Heart Surgeon in Portugal (3 page)

‘You can see it was an accident!’ she flung back in self-defence. ‘That lady would have been badly hurt if your c-case had landed on her. I’ve just prevented a n-nasty injury. For which
you
would have been r-r-responsible!’ Furious with herself for sounding so stuttering and breathless, she quickly gathered in the pieces of paper being thrust toward her on all sides, cramming them back into the open briefcase, tight red tee-shirt heaving with humiliation.

‘If you weren’t such a clumsy little idiot this wouldn’t have happened in the first place,’ he snarled, snatching back his briefcase and towering over Ellie’s quaking form.

Ellie had to acknowledge there was a certain logic to this but she refused to let him put her in the wrong, just because she was half his size and couldn’t see inside the overhead lockers.

‘Y-you rammed your briefcase in, right in front of my stuff,’ she retaliated bravely. ‘If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s yours!’

‘Hear hear!’ called her American admirer and a few others - who hadn’t really seen what happened but had decided the posh man was bullying the pretty girl -joined in the general muttering. Several lone sheets had floated a few rows down and all were safely returned to Mr Big who gave Ellie one last withering scowl and then took himself back to his seat to sulk into his copy of The Guardian.

Briefly distracted, the snogging couple resumed their canoodling.

Ellie decided to take her mind off things and read her Portugal guide book, but her hands were shaking and her little finger was bruised and black.

The lady across the aisle could see the girl was trembling in spite of the spirited way she had dealt with her accuser. She leaned across and put a comforting hand on her arm.

‘Storm in a teacup,’ she murmured, ‘no real harm done.’

Her voice was low and melodious. And she had a lovely smile. Ellie wondered if she was famous .. there was something about her, something familiar …

She smiled a wan thanks. Gradually the trembling stopped and the book held steady in her hands. But the finger still throbbed and blackened. She bought a large bottle of water from the drinks trolley and gulped down the lot.

An hour later, she left her seat and went to the front of the aircraft where several passengers were waiting their turn in the loo queue. Because of the cramped legroom Mr Big’s legs were sticking out a bit in the aisle so she was extra careful not to bang into his shiny black shoes. It was just unfortunate and completely unintentional when her bare elbow rather roughly swept the edge of his newspaper. As she waited in the loo queue, Ellie could feel those dark eyes boring into her shoulderblades. And he was still watching when she came back to her seat, biting her lower lip as those speculative eyes examined her. How easy it was to read the man’s contemptuous thoughts …

Back in her seat Ellie closed her eyes to blot him out and feigned sleep for the rest of the flight.

‘L
amento, Senhorita, no such parcel has been handed in.’

‘Well, not exactly a parcel,’ explained Ellie anxiously, ‘a plastic carrier bag with my recipe folder and some tissues and oh - just a few other bits and pieces. I left it over there,’ she pointed to a row of plastic chairs, ‘while I fetched my suitcase from the carousel. I was only gone for a couple of moments.’

‘You did not have a trolley?’

‘I didn’t need one - my big case has wheels.’

With an expressive shrug of his uniformed shoulders, the official indicated that the problem then was hers.

Ellie turned away from the desk in some confusion. What use were those precious recipes and a few bits and pieces to anyone else? She’d better check all the refuse containers in the hope that a disappointed thief might have dumped her stuff in disgust. Ellie trailed around the arrivals hall looking in every waste bin. Nothing. Well, it wasn’t the end of the world - Harland wasn’t arriving till the following weekend so she could call home and get copies emailed out. She’d have to find a cyber café in the nearest town. Oh
why
hadn’t she brought her laptop with her?

Well, she knew the answer to that one. Because she’d been frightened of getting it pinched during the journey. And anyway, she wasn’t planning on staring at a computer screen when she could be out in the fresh air and sunshine.

Mr Big and the lady in the linen suit had already left the airport, heading straight out to their waiting cars while everyone else thronged round the luggage carousel waiting impatiently for their luggage to begin trundling along the belt.

