Read Online Melting the Argentine Doctor's Heart / Small Town Marriage Miracle by Meredith Webber / Jennifer Taylor - Free Book Online

with every fibre of his being, he couldn’t saddle her with the man he had become—couldn’t trust that all she had to give him would be pity, for to be pitied by Caroline would surely kill him.

CHAPTER FOUR
    ‘I CE CREAM!’ his daughter reminded him, patting him on the head. He headed down the alley towards the main road where a small ice-cream cart usually stood at this time of the evening.
    The van was there but it was the white pole on the pavement close by that attracted Caroline’s attention.
    ‘What is this?’ she asked, studying the side of it that had its message in the Toba language.
    ‘Walk around it. You will understand when you find the Spanish.’
    ‘“May peace prevail on earth”,’ she read. ‘How lovely. The other languages?’
    ‘One in Toba, one in Guaran'—Toba is a sub-language of Guaran'—and one in Italian, representing the cultures that have contributed to the development of the neighbourhood. There is another such pole near the National Flag Memorial. They are called Peace Poles.’
    He had squatted down to allow Ella to climb off his back and now he lifted her so she could see the variety of ice creams available. Caroline was still walking around the pole, reaching out to touch the words painted on it.
    ‘We have to believe it will happen, don’t we?’ shesaid quietly, and he remembered that there was so much more to her than her beauty—so much more that he had fallen in love with.
    ‘I’ll have choc’late,’ Ella announced, breaking into his thoughts, which was just as well. He ordered her ice cream and made sure he grabbed a handful of napkins to mop up any spills. He carried the ice cream for her across the road to a small park bench and when she’d settled on it, handed it to her.
    To his surprise she was as careful eating ice cream as she was eating noodles, both messy dishes for a child, but the little pink tongue licked around the edge, never allowing a melting drop to trickle down the thick waffle cone. He was so fascinated by her actions he didn’t realise Caroline wasn’t with them until she joined him, a cone in each hand.
    ‘I didn’t know what you’d like so I went for coffee and strawberry. Which do you want?’
    It was too domestic to be true—too huge a leap in his life—so it seemed as if he’d been transported to another place in time, another world where nothing was quite real. But he’d lived with pretence for a long time—pretence that he wasn’t in pain, pretence that his scars didn’t matter, pretence that he didn’t love—
    No, he wasn’t going there.
    ‘Coffee would be great,’ he said, no pretence needed but guessing she’d like the strawberry.
    She handed it to him and sat down beside her daughter—their daughter—and he saw immediately where the ‘neat freak', as Caroline had called Ella, had got her ice-cream eating techniques. For Caroline lickedjust as neatly, turning the cone in her hand, catching any potential drip before it could cause a mess.
    He stood and watched the pair of them, so different in looks, licking at their ice creams, his own melting so sticky liquid was running down his fingers.
    This was definitely an out-of-body experience, a dream, but if it wasn’t, what next? There might be a temporary truce between himself and Caroline, but where did they go from here?
    Anger, although tamped down, still burned inside him. It was where to aim it that bothered him. At fate? Too easy! At himself? Of course, this situation was, at least in part, his own fault for being so determined to return all her mail unopened.
    But try as he may, he couldn’t help but direct most of the anger at her. She’d kept his child from him then staged this grand reconciliation scene. There had to have been another way to have done this! And how hard had she really tried to contact him?
    ‘Your ice cream’s melting all down your hand.’
    He looked at her and realised
all
his anger should be directed at himself. At himself for still