Before he could answer, she had turned around and hurried off.
Everyone seemed to have a task, a purpose, hurrying around quickly. The sooner he was one of them the better.
* * *
It was a good couple of hours before Oti finally left the medical tent, making her way across the compound to the tukul where she’d been told Lukas was, still shocked that no one appeared to have recognised him yet. It felt like fate that he hadn’t shaved since their wedding, because it was amazing what a couple of weeks’ worth of facial hair and a baseball cap could do.
To her, it was still obvious that Lukas Woods was the man beneath, but to people who weren’t expecting him to be out here in the first place it was enough to cast shadows over the sharper contours of his face, to soften his telltale square jaw and to conceal the giveaway cleft in his chin.
She doubted they would get away with it for too long, but she would be grateful for every day they were able to settle in without too much scrutiny. Hopefully enough time to help them find a groove.
She could still hardly believe that he had agreed to come out here with her. As though he actually cared about her, as though she mattered to him. And it didn’t matter how much she told herself it was all deeply fanciful and ridiculous—every time Lukas watched her with those intense granite-grey eyes she felt as though he was seeing her for the first time all over again.
But right now she should check he was settling in before heading back to her own old hut for a bit of alone time. She could hardly wait.
Sure about that? a voice questioned silently in her head. Oti ignored it.
‘Knock-knock,’ she began as she reached the open door to one of the larger tukuls.
A grin pulled at her lips despite everything. No doubt he’d already realised how sweltering it was in those huts, until the temperature dropped later in the night.
‘Are you settling in okay?’
The hut was usually reserved for the main project managers or surgeons. It was about twice the size of her tukul, complete with a king-size bed and a new-looking mosquito net. She was used to an old one that had been repaired at least a couple of times, using silver tape. Why wasn’t she surprised the billionaire was being treated like royalty?
‘I’ve been...playing house, it seems,’ he replied drily, his head turning to look at her. ‘Unpacking as best I can, given that all clothes have to be bagged to keep any unpleasant insects or arachnids from crawling into them.’
‘It’s a bit of an art form,’ she agreed, laughing. Then she spotted her own half-empty rucksack. ‘Wait, why did you unpack my stuff? I have my own tukul—it’s just over there.’
Turning to point between a few other huts, she noticed a decoration on the door that she hadn’t left there. As though someone else was now occupying it.
‘You had your own tukul,’ Lukas corrected quietly.
Something flip-flopped inside her.
‘Well, it doesn’t matter.’ She forced a smile. ‘I’m sure my new one will be fine. Not as salubrious as yours, of course.’
‘This is our tukul, Oti.’
She blinked at him, a cold sensation rushing over her body as she stood statuelike, followed by a rush of heat which she preferred not to dwell on.
‘It can’t be. It’s too...’ she bit back the word intimate ‘...big. And it’s usually reserved for people more senior than me.’
‘Your project chief said it was going spare and she thought, as a newly married couple, we would appreciate it. I wasn’t about to lay out the details of our arrangement to her.’
‘No, obviously not.’ She bit her lower lip.
‘I suspect you’ll have a fair few questions to answer next time you see people, though. She was rather shocked you’d never mentioned me before.’
She could well imagine it. Everyone had been so focused on the baby, Shangok, that there hadn’t been chance for anyone to ask her about her sudden change in marital status. But tonight, and tomorrow, Oti had no doubt there would be a veritable barrage of questions fired her way.
‘But we can’t share a hut, Lukas.’ Her voice shook and there wasn’t a darn thing she could do about it. Her eyes slid, almost against her will, to the king-size bed. ‘We can’t share...that.’
They hadn’t been intimate again since that one night, almost a week ago. Not that she hadn’t enjoyed it—more than enjoyed it—but after that bath, and her shocking revelation, Lukas had closed and bolted the door between their suites and practically moved out of their—his—home and into his city centre office, making it clear that he had no intention of a repeat performance.
She’d tried not to let it hurt her. Clearly he was the kind of man who liked the thrill of the chase more than he liked a sure thing—but hadn’t she known that about him already?
And he hadn’t been the one to instigate that night, had he?
Either that, or she’d been so appallingly bad in bed that he didn’t want a repeat performance. Just because she’d found their night together so wholly electrifying didn’t mean that Lukas had been equally enthused.
Oti felt a hot flush spread over her cheeks; how had she failed to recognise that at the time?
‘I agree—it isn’t ideal.’
‘Ideal?’ She tried for another laugh, but it sounded flat.
From the safety of the doorway, she once again eyed up the king-size mattress on the old pallet frame. There was also a battered old dresser desk, a rickety chair and a newly woven rug.
As tukuls went, it looked lovely. And that wouldn’t do at all.
She and Lukas might have pretended to the objecting board members of his various companies that they were going on a delayed honeymoon, but that didn’t actually mean it had to feel like one.
‘We should have a hut each,’ she muttered faintly, not daring to look at Lukas. ‘I didn’t plan this. You have to understand that.’
‘Obviously you didn’t plan it.’ He had crossed the tiny space before she had a chance to move, his hands going to her shoulders. ‘You don’t believe that I manipulated this situation?’
