‘Colonel Fitzwilliam?’ echoed Elle.
The whimsical gaze only intensified. Elle gritted her teeth. She’d barely managed to stop herself from watching every time he passed, her eyes seeming to lift up at just the right moment to see his robust form striding across the frame of the tiny window with, even more surprisingly, a growing cluster of village men scurrying eagerly after him. Or to see him setting aside his own work to carry out some manual labour or other with the community, winning hearts and minds by actually joining in with something the village had been working on and needed.
And in those moments Elle had seen exactl
y how Fitz had acquired, and maintained, that impressive physique of his. Not in a gym but in the real world. Not with artificial machines but doing real manual labour. She’d remembered with embarrassing clarity just how he’d felt, driving inside her, claiming her, imprinting himself on her for ever.
Even at this distance, even though appearing no bigger than a matchstick, Fitz dominated entirely.
‘I’m not sure what he has to do with the heaving waiting area.’ She hadn’t intended to sound so prim.
‘Well, that’s because not everyone is as immune to charm as you, Major I-Only-Have-Eyes-for-My-Childhood-Sweetheart!’ Jools laughed. ‘And Major Fitzwilliam has charm in spades. Haven’t you seen how he’s been working out there with the local men? And on more than just the wells. Last time I went for a new batch of vaccines from the mobile unit I heard that the six-tonner he brought with him was loaded with supplies for building hen-houses. Did you know that?’
‘We have some basic kits to get them started!’ Elle exclaimed. ‘The charities gave them to us and they’ll do the rest when they come out. He knew that, he even mentioned it to me this morning.’
‘Yes, but the Colonel brought better timber and some tools. He’s been showing them how to build them to best suit the birds, and which ground is better for siting them. He’s been gaining their trust and apparently casually chatting to them about the health benefits of the clinic.’
‘So that heaving waiting area is his doing?’
‘Amazing, isn’t he?’ Jools sighed. ‘I’d love to have your job as liaison officer, having to work with him practically every day and on a one-on-one basis. Getting to travel that awful journey out here cooped up with him. No offence but it’s wasted on you.’
Elle resisted the urge to roll her eyes. How could she criticise Jools’s swooning when she herself wasn’t much different?
‘Wait, look, he’s about to send over some more. A couple of local men just approached him and pointed over here. You’ll see.’
Her legs almost carried her back to the window of their own volition as Elle spotted Fitz conferring with his newfound supporters, nodding in agreement as they gesticulated towards her location. Even the interpreter didn’t seem to need to do much translating. Moments later, the men crossed the ground and went into various homes or out of sight.
‘Give it a few minutes and a group of fresh families will come through our doors,’ Jools confirmed. ‘There, that’s the last of this batch of immunisations set up. Shall I have the next group readied for us?’
‘Sure,’ Elle replied, still staring thoughtfully through the window at the apparent hero of the hour. ‘The quicker we can get through them, the sooner we can move on to help the next village.’
Thanks to Fitz, it seemed they might be able to get to even more communities and help even more locals during this trip.
It was bad enough lusting after the guy, but did he have to make her admire him so much, too?
She needed to get through the next couple of days and then she’d be back at the hospital and could go back to avoiding him. So much for wanting the chill between them to thaw. It seemed that, instead of helping matters, his new openness to her had only confused matters and made her all the more attracted to him.
Clearly, in future, she needed to watch what she wished for.
* * *
‘There you are. I wondered where you were hiding out.’
Elle clutched her ration-pack hot chocolate in its steel cup—watery and tasteless, but at least wet and welcoming—as the dust storm raged outside. For two days the sky had been perfectly blue as they’d travelled from village to village, some makeshift, some well established. Thanks to Fitz and Zi, they had encountered less resistance than normal and had therefore been able to do more than normal, successfully immunising children, health-checking pregnant mothers and passing on even more valuable sensitisation information than previously planned. Elle had even convinced herself that they would get back to the hospital before the weather turned.
Murphy’s law, however, meant that the storm hit just as her team had been loading up the last of their kit. Still, she supposed it was better than if they’d been halfway between two locations and slap-bang in the middle of nowhere. At least this was one of the largest established communities and they had shelter, a safe place to wait it out.
At least, it had been safe before he’d walked through the door.
‘I’m not hiding out,’ she lied.
‘The rest of the two teams are in the main community hall across the square.’
‘And I’d have been with them if I hadn’t been packing up the last of my kit when the storm came out of nowhere.’
‘I think we both know you had time to get across, if you’d wanted to.’
Elle dipped her head and took another sip of the watery drink. He was right, there was little point in denying it.