Secret Seduction

‘Good boy, Zorro!’ Nina praised him extravagantly as she put him down on his wobbly legs and patted his wet head. She was so grateful that he had fulfilled his urgent commission that she didn’t even chide him when he shook himself violently, splattering muddy water over her stretch pants. ‘I was a bit worried that with the racket going on outside you might not hear him barking,’ she admitted.

‘We didn’t at first, not until he jumped up onto the front deck and attacked the French doors. Persistent little beggar, isn’t he? I know he’s not too keen on storms, so I figured that it wasn’t his idea to play fetch in the middle of a gale!’

‘I’m sorry to drag you out on such a filthy night,’ Nina said anxiously as her visitor briskly shouldered out of his hooded coat and hung it on the back of the door, ‘but I couldn’t think of what else to do.’

She hastily explained what had happened while Dave Freeman washed his hands at the kitchen sink. He was not much taller than her, but broad and stocky, still physically vigorous in his mid-fifties. With his balding grey head, chubby round face and neat silver beard, he had the look of a kindly teddy bear, but Nina had always found his rock-steady brown gaze uncomfortably penetrating.

Now, she was grateful for their unwavering calmness as she recounted her tale.

‘His clothes are a bit damp, but I didn’t like to move him around too much while his head was bleeding. He seems to have no idea who he is and that made me worry that he might have some kind of skull fracture or something.’

He dried his hands on the clean towel she handed him from the airing cupboard.

‘Well, there’s not an awful lot we could do about that right now except keep him under observation until the weather clears enough to get him to a hospital,’ he said gravely. ‘But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. The worst-case scenario is often the least likely.’

He opened his briefcase and took out a stethoscope, his gravity lightening when he saw Nina’s expression of ill-disguised relief.

‘It’s not exactly the traditional black bag, but I always carry a very well-equipped first-aid kit around with me.’ He looped the stethoscope around his neck and patted it against his chest. ‘My badge of office—reassurance to the patient I’m not just any port in a storm—even though in this case it’s literally true. Do you think I look enough like a real doctor?’

‘But I thought…That is, you are one, aren’t you?’ Nina said, disconcerted by his flippancy.

‘Quite. So you can safely leave your injured stranger in my hands. I promise I’ll give him a thorough going-over.’

‘Oh, yes, of course.’ She was flustered as she realised he was gently suggesting that he preferred to conduct his examination alone. ‘He’s through here on the couch, Doctor—although you can use one of the spare bedrooms if you want to be more private.’

‘You may as well call me Dave,’ he said, grinning. ‘No point in us being formal when Zorro and I are already on first-name terms.’

Leaving the two men together, Nina hastily made herself scarce, bundling Zorro along to the bathroom where she cleaned his paws and gave his ecstatic body a hot bath of air with her hair dryer, running her fingers through the soft fur until it was silky dry again, shedding a lot of sand and grit on the floor in the process.

Thanks to the sound of the hair dryer allied with the wind and the rain, Nina was protected from the ignominy of eavesdropping on the proceedings in the living room, but she was quick to appear the instant that Dave called her name.

She was unaware that she was clenching her hands at her sides until he greeted her with his affable smile, spreading his big hands in their white latex gloves. ‘Well, he seems to have escaped with just a few bumps and bruises, but you were right about his cut needing a couple of stitches. Would you mind acting as my nurse for a few minutes?’

Her white knuckles relaxed and she flexed her fingers, the fierce tingling a signal that the blood was returning to her cramped muscles.

‘No, of course not.’ She transferred her gaze to the patient and found his eyes on her betraying hands. His face looked a little greyer than it had been when she left the room, and a lot more shuttered. ‘That is, if you don’t mind…’

His head lifted and a ghost of a smile drifted across his pale lips. ‘Why should I? You’ve played nurse pretty convincingly so far. I doubt you’re going to see anything you haven’t seen already.’

That wasn’t quite true. Although he now had the thick mohair snuggle rug that had been folded on the arm of her chair tucked over his long body, his shoulders were bare above it, and the trousers lying on top of his sweater on the floor told Nina that the examination had been every bit as thorough as promised.

She couldn’t help noticing that the black hair that swirled on his deep chest looked as soft and luxuriant as the strokeable mohair or that his lean shoulders and upper arms, lying exposed on top of the blanket, were smoothly contoured with well-defined muscle even when relaxed.

Her gaze sweeping down the bronzed forearms covered with superfine black hair to the slender hands clasped loosely on his flat abdomen, she saw for the first time that he was wearing a black digital watch and a discreet gold signet ring, inset with jade, on the little finger of his right hand.

