Heart Surgeon in Portugal (8 page)

Ellie sat on her bed feeling awful but telling herself it wasn’t the end of the world. Rafe hadn’t torn her off a strip; in fact he’d been remarkably unperturbed. Then a bright idea struck. There was a way she could make amends!

Remembering the way he had dealt with her shirt, and what he had said, a warm melting glow ran through her whole body. But she wasn’t going to run around in just a bikini, so she pulled on a strappy top and linen shorts and went barefoot back to the terrace.

Rafe was by now out of the pool with a towel wrapped around his middle. ‘I was just thinking -’ said Ellie eagerly, pausing to catch her breath, her eyes shining.

‘Sounds ominous.’ Rafe slung a dry towel round his neck stethoscope-style.

‘I could type those notes out for you if you don’t mind me using your laptop! I can get them done tonight while you’re out.’

Rafe looked down into the shining hazel eyes upturned to his. ‘That’s a very kind thought,’ he said, looking amused at the very idea. ‘But you know, there’s a lot of difficult terminology. Even the ‘trained medical secretaries’ find the spelling a challenge.

Damn damn damn
, Ellie was thinking. ‘I’m not thick, you know,’ she muttered.
I’ve got three science A levels. I could have been a doctor too, if I’d wanted!

Rafe was gathering up his papers which were now dry. ‘Indeed you are not, Miss Robey,’ he said mysteriously. ‘Very far from it.’

‘I’m finished here. I want to drop in at the Centre on my way to the restaurant.’

‘But don’t you want -’

‘See you at breakfast,’ he called over his shoulder, heading indoors to shower and change.

And half an hour later he was gone in a spurt of exhaust and an eagerness to get away that excluded her completely.

Without its dynamic owner the place seemed to settle into a limbo of suspension. The very air was flat and stifling in the heat. It seemed to Ellie that there was a crackle of energy when Rafe was around; a lifelessness without him. Now as brother Jon had promised, the Casa de la Paz was exclusively hers. For the rest of the afternoon and the long, long evening ahead…

She wandered aimlessly round the grounds of the Casa, imagining what the Cardiac Centre must be like. Staffed with gorgeous Portuguese women doctors and nurses - far more exciting than she. Undoubtedly Rafe was planning to take one of them out to dinner. He must have some kind of a sex-life. He wasn’t an automaton.

‘Ellie Robey,’ she scolded herself aloud, ‘that is none of your business! You know your trouble? You feel fine. You want to be back on the wards. You’re not used to this quiet life.’

A surprise was waiting for her by the swimming pool. There was Jon’s shirt, draped over the back of a chair and left to dry. Rafe had fished it out and left it there for her to find.

Ellie was touched by this kind gesture. She had supposed he’d thrown it straight in the bin. It was already drying, the fabric stiff and hard and when she pressed it to her nose, smelling of pool water. She would wash it and hang it in her bathroom to dry, well out of sight of the unpredictable surgeon.

This done, she went in search of Giovana to let her know she was going for a walk so that Giovana could lock up the Casa when she had finished. There was the old Portuguese woman watering the lemon trees, nodding and smiling over Ellie’s earnestly halting attempts to communicate by a mixture of signs and words. So charming, this Ellie - so
bela.

The scrawny grey cat was rubbing affectionately round Giovana's black-stockinged legs. It crossed to an empty saucer placed thoughtfully in the shade of the back door and mewed appealingly at its audience of two.

There was a rim of dried milk round the edge of the dish. ‘Who's been spoiling
you
, then, Miss Moggs?’ wondered Ellie.

‘The
medico
... ees all heart,’ pronounced Giovana. ‘Ees all
heart
,’ she repeated more confidently, beaming at the pretty English girl with the face red from too much sun.

‘All brain, you mean,’ said Ellie, quite forgetting that communication between the two of them was strictly of the pidgin variety. She went back to her room for her Nike trainers and the khaki baseball cap bought years ago on a trip to Eurodisney Paris. As she crossed the meadow her thoughts of Rafe Harland were too intense for Ellie to notice the thorns attacking her bare legs. What an enigma the man was; clever, ruthless, bad-tempered. Yet with a kind and tender side to him, moved by a little cat’s piteous cries - because although it came from Giovana’s farm, everyone knew farm cats had to fend for themselves.