By the time Ellie found the Avis desk the other passengers were long gone. ‘I was wondering what had happened to you, Miss Robey,’ said the young official in his fluent English. Seeing the girl looked weary and a bit lost, he took charge of her heavy case and said he would show her how the car’s controls worked. This unexpected kindness brought tears to Ellie’s eyes and she emerged blinking into late-evening sunshine and a warmth so unexpected and so intense she gasped aloud with pleasure. ‘Oh!’ she heard herself exclaiming, and heaved a sigh of relief. I’m here, she told herself. I’ve made it…

The man was hoisting her luggage into the boot of a darling little blue Seat. ‘New this season,’ he said in his sexy accent, ‘one thousand kilometres on the clock.’ After a demo of the controls, and instructions for finding her way out of the airport and onto the main road, off drove Ellie with a crunching of gears, indicating left where she meant right and trying to keep her eyes on the road while following Rafe Harland’s hand-scrawled map.

Night seemed to fall in the blink of an eye; one moment it was twilight and next she was out of the city lights and into the dusty countryside, fingers scrabbling to turn on the headlights, driving into darkness along winding little roads which seemed deserted - apart from an occasional car being driven at breakneck speed towards her.

The surgeon wasn't much of a cartographer. His map was just a sketch and the red biro directions difficult to decipher. Ellie pulled into the verge and switched on the internal car-light.

‘- white one-storey house,’ she muttered, ‘- turn right into lane - go past farm … Casa on left - key in door.’

She glanced nervously out at the darkened countryside stretching on either side of the lane, gasped - and a little cry of alarm escaped from her parted lips. Looming close to her face and eerily lit by moonlight reared tall sword-like plants, their silvery shapes edged with sharp thorns. Shivering, Ellie accelerated away, headlights on full beam and eyes skinned for that low white farmhouse which should be coming up soon on the right. The road was now snaking its way through little clusters of houses, the Seat’s lights picking out garden walls draped in pink and scarlet blossom. Clouds of perfume drifted into the car …

And suddenly here it was, illuminated in the headlights - the white block of the sketch-map farmhouse, windows shuttered and silent against the night. Carefully Ellie edged the Seat down a sandy track flanked by the dusty jigsaw leaves of fig trees, keeping the farm on her left till she could go no further, her path blocked by a high stone wall with an arched entrance. ‘Ellie Robey, you’ve made it! ‘she congratulated herself. ‘Here it is - my House of Peace …’

Spelled out in blue and white porcelain tiles set into the wall by the garden gate were the welcoming words CASA DE LA PAZ.

First thing Ellie did was park on an empty patch of ground over to the side, switch on her mobile and text the brief message home: I AM HERE xxx

She locked the car and dragged her luggage into the garden. A porch light had been left on to greet her, illuminating an oak front door carved and studded and sturdy enough for a cathedral. In the lock was a heavy old key, and on the broad flight of steps stood huge terracotta urns filled with waxy rich-perfumed Madonna lilies. It was like a film set! Ellie opened the door and went in.

The lights were on. She was clearly expected.

’Hel-lo?’ she called out hopefully. But silence was the only greeting. The place seemed empty. Too weary to explore, she bumped her wheeled cases up the stairs and into the first room she came to.

It had really taken it out of her, the journey and then this mystery tour in the black of night. Such fatigue brought home the debilitating effect of the glandular fever. And that wide bed with its white knobbly-cotton coverlet turned down in readiness for the sleeper was just too temptingly inviting. Suitcase abandoned in the doorway, the exhausted girl switched out the lights and tumbled on to the bed—unwashed, unpacked, and fully dressed—and within the space of seconds was lost in the limbo of a heavy dreamless sleep.

Rafe Harland MD, FRCS was so accustomed to being targeted by women, he scarcely noticed it any more. Nurses and junior women surgeons alike wasted hours in front of their bathroom mirrors getting that smokey-eyes look just right. In their dreams, eyes would meet over theatre masks and RH would be mesmerised …
who is that mysterious woman?
But the reality was that Harland only had eyes for his patient. And since the patient’s eyes were taped shut, the focus of his rapt concentration was the opened chest with its vulnerable needy heart. And when on the rare occasion Rafe did pick up on an emphatically yearning glance, it only made him irascible. He wasn’t a monk. But his love-life was separate from his working world. Nothing for the greedy hospital grapevine to feed upon. His women friends tended to be university academics - and not necessarily medics.

It wasn’t generally known that he and Charlotte Bowman, the current glamour-girl television historian, were an item. Charlotte was going to be out in the Middle East, filming with a camera crew just when Rafe himself planned to be working in Portugal. She would be gone for eight weeks; eight weeks of keeping in touch via Skype and email.