Tearing her eyes away from the unexpected impact of his masculinity, Nina busied herself getting the supplies Dave requested as he ripped open a sterile pack from his bag. She felt a little tug of protest when he borrowed her razor to shave a thin strip from the edge of his patient’s dark hairline, but he chuckled that it would soon grow back.

‘No sign of male-pattern baldness yet, you lucky dog,’ he said. ‘I was thinning before I hit thirty-five. I would guess you’re somewhere around that yourself.’

He didn’t wait for an answer but swabbed the patch with a topical anaesthetic, apologising for the lack of anything stronger to block the pain.

‘We don’t want to take a chance of numbing any of your other responses for the next few hours.’

Nina winced unconsciously as he poised the needle and surgical thread at the edge of the wound, the bowl of cottonwool balls and pair of sterilised scissors she was holding, sagging in her grasp.

Dave paused, raising grey eyebrows at her. ‘Okay?’

She braced her shoulders. ‘I am,’ she said, glancing down at the stranger’s set face, his eyes fixed blankly on some distant point in the room.

‘Ryan will be, too. He’s in pretty good physical shape for someone who’s just been beaten up by a tree, so I’d say he’s tough enough to weather a few little pinpricks.’

‘You’re calling him Ryan—did he remember that was his name?’ she blurted, leaning forward eagerly.

‘He’s still hazy on personal details, but he told me about the lighter,’ he replied, disappointing her, his brown eyes delivering a silent caution. ‘So we’ve decided Ryan is more likely than John Doe and less melodramatic than Mr X.’

Nina bit her lip and forced herself to stand back. The man suffering the suturing didn’t even twitch a muscle. He seemed to have retreated somewhere deep inside himself where pain could not reach. But that would require a mental control that he didn’t seem to possess right now, so perhaps his state of confusion had deepened to the point that the pain receptors in his brain simply weren’t accepting any more messages from his abused body.

‘Very neat,’ she said shakily as she watched Dave cut the final thread and carefully sealed the bloody needle and soiled swabs into a thick waste packet.

The unflattering surprise must have shown in her voice for he cut her his wry grin.

‘Actually, I do needlepoint as a hobby—not very macho, but it helps me relax. The only trouble is that I’m so good at it my wife makes me do all our darning!’

Since Ray had told her that the Freemans were loaded, Nina took his last comment with a pinch of salt.

‘How are you feeling now, Ryan?’ Dave shone his pen light into the blue eyes.

‘Like some sadist just used me for needlepoint practice!’ came the grim reply.

Dave laughed. ‘Well, you can relax now and have a good rest—the sadist is leaving. Nina here will look after you. We’ll see how you are in the morning. My bet is that by then you’ll be a different man.’

Ryan’s grim expression flattened into serene calm. ‘I have no doubt you’re right.’

Nina was not so sanguine and she followed Dave back into the kitchen with her doubts. ‘So you definitely don’t think he’s got a fracture?’ she said in a low voice.

‘Without an X-ray I can’t totally rule it out,’ he began cautiously, ‘but, no, I’m pretty sure he doesn’t. Although he’s displaying a disordered state of consciousness that suggests concussion, there’s nothing to indicate any serious underlying brain injury. He’s dizzy but not nauseous, and while his verbal responses are mixed, his motor responses are all good. The deep bruising on his forearms looks like a defence injury, so I suspect he must have deflected a great part of the impact along his arms. The cut is just minor stuff and should heal with no trouble. I definitely couldn’t find any suspicious bumps or depressions anywhere else on his skull.’

‘But you do think he might have some minor concussion?’ Nina pressed as he repacked his briefcase.

‘I think you should keep an eye on him for the next twenty-four hours, just to be on the safe side. He can go to sleep if he wants to, but you should wake him every couple of hours. Turn on the light and make him open his eyes, see if he can talk lucidly and obey a few simple commands.’

‘Don’t you think you should stay?’ she asked nervously.

‘Look, I know you don’t have a phone here—so take my cell phone.’ He handed it to her with succinct instructions on how to work it. ‘And here’s my number at the bach,’ he said, scribbling it on the back of one of his business cards. ‘If you have any problems or questions—whatever time it is—call me. Okay? And if any calls come through for me—just advise whoever it is to take two aspirin and call me in the morning!’

She didn’t respond to his bracing good humour and he sobered.

‘Tell me what’s really bothering you.’