‘Ezra, I’m sorry. What I said was unforgivable. I had no right—’
‘Actually, you did.’ He put down his coffee-cup, and his mouth twisted into a sad travesty of a smile. ‘Because you’re right. I couldn’t hack it as a surgeon. I did throw in the towel.’
‘Ezra—’
‘I’m late for my home visits.’ He walked slowly towards the door, and she saw with dismay that his shoulders were hunched, just as they’d been the first time she’d seen him walking along the beach. ‘My list seems pretty straightforward, but if I meet any problems I’ll let you know.’
‘Ezra, don’t go—wait!’
But he didn’t wait, and when she heard his footsteps fading down the corridor she slumped back in her seat and put her head in her hands. Why had she said what she had? He’d looked so broken, as though she’d rubbed salt into an open wound. OK, so she didn’t agree with what he’d said about her father, or his criticisms about how she lived her life, but he’d probably spoken with the best of intentions, and how had she repaid him?
By being cruel. By being cruel, and wrong. A man like Ezra Dunbar would never simply have thrown in the towel. He was a focused, dedicated, gifted doctor. Something catastrophic must have happened to make him give up medicine, but what?
CHAPTER FIVE
‘JESS, tell me to mind my own business if you want,’ Cath said as she put a pile of patient files down on Jess’s desk, ‘but have you and Ezra had a row?’
Jess clicked the save icon on her computer and sat back in her chair uncomfortably. ‘Not a row as such. I—well, I sort of lost my temper a bit.’ Which had to be the biggest understatement of the year. ‘Said something I shouldn’t.’
‘Then can’t you simply apologise?’ her receptionist asked, her forehead creasing into an unhappy frown. ‘There’s been such an odd atmosphere in the surgery this week. I don’t mean it’s frosty or unpleasant, it’s just…’ She shook her head impotently. ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t explain it.’
Jess could, and if walking over broken glass would have turned the clock back she’d willingly have done it, but nothing would help.
She’d repeated her apology to Ezra the minute he’d come back from his home visits, but he’d dismissed her words as completely unnecessary. He’d even apologised to her—saying he shouldn’t have tried to interfere in her life—but nothing had helped. The words she’d hurled at him were still there. Too cruel and hurtful to be erased.
‘Make your peace with him, Jess,’ Cath continued, her brown eyes worried, earnest. ‘Don’t go losing him because of a stupid argument.’
Losing him? Jess gazed at her receptionist in disbelief. Was she serious? She obviously was.
‘Cath, read my lips. Ezra and I are colleagues. Nothing more, nothing less.’
‘But I’ve seen the way you look at him—’
‘And I think it’s high time you got back to work if all you can do is stand there and talk utter nonsense!’
The receptionist blinked, crimsoned, looked as though she was about to burst into tears and then dashed out of the consulting room, leaving Jess gazing heavenwards with a mixture of anger and regret.
She hadn’t meant to be quite so sharp, but did her receptionist really think she wanted to know that her growing interest in Ezra was obvious? It was bad enough that it was there, without someone commenting on something which was as inexplicable as it was ridiculous.
And it was ridiculous. What did she know about him? Nothing. What had he told her about himself? Next to nothing. He could have a wife and three kids in London, for all she knew. Dammit, he could be a serial bigamist, a five-times-married divorcé.
Quickly she pulled her keyboard towards her, only to push it away again with vexation. What in the world was wrong with her?
Just three short weeks ago she’d had her future all mapped out. And yet now, just because a mysterious, attractive stranger—OK, she admitted it, he was attractive—had come into her life, all her old certainty had gone. And for what?
A man who treated her with punctilious correctness. A man who could happily help her in and out of baths without batting an eye. Well, all right, so he’d only done it once and had never offered again, but that was beside the point. No, actually, it wasn’t. It was exactly the point. It proved he wasn’t interested in her. It proved he was merely counting the days until he could leave.
But what about that moment after he’d stitched Simon Ralston’s hand? her mind whispered. That moment when he gazed at you and…
‘Yeah, right,’ she muttered. ‘What about it?’
