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Grinding his teeth together, Jake shook his head, as if that could somehow free his mind from the grip of too many deliciously tempting images. But as he’d told Oz—was it really only three days ago?—that wasn’t who he was. Not any more.
Not since Helen’s death, and Brady’s appearance. Not since this whole past horrific year.
‘Actually, quite the opposite.’
He was vaguely aware of Flávia’s response. Albeit through a slight haze.
‘Bushmasters are actually very gentle, sensitive and fragile animals. If you approach them correctly, then they rarely harm. But their backs are like glass, and if you don’t handle them with care they can, quite literally, break their spines twisting away from you. It has always devastated me to think that in the herpetologist Raymond Ditmar’s books from the 1920s and ’30s, the suggested method of catching snakes was to noose them from a safe distance. But for the delicate bushmaster, this will actually snap their backbones.’
A couple of the diners frowned.
‘Nonetheless,’ one of them persisted, ‘lab cloning must be preferable, on the basis that even mishandling the tiny pot of venom extracted from these vipers of yours could kill you, even by simply getting a splash on your skin.’
‘Let me tell you a not-so-secret fact about me.’ Flávia smiled, and Jake thought that perhaps it was only him who could tell that it was just a little too tight at the corners of her mouth to be as genuine and open as everyone else seemed to think. ‘My whole reason for moving into the venom-therapy world of cancer cures was not to save humans, but to save snakes.’
‘I don’t follow?’ another diner pressed, clearly as enthralled as the rest.
And who could blame them—he wasn’t far behind them. For all his self-recriminations.
‘Don’t misunderstand me,’ Flávia pressed on. ‘I love the thought of being able to come up with a solution that halts the metastasis in cancers. But what truly drives me is the knowledge that the bushmasters and others are now listed as vulnerable, because as we humans decimate their natural habitats in the Atlantic Forest, their populations have plummeted.’
‘Surely, all the more reason to reverse-engineer a synthetic toxin?’
Flávia’s smile brightened even further, and once again, Jake was convinced that only he felt its sharpness cutting through the air.
‘Or perhaps an opportunity to educate people to take more care of these snakes. It might not be perfect that we have to prove these animals could save human lives in order for humans to start trying to save the animals in turn, but it’s a good place to start.’
And it was in that moment that Jake grasped the depth of his peril. Because Flávia Maura and her obsession for her work was well and truly under his skin. Where it simply couldn’t be.
Where he couldn’t let it be.
He had no room in his life for anything but Brady and his career. Not that it was love—he knew that wasn’t possible, though perhaps he might have better understood such an emotion if his own parents had set any kind of example of a caring, loving marriage. No, his parents had ensured that emotions weren’t an affliction from which he was ever likely to suffer. But he had responsibilities nonetheless. Like work, and his nephew. He had to get them both back on track. This inconvenient attraction to Flávia Maura couldn’t get in the way of that. It wouldn’t. He refused to allow it.
‘You look a million miles away.’ Her gentle voice tugged him back into the room. And he had no idea
for how long he’d been distracted, but her previously enraptured audience was now, finally, engaging in conversations of their own.
‘Or are you only six thousand miles away?’ she added. ‘Back in London, perhaps? A girlfriend?’
What did it say about him that he was already searching her tone for something approaching...disappointment?
He shouldn’t bite. It made no difference.
‘No girlfriend.’ He told himself he wasn’t still searching for her reaction.
Good thing, too, since she kept her tone excruciatingly neutral.
‘Ah. You just seemed distracted. Or bored.’ Her expression pulled suddenly tight, and her cheeks flushed a dark pink. ‘Meu Deus, have I been rambling too much about the rainforest? Everyone tells me I do that.’
‘No.’ He reached to place his hand on hers before he could stop himself, his whole body jarring as though from a jolt of electricity at the contact. And by the way Flávia was staring down at it, her entire body now stiff, she was equally shocked. ‘Absolutely not. Talking to you has been even more interesting than I had imagined it would be.’
He should stop there. Anything more wasn’t her business. It wasn’t anybody’s business, ever. But especially not when they were at a table with ten of their colleagues, even if those colleagues were beginning to move around now that the meal was over, all engrossed in their own conversations.
‘But... I really ought to go and check on something. Will you excuse me?’
Setting his napkin on the table, Jake stood abruptly. He really did need to go and check on Brady, even if it was just a phone call to Patricia, the retired nurse the hospital had engaged as a quasi nanny for this teaching programme, back in the accommodation the hospital had also provided.
Yet, more than that, Jake needed a reason to put a bit of distance between himself and Flávia Maura.
