The Vet's Escape to Paradise Read online

  Why did he even care? He needed help at the clinic, and help was what he’d got, of literally the highest degree.

  ‘Can I take some photos now?’ Aayla asked as they made their way back to his car. She made a grab for the camera, and he told her to watch her manners. Aayla pouted. Ivy looked unsure, but eventually she unhooked it from around her neck and handed it over, which made him smile.

  ‘You have to look through here,’ she explained, stopping on the dusty palm-lined path to the road to lean over his curious daughter’s slight, six-year-old frame and show her the viewfinder.

  Something in him shifted as her bright red curls meshed with his daughter’s volcano-black locks for just a second. If only he could get a photo from where he was standing, but his arms were full of puppies. Aayla had never held a real camera before.

  ‘Don’t drop it,’ Ivy pleaded.

  Aayla tutted. ‘Why would I drop it?’

  The two of them bantered all the way back to the clinic, in the back seat with the puppies. He listened in, fighting back the odd laugh. Ivy probed him on his role, work, the clinic, the sterilisation programme, while Aayla probed her on how to use the camera.

  From Ivy’s short, not cold, but slightly awkward answers to all of Aayla’s questions he got the impression that she hadn’t spent much time around kids. At times she spoke like some kind of robot: forced, mechanical. Aayla just found her more amusing for it.

  * * *

  ‘You’re good with her,’ he told her later, when they’d settled the pups into their cage in the back room, now thankfully wormed and vaccinated. Seven less domestics to worry about—they’d be put up for adoption as soon as Dudders got back from wherever he was now and entered them into the system. That was his role.

  One of them anyway. Dudders had many roles, they all did.

  ‘Did you hear me? I said Aayla seems to like you,’ he said again, when he realised she hadn’t responded.

  He was surprised that a compliment regarding a stranger with Aayla came so easily out of his mouth when normally it would take ages to even think that about a new person. But from her trepidation he sensed it was something Ivy might need to hear. Anyway, Ivy Malone was going to have to get used to Aayla if she was going to be hanging around the clinic, he thought. It was basically the kid’s second home, when she wasn’t at school or with Nina, her nanny.

  ‘I’m really not good with kids,’ she replied now, crouching over their little booby fledgling. Aayla had named her already—Pluma, which meant ‘feather’.

  Jero peered around the door, where Aayla was colouring in a picture book of cats at the little table. ‘She’s never held a real camera before. Not till you showed her yours,’ he told her.

  Ivy curled her fingers round the bird’s cage, peering inside. Her face got lost behind her mass of red hair. ‘I know cameras, that’s all. Cameras and animals.’

  There was a sadness to her tone again, and he didn’t know what to say. Pluma was cooing in her own little cage under the Darwin quote poster, which read: The love for all living creatures is the most noble attribute of man. Hailey had scribbled out man and replaced it with woman, and he was just about to comment on it, to break the awkward silence, when Aayla bounced back in and asked if she could help Ivy feed worms to Pluma, then take more photos.

  He shifted a pile of unattended paperwork to locate the worms and tried to ignore the look Ivy shot him. Yes, OK, the place could be a little more organised, he’d been meaning to address that, but calls were coming in already. A tortoise with a cracked shell and flesh wound over on Floreana that he’d have to see to onsite, thanks to Yolanda being off-island. A pregnant dog had also just been found in a rubbish container.

  He answered a call from Zenon, who’d finally woken up from his siesta, watching Ivy and Aayla interact around Pluma the whole time.

  Poor little Pluma had probably been abandoned by her mother after being attacked, he thought, trying to ignore the way he couldn’t stop wondering things about Ivy. She was here to work, that was all, and she was under no obligation to tell him anything else about herself. Just because she’d probably heard everything about him, from the island gossips, didn’t mean it was his place to ask what happened with her ex, or why she was honeymooning alone. Or why she assumed she’d never been any good with kids.

