The flight over to Argentina wasn’t long, but it definitely gave me too much time to think. Some of the other aid workers chatted quietly around me, but I had been on one too many of these trips by now, and I knew that the likelihood that I would be placed near any of these people was pretty low. They’d spread us out in the affected areas, putting us together with the guys who were already on the ground there. I’d rather save my small-talk for the team I would actually be working with.

I tried to sleep, but my mind felt curiously wired. All I could think about was my final afternoon at work. I’d received the call from Tanner, letting me know about the aid flights and giving me a briefing on the work I’d be assigned to down in Argentina. Then, as I’d been leaving the office . . .

I pulled open the door to my office, a stack of papers in my hand for Jeri—instructions for while I was gone, among other things—and nearly bumped headlong into another of those couriers. I froze, surprised to see him standing there. He held up a single rose, with the standard envelope.

I shook my head. “I don’t have time for this right now,” I muttered under my breath. I grabbed the flower and envelope from the bewildered guy’s hand, quickly scrawling my signature on the courier’s clipboard just so I could get the guy out of there.

Then, without even looking at what was in the envelope, I dropped the whole thing in the trashcan by Jeri’s desk. The flower would have wilted by the time I got back, anyway.

I thrust the paperwork at Jeri as I made my way out. “You know what to do,” I told her.

She glanced towards her trashcan for a moment, looking like she wanted to say something. But finally, she just nodded. “Good luck,” she said.

I felt a faint regret at the fact that I hadn’t even read Oliver’s note. I hadn’t even messaged him to let him know that I was going to be out of the country.

But why should I do that? We weren’t in a relationship; I had made it clear that I wanted nothing more to do with him. Besides, I was sure Jeri would be all too happy to tell his messengers that I wouldn’t be able to receive his silly roses and poems for the foreseeable future.

In fact, this trip couldn’t have come at a more perfect time. I welcomed the chance to get away from the city and Oliver. I would have no choice but to focus on the work that I was doing in Argentina, without allowing myself to be distracted by silly thoughts about potential romance. (As though Oliver might ever be capable of romance—romance involved caring about another person, and after all, he’d shown that he wasn’t capable of that!)

Sure enough, from the moment we landed, I had no more time to think about him. As I’d suspected, we were all split up into different transports which took us deep into the countryside.

“Peoria—as you might guess from its name—has never been a particularly wealthy town,” our driver, Peter, told us as he navigated potholes and patches of slippery, dark mud along the road. “One of the landslides hit the town’s school head-on, and a number of the houses were destroyed as well. There’s no vehicular access into the town—we’ll get as close as we can—about an hour’s drive away—and get in a helicopter to airlift the two of you in.”

“Great, more flying,” Anne, one of the other volunteers in my transport muttered. She’d already complained about feeling airsick from the flight in, which had been pretty bumpy towards the end, as we’d circled through clouds looking for a break in the weather so that we could land.

I gave her a sympathetic smile and turned back to Peter. “So we’ll be working on rebuilding homes first?” I asked.

He nodded at me. “The region is important to the Argentinian economy, because although the towns themselves have never been particularly wealthy, there are a lot of resources—mainly different types of ores—that come from the area, in addition to a certain amount of farming and cattle-herding.” He paused as he navigated a particularly washed-out section. “The truth is, most of the mines have probably collapsed or flooded as well, but the people are hopeful . . .”

I grimaced. “Could we pump the excess water out of the flooded mines?” I asked.

“A good suggestion, but unfortunately, it would take a lot of aid money to do that,” Peter said. He glanced over at me, giving a wry smile. “I can practically see you filling out the funding paperwork in your mind. But to be honest, I’m sure the people of Argentina as a whole are better served with the things that Le Monde Ensemble has already signed off on: water, food, et cetera.”

