The Stranger's Secret. Maggie Kingsley

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