The Stranger's Secret

“I don’t need anybody. I’ll be all right.”

“You won’t—and I don’t just mean simply tonight. 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?”

“It’s not your problem,” she pointed out.

“Of course it’s my problem,” he shot back. “There’s only one thing I can do. I’ll have to stay.”

“Stay?” she echoed faintly.

“And not just for tonight,” he fumed. “I’m going to have to stay with you until you get a replacement.”

Dear Reader,

I moved to the far north of Scotland ten years ago and have never regretted it. It’s beautiful, remote—some people would say it’s lonely—but I’ve never found it so. It occurred to me recently that almost all of the “incomers” I’ve met since moving here have been running away from something. An unhappy marriage, a job they disliked, a situation they could no longer face.

It was this thought that inspired me to create the island of Greensay, and the mysterious Ezra Dunbar. He’s a man with a past, who seems to have no future until he meets the local family physician, Jess Arden, and then…

Well, I just hope you enjoy discovering how Ezra finds his future as much as I enjoyed writing about it!

Maggie

The Stranger’s Secret

Maggie Kingsley

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CONTENTS

Cover

Dear Reader

Title Page

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

EPILOGUE

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

‘ARE you all right?’

The driver of the dark blue Mercedes wasn’t simply a maniac, Jess decided, opening her eyes slowly, only to close them again when a searing pain shot down her leg. He was a gold-plated, top-of-the-class idiot as well. How on earth could she possibly be ‘all right’ after he’d just driven at breakneck speed round the corner of the single-track road straight into her car?

‘I really don’t think you should try to move,’ the deep male voice continued with concern when she eased herself gingerly back from her steering-wheel. ‘You might be injured.’

‘Of course I’m injured,’ she muttered through clenched teeth. ‘My right leg’s fractured.’

‘It may simply be jarred—’

‘I’m a doctor and, believe me, it’s fractured.’ And if I’m not very careful I’m going to burst into tears, Jess realised with dismay when a cool, firm hand suddenly enveloped hers.

She didn’t need this. She really, really didn’t need this. Five minutes ago she’d been congratulating herself on having got through all her afternoon home visits early. Had even thought she might actually have time to attack her mounting paperwork before the start of her evening surgery, and now…

‘Are you in pain anywhere else?’ the male voice said quickly as a sob came from her. ‘Your chest, neck—’

‘Look, do you suppose you could stop playing doctor for a moment and concentrate on getting me out of here?’ she asked as the fingers which had been taking her pulse moved to her throat.

‘Wouldn’t it be more sensible if I called for an ambulance?’

Good grief, the idiot was using the tone she always adopted when she was dealing with a difficult child. If she’d been fit enough she’d have hit him.

‘There isn’t any ambulance,’ she said tightly. ‘At least not today. It’s down in the garage, having an overhaul.’

‘Then another doctor—’

‘There isn’t another doctor on Greensay, only me.’

‘I still don’t think—’

‘No, you obviously don’t, do you?’ she retorted, fighting back her tears. ‘Because if you had thought you wouldn’t have been driving like a maniac, and if you hadn’t been driving like a maniac I wouldn’t—’

‘Be in this mess?’ he finished for her awkwardly. ‘Look, I’m really sorry. I needed a few things from the shops—’

‘And you thought they might disappear unless you drove at eighty miles an hour?’

A low, husky chuckle was his only reply, and she turned towards the sound and tried to focus.

He was a tall man. That much she could see in the pale January moonlight. A tall man in his mid-thirties with deep grey eyes, thick black hair and a beard.

And she knew him.

Not to speak to. Nobody on the island knew him yet to speak to. But she’d seen him last week, walking along the beach the day after he’d moved into Sorley McBain’s holiday cottage. Walking as though he had all the cares of the world on his shoulders.

‘You’re the drug dealer,’ Jess murmured. ‘The one who’s lying low until the heat’s off.’

‘The drug…?’ His fingers reached swiftly for her wrist again.

‘That’s what Wattie Hope reckons at any rate. Or an axe murderer who’s come to Greensay to dispose of the dismembered bits and pieces of your ex-wife.’

He sat back on his heels, his grey eyes glinting with amusement. ‘I see. And you—what do you think?’