Ellie sighed deeply and there and then made up her mind. ‘I am
not
,’ she declared to the birds, and the bees, and the insects buzzing around the clumps of herbs sprouting out of the sun-baked ground, ‘I am not going to think about Rafe Harland any more today. He is banished from my mind. I shall concentrate on tomorrow. Because I,’ she said loudly, ‘am going back to the Fish Market with my good friend Vivienne Carr.’

She strode along, swinging her arms, kicking at tufts of coarse grass in the orange earth, stooping to pick a handful of yellow daisies for the green glass jug on the breakfast table. ‘I wonder if Vivienne would come shopping with me in that little boutique-y place down in the town? I really could do with some new gear…something a bit funkier, I need to look a bit more
cool
.’

Yeah, right - look good for RH!
teased that little voice in her head.

Though she was so much older, Vivienne was
très chic
and had the stylist’s eye. She would see what would suit Ellie with her lack of inches and unfashionable curves.

No, I’m not giving Mr Harland another thought for - for hours.’ Ellie checked her wristwatch, still talking to herself. ‘Listen to me, girl, no thinking about RH before bedtime. You’re beginning to behave like a romantic little fool not a level-headed graduate nurse. Just keep telling yourself you’ve come out here to do a job of work and to make a complete recovery. Hold that thought and everything will be fine. If you’ve got any sense at all - and nurses are credited with a super-abundance of the stuff - you’ll keep out of RH’s way, do what you’re expected to do and enjoy this working rest-cure for exactly what it is.’

Overhead a plane left vapour trails across the brilliant sky and Ellie watched it till it disappeared from sight, picturing the tiny passengers inside, cooped up like sardines in a can, their belongings crammed into the overhead lockers ...

A dialogue was starting up in her head: ‘Now stop that. Talking to yourself is getting to be a habit. Cut it out.’

‘When Rafe’s not around I can’t help -’

‘Oh, it's
Rafe
now, is it? No more
Mr Big
.’ The voice in her head was mocking and Ellie flushed beneath her pale gold tan.

She was lonely, needed another human being's contact. Giovana might still be there in the garden…

But the key was under the flower pot and Giovana back at the farm so Ellie decided that while Rafe was out, she would hand-wash her smalls and have them out of the way before night fell. In this climate things dried in minutes, any time of day.

There wasn’t a proper clothes line because sheets and towels were laundered back at the farm, but Ellie had seen how Giovana spread the damp tea towels over the rosemary bushes. They smelled delicious when they had dried. So Ellie did the same, placing a delicate bra or a flimsy pair of briefs on each one of the line of rosemary bushes edging the path from the arched gateway right up to the steps to the main door. That very same path she had tottered wearily up that first fateful night when she had arrived.

She stood back and surveyed her handiwork. There! In the soft warmth of the evening air they’d be dry before bedtime.

She came back into the house through the big front door and it was only then that Ellie saw the post - two letters with her name on them placed by Giovana on the carved oak chest in the dark hallway. Her heart soared at the sight of her mother’s handwriting on a large manila envelope - the precious recipes at last! But the other letter sent a frisson of alarm racing through her veins. For there it was: Eleanor Sarah Louise Robey B.Sc., RGN. Her name in full, for all to see, written out in bright blue biro in the handwriting of Emma, a physio friend who worked at the same hospital as Rafe Harland and her brother Jon:

Could Rafe have taken in the post? Was her secret a secret no longer?

No, it must have been Giovana. Rafe had been outside for much of the day. And he had left the Casa via the side path. Ellie herself had watched him go. And wouldn’t it be more Rafe’s style to present her with her letters, saying nothing but taking a wicked pleasure in her obvious discomfiture …?

It wasn’t so much that Ellie
minded
Rafe knowing the truth. It was more that he’d realise she’d been playing games with him. And he would take his revenge. The very idea made Ellie shiver and put on a grey hooded sweat-top. She ripped the incriminating envelope into tiny shreds and pushed it to the bottom of the kitchen waste bin.

