The Stranger's Secret

‘I’m not—’

‘In fact, there’s a dance in the village hall this weekend—’

‘Look, I’m sorry to interrupt this cosy chat,’ Jess said caustically, ‘but some of us have work to do. Goodbye, Dr Dunbar.’ She didn’t extend a hand to him but kept both fixed firmly on her crutches. ‘I’d like to say it’s been a pleasure meeting you, but in the circumstances I don’t think that would be appropriate, do you?’

‘Goodbye?’ he echoed. ‘But—’

‘Goodbye, Dr Dunbar,’ she repeated, and before he could stop her she’d turned and hopped with as much dignity as she could along to her consulting room.

The nerve of the man—the sheer unmitigated gall! Laughing and joking with Tracy—discussing the dance which was going to be held in the village hall on Saturday. Well, to be fair, Tracy had done most of the laughing and joking, but that didn’t alter the fact that she wouldn’t be able to do any dancing for the next three months. And whose fault was that? Ezra’s!

Just as it was also his fault that by the end of her surgery she felt like a washed-out rag. Ten patients—that’s all she’d seen. Ten patients who’d been suffering from nothing more challenging than the usual collection of winter coughs and colds, and yet by the time they’d all gone her head was throbbing quite as badly as her leg.

So the last person she wanted to see in the waiting room was Ezra Dunbar.

‘Now, before you chew my head off,’ he began, getting quickly to his feet as he saw the martial glint in her eye. ‘I’m here solely because I thought you might appreciate a lift home, rather than having to wait for a taxi.’

‘I don’t need—’

‘No, I know you don’t,’ he interrupted. ‘But just humour me this once, please, Jess, hmm?’

And because she felt so wretched she feebly allowed him to drive her home, and made only a token protest when he insisted on helping her inside.

But the minute he’d flicked on the sitting-room light and ushered her towards a chair, she turned to him firmly. ‘I’ll say goodnight, then.’

To her surprise, he didn’t go. Instead, he stared round the room, then back at her with a frown. ‘Isn’t there anybody I can call to come over and stay with you?’

‘I don’t need anybody,’ she insisted. ‘You can see for yourself that my house has no stairs, and as all I want to do is go to bed—’

‘Your clothes—what about your clothes?’ he demanded, his eyes taking in her green sweater and the remnants of her trousers. ‘How are you going to get them off?’

‘The same way I put them on,’ she replied dismissively, only to see his frown increase. ‘Look, I’ll be all right.’

‘You won’t. Oh, I don’t mean simply tonight,’ he continued as she tried to interrupt. ‘I mean tomorrow, and the day after that. Jess, you’re going to be in plaster for a minimum of eight weeks. You might just be able to do your surgeries, but how are you going to do any home visits or night calls when you can’t drive?’

‘I’ll get a locum to cover the nights and home visits.’

‘And until he or she arrives, how are you planning on getting to your patients—by hopping or crawling?’

Ezra was right. If she couldn’t drive there was no way she was going to be able to cope. And then suddenly it hit her. She had the answer standing right in front of her. All six feet two of him.

‘You could drive me about.’

‘I could what?’ he gasped.

‘You’re here on holiday,’ she continued quickly. ‘You could drive me to my home visits and out to any night calls until I get a locum.’

‘Jess—’

‘I’m not asking you to do anything medical—’

‘Just as well because I wouldn’t do it,’ he retorted. ‘No, Jess. No way.’

He meant it—she could see that—but desperate situations called for desperate measures, and she drew herself up to her full five feet two inches and took a deep breath.

‘OK, I’ve tried asking, and now I’m telling. You’ve admitted the accident was your fault so you owe me. Either you agree to chauffeur me around or…or I go straight to PC Inglis, and accuse you of dangerous driving.’

‘That‘s…that’s blackmail!’ he spluttered, and she coloured.

‘I haven’t got any choice—can’t you see that? The people here need me, and everybody else on the island is either too young, or too old, or they’ve got full-time jobs. Only you are here on holiday.’

He stared back at her impotently. He could tell her to go to hell. He could say he didn’t give a damn if she spoke to the chief constable of the area himself, but if she called in the police questions would be asked. Questions about where he’d come from and what he was doing here. And everything would come out. Every last, sorry detail. There was nothing he could do but agree to her suggestion, but that didn’t mean he had to like it, or that he couldn’t make one last attempt to dissuade her.