‘I’m just wondering if your car is as much of a write-off as mine.’

‘No, but, then, I don’t drive a sardine can,’ he replied, gazing critically at her beloved little hatchback. ‘Surely if you’re the only doctor on the island you should have chosen something more substantial to drive.’

‘Look, could we just stick to the point?’ she returned acidly. ‘Is your car driveable?’

‘The front bumper’s bent, and the offside light and indicator are smashed, but apart from that—’

‘Then you can drive me to the Sinclair Memorial in Inverlairg.’

The man’s black eyebrows snapped down. ‘I really don’t think—’

‘You’re doing it again—thinking—and I’d far rather you didn’t,’ Jess interrupted. ‘Now, are you going to help me out of my car, or do I have to crawl?’

For a second he hesitated, then held out his hands to her. Large hands, she noticed, strong hands. Which was just as well, she realised, because when she tried to stand up another shaft of pain had her grabbing frantically at the front of his Arran sweater.

‘Care to reconsider your plan?’ he said gently as she buried her face in his chest, desperately fighting the waves of nausea and pain which threatened to engulf her.

Actually, she’d have liked nothing better. Just to stand here wrapped in this man’s arms was infinitely preferable to the thought of the journey ahead. And she was mad. Good grief, he could have killed her and yet all she could think as she clung to him was that he smelt of the sea, and of warmth, and shelter.

‘What I want,’ she managed to reply, after taking several deep breaths, ‘is for you to stop talking, stop thinking and get me into your car.’

His mouth quirked into a rueful smile. ‘Are you always this bloody-minded, Dr…Dr…?’

‘Arden. The name’s Jess Arden, Mr Dunbar.’

All amusement disappeared instantly from his face and his voice when he spoke was clipped, tight. ‘You know me?’

‘Not from Adam. Sorley McBain said he’d rented his cottage to an Ezra Dunbar from London—’

‘A talkative man, Mr McBain.’

‘You can’t really blame him,’ Jess replied defensively, hearing the decided edge in his voice. ‘I mean, we get lots of people renting holiday cottages on Greensay in the summer—Americans mostly, looking for their Scottish roots—but it’s pretty unusual for someone to take a cottage for three months in the middle of winter.’ She glanced up at him with a slight frown. ‘Does it bother you—people knowing your name?’

He didn’t answer. Instead he slipped his arm round her waist, balanced her against his hip, then carried her across to his Mercedes. An action which left her white-faced and shaking, and feeling sick all over again.

‘You know, your leg really ought to be splinted,’ he observed after he’d pushed the front passenger seat of his car back as far as it would go. ‘It’s a ten-mile trip down to Inverlairg and no matter how slowly I drive you’re going to get jolted. Perhaps I could find some pieces of wood to splint it—’

‘And perhaps you could just let me worry about my leg?’ Jess flared, driven beyond all endurance.

For a second she thought he was going to argue with her again, but by the time he’d eased her into the car Jess heartily wished she’d let him find those pieces of wood, and that he’d used them to knock her unconscious.

‘Feeling rough?’ he murmured sympathetically when he finally got into the driver’s seat beside her.

‘A bit,’ she admitted, pushing back her damp hair from her forehead with a trembling hand.

He shook his head. ‘I’m not surprised. Frankly, I don’t know whether to admire you for your courage or condemn you for your stupidity.’

‘While you’re making up your mind, could you just drive?’ she suggested, and he chuckled as he switched on his car’s ignition.

‘Regular little firebrand, aren’t you? Goes with the red hair, I suppose. Your eyes wouldn’t happen to be green, would they?’

They were, but Jess didn’t feel up to acknowledging it as he turned his Mercedes in the direction of the town, or to informing him that she’d always been short-tempered even as a child. So he thought her a firebrand, did he? Well, right now she felt more like a damp squib. A squib that was giddy, and in pain, and more frightened than she’d ever been in her life.

What if she hadn’t simply fractured her leg? What if she’d suffered internal injuries as well? She couldn’t afford to be ill, couldn’t so much as catch a cold, when it would mean leaving her patients with a two-and-a-half-hour ferry ride to the nearest doctor on the mainland.