“Right,” I sighed. There was a limit to what we could do—it was impossible to fix everything using our aid dollars, not when there were other disasters happening every day. Pumping water out of mines might be within our financial capabilities at the moment, but if we put all our aid money towards that, it would be impossible to help out the next victims of disaster, whoever they might be. We had to draw the line somewhere.

We finally reached Peoria and were split further into separate teams, each paired with one of the guys who had been there since the beginning.

“Javier, was it?” I asked my partner, reaching out to shake his hand. He had a firm, if slightly dirty grip, and he used his other hand to wipe sweat off his brow.

“Javier,” he confirmed. “And you must be Ms. Sophia Boutelle. It’s an honor to work with you.”

I laughed and shook my head. “Come on, none of that. It’s just as much an honor to work with you—I hear you’re the de facto leader?”

Javier shrugged modestly. “That’s only because I speak better Spanish than the rest of them,” he said, his eyes twinkling, but I knew it was something more than that. I wished I could look him up and see who he really was. I had a feeling from the way that he was expertly working to clear the road, working tirelessly and with no complaints, that this definitely wasn’t the first time he’d been involved in an aid mission.

Of course, they wouldn’t have put him in this area if it were. I gave myself a little mental kick. What was with me these days? It was as though all of a sudden, a sexy man with muscles was enough to sidetrack my thoughts entirely.

“So, we’re clearing the road?” I asked him, trying to focus.

Javier nodded. “But don’t worry about making it perfect. The main goal at the moment is to be able to get Jeeps in here with water and more volunteers,” he said. He lowered his voice. “And to take out the dead. There’s no place to bury them here; the ground is too soft. The last thing we need is to have a pile of rotting corpses at the edge of town.”

I grimaced at the grim picture and started wordlessly clearing the road alongside him, tugging aside branches and hauling off the largest of the rocks.

“So, Sophia Boutelle,” Javier said, taking a sip of water as we took one of our rare breaks. He looked over at me, raising an eyebrow. “I didn’t realize that you still got involved on the ground-level of these sorts of things. Mud is a good look for you.”

I laughed in surprise and self-consciously rubbed at a streak of mud that I knew was smeared across my cheek. I probably only made it worse, though, given how grubby my hands were. “If you’re not willing to do the dirty work, then how could you ever convince anyone else to work for you?” I asked him philosophically.

Javier nodded in approval and glanced around. “This is one of the worst tragedies I’ve ever been involved in,” he admitted quietly. “When we first got here, it was like the whole village was in shock. Old women wailing about their children and their grandchildren. Children wandering around with big eyes full of horror. Even the dogs were quiet and cowering.”

I swallowed hard, just imagining it. “This is one of the worst assignments I’ve been on too,” I told him. “Not the worst, I don’t think. But after a certain point, horror doesn’t have a magnitude, does it?”

Javier shrugged. “I’d be here helping them even if I didn’t know their stories,” he said. “But knowing their stories, knowing their pain, that adds such a different dimension to what we’re doing here.”

I thought back to what Oliver had said about helping people I didn’t even know, and wondered how much of those feelings of his were tied up in the same thing. But Oliver wasn’t like Javier; he didn’t come to these places to meet the people and learn their stories. I looked around at the work we’d been doing that afternoon. We’d actually managed to clear a sizeable swath of the road together, and I was impressed. But there was still a long way to go.

The truth of it was I couldn’t imagine Oliver in this sort of environment.

At the end of the day, when Javier invited everyone working on the project out for a meal, we all went, exhausted though we might be. The other team had managed to clear enough of the road at the far side of the village that we could get out to the next town over, which had miraculously been spared from the landslides that most of the other towns in the region had been hit with. There were sure signs of flooding and a certain somber mood about the place, but for now, at least, their food stores were holding out, at least enough to provide us with a simple dinner.

It was good to get to know the team better too, but I could feel myself gravitating towards Javier as the night went on, and not just because he was sitting directly beside me.

“So how did you get down here anyway?” Javier asked, turning toward me.