  She was reserved around his daughter, sure, but a little less awkward now than when they’d first met, a couple of hours ago.

  ‘Look, Ivy, Pluma just lifted her head up!’

  ‘You’re right, she did. She’s getting stronger already.’

  Despite her insistence on being no good with kids, if it carried on like this, the two might actually form some kind of friendship, he thought to himself absently. Aayla was pretty addictive, but maybe he was biased.

  Ivy would be out and about all the time, with him more than Aayla—if she wanted to work, he’d give her work. Besides, tourists never stuck around too long anyway.

  Especially unmarried, single, highly qualified, strikingly beautiful ones...

  Good thing too, he thought suddenly, catching himself. He’d have to start making sure they didn’t bond, for Aayla’s sake.

  There was absolutely no way he’d have his daughter’s heart broken by anyone else filling her head with possibilities, and then walking out of her world.

  CHAPTER THREE

  IVY FLATTENED A hand to her hair. The salty ocean breeze was going to leave it looking wilder than ever after this boat ride. She wouldn’t care if she weren’t with Jero but she’d caught him looking at her as if she were some kind of entertaining alien over the past few days and it was making her self-conscious.

  They’d been talking about climate change. How the United Nations reported up to thirty per cent of plant and animal species around the world were at risk of extinction. ‘I know islands like this are especially vulnerable,’ she said now, over the sound of the engine.

  Jero bobbed his shaved head towards the island ahead. The boat was speeding towards Floreana, where a café owner had called concerned about a mystery wound on his dog’s hind leg.

  ‘Why do you think I stay out here?’ he said. ‘There’s more work to do than you even know.’

  Ivy pursed her lips, training her eyes on the slope of his nose. The sun was reflecting the ocean spray in his sunglasses, hiding those dreamy eyes. OK, she might have told a little white lie to Mike this morning when she said she didn’t find her new Galapagos mentor hot, but it wasn’t for a man, or anyone, to tell her what she knew.

  Then again, he had a point. What did she know? This was her first visit to the Galapagos after all.

  ‘So...how long have you been out here?’ she asked, watching the pier draw closer. The midday sun was already scorching her bare arms through her sunscreen; this place was still a shock to her Irish skin. ‘I’m guessing you weren’t born in the Galapagos Islands, like Aayla was?’

  His dark brows drew together. ‘Nope. My parents raised me a Galveston boy. We lived one mile from the beach...in fact I haven’t lived that far away from it since.’

  Ah, that was right, Texas, she thought, remembering what the receptionist at the hotel had said.

  Jero tossed the buffers over the side of the boat, and she pretended not to notice how his sunscreened olive biceps glistened like a rock under his black tattoo. Simon hadn’t had a bad physique, but he’d been nowhere near as muscular or toned. She wondered, would the magic have lasted longer if he had been more physically attractive, instead of kind, attentive and...safe?

  Was there ever really any magic to begin with?

  Ivy frowned to herself. Sometimes she had to think really hard about that. Maybe she’d wanted the magic so much that she’d merely convinced herself that she and Simon had it.

  In truth, her heart had never really had to heal from Simon, because it hadn’t been all that broken by the break-up. She hadn’t ever admitted that to anyone—it was hard enough to admit it to herself, let alone everyone else. Her friends all seemed to expect a crumpled mess in her company after it all fell apart. So how could she admit that she’d spent over four long years with someone who, through no real fault of his own, had failed to make her feel the way she truly wanted to feel about a partner, a husband? That she’d been waiting for the sparks to suddenly ignite?

  She always knew they wouldn’t. But safety and security meant more than physical attraction and chemistry. Those things were more important. Those were the things she needed.

  At least, that was what she’d told herself after the string of man-children she’d met online, who’d disappeared after just one date. Maybe she’d given up, after that. It wasn’t something she enjoyed thinking about, but maybe she’d ‘settled’ with Simon out of fear she’d never meet anyone she really connected with. The kids thing had been a convenient excuse to get out of it, really, in the end. A wake-up call.