‘And what if I am a drug dealer, like Wattie Hope said, or an axe murderer?’

Heavens, but he looked angry enough at the moment to be either, she thought as she stared up at him. And she couldn’t really blame him. What she was doing was unforgivable.

‘I’ll…I’ll risk it,’ she said. He didn’t reply. He simply turned on his heel and headed for her front door, and desperately she hopped after him. ‘Look, I’m sorry. I know what I’m doing is wrong, and I promise I’ll phone the agency about a locum first thing tomorrow—’

She was talking to thin air, and as she listened to the sound of his footsteps going down the gravel path she suddenly felt an overwhelming desire to burst into tears. Which was crazy.

Dammit, he owed her a favour. OK, so maybe she shouldn’t have blackmailed him into agreeing to it, but he did owe her. And just because he obviously thought she was the lowest form of pond life, that was no reason for her to get upset.

She was home, wasn’t she? Home in the house where she’d been born. Home with all her familiar things. OK, so her leg—not to mention every other bone in her body—hurt like hell, but that didn’t explain why she should suddenly feel so lost and lonely.

And it sure as heck didn’t explain why her heart should lift when her front door was suddenly thrown open again and Ezra reappeared.

‘I can’t do it,’ he announced without preamble. ‘You might be the most manipulative, stubbornly vexatious woman it’s ever been my misfortune to meet, but I can’t leave you here on your own. You could collapse in the middle of the night—’

‘I won’t—and if I do it’s not your problem,’ she pointed out.

‘Of course it’s my problem,’ he flared. ‘You wouldn’t be in this mess if it wasn’t for me, and if you’re too stupid and pigheaded to stay in hospital there’s only one thing I can do. I’ll have to stay.’

‘Stay?’ she echoed faintly.

‘And not just for tonight,’ he fumed. ‘If you insist on me being at your beck and call twenty-four hours a day I’m going to have to move in with you until you get a locum.’

Jess’s mouth opened and closed soundlessly, then she found her voice. ‘But it could take me a week to organise a locum!’

His lip curled grimly. ‘You’re the blackmailer. You tell me what other alternative there is?’

To her acute dismay Jess realised there wasn’t one. His cottage was on the far west side of the island and if she got an emergency call during the night he’d have to get up, get dressed, drive down, pick her up—

‘And lose vital, potentially life-threatening minutes in the process.’ Ezra nodded, obviously reading her mind. ‘So would you care to reconsider your plan?’

She wanted to—oh, boy, did she want to. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t abandon her patients, leaving them with no emergency cover or home visits.

‘No, I don’t want to reconsider,’ she replied tightly. ‘Believe me, the thought of you living here doesn’t exactly fill me with unmitigated joy either, but right now it looks as though I’m stuck with you, Dr Dunbar.’

And she was stuck with him, she thought after she’d shown him through to the spare room then retreated thankfully to her own bedroom. Stuck with the most bossy, self-opinionated man she’d ever had the misfortune to meet. Stuck with a complete stranger who could have been anyone, despite his declaration that he’d once been a doctor.

Yet, as she began undressing, and heard him moving about in the room next to hers, she realised that she had that odd feeling of security again.

And she was still mad.

CHAPTER TWO

IT WAS the sunlight streaming through her bedroom window which first told Jess something was wrong.

For a start it should be dark. Greensay was situated off the far west coast of Scotland and it never became fully light in January until well after nine o’clock, so if the sun was shining…

Quickly she reached for her bedside clock, remembered her plastered leg too late, and with a yelp of pain knocked the clock. But not before she’d seen the time. One o’clock. Lunchtime. Which could only mean some officious, overbearing swine had sneaked into her room during the night and switched off her alarm.

The same overbearing, officious swine whose dark head had just appeared round her bedroom door.

‘Now, before you blow a fuse,’ Ezra declared, holding up his hands defensively as she eased herself upright, a look of fury plain upon her face, ‘it was obvious you needed sleep—’

‘And what about my morning surgery?’ she exclaimed, pushing her tangled hair back out of her eyes and wincing as her fingers caught the bruise on her forehead. ‘My poor patients, left wondering where I was—’

‘They weren’t. I told Tracy to put a notice on the health-centre door, explaining what had happened and advising anyone with worrying symptoms to contact the Sinclair Memorial.’

