bearing on anything else in her life. Then, and even now.
So, where was she anyway? Normally a quick check of an online map site was all Layla needed, but there was no cell reception out here, let alone a road that had been charted on a map. So she was only guessing she was headed in the right direction. A direction where she didn’t expect modern facilities, let alone the basics like running water and electricity.
That’s what Arlo had told her he’d come from, and that’s what he’d always said would be the kind of place he would practice his medicine. He’d grown up in the jungle, traveled with his parents, who were both doctors. And it’s what he’d said he wanted for his own life as he simply fit there better. Shortly, she would see if he did.
Layla looked ahead of her, saw a man riding atop an elephant and nearly ran herself off the road staring at him. It wasn’t the elephant that got her, though, not even the crater she swerved to avoid hitting. It was the wavering turn out of the swerve that wobbled her back and forth across the road. Unfortunately, it resulted in her landing in a drainage ditch with a flat tire, the front end down, back end up. Royally stuck and—she checked her phone even though it was pointless, and the result was what she expected—there was no way to contact anyone, anywhere.
“Damn it,” Layla huffed, throwing her phone back into the car as she stood alone on the road, trying to figure out what to do. “No bars. Not a single, lousy blip on the bar indicator.” Her first test out here, and she was already failing it.
After walking around her car several times, assessing and reassessing the situation, Layla finally sat down in the dirt, hoping someone would come by to help her. Someone in a truck with a tow rope, she hoped. Maybe even Arlo? But the only person who did pass was a withered little old man with a pushcart filled with fruits and herbs. He smiled graciously at her, then began a long-winded discussion, none of which she understood. After he finished speaking, he tipped his straw hat to her, picked up the hand grips of his cart and meandered on down the road at a pace that would favor a snail in a race.
“Well, so much for that,” Layla said, deciding to hike on down the road and hope that somewhere along the way she stumbled on someone who could help her. Or maybe even stumble on the village itself.
An hour later, making very little progress due to the road conditions, Layla stopped to rest, sitting down on a roadside rock and watching some kind of wild pig munching the droppings of a papaya tree. And this was why she and Arlo hadn’t succeeded at their relationship. They’d talked about it ad nauseam for the last few months they’d been together. While she’d never been in the jungle, she could see it in detail through Arlo’s description. There were good people here, leading extremely hard lives, in a place where nothing came easily. Transportation was limited, according to Arlo. As were communications. It was his passion, and she didn’t condemn him for it. But it wasn’t her passion. She wasn’t the kind of person who could survive here. Even two months were beginning to seem like an eternity.
“You and your passion, Arlo,” Layla grumbled, as she stood to resume her hike. Much to her surprise, the little man with the pushcart was coming back into view. Slowly.
Was he coming to rescue her? Her knight in shining armor? A man with a receding hairline, bushy gray eyebrows and some wispy chin fringe?
Naturally, when he arrived at her side, he was already chattering words she still didn’t understand. His gestures were clear, though. She was to climb into the part-empty cart and be pushed wherever he wanted to take her. “Village by the big fig tree,” she said, knowing he wouldn’t understand the English interpretation of the village’s name. But she couldn’t pronounce it in Thai and any mispronounced attempt might land her someplace she didn’t want to go, so she pointed to a small fig tree sapling off the side of the road, then attempted to gesture a much larger tree. Wouldn’t Arlo just laugh at her now, standing in the middle of nowhere playing a game of charades?
“Big fig tree,” Layla said a couple of times, even though the man had no idea what she was saying. He smiled, though, let her charade herself into more embarrassment before he gestured her to the cart again. Her taxi was waiting, and she couldn’t have been happier to see it, despite the prickly straw in the bottom, and the caged chickens she had to share her ride with. Oh, and the dog. The little old man had picked up a scraggly, lap-sized brown and white mutt somewhere along the way.
So, forcing a gracious smile, Layla climbed in, found a spot among the other passengers and shut her eyes. All those years ago, when Arlo had walked away from her, calling her too damned ambitious, it had hurt, even though it was true. Today—right this moment—she was glad her ambitions had kept her in modern society, as this was simply too hard already, and she hadn’t even started.
Maybe it was what Arlo wanted from his life, living here and practicing jungle medicine, and maybe he was one of the most benevolent, altruistic and humane people she’d ever known, but none of this was for her, and if she hadn’t known it then, she surely did now.
“Of all the doctors in the world, he sent you?” Arlo shook his head, not in disbelief so much as amusement. “You working in the jungle is as improbable as me working in a modern hospital somewhere. But you’ve certainly got the skill I need, so” He visibly bit back a laugh. “Welcome.”
Layla opened her eyes, which she’d purposely kept shut so she could avoid the full picture of her impetuous volunteering, and there he was, taking away her breath the way he always had. Only maybe a little more since the jungle setting made him seembetter.
Tall, roguishly handsome as ever and a little weathered, which became him. His blond hair looked sun bleached, and it was long, still with its gentle curl. She’d always liked those curls and the way they had felt in her fingers. And the penetrating blue eyes that still penetrated. But the thing that had always attracted her most were his dimples. Honest-to-gosh sexy dimples when he smiled.
“I’d have made my grand entrance differently if I could have, but I suppose this works,” she said as she picked straw from her hair. “Oh, and to answer your question, yes, he sent me.”
“He didn’t tell me it was you he was sending,” Arlo said.
“Probably because he was as surprised as I was that it was my hand that went up first to volunteer. Also, because he couldn’t get in touch with you.”
“Ah, yes. It’s all about the soon-to-be-open assistant chief position, isn’t it? When he told me he was going to announce it, I assumed you’d be the one fighting to get to the front of the line. Didn’t count on Ollie sending you out here as part of your climb up his ladder, though. Especially since we haven’t spoken in five years.”
“Three,” she corrected. “We spoke that time you came to New York to visit him.”
“One word, Layla. You said hello in passing.”
“And you acknowledged it by bobbing your head and grunting.”
“That’s not exactly speaking.”
“I was civil,” she said, trying to right herself in the cart, wishing Arlo would help her out so she wouldn’t look quite so undignified. But he was standing back, arms folded across his chest, the way he’d always done when they’d argued. So, was he expecting this to turn into an argument? “And in a hurry.”
“You