  What was Jero’s tattoo of? She studied it again, while he bantered with the driver in Spanish, and tried to shove Simon from her head.

  God, it was sexy hearing Jero speak Spanish. She spoke a little herself, but the two spoke so fast she could barely keep up. It bothered her, feeling left out, no thanks to spending the majority of her formative years all by herself. Well, apart from the nanny.

  Maybe it bothered her more because she liked Jero more than she wanted to already, more than was safe to, considering her temporary status here. Best to keep it professional, she decided. A ‘look but don’t touch’ kind of thing. It wouldn’t be hard. Aside from his looks, he was still somewhat a mystery.

  She knew about his work obviously. And how his full-time surgeon Hailey, had left for New Zealand, leaving him with a team of volunteers who weren’t always the most reliable. She’d seen them do things around the clinic that they certainly wouldn’t be doing if they worked for her.

  But he was doing immeasurable good around the islands. Late last year they’d managed to acquire a new licence and had sterilised almost two thousand animals. They’d worked hard to eradicate the threat of parvovirus and stop distemper reaching the Galapagos sea lion population.

  Jero had explained how he’d started leading outreach events and doing school talks too. Most people thought the thousands of dogs on the four inhabited islands were harmless. But he’d stressed to her how they were very much invasive animals, who harassed and preyed on the finches and marine and land iguanas, the birds and, Aayla’s favourites, the young giant tortoises. It was nothing short of inspiring, how he wanted to educate people and train even more Galapagos community members and give them the tools to secure a sustainable future. All of this was as important to Jero as raising Aayla.

  Well, almost.

  It was obvious that Jero loved that little girl like nothing else. Aayla Morales was pretty cute, Ivy thought now, all big brown, bright joyous eyes, and raven-black hair with a glossy sheen she’d have killed for as a kid. She had crazy curls, and rosy cheeks you just wanted to squeeze. Watching them together made Ivy forget herself sometimes; she just wished she were as good with her as Jero seemed to think she was. Obviously he only said that stuff to be nice.

  She swallowed back the bitter taste that always came when she was reminded, in any way, of how bad she was with kids. Even though Simon had argued it was all in her head. He’d said she was calling herself ‘unsuitable’ and them ‘noisy’ or ‘expensive’ or ‘time-consuming’ as excuses to not have them herself, because she was afraid she’d be a bad mother, as her own was.

  Maybe he was half right. Or maybe she just didn’t want to go there with him.

  Ugh.

  It didn’t matter, she was only here for another couple of weeks. She might as well use her experience to be of use. And learn something too. What else was she supposed to do?

  ‘Relax!’ Mike had almost yelled at her this morning, after he’d wound her up unknowingly by mentioning the acquisition again. Blue Stream Veterinary Alliance were coming down hard now, upping their offer, not just for the central location in Galway, but for the reputation they’d spent years building. It meant freedom for her and Mike, to cast their nets wider somewhere else, or to just enjoy a small fortune, but this was her baby!

  She was trying not to think about it here; although, if she was honest, this was one of the reasons she’d come away. To think. Money wasn’t everything.

  ‘Experiences like this are better for my mental health,’ she’d told him anyway. ‘It’s invaluable really.’

  He’d asked if it had anything to do with Jero—he’d looked him up, apparently, called him ‘her type’, as if she had a type. She’d told him absolutely not.

  A big, fat, not-so-little white lie.

  Jero was very easy on the eye. Even when the state of the Darwin Animal Clinic gave her heart palpitations, just looking at him made it less relevant somehow.

  That place was far from organised. Volunteers were expected to work five days a week and help with being on call on weekends, on a shared rota. They worked seven-thirty a.m. to eleven-thirty a.m., closed for a long siesta, which everyone took but herself and Jero, then reopened in the late afternoon once the temperature had dropped. Sometimes they worked till seven-thirty p.m.