He hadn’t been the one who’d got all flustered and confused. His cheeks hadn’t glowed like twin beetroots. It had been she who’d behaved like a prize booby. And then—just to make absolutely sure he’d never be interested in her in a million years—what had she done? Gone and told him he couldn’t hack it as a surgeon.
‘Brilliant, Jess,’ she sighed. ‘Really brilliant. When you set out to capture a man’s interest, you sure pick a terrific way of doing it.’
And sitting here, feeling stupid, when you’ve got a waiting room full of patients is pointless, she told herself as her consulting-room door opened and Tracy appeared.
‘Jess, you’re never going to believe who’s just walked into the waiting room!’
‘George Clooney?’ she suggested hopefully, and Tracy laughed.
‘Don’t I just wish! But it’s almost as good. Mairi Morrison.’
‘You’re kidding,’ Jess gasped.
Tracy shook her head, all too aware of the number of phone calls Jess had made in an attempt to achieve just this moment. ‘She’s here, and she wants to know if you can possibly see her this morning.’
Jess couldn’t—not really—but there was no way she was going to let Mairi leave without talking to her.
‘Who’s next on my list?’
‘Mrs Wells, but she and Mrs Cuthbert are enjoying a right good gossip in the waiting room, so…’
The likelihood of Hildy Wells noticing she’d had to wait longer than she’d expected was remote.
Tracy grinned. ‘I’ll send Mairi along.’
And I’ll take several very deep breaths, Jess decided. After all, Mairi might simply have come in to tell her to stop jamming up her answering machine. But at least she was here. And if she was here, and they were face to face, maybe—just maybe—she might be able to talk her round.
She didn’t need to.
‘You can arrange for me to have more X-rays and I’ll give you a sputum sample,’ Mairi declared the minute she sat down. ‘That is what you want, isn’t it?’ she added, her lips curving slightly when Jess stared at her, open-mouthed. ‘What all those messages on my answering machine were about?’
‘Why, y-yes—th-they were,’ Jess stammered. ‘I just…I’m delighted, of course—you’ve no idea how much—but what made you change your mind?’
‘Couldn’t really do anything else, with that man of yours visiting me every day,’ Mairi replied ruefully.
‘That man of—You mean, Ezra—Dr Dunbar’s been visiting you?’ Jess exclaimed.
‘Every afternoon for the past week, regular as clockwork. Said he came round because I made the best coffee on the island, but I’m not an idiot.’
So that was why Ezra’s home visits had been taking so long lately. Much as Jess longed to know how he’d managed to talk Mairi round, she wasn’t about to lose the impetus of the moment by asking her. Not yet, at any rate.
‘Stay right where you are,’ she ordered, grasping her crutches and pulling herself upright. ‘I won’t be a minute. I just need to get a container from the store cupboard for the sputum sample.’
‘There’s no hurry!’ Mairi called after her, amusement plain in her voice. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’
Maybe she wasn’t, but Jess wasn’t about to take the chance. Not when Mairi was here, and ready, and willing.
‘Hey, watch out!’ Ezra exclaimed, catching her just in time as she negotiated the
entrance to the store cupboard much too fast and sent one of her crutches clattering to the floor. ‘Isn’t one fractured leg enough for you, or are you trying for a matching pair?’
She shook her head and laughed. ‘Ezra, has anyone ever told you you’re wonderful?’
‘Hey, I just happened to be in the right place at the right time.’
‘Not this, you ninny! Mairi Morrison. She’s in my consulting room, and she’s agreed to the sputum sample and more X-rays, and it’s all because of you!’
He looked embarrassed. ‘I didn’t do anything—’
‘Says the man who’s been visiting her every day for the past week on the quiet. Ezra, I’m so pleased I could…’ Yikes! She’d almost said ‘kiss you’. Get a grip, Jess. Get your brain in gear and your mouth under control before you make a complete and utter fool of yourself. ‘It’s terrific news, isn’t it?’ she hurried on quickly. ‘I’ve been hoping, praying—’
‘Could what?’
‘Sorry?’ she floundered, hoping he wasn’t asking what she thought he might be, but he was.
‘You said, “I’m so pleased I could”,’ he prompted, ‘and then you stopped.’
‘Did I?’ she mumbled.