She all but ground her teeth. ‘Dr Dunbar—’

‘The name’s Ezra.’

‘Tracy doesn’t have the authority to cancel anything. She only joined my practice four months ago. Cath Stewart’s my senior receptionist and practice nurse.’

‘I wondered about that,’ he observed. ‘The diamond stud in her nose and everything.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with the stud,’ she retorted, conveniently forgetting her own initial misgivings when she’d seen it. ‘It’s fashionable, modern. And how Tracy dresses is none of your damn business anyway,’ she added for good measure.

He stared at her for a second, then sighed heavily. ‘Topsy.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Forget it. Jess, a tired doctor is a careless doctor. A tired doctor who is also in pain is a menace.’

‘I’m not in pain,’ she lied.

His eyebrows rose. ‘No? Then lunch will be ready in ten minutes. No doubt you’ll be able to get up, dressed and along to the kitchen by then.’

And he went. Without giving her the chance to hurl something harder than her voice at him, he just upped and went.

Of all the interfering, arrogant, pompous…! There was no limit to the home truths she intended throwing at him, but first she had to get out of bed and dressed.

Well, she’d managed to get undressed and into bed last night, she told herself as she pulled back the duvet and stared dubiously at her plastered leg. How hard could it be to do it in reverse?

Tear-blindingly, excruciatingly hard was the answer.

‘Don’t say a word,’ she ordered when she finally made it to the kitchen more than half an hour later. ‘Not one single solitary one, OK?’

Obediently Ezra lifted the pan of potatoes off the hob and drained them. ‘It’s frozen fish, potatoes and peas for lunch. Your freezer needs restocking.’

She knew it did. In fact, she’d intended going shopping yesterday but it hardly seemed tactful to point out to him why she hadn’t been able to do it. Especially when he was cooking for her.

‘Who—or what—is Topsy?’ she said instead when he put her lunch down in front of her.

‘A neighbour’s cat in London.’

Which made absolutely no sense at all to her, Ezra realised as he began washing the pots, but perfect sense to him.

Topsy and Jess Arden had a lot in common. Both were red-haired, green-eyed and fiercely independent. Both hissed and spat fire whenever they thought anyone was trying to invade their space. Not that he’d tried invading Topsy’s space often. He preferred his hands in one piece. And he most certainly didn’t intend trying it with Jess Arden.

Lord, but she was a firebrand and a half. Attractive, he supposed, if your taste ran to shoulder-length, curly red hair and eyes which sparkled like emeralds. Sassy and spunky too, but he’d never been attracted to redheads, and certainly not to redheads who were stubborn, opinionated and pig-headed. And Jess Arden was one pigheaded lady.

‘OK, I’m ready to go.’

He turned in surprise and gave her suspiciously clean plate a very hard stare. ‘Go where?’

‘I may have missed my morning surgery, but I have absolutely no intention of missing any home visits or my evening surgery.’

Ezra reached for a towel to dry his hands. ‘I don’t suppose there’s any point in me trying to talk you out of it, is there? No, I didn’t think there was,’ he sighed when she pointedly lifted her medical bag. ‘Have you taken your painkillers?’

‘Of course,’ she replied quickly. Much too quickly, he thought, but before he could press her she continued, ‘So, are we going, or what?’

He would have preferred the ‘or what’ if it meant her returning to bed and staying there, but he also knew that nothing short of a padlock and chain would have kept Jess Arden in her bed.

Actually, the image held a certain appeal, he decided grimly as he followed her out of the house. Especially if he could have arranged to have her fed on nothing but bread and water for a couple of weeks. Perhaps that would teach her the perils of blackmailing someone, and it might even—though he very much doubted it—teach her some sense.

‘I’ll have to leave you at your surgery for a little while,’ he declared after he’d helped her into his car. ‘I’m not sure how long I’ll be—’

‘But you agreed to chauffeur me about,’ Jess protested. ‘We had a deal—’

‘Which I fully intend to keep,’ he interrupted, his voice clipped, ‘but unless you want me arrested for driving an unroadworthy vehicle, I suggest I get my car repaired first.’

She bit her lip. ‘Oh. I see. I’m sorry,’ she added belatedly.

He didn’t reply. In fact, he didn’t say anything at all during the drive down to Inverlairg, which left her feeling angry, and guilty, and confused, all at the same time.