Both led hectic lives. Their careers came first. That was a given.

Coming out to the Cardiac Centre recharged Rafe’s batteries. For him more work was pleasure. Not operating made him feel restless and under-utilised. Even so, tonight he was truly weary. Seven hours of complex surgery in the operating theatres of St Botolph’s. Then the dash to catch his flight – he’d made it in the nick of time. And once landed, straight to see Dr Flora and catch up on the situation at the Cardiac Centre. Giovana would have the Casa de la Paz ready for him whatever late hour he rolled in. For once, Rafe planned to take a week's break— get some sunshine and boost his vitamin D, swim starkers in the pool … maybe invite some friends round.

Time enough to get back on the grindstone when Robey’s sister arrived to take over on the domestic front. He’d left it to Jean to organise everything, good old Jean. The sister had been ill: glandular fever, wasn’t that it? Nice place to recuperate - the Casa, Portugal, lucky girl. He wouldn’t expect too much from her - maybe a barbecue for a dozen or so, nothing heavy. He hadn’t had the chance to interview Eleanor Robey but her brother Jon was a very decent, hard-working chap. She would be in the same competent and responsible mould.

Rafe parked the Renault in its usual spot by the farm where Giovana would spot it and know Dr Rafe had arrived. He locked his laptop in the car boot where it would be safe till he needed it in the morning, and swinging his attaché case came through the fig trees that backed on to the garden, ducked under a drunken old mimosa held up by a strategically-angled wooden post, inhaled with unfailing pleasure the heady scent of orange blossom, and taking a bunch of keys from his trouser pocket, unlocked the back door and stepped into the kitchen passage.

There was a horrendous crash followed by a bellow of pain and fury.

The room blazed with sudden light.

Ellie had been so deeply asleep she couldn’t remember where she was. A man’s footsteps approached the bed and someone loomed threateningly over her. She lay there, frozen in terror, eyes tightly closed, the lids trembling in shock.

‘Hell's teeth!’ snarled a deep voice that would make an Eskimo's hair curl. ‘What the blazes are
you
doing here?’

Ellie shot upright. ‘Mr Big!’ she gasped, ‘Oh no!’

‘
What did you - ??’
hissed the man from the plane, rubbing his shoulder and grimacing in pain. Even in her panic, Ellie noticed this and winced.

‘Oh dear what have you done to yourself. Pop your shirt off and let’s have a look, I'm a qualif -’

Her words were cut off by an accusation that just took her breath away.

‘You're a trespasser, that's what you are. A squatter! Breaking into my house! Sleeping in my bed!’

Ellie's eyes widened to the limit of their sockets.
His
bed? Mr Big’s bed? As if scorched, she sprang off the coverlet and as she did so a piece of paper fluttered to the polished wooden floor. Mr Big - who she now realised was as astonished and indignant as she - snatched it up and read it. Then raked his head with a bemused hand so that his thick dark hair stood on end. He looked almost human.

‘What the hell is going on here?’ There was puzzlement in that warm deep voice. Mr Big was staring bewildered at his own red-biro sketch map.

Elllie began to sway on her feet.
Oh god, where had she heard that voice
before …
‘I don’t feel very -’

Shock, weakness and an empty stomach caught up with her and she fell like a stone at Rafe's feet.

His bruised shoulder throbbing angrily, Rafe stared blank-eyed at the sprawled heap at his feet. All he wanted was to get under the shower and into his bed. Sorting out this mess could wait till morning.

He nudged the sprawled heap of girl with an unsympathetic toecap. She was in a dead faint, out for the count. But he wanted her out of his room and there was nothing else for it.

Rafe scooped her up, slung her over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift, and carried her back down the stairs …

Ellie awoke next morning to find she had been unceremoniously dumped in a downstairs bedroom at the far end of the villa, slung down like a bundle of old clothes on one of a pair of twin beds. She plucked in distaste at her sticky tee shirt and dragged agitated fingers through the tangled mass of her hair. You couldn’t come up with a more horrible nightmare - Mr Big turning out to be none other than Rafe Harland. On the plane, his voice … she’d had a feeling about that voice, somewhere she had heard it before …