Think of something Jess, she told herself. Think of something, and make it good. And she probably would have been able to if she hadn’t suddenly realised he was still holding her lightly round the waist, and her hands were still resting on his broad, muscular chest.
Lord, but what deep grey eyes he had, and such long eyelashes, too. Completely wasted on a man, of course, her practical side observed, but right now—strangely enough—she wasn’t feeling very practical. Not when the most deliciously warm sensations seemed to be uncurling somewhere deep within her.
‘I…um…’ Her mind was a blank. A complete and utter blank. ‘I…I’m afraid I can’t remember what I was going to say.’
‘Can’t you?’
Was it her imagination or did his voice sound deeper, huskier? His heart rate was certainly slightly fast. Hers was jumping around all over the place.
‘Crazy, really,’ she said, knowing she was babbling but quite unable to stop. ‘Not remembering, I mean.’
‘So what are you doing out here?’ he asked. ‘I mean, why aren’t you with her?’
‘With who?’ she said in confusion.
‘Mairi Morrison.’
‘Because I need…’ Oh, hell, what had she needed again? Oh, yes, now she remembered. ‘A sterile container for the sputum sample.’
‘Ah.’
His reply was almost a sigh, and she shivered. Couldn’t help herself. His heart rate was too fast. So was hers.
‘And then I must phone Bev,’ she said, desperately trying to drag her addled brain into some sort of working order, ‘to organise—’
‘More X-rays.’ He nodded. ‘But, Jess…’
But what? she wondered, then ceased to care. He was closer. She couldn’t for the life of her figure out how when they’d been already standing toe to toe, but he was definitely closer.
Was he going to kiss her? Did she want him to? Stupid question!
Nervously she moistened her lips, saw his pupils dilate as his eyes followed the action, then completely without warning he suddenly released her.
‘Right—fine. I’d better not keep you, then,’ he muttered, before banging back into his consulting room leaving her staring, open-mouthed, after him.
He’d been going to kiss her—surely he had—so why had he changed his mind? Or maybe he hadn’t changed his mind. Maybe…Oh, cripes! Maybe he’d never intended kissing her at all, and she’d just imagined it. In which case she was in trouble. Big trouble.
‘Everything OK, Jess?’ Tracy smiled as she bounced down the corridor towards her, carrying the box of pharmaceutical supplies which had arrived in the morning’s post.
‘I—Yes, couldn’t be better,’ she managed brightly. ‘I’m just…’
Oh, hell, her brains were mush again. Mairi Morrison. Mairi Morrison’s sputum sample. Concentrate on work, Jess, she told herself, bending to recover the crutch she’d dropped, only to discover her hands were shaking. Pull yourself together, and concentrate on work.
And she managed to do just that. Managed to take Mairi’s sample, carefully label it ‘For Urgent Attention’ and then phone Bev at the hospital to organise more X-rays. It was only when all the practicalities had been completed that she couldn’t prevent her mind returning to Ezra. But at least it was work-related, she told herself, purely in the interests of the practice, to ask Mairi how Ezra had managed to achieve what she’d so singularly failed to do.
‘You mean, did he talk me into submission?’ Mairi declared, her eyes twinkling.
‘No—of course not,’ Jess floundered, though, in truth, that was exactly what she’d suspected.
‘I know what people say,’ Mairi nodded. ‘That talking to him is like talking to a walking medical dictionary, but we actually only talked about the shadow on my lung on his first visit. The rest of the time we simply chatted about this and that.’
‘You did?’ Jess said, trying—and failing—to picture Ezra actually chatting to a patient.
‘He told me a little bit about his childhood. I might tell you about it some time,’ Mairi continued as Jess opened her mouth eagerly, ‘but right now all I can say is I trust him. And…’ She paused, and looked a little rueful, a little embarrassed. ‘I like him.’
So did Jess. A lot. But it was all too obviously a one-sided attraction. In two weeks’ time he’d leave and her life would go on as it had been before. OK, it might be a little emptier, a little lonelier, but it would go on.
The way to get through the next two weeks was to work, she told herself when Mairi had left with an appointment to see Bev at the Sinclair Memorial that afternoon. If she buried herself in her work she wouldn’t have time to think, and thinking, she had decided, was a very bad idea.
