, fortunately, you do know. Even better, you’re acting on it.’
‘I still don’t know whether to bring him out here.’
‘He’d love it,’ Flávia laughed softly.
‘Oh, he would. No question. But I still don’t know if it’s responsible to bring a seven-year-old into the Atlantic Forest.’
The air went silent, though not still, as Flávia appeared to ponder his question.
‘Many kids, maybe not,’ she offered eventually. ‘Although, they do run mini expeditions from the city and there are kids under ten. But Brady is different. He would really soak it all in.’
‘I know, but—’
‘You’re not his father, but you’re wholly responsible for him,’ she supplied. ‘Which makes the decision that much harder.’
He blew out a deep breath and time passed, but he didn’t know how long.
Maybe a lifetime.
He’d never voiced these fears to anyone before. He didn’t even know he was going to voice them to Flávia, until he heard them coming out of his mouth.
‘I don’t know about any of that. I just know that I made a promise to Helen that I would take care of Brady, and I would never break that promise. But... I can’t reach Brady. I can’t connect with him. He doesn’t seem to notice whether I’m there or not and I don’t know that I’m the right person to bring out the best in another human being.’
He didn’t mention the fact that love wasn’t even an emotion he was sure he possessed. At least, not in that all-consuming way that parents had for their kids. Or even couples had for each other. Because the fact was that the more time he and Brady spent with Flávia and her family, the more he began to wonder if maybe he could learn to love after all.
The way Helen had believed he would. And the way Flávia had told him he could.
‘I know he was close with his mother. He was Helen’s little prince. But I can’t seem to build a relationship with him and I feel he is withdrawing every month that goes by. Then I try to make amends by letting him get away with behaviour that I know school would pull him up over. I don’t want to be so poor of a guardian to my nephew that I actually end up somehow damaging him.’
He didn’t know what he expected Flávia to say; he certainly wasn’t expecting her to say something which would make him feel instantly better. So why was he so compelled to talk to her?
Either way, she was silent for so long that Jake began to regret voicing the plaguing doubts.
‘It’s an impossible balance,’ she conceded. ‘Maria makes it look so easy, but it isn’t. Kids do need boundaries, though. They have to know their limits. But have you talked to Brady about his mother since that day in the visitor centre?’
‘I tried...’ Jake thought back. ‘I asked him if he missed her, but he didn’t respond.’
Certainly not the way he had with Flávia when he’d broken down in her arms. And he hadn’t pushed. Who would want to make a child cry, anyway?
She tilted her head. ‘Maybe there’s another way to approach it.’
‘Go on,’ he encouraged when she fell quiet. The crackling of the fire was almost a comforting sound in the noises of the jungle.
‘Maybe instead of asking him about his feelings, you should tell him about yours, first.’
‘Talk to him about my...feelings?’ Jake blew out sharply.
‘It isn’t a dirty word,’ she chided gently.
‘I know that. I just... What would I even say?’
‘I don’t know—tell him some of the good things you remember about his mother.’
‘I didn’t even know Helen these last ten years. What would I tell Brady?’
‘Then tell him about your memories of her as a kid. She told Brady you were once a good big brother to her—can’t you talk about that?’
‘I don’t even know how I was a good brother.’ Jake shook his head in the darkness, and he wondered if she could hear the same ring of anger to it that he could. ‘I guess I was just...there...someone to talk to about what was going on in our lives. Not that we did all that much, but God knows our parents never talked to us about anything other than homework, or school, or something equally educational.’
‘You once said they did their duty by you?’
And Jake didn’t expect himself to answer; this was far too personal for his liking. Yet he heard himself speak, all the same.
‘They were academic surgeons. High-achieving, focused, but detached. If they weren’t learning on a practical level, they were writing medical papers, securing research funding, travelling the world for conferences. They sent Helen and me to good schools, dressed us in new clothes and kept a clean, albeit old-fashioned home. They believed there was nothing my sister and I couldn’t learn from books.’
She didn’t answer, but he knew she was listening. Absorbing it all.