Anyway it was lovely of Emma to write to her, to take the trouble. They had met through brother Jon when he was dating the red-headed physiotherapist. Though the romance had ended perfectly amicably, the two girls had already formed a friendship, and Ellie had been rather sorry it came to nothing as she would have loved to have Emma as a sister-in-law and part of the family. But Jon was Jon and his girlfriends were legion; he stayed on good terms with most of them, but he wasn’t planning on settling down any time soon …

Ellie took the letters into the formal salon - so different from a chintzy English drawing-room, and settled down on the big wooden couch, her iPod stuffed in the pocket of her linen shorts and her bare feet wedged among the cushions. First she ripped open her mother’s foolscap envelope and with a sigh of thanks pulled out a fat wadge of printed recipes. A yellow sticky note with her mother’s red-ink writing was attached to the top page and Ellie read it and laughed aloud. Good old Mum! She leafed through the recipes and knew she’d have to go through them carefully and make a shopping list … but
mañana
. That could wait for tomorrow.

Eager to catch up with Emma’s news she snuggled down with the long handwritten letter.

Dear Ellie,

Thanks for the texts! Sounds like you’re having a brilliant time with RH. Thought I’d send a proper letter - see if I still know how to do joined-up writing (seeing I spend most of the day filling in forms while the patient sits there hoping eventually they’ll get some hands-on physiotherapy.) Did it give you a thrill seeing your name and qualifications written on the envelope? I bet it did!

Ellie’s lips curved in a rueful half-smile. More of a heart attack, Emma dear.

Wish I could get out of London - come and see you and lie out in that lovely SUN. Must be doing you the world of good. And I do love the name of your place. Casa de la Paz - can just picture it, calm and peaceful and relaxing. (Not sure how calm I’d be seeing RH in Speedos - that man is well fit.) Fancy your not knowing who he was on the plane. That is just hilarious.

(Huh! muttered Ellie)

Saw your big brother yesterday and said I was going to do you a proper letter. Jon says give his regards to RH and don’t worry about your Mum and Dad, they’re fine and not missing you at all (ha ha, much). Big hugs for your little self,

Emma xx.

Ellie pulled out a tissue and blew her nose punishingly hard to stop herself from crying. Hugs and kisses weren’t coming her way these days.

All of a sudden she was overwhelmed with homesickness and the longing for a familiar face. She re-read Mum’s note, picturing her sitting all alone at the kitchen table, red pen in hand as she marked a French dictée, the house empty - Dad on tour with his orchestra, Jon up at the hospital, and her only daughter far away in a distant land. For a few moments Ellie lay there sniffling a bit, then her eyelids began to flutter and her letters floated to the floor as she drifted into a dreamless sleep …

A
t Dr Flora’s urgent request, Rafe had spent a Michelin-starred evening wining and dining some of the most influential couples in the region. If the wealthy philanthropists now following him back to the Casa for a nightcap had been disappointed by the absence of the surgeon-in-charge of the Centre, their elegant manners concealed this.

But Rafe could tell they were a bit wary of a cardiac surgeon from London asking them to subsidise a new Theatre wing for the local Cardiac centre. He’d told them that for the past three summers he’d been coming out to train their surgeons; that it was vital for the Centre to keep up with the latest technology. They
seemed
to be on board…but until he got feedback from Flora, nothing was certain. And she wanted to action this project
a.s.a.p.

If only his guests would relax the formality. If only they would
lighten up
a bit. ‘I’m enjoying their company,’ said Rafe to himself. ‘It’s been a really stimulating evening. They’re suave and sophisticated, these guys, but they’ve got astute clever minds and their philanthropism does them credit. And as for their women - they’re lookers, and smart with it. But everyone’s handling me with kid gloves. As if I’m some kind of VIP!’

All the same, Rafe was glad that Claudia and Eduardo had been free to join him. They were generous supporters of the work of the Centre and it was through Eduardo’s upmarket estate agency that Dr Flora had found the rented Casa de la Paz. Claudia and Eduardo knew these people – had sold them their palatial pads and were part of the same set. Their presence had helped to oil the evening and ensure everything ran smoothly.

He hoped they weren’t going to disturb Ellie. That young woman needed her sleep. Rafe shook his head, remembering the times he had found her tucked away in some secret spot, book fallen to the ground, iPod forgotten. His little sleeping beauty drifting off again into health-giving dreamless slumber… Jon Robey had warned him this might happen. Brother Jon had told him quite a few things about little sister, things she didn’t know Rafe knew.