Ezra had come to the same conclusion as he sat in his consulting room, only half listening to Mrs Cuthbert’s tale of woe about her verruca. If he’d acted on instinct—as every part of his body had urged him to do—he would now know whether Jess’s lips were as sweet and soft as they looked instead of still being in a state of unhappy ignorance.
Dammit, she’d looked so appealing, her cheeks flushed, her eyes shining with pleasure because Mairi had finally come into the surgery. Would one tiny little kiss have hurt?
‘Yes,’ he muttered, and Mrs Cuthbert nodded sagely, her double chin wobbling its agreement.
‘That’s exactly what I thought, Doctor. The preparations Mr Singh sells in the shop are fine for something small, but if you want your electricity fixed, you don’t see someone who can only change a plug, do you? You go to an expert. In fact, as I was saying to my friend, Mrs Wells…’
One little kiss would have been disastrous. Because one little kiss wouldn’t have been enough. It would have led to a longer one, a deeper one, and…
‘You don’t agree, Doctor?’ Mrs Cuthbert asked, her plump face creasing into a puzzled frown as he unconsciously shook his head.
With what? he wondered, staring back at her with dismay.
Lord, what in the world was happening to him? He’d had relationships with women in the past, and yet never once had he let his mind wander at work, but in the space of three short weeks with Jess Arden…
‘I—Well, of course, there’s always two schools of thought, Mrs Cuthbert,’ he hedged, praying she might enlighten him, and to his relief, she did.
‘Then you think my verruca might benefit from this ointment containing podo—pody…’
‘Podophyllum,’ he finished for her thankfully. ‘Verrucas certainly seem to respond well to it, but I’ve got to tell you it’s a rather painful way of getting rid of them.’
Mrs Cuthbert sniffed. ‘Doctor, as a woman who’s had three children—one of them a breech birth—I think I can stand a little pain.’
So could he, Ezra told himself firmly as he wrote her out a pres
cription. OK, so living with Jess had unexpectedly sent his libido into overdrive. And OK, so it was becoming increasingly difficult for him to sleep at night, knowing that the person who could ease his discomfort was lying just a few feet away from him, but he’d do it. To do anything else would be unforgivable.
But, oh, so very pleasurable, he thought with a sigh when he joined Jess in her consulting room for coffee at the end of morning surgery and couldn’t fail to notice how the winter sunshine was illuminating her red curls.
‘Something wrong?’ he asked, seeing her frown as she read the letter she was holding.
‘Not wrong as much as puzzling. According to the infirmary, Robb MacGregor definitely hasn’t got a peptic ulcer.’
‘Robb MacGregor—he’s the builder you initially thought had anaemia, isn’t he?’
She nodded. ‘The dark stools, the bouts of diarrhoea—everything seemed to point to an ulcer, but now I’m wondering if he could have chronic fatigue syndrome. He’s certainly been working very long hours these past six years, trying to establish his business, and I know mental and physical stress can be a contributory factor, but…’
‘You’re not convinced,’ Ezra finished for her, helping himself to one of the chocolate biscuits Tracy had brought in with their coffee.
Jess eyed the biscuits longingly, then gave in to the temptation. Oh, what the hell. She could start her diet next week. Right now she needed some comfort food.
‘I still think I’ve missed something, Ezra.’
‘Would you like me to check him over when he comes in for the results of his test?’ he offered. ‘I’m not suggesting you haven’t been thorough—’
‘You can suggest whatever you like, provided you find out what’s wrong with him,’ she said, and he laughed. A deep, rich, throaty sound which seemed to wrap itself round her heart, warming it.
Oh, how she liked this man. Liked him so much. OK, so he could be over-organising and officious at times and, OK, so she knew nothing about him, but sometimes a girl didn’t need to know much about a man. Sometimes a girl just took one look and—
Stop it, she told herself. Just stop it! You’re sounding like some dopey thirteen-year-old mooning over the high-school heartthrob. You’re thirty-two years old, for heaven’s sake. Get it into your thick skull that the man’s not interested. OK, so you’re attracted to him, but you’ll get over it. It’s like the measles. Uncomfortable while it lasts, but if you’re sensible and careful, it leaves no lasting damage.
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