‘They provided for us well, but they were detached. Cold. You could go to them for practical, medicinal care if you were ill, but forget a show of affection, or a word of love. That wasn’t who they were.’
‘I can’t imagine that,’ Flávia said quietly, and he could well believe it having met her sister and her father, who had given him an exuberant bear hug the first time he’d met him at that family barbecue.
‘You’ve seen how I am.’ Jake shrugged. ‘I never really thought anything was lacking. Until Brady came along.’
‘I think you did,’ Flávia countered after a moment. ‘You just didn’t have any reason to tackle it. But his mother wasn’t like that, clearly.’
‘No,’ he agreed. ‘Somehow, Helen managed to change things for herself. For Brady. I don’t know how.’
‘Why did you fall out?’
‘We didn’t.’ He shrugged, scarcely able to believe he was still talking. Still confiding about things he had barely even let himself think about in the past. ‘We just...drifted apart when we went to uni.’
‘To study medicine,’ Flávia finished, more as if she was thinking out loud than actually talking to him.
‘What is it you want to know?’ he asked astutely.
‘I suppose—’ her answer was slow, thoughtful ‘—that a part of me wonders why you followed them into medicine. Given how they were.’
As though she knew him better than anyone else ever had.
‘Not just medicine. Surgery. They didn’t want doctors for kids... They insisted we both became surgeons.’
‘Insisted?’ He could actually hear the smile in her voice, could imagine it hovering on her lips, as if she didn’t fully believe him.
He didn’t blame her.
‘There was no option. They made it clear from as early an age as I can remember that they would never accept anything else from either of us but becoming surgeons.’
‘Oh.’
‘Actually, I didn’t want to,’ he shocked himself by saying. ‘I spent most of my childhood and teenage years dreaming of becoming an engineer.’
It was a confession he’d never told a living soul.
The moment seemed to hang between them.
‘It should surprise me more,’ she murmured after a while. ‘You’re such a skilled, driven, compassionate surgeon, it’s no wonder you were sought out to run clinical trials. But the truth is that it doesn’t surprise me that much at all.’
‘I don’t know if that’s a compliment.’
‘It is,’ she laughed softly. ‘So you and your sister are...were...both surgeons.’
‘I am. Well, you know that, of course. But although Helen studied medicine at uni, it was partway through her third year th
at she fell pregnant with Brady.’
‘I can’t imagine that went down well, from everything you’ve said.’
‘It didn’t,’ he acknowledged. ‘They didn’t shout, or yell—that wasn’t their style. But they told her that she was too young, that a baby would ruin her career at this stage and that the logical solution was to terminate.’
He could remember it now. The cool, firm statement made as they’d all sat around the table in a restaurant for a typically uptight family meal. There had been no scene in any real sense of the word.
‘What happened?’ Flávia asked tentatively, drawing him back to the present.
‘Helen wiped her mouth with her napkin, set it to one side and quietly told them that she would be keeping her baby. Then she got up and discreetly walked out of the restaurant.’
Not that her parents had ever made any attempt to stop her.
‘And that was it?’
‘That was it. They went back to their lives, I went back to uni and Helen did her own thing. We didn’t see her again for about six years. So, you see, I wasn’t much of a brother to her at all.’
‘What about the father? If you don’t mind me asking.’
And the fact was that he didn’t. He had no idea why he was still talking—maybe it was the intimacy the rainforest created—but it was somehow cathartic.
‘Helen never told us who he was. The first and only time I met Brady he was five, and I did ask her about the father. But she simply said that she’d told him she was pregnant and given him the choice of how involved he wanted to be. Apparently, she’d never heard from him again, but her son was her world.’
‘I can tell that. She was a good mum.’
‘She was,’ Jake agreed. ‘I’ve no idea how, given the example we had set for us. I just know that whatever she had, I don’t have it in me. But I’m trying, thanks to you, and I should be grateful for that much.’
He’d possibly intended the conversation to end there, but he heard the light creaking of the tree and could imagine she was flipping onto her side on her hammock. When she spoke, her sweet, gentle voice seemed that little bit closer.
Falling For The Single Dad Surgeon (A Summer In São Paulo Book 2) Page 11