‘Why are you the only doctor on the island?’ Ezra asked suddenly, as though he’d read her mind. ‘Surely there’s too much work here for you on your own?’

‘Not for most of the time, there’s not,’ she answered, biting down hard on her lip as his car hit a pothole. ‘Greensay only has a population of six hundred.’

‘But those six hundred don’t all live in the main town,’ he argued back. ‘From what I’ve seen, a lot of them live in outlying crofts, and if you’re called out at night—’

‘I manage,’ she replied defensively. ‘My father was the doctor here for thirty years before he died, and he managed.’

He glanced across at her, his grey eyes pensive. ‘I see.’

She rather thought he saw more than she wanted him to. That it hadn’t simply been a desire to return to the island where she’d been born which had brought her back when her father had died three years ago. It had been a desire to follow in his footsteps, to be as good a doctor as he had been.

And why shouldn’t she want that? she asked herself as they drove through the dark countryside. She’d adored her father, had always loved the island and its people. Why shouldn’t she want to emulate him?

Yes, it was tough sometimes, being permanently on call. And, yes, there were days when she was so bone-weary it took all her strength to drag herself down to the health centre, but she couldn’t have borne it if a stranger had taken over her father’s practice. She had to succeed. She simply had to.

‘Where do we go for the A and E unit?’ Ezra asked when they finally arrived outside the imposing Edwardian building which housed the Sinclair Memorial Hospital.

‘There isn’t one as such,’ Jess replied, sucking in her breath sharply as he carried her up the steps. ‘But if you ring the bell at Reception Fiona should come.’

The staff nurse did, and the minute she saw them her face crumpled in dismay. ‘Oh, my word…!’

‘I’m OK, Fiona, honestly,’ Jess interrupted quickly. ‘I just took a corner too fast and landed in a ditch. I think I’ve fractured my right tibia—possibly my patella as well.’

‘Not to mention having also acquired a very nasty bump on your forehead.’ Fiona’s eyes drifted towards Ezra. ‘And you are…?’

‘The drug dealer,’ he replied blandly. ‘Or the axe murderer—take your pick.’

‘Ezra Dunbar!’ she exclaimed triumphantly. ‘You’ve taken Sorley McBain’s holiday cottage—’

‘For the next three months.’ He nodded with resignation. ‘Yes, that’s me.’

‘Well, thank goodness you did,’ Fiona declared, lowering Jess carefully into a wheelchair, then pushing her through a door marked X-RAYS. ‘We islanders don’t tend to go out much in the evening in winter and heaven knows how long Jess might have been stuck in her car if you hadn’t happened along.’

‘I didn’t exactly happen—’

‘Would you mind staying with Jess until I get Bev and Will?’ Fiona continued. ‘I won’t be a minute.’

And before either of them could reply she was gone in a flurry of starched green cotton.

‘Bev is our part-time radiographer,’ Jess explained as a frown creased Ezra’s forehead. ‘Will’s her husband, and a first-rate anaesthetist, though how long we’ll be able to keep him is anybody’s guess. Our resident surgeon retired last year, you see, and we haven’t been able to replace him. I can do some surgery, but—’

‘Why did you do that?’

‘Do what?’ she asked in confusion.

‘Tell her the accident was your fault?’

Jess eased herself gingerly round in her wheelchair. ‘I don’t think you’d have a very happy three months here if word got round that you’re the man who trashed the doctor’s car and landed her in hospital.’

The frown deepened. ‘But why should you care? Like you said, you don’t know me from Adam.’

She was hurting more and more by the second, and was in no mood to try to explain what she didn’t quite understand herself, but she managed to dredge up a smile. ‘Maybe I’m an old softy at heart. Maybe I’m just too sore to be able to think straight.’

‘Yes, but—’

‘Didn’t I tell you to buy a decent car—well, didn’t I?’ Will Grant declared as he breezed into the X-ray department. ‘Buy a Volvo or a Range Rover, I said—’

‘Yes, we all know what you said, dear,’ his wife Bev interrupted, pushing past him, ‘and right now I don’t suppose Jess wants to hear you repeat it. Fractured right tibia and patella, you reckon?’ she continued, eyeing Jess critically, and when she nodded the radiographer frowned. ‘I’m not too happy about that bruise on your forehead. I think we’ll X-ray it as well.’

