скачать книгу бесплатно
The Stranger's Secret
Maggie Kingsley
The reclusive doctor…When Greensay Island's only doctor, Jess Arden, breaks her leg, she wants to continue practicing but knows she can't manage alone. Then she discovers that the island's recluse, Ezra Dunbar, has hidden talents….Suddenly this gruff stranger reveals himself to be a doctor. And he insists on moving in with Jess to look after her! But why hasn't Ezra been using his medical skills? And until he confides his secrets, should she be dreaming of a future together?
“Is there anyone I can call to come over and stay with you?”
“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 (#udf1d52bf-d855-5c92-928d-533d4945a7f1),
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 (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CONTENTS
Cover (#ubf2e71d1-ad4c-5106-a4bc-2305a6a2827b)
Dear Reader (#u575b4100-6944-5621-8534-0e7c1655edd4)
Title Page (#u74af0105-278a-5516-816b-e053f59a706e)
CHAPTER ONE (#u5136bc33-1d1e-5d56-8faf-9c02af40567c)
CHAPTER TWO (#u1cd302da-83fe-5c15-ae7e-af70d713c526)
CHAPTER THREE (#u8201db81-7565-5280-8b19-1167476581cc)
CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#udf1d52bf-d855-5c92-928d-533d4945a7f1)
‘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.’