‘Of course not.’ Her gaze seemed to be locked with his, and she couldn’t have disconnected even if she’d wanted to. ‘You made it abundantly clear, even back at the house, that you wouldn’t be...inviting any further intimacy between us.’
‘Right.’ He nodded with evident relief, and she tried not to feel irrationally hurt. ‘I’m glad that was clear.’
‘But you didn’t insist on separate accommodation?’ She swallowed heavily.
Even though she tried, there was no suppressing the glimmer of hope that he just might admit it was because a part of him had wanted to share. And then he moved closer to her, so fast that she didn’t have time to think. But her heart had time to beat faster.
‘This isn’t a conversation for other ears,’ Lukas muttered tersely, his large hand circling her wrist gently as he tugged her inside.
‘No.’ He didn’t hesitate once the door was closed. ‘But only because I believe it would only raise suspicion. After all, we’re supposed to be a newly married couple.’
Yanking herself out of his grasp, Oti tried to push back the sense of disappointment that raced through her. It was shamefully telling that she didn’t open the door or try to leave. They were alone and, despite everything, her entire body was prickling with awareness.
She swallowed heavily. ‘Yet we can’t stay here and...share a bed.’
‘There’s no choice.’ His voice held a sort of grimness that made her feel perversely insulted. She wondered what was wrong with her. ‘We’re married. We’re sharing. It’s done.’
Oti stared at the bed, then at the floor. She felt like some gauche teenager again, and hated herself for it.
‘We’re grown adults, not unschooled adolescents,’ he pressed on, as if reading her thoughts. She hated the way he could
do that. ‘I’m sure we can sleep in the same bed without touching each other.’
A memory of their night together slid, unbidden, into her head. He had reached for her so many times that night, as though he could glut on her for ever and still never have enough. He’d made her feel so cherished, so incredible, and she’d never, ever, felt like that before.
She’d never thought she was capable of it, especially after the attack.
It was as if Lukas had made her come alive, and she’d suddenly realised what she’d been missing out on all those years. Yet now he was like a different man, keeping her at arm’s length and making it clear he didn’t remotely feel that same draw, that same desire, whilst she couldn’t imagine ever wanting to be with anyone else.
He’d ruined her. And the worst of it was that if she could go back in time and choose to have one night with Lukas or a lifetime with anyone else, then she wouldn’t hesitate to choose him. Every time.
‘Of course we can,’ she replied, wondering if her voice sounded as hollow to Lukas’s ears as it did to hers. She hoped not.
‘Besides, you’ll be in that hospital eighteen hours a day, from what you’ve told me, grabbing a few hours’ sleep when you can, sometimes working through the night. And I’ve already been given a list of tasks, so I have plenty to do. We won’t even be in here at the same time for much of it.’
‘And when we are, we’ll be so tired that we’ll be asleep before our heads even hit the pillow,’ she added, wishing that she could believe that for even a minute.
She couldn’t actually imagine anyone being able to sleep if they were sharing a bed with Lukas. She doubted anyone ever had.
Her body signalled its approval instantly.
‘Are you okay?’ He eyed her closely. ‘You appear to be a little flushed.’
‘It’s a little hot in here, don’t you think?’ Beginning to babble, she headed for the door. ‘Sometimes you marinate in your own sweat in these places. I’ve known people to pull their beds outside and sleep in the cool air.’
‘That’s an option,’ he replied evenly. ‘But for now, acting like we can actually stand to be around each other would be a start.’
She nodded stiffly, her mind searching for a topic but coming up short. He made it sound so easy. Then again, it probably was easy for him.
In the end, it was Lukas who spoke first. ‘How is the baby, anyway?’
‘Shangok?’
Did his voice sound hoarser than usual? No, it was no doubt just her imagination. At least this was a topic she could discuss with some ease.
‘Shangok. Yes.’
She lifted her shoulders sadly. ‘We won’t know for a while. That is to say, we’re more likely to know if he’s getting worse than if he is responding. We put him on a drip, and we’ll use as much of our limited resources as we can.’
‘Is he still in pain?’
‘Incredible pain.’ She nodded. ‘We inserted an IV line and administered medications to control the muscle spasms, otherwise he’d be unable to move his rigid body yet feel every single one of them.’
‘It sounds horrendous.’
‘You have no idea.’ She sucked in a breath. ‘The slightest thing can set a spasm off, from a soft noise to the lightest touch, even a whisper of wind gliding over their skin.’
‘I take it that’s why you mentioned putting him in an environment with little stimuli?’
‘Yes.’ No point in thinking about their home—his home—now. ‘The hut we have is darkened, with a more consistent temperature than elsewhere.’
‘And it will be enough?’
He actually sounded as though he cared. But then, why wouldn’t he? He wasn’t some heartless monster. Except, perhaps, where her own traitorous heart was concerned. And that was hardly his fault, since he’d warned her from the start that she should know what she was signing up to.
She dragged her mind back to the little baby in the tukul. Would the measures be enough?
‘I don’t know,’ she told him sadly. ‘He really needs human tetanus immune globulin, but our stores are virtually depleted. There should have been a supply run a few weeks ago, but the rains meant that the runways were impassable. Last time I was here, we had three babies die within a thirty-hour period.’
