The Stranger's Secret. Maggie Kingsley

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      ‘Resting them, be damned. Jess, this arrangement we’ve got—it isn’t working.’

      ‘Of course it’s working,’ she exclaimed, panic plain on her face. ‘OK, so maybe we need to iron out one or two creases—’

      ‘You’re going to kill yourself if you go on like this,’ he said bluntly. ‘You’re not taking your painkillers—’

      ‘I am!’ she protested. ‘Just because you haven’t seen me—’

      ‘Jess, I know exactly how many you’ve taken,’ he interrupted, pulling her bottle of pills out of his pocket and waving them under her nose. ‘Two, that’s all, and you took those last night.’

      She bit her lip. ‘I can’t take too many—you know I can’t. They fuddle your brains, make you sleepy.’

      ‘Jess—’

      ‘I know what you’re going to say—that I should close the surgery until I can get a locum—but the agency can’t get me anyone for five weeks—’

      ‘Five weeks!’ he repeated in horror, and she groaned inwardly.

      She’d meant to break the news to him gently, not spring it on him like this, but it was too late now.

      ‘It’s an awful lot longer than I expected, too,’ she said, ‘but I can’t—and won’t—ask my patients to travel to the mainland, so I have to keep on working—can’t you see that?’

      He could, and the trouble was he could also see an obvious solution to her problem, but it was a solution he didn’t want to suggest. A year ago he’d vowed never to set foot in any medical establishment again unless he was a patient. Hell, that was why he’d come to Greensay, for anonymity, and yet…

      Look at her, his mind urged. Hell, the girl’s in pain. It’s your fault, and if you can do even a little to help, you have to.

      He cleared his throat, knowing he was undoubtedly going to regret what he was about to say, but seeing no other alternative.

      ‘Jess, I can’t offer to do your home visits and night calls—I wouldn’t feel comfortable, not knowing any of your patients’ medical histories—but would it help if I shared your surgeries until your locum arrives?’

      She stared at him in amazement. Would it help? It was an offer to die for.

      ‘I—I don’t know what to say,’ she stammered.

      ‘How about “Yes, please, Ezra” and “Thank you?”’ he replied, forcing a smile to his lips.

      ‘Yes, for sure, but a mere thank you…’ She shook her head. ‘Ezra, I know this isn’t how you planned on spending your holiday. You probably came here to paint, or to write, or something.’ She paused, giving him the chance to explain, but he didn’t. ‘I guess what I’m trying to say is how very grateful I am, and…’ To her dismay tears filled her eyes and she blinked them away quickly. ‘I’ll be forever in your debt.’

      Ezra groaned inwardly as he saw the tears. Jess was a spunky, stroppy, irritating lady, and the last thing he wanted was to see she could be vulnerable, too.

      Vulnerable meant him noticing how soft and husky her voice became when she was deeply moved. Vulnerable meant him seeing the way her green eyes darkened, throwing the whiteness and translucency of her skin into sharp relief. And he didn’t want to see these things. Seeing them meant he was in danger of forgetting why he was here, and that the last thing he needed in his life was a relationship.

      ‘You ought to be in bed,’ he said gruffly. ‘You’re almost asleep on your feet.’

      ‘Does this mean you’ll be moving back to your own cottage?’

      His heart lifted at the prospect, only to plummet down again as he thought it through. ‘I can’t. You’re obviously not fit enough yet to be left on your own. No, don’t try to argue with me, Jess,’ he continued as she opened her mouth to do just that. ‘If I say you’re not fit, you’re not fit. Just accept that you’re stuck with me for a little while longer.’

      And he was stuck, too, he realised when she smiled up at him—a small, wobbly smile which touched him more than he could say. Stuck with a job he didn’t want, in the company of a girl who somehow seemed to be unaccountably growing more and more attractive by the hour.

      He groaned inwardly again.

       CHAPTER THREE

      ‘I’M so glad it’s you, Dr Arden,’ Wattie Hope said, sitting down opposite her with an ingratiating smile. ‘This new chap you’ve got—nice enough bloke and everything, but you go in to see him with an ingrowing toenail and before you know it he’s got you stripped, sounded and your blood pressure taken.’

      ‘And how is the ingrowing toenail?’ Jess asked evenly as she opened his file.

      ‘Och, ’twas just an expression, Doctor,’ Wattie replied, his smile widening to reveal a row of tobacco-stained teeth. ‘It’s the old trouble—my back, you know.’

      Jess did know, just as she also knew that Wattie’s back seemed to possess a marked tendency to get worse whenever work was mentioned, then miraculously improve the minute he heard someone was buying drinks in the local pub.

      ‘Have you found the pills Dr Dunbar prescribed helpful?’ she asked, scanning Ezra’s notes. ‘I see he’s started you on a course of indomethacin—’

      ‘They helped a wee bit, but…’ Wattie heaved a sigh. ‘Not as much as I’d hoped.’

      Probably because you’re not taking them, you old fraud, Jess thought grimly. ‘It might be worth increasing the dose—’

      ‘Ronald at the garage told me you were speeding when you crashed into Dr Dunbar’s car.’ Wattie shook his head in wonder. ‘And there was me thinking you were one of the most careful drivers on the island, Doctor.’

      PC Inglis had said the same, Jess remembered, when she’d reported her wrecked car. His sharply raised eyebrows had also told her he wasn’t one bit deceived by her story, but if that was the way she wanted to play it, so be it.

      ‘Wattie—’

      ‘Dr Dunbar was a doctor in London, so I understand,’ he continued. ‘Now, would he have been an ordinary GP there, or one of those big-shot Harley Street doctors?’

      ‘I think you’d better ask Dr Dunbar that yourself,’ Jess replied. With any luck he would, and with a little bit of extra luck she might be there when Ezra sent him away with a flea in his ear. ‘Now, about these pills—’

      ‘Wasn’t it a stroke of luck he turned out to be a doctor? I mean, if it had been anybody else…’ Wattie shook his head. ‘Where would we all have been?’

      ‘Yes—quite,’ Jess said tightly. ‘Now, as I was saying—’

      ‘And lucky, too, that your father’s СКАЧАТЬ