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?