‘If you’re hoping to find any brains, I wouldn’t hold your breath,’ Ezra murmured, and Will laughed.

‘Too damned right. I’ve been telling this girl she’s an idiot for the past three years. Taking on her father’s practice—’

‘Look, could we just get on with this?’ Jess protested, scowling across at Ezra who, to her acute annoyance, merely smiled back.

It didn’t take long for Fiona to check her blood pressure and temperature, and it only took a few minutes more for Bev to process the X-rays.

‘Well, the bad news is you’ve definitely fractured your tibia and patella,’ the radiographer declared. ‘The good news is they’re both nice clean breaks, and I can’t see any indication of internal damage.’

Jess let out the breath she hadn’t even known she’d been holding. OK, so she’d broken her calf bone and kneecap, which would mean eight to ten weeks in plaster, but clean breaks meant she wouldn’t have to go to the mainland. Clean breaks and no internal injuries meant she could still take care of her patients.

‘My turn now.’ Will beamed, leading the way out of the X-ray department into the next room. ‘Time for a spot of good old reduction and plastering.’

‘But…but this is an operating theatre,’ Ezra declared, coming to a halt on the threshold.

‘We don’t have a plastering department,’ the anaesthetist explained. ‘Frankly, we’re lucky to have a hospital at all, considering the authorities would like nothing better than to shut us down. Centralisation of resources, they call it. In my opinion—’

‘Yes, dear, we all know your opinion,’ his wife sighed. ‘But right now Jess’s leg needs attending to.’

And Ezra Dunbar badly needed some fresh air, Jess thought as she glanced up at him and saw how white he had become. Delayed shock, her professional instincts diagnosed. OK, so he hadn’t been hurt in the accident, but he had been involved and the knowledge of what could have happened had obviously just hit him.

‘Don’t you think it might be better if you waited outside?’ she said gently.

He thrust his hands through his hair and she saw they were shaking. Delayed shock, indeed. And delayed shock in a very big way.

‘I—Right…Fine,’ he muttered. ‘I’ll…I’ll see you later, then.’

And before she could say anything else, he was gone.

Will stared after him for a second, then chuckled as he loaded a syringe with short-acting anaesthetic. ‘Well, who’d have thought it? A big, strapping chap like that coming over all queasy and not even a drop of blood in sight!’

‘Not everybody’s as cold-blooded as you are, Will,’ Jess retorted, only to flush slightly when they all stared at her in amazement. And it was hardly surprising. What on earth was she doing, leaping to a virtual stranger’s defence? And not simply a stranger but the man who had landed her here in the first place. Not that any of them knew that, of course, but… ‘Look, could we just get on with getting this leg of mine aligned and plastered?’ she continued vexedly. ‘I don’t want to be here all evening!’

Ezra didn’t want to be there at all as he leant his head against the waiting-room window and tried to calm his fast-beating heart.

Hell, they must all think he was an idiot. One minute he’d been fine, and the next…

It had been the smell. He’d never realised that all operating theatres probably smelt the same, but they did, and when he’d seen the table…

‘Oh, hell.’

He clenched his hands tightly together and whirled round on his heel. Think of something else. Think of anything else, his mind urged, before you make an ever bigger fool of yourself than you already have done.

If only he hadn’t been driving so fast. If only he’d been paying attention. But he hadn’t, and now…

Restlessly he paced the waiting room. What the hell were they doing in there? Aligning and plastering a leg shouldn’t take very long. Unless, of course, they’d found some complication.

A cold sweat broke out on his forehead and he turned quickly as a door opened behind him. Fiona. And to his relief, Jess was with her.

‘She’s thrown up twice, and fainted once,’ the staff nurse stated, holding out a bottle of pills. ‘She can take two of these for the pain, but no more than eight in twenty-four hours.’

‘B-but surely you’re going to keep her in?’ Ezra stammered, and Fiona sighed with resignation.

‘She won’t stay. Maybe you can make her see sense but I doubt it.’

‘Jess, of course you’ve got to stay!’ Ezra exclaimed as Fiona walked away. ‘You could be suffering from shock—’

‘I’m not,’ she said smoothly. ‘Will’s plastered my leg, and given me some painkillers, so could we, please, leave now?’

