The Stranger's Secret. Maggie Kingsley

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.