Melting the Argentine Doctor's Heart

Melting the Argentine Doctor's Heart
Meredith Webber

Melting the Argentine Doctor’s Heart

Meredith Webber

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

Table of Contents

Cover (#u771728dd-3bd6-5137-9202-fc832e2cf7c6)

Title Page (#ude910153-b0ef-5f3d-a545-84a193a009d3)

Excerpt (#u3751afe9-7f53-5382-a7e3-6c3dd7f635b1)

About the Author (#u370095b6-9f21-5c31-8579-099444eac910)

Dedication (#ua72c2907-ac6d-5201-9fd7-70d58d2c8440)

Chapter One (#u1d30ba68-832b-5d42-a49a-147e57a0a2c3)

Chapter Two (#u0f2e04f8-5c67-5b31-b03b-ff758887f692)

Chapter Three (#u8fb7f04d-cf88-5d82-afcd-d5fffa9fc9d6)

Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)

Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

‘It’s impossible that you 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?’ Caroline spat the words at Jorge, her fury a palpable force. ‘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. Jorge found his heart was hurting again. Was the wall he’d built around his feelings crumbling so easily?

‘Come inside,’ he said at last.

About the Author

MEREDITH WEBBER says of herself, ‘Some ten years ago, I read an article which suggested that Mills and Boon were looking for new Medical™ Romance authors. I had one of those “I can do that” moments, and gave it a try. What began as a challenge has become an obsession—though I do temper the “butt on seat” career of writing with dirty but healthy outdoor pursuits, fossicking through the Australian Outback in search of gold or opals. Having had some success in all of these endeavours, I now consider I’ve found the perfect lifestyle.’

To my Argentinian relatives, the wonderful Daniela and Damian, with thanks

CHAPTER ONE

THE anger that had sprung to fierce life when Caroline had read the article about the clinic in Argentina continued to burn within her as her plane crossed the Pacific Ocean. It simmered nicely as she struggled with a three-year-old through Customs in Buenos Aires and onto the local plane for the short flight north to Rosario, where one Dr Jorge Suárez had set up a special clinic for people of the indigenous Toba tribe who had settled in the city at the end of the twentieth century.

One Jorge Suárez!

Unfortunately, as the taxi took Ella along endless tree-lined boulevards and past wide parks, which she knew from the guide book she’d read on the flight were called plazas, the anger began to fade. Doubts rushed in to fill the space where it had been. The fact that Ella was asleep beside her meant Caroline had nothing but her thoughts to keep her company.

And the thoughts were not good!

What if Jorge had actually meant what he’d said in that devastating, humiliating, soul-eroding email sent from France four years ago? What if she was wrong in assuming he’d sent it because his beautiful face, and probably his whole body, had been scarred and, proud man that he was, he’d feared her pity? What if he hadn’t ever loved her, and she’d been nothing but a convenience, someone to be lied to so he could get her into bed?

She hadn’t believed his words when the email had arrived; couldn’t believe that the overwhelming, all-conquering love she’d thought they’d shared had been nothing more than a farce; their talks of marriage a sham. Frustration had been her strongest emotion at the time, frustration because she couldn’t fly to his side and demand to know if his words were true. But news of her mother’s breast cancer had come through only a week before his accident and she’d been on the long flight back to Australia when it had happened.

By the time she’d gathered her wits and had organised for her mother to begin treatment, he’d changed his email address, and letters sent to him at the hospital to which he’d been airlifted after the accident had been returned unopened. That was when she’d been forced to wonder if she’d been deceived by a master of the love game.

Two months later, while supporting her mother through debilitating radiation therapy, Caroline had realised she was pregnant. She’d searched the internet until she’d found his father’s address in a suburb called Recoleta in Buenos Aires, and sent a letter to Jorge care of that address. After all, a man deserved to know he was about to become a father. That letter, too, had boomeranged right back to her.

The Spanish-accented voice of the cab driver—deep and rich, so like Jorge’s—told her she was close to her destination and now doubt turned to panic.

Why had she done this?

How could she have been so stupid?

To have dragged Ella all this way on an assumption made from a very blurry internet photograph—was she mad?

Fortunately, though not so fortunate for the people who lived here, the taxi had turned off the tree-lined boulevard, down a suburban street then into a small lane between makeshift homes.

‘Poor people who come from the north,’ the taxi driver explained. ‘The city builds them housing but more come before they can all have homes.’

The clinic looked exactly as it had on the internet, like an old corner store, painted white, and the small, brown-skinned people lazing around outside it might have been the same ones she’d read about in the article, mostly indigenous Toba people who lived in this overcrowded section of the big city of Rosario. The taxi stopped and though her stomach was knotted tightly and her lungs had seized so she could only gasp in short choppy breaths, she resisted the temptation to ask the driver to take her back to the airport.

Resisted, too, the panic that threatened to overwhelm her, reminding herself of the reason she had come.

Whatever she might feel—whatever might lie between Jorge and herself—her daughter deserved a father. Growing up without one herself, she had longed for someone to call Daddy. But worse than the longing—that hollow gap in her life—she knew how insecure it had made her around boys, and how uncertain she’d been about men.

Perhaps it even explained how easily she’d been seduced by Jorge’s declarations of love …

Refusing to acknowledge such a dread thought, she forced air deep into her lungs, shook her daughter gently awake, paid the cab driver, and muttered, ‘Here goes!’ to herself.