The trouble was, she wasn’t used to being fussed over. She was used to making her own decisions, and although part of her knew her leg wouldn’t have been broken if it hadn’t been for him, the other part also knew he hadn’t needed to make her lunch or to switch off her alarm to let her get some sleep. And how had she repaid him? By sounding like a nagging harpy, that was how.

She would just have to apologise to him again properly, she decided when he left her outside the health centre and drove away without a backward glance. And then again perhaps she wouldn’t, she thought when she saw the notice taped to the door, proclaiming that all medical services were suspended until further notice.

‘I’m sure Dr Dunbar meant it for the best, Jess,’ Cath declared when she bore the offending notice into the surgery. ‘He probably thought—as we all did—that you’d be taking a few days off.’

‘Well, you all thought wrong,’ Jess replied as evenly as she could. ‘Dr Dunbar and I have had a full and frank discussion.’ Well, that was one way of putting it, she thought, remembering her threat of police action. ‘And he has kindly volunteered to chauffeur me around until I can get a locum, so it’s business as usual, starting with my home visits this afternoon and evening surgery tonight.’

‘But what about your night calls?’ the receptionist protested. ‘I can do some for you—after ten years as a theatre sister at the Sinclair Memorial I’ve certainly got the experience—but there’s a limit to what I’d feel happy about treating on my own.’

To her acute annoyance Jess felt her cheeks beginning to heat up. ‘Dr Dunbar has also volunteered to stay at my cottage so he can drive me to any night-time emergencies.’

Cath’s eyes opened very wide, then a slow grin spread across her face. ‘I can just imagine what Wattie Hope is going to make of that arrangement!’

‘Cath—’

‘Tracy said he reminded her of a pirate. All dark and bearded and mysterious.’

‘Personally, I’ve always thought men with beards have something to hide,’ Jess declared dampeningly.

‘Tracy also said he wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. So do you reckon he’s single, married or divorced?’

‘I’ve no idea, and less interest,’ Jess replied dismissively. ‘And I thought Tracy was dating Danny Hislop anyway?’ she added with irritation, only to be angry with herself for being irritated.

‘She is,’ Cath observed, shooting her a puzzled glance. ‘But she’s known him since they were kids, whereas Ezra…Well, he’s new, different.’

Oh, he was different, all right. Bossy, opinionated—a human steamroller. And yet he could also be very kind, Jess was forced to admit when she suddenly remembered what was inside her medical bag.

Gingerly she delved into it and extracted a soggy package. ‘Cath, could you get rid of this for me, please?’

Her receptionist wrinkled her nose. ‘It smells like fish.’

‘Fish, potatoes and peas, to be exact. Dr Dunbar made me lunch, but I felt too queasy to eat it.’

‘And you hid it?’ Cath laughed. ‘Boy, this must be some man if you didn’t want to risk offending him!’

‘It wasn’t that—well, it was in a way—but I didn’t—I mean, I wasn’t…’ Cath’s brown eyes were dancing, and Jess scowled. ‘Look, could you just get rid of it, please, while I phone the medical agency about a locum?’

But by the time Jess had finished speaking to the agency she heartily wished that someone—or something—could have got rid of Ezra Dunbar before he’d ever set foot on Greensay. Oh, the agency was very nice, very sympathetic, but the minute she’d told them where her practice was, the excuses had begun. January was a difficult month for locums, trainees didn’t like being sent to remote areas, it was all rather short notice. After fifteen minutes of begging and pleading, the best she could extract from them was the promise of a locum in five weeks.

‘If Dr Dunbar’s as wonderful as Tracy says, I’d just sit back and enjoy it,’ Cath replied when Jess told her. ‘After all, it’s not every day a handsome pirate comes to the rescue of a damsel in distress, takes her home and then cooks for her!’

And it wasn’t every day that Jess saw her happily married forty-year-old receptionist light up like a beacon, but she did just that when the door to the health centre opened and Ezra appeared.

Good grief, anyone would think he was a film star, Jess thought with disgust. OK, so he was six feet two inches tall, with thick black hair, and had rather nice grey eyes when he smiled. And, OK, his voice was deep and warm, and oddly comforting when he wasn’t shouting at you, but when all was said and done he was just a man. And yet now, not only had Tracy gone all dreamy-eyed over him, Cath clearly thought he was Mr Wonderful, too.

Irritably she picked up the list detailing requests for home visits and frowned when she scanned it. ‘Mairi Morrison wants a home visit?’