  Typically, surgeries including spaying and neutering were performed in the morning, and most walk-in consultations or off-island calls were in the afternoon. No one was fully responsible for filing the paperwork in those ridiculously outdated Manila folders, as far as she could tell. Everyone did their bit, or at least they were supposed to.

  She was itching to reorganise. Practically chomping at the bit already, but no.

  It wasn’t her place to get involved in any of that. She could get bossy and she knew it. Things were different here; they were also working with far less than adequate equipment. But yikes! How anyone could work like that for long was a mystery to her.

  ‘So, what brought you over here?’ she asked Jero, realising she’d been watching him, watching the waves, reorganising his life in her head.

  ‘I moved back to Quito to study.’

  ‘Back to?’

  ‘I was born in Ecuador. It was Dad’s job that took us to Texas, but I guess I never felt like I belonged there. I opened the clinic on Santa Cruz a couple years before Aayla came along; it was just a shack then. Grew it out from there, had our own place built in town. Home is home, you know? I think your heart knows, anyway.’

  Ivy nodded thoughtfully. Her heart had never known anything but Ireland. Was she boring? Gosh, maybe he thought her so. Her pride went down a notch on the spot.

  Jero finished swigging from a bottle of water, kicked a foot up on the bench opposite her and gripped the mast with one big hand as they bumped over a wave. ‘My ex-wife, she’s American. Met her right here. She was on vacation. Never thought I’d marry a tourist but...’

  ‘Your heart knows, right?’

  Jero tossed the water bottle into a crate and huffed a laugh that made her kick herself. ‘Never thought I’d divorce one either. But we had Aayla. So, I must have done something right.’

  She pulled a face. He was divorced, of course, why had she just said that? Why was he making her nervous?

  He grabbed up the bag of supplies they’d brought, and she followed him to the front of the boat, where the driver, Nico, hosed their feet, hands and legs down while a big fat sea lion eyed them sleepily from one of the benches by the pier.

  It was still weird, this washing process. Jero said it was to eliminate any bacteria and prevent contamination between the islands.

  They walked in silence along the sandy cobblestone road towards the café. His butt looked like two more rocks, and she couldn’t help wondering if it was as hard as it looked in those black shorts. Was he still single?

  She couldn’t help but hope he was, even though it didn’t matter in the slightest really. Dating a father meant the child came along with him, and for multiple reasons she was definitely not what either of them needed.

  Jero was a man of few words when it came to his private life, but his unsettled state about his ex had been more than clear in his clipped tone back on the boat. She did already know some of his story. All she’d done was ask Nayely if he’d lived on the island long—out of interest, because he was a vet too, not because visions of his buff body and piercing eyes had struck her like a gamma ray at first sight.

  Nayely had told her the whole story. Her version anyway, right after he’d left the lobby. He’d married some younger woman, a tourist. Bit of a whirlwind situation, apparently. Aayla was a mistake, but he’d loved her mother madly; Aayla too when she came along. Then, a few years later his wife wound up cheating on him with some other American guy who’d been visiting the island. She and this new guy lived in Washington DC now. They had another kid and she hardly ever called Aayla. Jero was raising their daughter alone...with a nanny, whom Ivy hadn’t met yet.

  Aayla was always either at school, where she was now, or in the clinic, trailing her, asking if she could use her camera.

  Annoying.

  Well...not annoying, Ivy caught herself. That was unfair; she was just being a kid. She was more annoyed at herself for never knowing how to act around her. Of course it must show. At least they had little Pluma and the puppies to care for together. Aayla loved that little booby bird; she’d taken some pretty good photos of her too, so far. OK, a few blurry ones also, but the girl was a good listener, picked things up fast. Maybe Ivy should let her use the camera more often, she considered, under strict supervision, of course.

  ‘What are you smiling at?’ Jero opened the door to the run-down shack that constituted a café and her stomach performed a little flip at the look on his face.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You were smiling, ear to ear.’

  ‘Was I?’ she said.