‘That many? I thought illnesses like tetanus were virtually eradicated.’
Oti tried to concentrate on the topic at hand and not the way that his sense of compassion somehow made him that much more than the man she was already beginning to fall for.
‘That doesn’t come close to the true extent of the problem, Lukas. It’s estimated that out here, in the bush, around ninety per cent of births happen in the home, and a high percentage of those births will result in maternal and neonatal tetanus being contracted when the umbilical cord is cut. Most of the time, they never make it to us—maybe as little as five per cent of the time—and because of the way it moves through the body, the mother and/or the baby will be dead within days.’
‘That’s...staggering.’ His brow pulled up tight, and there was an expression in his gaze which she didn’t entirely recognise. ‘Surely that can’t be across the entire country?’
‘It isn’t.’ She forced a half-smile. ‘In the cities, where there are hospitals, the incidence is much lower. The charities and the government have been working together for a long time, establishing vaccine roll-outs and educating people.’
‘But out here in the middle of nowhere, not everyone has access to healthcare and so immunisation rates are lower?’ he guessed.
‘Plus, so many people are displaced.’ She nodded, loving the way he took an interest because she did. As though it mattered to him because it mattered to her. ‘They have enough trouble finding clean water, food and building new shelter for themselves. And they have their traditional healers—some of whom are actually very good at what they do, and some are completely ineffective. Either way, western-influenced health education is very much a low priority for them.’
‘What about vaccine drives? Education drives?’
She was beginning to see what Lukas relished the most. A project. A goal. It gave him purpose.
Just like being out here had always made her feel as if she had value.
She couldn’t help wondering if it was tied to the way his mother had worshipped his biological father, despite him abandoning her and Lukas. Just as her self-worth had been damaged the day her parents had refused to side with her over what had happened with the Rockman boy—she didn’t even like to think of him by name.
They’d valued money and connections over her well-being. It had taken her years to get over that, and this place had helped.
As had Lukas, though that made no sense.
‘Obviously we educate people.’ She nodded softly, pushing the confused thoughts from her head. ‘Multiple charities, not just HOP, have worked together with the government for years, on huge public awareness and vaccine drives. And we are making ground. But it’s an ongoing issue. And money only goes so far, you know. We aren’t all billionaires.’
She stopped, horrified, waiting for him to say something.
He didn’t speak.
‘I wasn’t asking for more money,’ she choked out, hating how she’d let things get awkward between them.
‘I know.’
‘I didn’t mean...’
‘I know.’ He silenced her. ‘It’s been a long few days. I suggest we get some sleep and regroup tomorrow.’
Sleep? How was she supposed to sleep whilst lying in a bed next to Lukas? Not least because all she wanted to do was be close to him, touch him, be touched by him. Just like the other night.
And he didn’t want any of that.
‘I think sleep is a good idea,’ she lied as brightly as she could. ‘I’ll get changed in the shower block.’
‘No, you stay here. I’ll cha
nge over there. I want to check tomorrow’s schedule with one of the guys I met this afternoon, anyway. You may well be asleep by the time I get back.’
‘Great.’ Another lie. ‘Well, see you in the morning, Lukas. Goodnight.’
CHAPTER TEN
DESPITE FEARING THAT she would never be able to sleep with Lukas next to her—his back to hers—Oti woke up the following morning having had one of the most peaceful nights she’d experienced in a while.
The early-morning sounds of camp floated around the tukul, but the sound she found her ears straining for was Lukas.
Nothing.
Rolling gingerly onto her back, she turned her head to his side of the bed, only to find that he’d gone. Her stomach lurched, though she told herself not to be so dramatic. Lukas was a notoriously early riser; just because he wasn’t here didn’t mean he was trying to avoid her.
Stretching out her hand, she checked his side of the bed, to find that it was cold. He’d clearly left some time ago.
To avoid her?
It was a question she couldn’t possibly answer, and yet she felt she already knew.
Slipping out of the mosquito nets and throwing on fresh shorts and a T-shirt, Oti slipped into the ablution hut to shower. It was nothing like the glorious, hot power shower that she’d enjoyed back home—back at Lukas’s home—but it felt familiar and somehow comforting. From the low-pressure, tepid trickle that rolled briefly over her body to dodging the bats above her head, it was everything she’d grown accustomed to over the past four years.
Still, as she dried off and returned to their hut, Oti found herself hoping that he would be back there. But he wasn’t.
Eventually, she headed over to check on Shangok, relieved to discover that, whilst there wasn’t yet any improvement, he hadn’t significantly deteriorated. That, at least, was the best she could hope for at this stage.
By his bedside, the baby’s mother could only watch on, her face impassive. And, not for the first time, Oti’s chest pulled tight. Death was such a part of life out here, with mothers forced to watch so many sick, dying children that their attitudes were far more stoic than Oti wished they had to be, but that didn’t mean they felt the loss any less acutely. Here, the mothers seemed to permanently hold and cradle their babies, which only made tetanus all the more cruel. And it never got easier, trying to explain why—with this particular infection—cradling their suffering babies made it worse, not better.
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