‘Actually, it was her neighbour, Grace Henderson, who asked if you could drop by,’ Cath replied. ‘Apparently she’s a bit worried about her.’

Jess’s frown deepened. Grace must be worried if she was prepared to risk incurring Mairi’s wrath by asking for a home visit on her behalf. There wasn’t a person on Greensay who didn’t know that Mairi never asked for or expected help from anyone.

‘Something wrong?’ Ezra asked as she grasped her crutches.

‘Maybe—I don’t know,’ she replied absently, then pulled herself together. ‘My first call is to Harbour Road. Toby Ralston—four years old—juvenile arthritis. His parents initially thought he had meningitis. I confess I did, too, when they called me out in the middle of the night and I discovered his temperature was over 39°C, and he had stiffness in his joints and a rash.’

‘Systemic juvenile arthritis, then, affecting the small joints rather than pauciarticular or polyarticular arthritis?’ he said, then smiled slightly as she stared at him in surprise. ‘I did tell you I used to be a doctor, remember?’

He had, and she’d believed him—of course she had—but she’d have been a fool if a little part of her hadn’t wondered about his qualifications. She wasn’t wondering any more.

‘I’ve got him on non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs to relieve the pain and swelling, but they’re not working very well,’ she continued once Ezra had stowed her medical bag in the boot of his car and they were driving down the narrow streets from the health centre towards the whitewashed houses that lined the harbour. ‘I suppose I could start him on corticosteroids but…’

‘You’re reluctant to do so because of his age.’ Ezra nodded. ‘I’d try to keep it under control for the moment. Most children recover from juvenile arthritis within a few years and are left with little or no disability. Only a very small minority go on to develop an adult form of arthritis.’

She’d been telling Toby’s parents that for weeks, but the minute Simon and Elspeth had heard the word ‘arthritis’ they’d instantly assumed their son would be crippled for life, and nothing she’d said had persuaded them otherwise. Which was why, when Ezra drew his car to a halt outside the Ralstons’ home, she found herself turning to him and saying on impulse, ‘Would you like to come in—see him yourself?’

‘I’m not a doctor any more.’

‘I know, but I wondered—’

‘No!’ He bit his lip as she stared up at him, startled by his vehemence. ‘No,’ he repeated more evenly. ‘I’ll wait outside in the car if you don’t mind.’

Jess didn’t mind at all. It wasn’t as though she didn’t know what was wrong with Toby, but what really intrigued her was why Ezra had reacted as he had. OK, so he didn’t practise medicine any more but he’d seemed not only angered by her suggestion but also strangely upset by it.

It didn’t make any sense, but she had no time to think about it. Elspeth was already on the doorstep and Toby was bouncing towards her, his white-blond hair gleaming in the sunlight, his large blue eyes alert and full of mischief.

‘It’s his chest, Doctor,’ Elspeth explained, ushering her son back into the sitting room, concern plain on her face. ‘He got up this morning with the most dreadful cold, and I know we have to be careful, what with his condition and everything.’

Jess would have been amazed if Toby’s abundantly runny nose had meant anything other than one of the many colds which were plaguing the islanders this winter, and a quick check with her stethoscope revealed she was right.

‘You don’t think he needs a chest X-ray, then?’ Elspeth said after Jess had given her the good news. ‘Or perhaps some antibiotics?’

‘Elspeth, he has a cold,’ Jess said firmly. ‘If I give him antibiotics every time he’s snuffly, they won’t work when he really needs them. How’s the physiotherapy going?’ she continued, determinedly changing the subject.

‘All right, I guess. He’s not very happy about the night splints.’

Which meant he probably wasn’t wearing them, Jess thought with a deep sigh. ‘Elspeth, you know he has to wear them in bed, whether he wants to or not. The physiotherapy he’s getting will maintain muscle strength and joint mobility, but the splints are equally important to prevent joint deformity.’

‘I suppose so,’ the woman muttered. ‘I still don’t know how he’s got this juvenile arthritis. Simon’s phoned round all our relatives—even contacted his uncle in Australia—but none of them can remember anybody in the family ever having had it.’

‘Elspeth, I only said it might be inherited,’ Jess reminded her. ‘The initial joint inflammation can also be triggered by a viral infection, but the truth is we really don’t know why some children are affected and others aren’t. But as I told you before, there’s every chance he’ll grow out of it.’