‘But—’

‘Could you drive me down to my practice? It’s not far, but…’ she gazed wryly at the crutches Fiona had given her ‘…I don’t think I could manage it on these.’

‘You want to collect something?’ he murmured, still stunned by the knowledge that she’d actually discharged herself.

‘Not collect, no. My surgery started half an hour ago, and I don’t want to keep my patients waiting any longer than necessary.’

Ezra stared at her in disbelief, then anger flooded through him. ‘Are you crazy?’

‘I happen to believe I have a duty to my patients,’ Jess replied crisply. ‘Now, if you could—’

‘Duty be damned!’ he flared. ‘You’re just being pig-headed, that’s all, and if you think I’m going to encourage you in this stupidity, you can think again!’

‘Then I’ll phone the garage and ask them to send a taxi,’ she retorted, only to suddenly remember to her chagrin that, though she’d insisted on him retrieving her medical bag from her car, she’d forgotten all about her handbag. ‘Could…could you lend me twenty pence for the pay-phone, please?’

‘No, I will not lend you twenty pence!’ he thundered. ‘For God’s sake, woman, were you born with a vacant space between your ears? You’ve been in a car crash. You’ve fractured your leg in two places, and badly bruised your forehead. OK, so maybe you don’t feel too awful at the moment, but that’s only because of the anaesthetic and the fact that your body’s producing its own endorphins. Believe me, in a little while you’re going to feel hellish—’

‘Endorphins?’ A frown pleated Jess’s forehead. ‘What do you know about endorphins?’

‘Only what everybody knows,’ he replied with irritation. ‘That they’re peptides produced in the brain which give pain-relieving effects.’

‘Everybody doesn’t know that,’ she said, her eyes fixed on him. ‘What are you—a nurse, a vet?’

‘I used to be a doctor. Jess, listen to me. You can’t possibly do this—’

‘What kind of a doctor?’

‘Does it matter?’ he retorted, exasperation plain in his voice. ‘The most important thing right now—’

‘You can’t have retired,’ she continued thoughtfully. ‘You’re much too young to have retired.’

‘I…I just don’t practise any more, OK?’ he muttered, his eyes not meeting hers. ‘People change careers, want to do something else.’

‘I can’t ever imagine not wanting to be a doctor,’ she observed. ‘It was something I wanted even when I was a little girl.’

‘Everybody’s different.’

‘Yes, but—’

‘Look, if you insist on going to your surgery, let’s go,’ he interrupted grimly. ‘And I only hope to heaven that when we get there we’ll find somebody who can convince you that you’re out of your tiny mind!’

Tracy Maxwell tried. Ezra had to give the teenager credit for that. She might look a bit weird, with her heavily gelled, spiky black hair and the diamond stud in her nose, but the minute the receptionist saw Jess, she tried her level best.

‘It’s only the usual bunch of hypochondriacs anyway, Jess,’ she protested. ‘And you look shattered.’

‘My thoughts exactly.’ Ezra nodded. ‘So why don’t I go out to the waiting room, explain what’s happened—?’

‘Don’t you dare!’ Jess ordered. ‘OK, so I’ve fractured my leg but my brain’s still working.’

‘I’d say that was highly debatable,’ Ezra observed, and Tracy giggled.

‘His name is Dr Dunbar,’ Jess said acidly in answer to the girl’s raised eyebrows. ‘He has a big mouth, and even bigger opinions.’

‘You’re a doctor,’ the receptionist exclaimed. ‘We all thought—’

‘Yes, I know what you all thought.’ Ezra’s lips curved ruefully. ‘Sorry to be such a disappointment.’

‘Oh, not a disappointment at all,’ Tracy replied, batting her heavily mascara’d eyelashes at him. ‘In fact, it’s terrific, being able to finally put a face to a name.’

‘Is it?’ he said in surprise.

‘Oh, yes.’ Tracy beamed. ‘You know, you really ought to get out more. Living all alone at Selkie Cottage—a man could start getting weird doing that, and we’re quite a sociable crowd on Greensay, so there’s no need for you to ever feel lonely or isolated.’

‘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?’