I grinned. “I knew the pilot,” I admitted. “I worked with Tanner on a couple other aid missions in the past. I called him as soon as I saw the news. How about you?”

“I happened to be in Argentina already,” Javier told me. “I was in Buenos Aires for a seminar. As soon as I heard what was happening, I cancelled the rest of my talks and found my way here.”

“What was your seminar about?” I asked curiously.

“In my ‘real life’ I’m an architect,” Javier said, shrugging. “But I blur the line between aid work and ‘real life,’ I suppose. I spent most of last year in Central Asia helping build cheap but sustainable buildings on the outskirts of some of the capital cities to house the major influx of people who are moving into the cities to be better connected to the rest of the world.” He frowned. “It’s actually a very interesting project because, for many of them, they don’t really want to give up the traditional style of living—in fact, they’re very proud of where they’ve come from. But they recognize the perks of cellphones and the other trappings of the Western world.”

“Sounds really interesting,” I said. Again, not something that I could picture Oliver ever being involved in. “But you gave all of that up to come down to Argentina?”

Javier laughed. “I wasn’t planning on staying for any length of time,” he said. “My family lives in Santiago, so I came back to visit them. While I was over here anyway, it seemed like a matter of course for me to agree to be part of the seminar in Buenos Aires. Now, I’m not sure how long I’ll be down here.” He frowned. “It’s difficult to leave projects like these. I know that I’m doing meaningful work in Asia as well. But down here, it just seems so much more tangible.”

“I think I know what you mean,” I said. “Obviously Le Monde Ensemble does a lot of good, but it’s sometimes difficult to feel like I’m actively involved in changing lives when I’m cooped up in an office in New York City signing paperwork all day. Down here, I can see the progress that we made today and I know that the things we’ll be doing in the coming weeks—building houses, digging wells, all of that—will immediately improve these people’s lives.”

“Exactly,” Javier said. “Obviously the people I’m building these apartment complexes for need housing too, but if I weren’t there to construct the buildings, they would find other ways. I mean, in Mongolia, there are miles and miles and miles of sprawling ger—or yurt—districts around Ulaanbaatar. There’s pollution and unhealthy living conditions—that’s why I’m there. But it’s nothing as dire as this.”

He paused. “To be honest, I’m a little skeptical about going back to that. The company that I’ve been working for just got bought out by some bigger company—I’m sure you know what that means for us. The influx of funding will definitely be a good thing, but I’m sort of worried about what kinds of changes are going to come to the organization of things. I’ve had pretty free reign up until now, and I’ve been able to help people how I see fit. I’m not sure some corporation is going to understand things the same way.”

“Yeah, that makes sense,” I said, nodding and remembering suddenly what Oliver had said about Mongolia and mining ties to Australia. I shook my head; it was probably just coincidence that the same country had come up again in conversation. It wasn’t a sign of anything.

“I think Harrison is about to fall asleep at the table,” Javier said, bringing me back to the present and nodding at one of our colleagues.

I laughed and stood up, clapping my hands. “All right, I think I have to go to sleep,” I announced. “Who wants to drive back with me?”

But I couldn’t resist giving Javier a lingering, considering look as I got into one of the vehicles. He and I had a lot of common, I could already tell. On paper, he was much more my type than someone like Oliver. And he was sexy. He didn’t strike me as a bookish architect, that was for sure.

I felt something stir in my core and hurriedly pushed it down. We were coworkers, and the last thing I needed was to make things awkward by flinging myself at him, especially as just a palate-cleanser. Not that I needed a palate-cleanser. Oliver and I were never in a relationship, after all.

For a moment, I let my mind trail back to the sex in the cellar, and I felt a hot flush of shame come over me. Had I really been so unable to help myself?

I was glad to fall into a deep, dreamless sleep nearly the moment my head touched the pillow. I didn’t have the energy to keep tossing around thoughts of romance in my head.