by Susan Napier
The little dog came trotting out of the kitchen, dragging the discarded soup bone that Nina had used to distract him from chewing on the stranger’s muddy shoes.
A faint, choking sound floated up from the couch. ‘You’re going to ask a dog for a medical opinion!’
His incredulous outrage sent a buzz of amusement humming through her veins, easing the pressure of her intense anxiety.
‘Unfortunately, he’s not licensed to practise.’ Nina removed the bone from the dog’s mouth and picked up the gnawed handle of an expensive fishing rod from the bookcase, holding it out for Zorro to sniff.
‘You know where you got this, don’t you, boy?’ she said encouragingly. ‘Dr Freeman—Dave—gave it to you after you kept stealing it off his back porch at Christmas. You take it along with you when Dave takes you and Ray out fishing on his boat, and he throws this in the water for you, doesn’t he?’
Nina was scribbling a brief line on a scrap of paper and taping it to the stumpy rod as she spoke. ‘You like playing fetch with Dave, don’t you?’ She mimed a throwing action and the terrier began to prance energetically. Nina crouched down and looked into the beady masked eyes as she placed the piece of rod firmly between his jaws. ‘I want you take this along to Dave’s place now. I want you to fetch—Dave! Understand?’
Zorro pricked up his ears, his whine mingling with a sleepy snort from the patient.
‘Of course he can’t understand—he’s a dog!’
Nina bristled in defence of her companion. ‘Zorro is extremely intelligent. He knows what I’m saying, don’t you, boy? You’re going to play fetch with Dave.’
The Jack Russell barked excitedly around the edges of the rod and took off at his customary velocity.
As his claws clicked across the kitchen floor, Nina remembered to call out, ‘Uh, Zorro, just don’t forget that the rod may not—’ There came a sharp rap and a pained whine, followed by a furious rattling and growling. ‘—fit crossways through the cat door.’ The fight sounds rose to a crescendo of frustrated snarls and Nina was about to dive to the rescue when there was a scraping pop and a series of muffled, triumphant yips diminishing into the distance.
‘Extremely intelligent, huh?’
Nina ran her hands through her wringing-wet hair, scooping it off her clammy neck. ‘He tends to leap before he looks sometimes, but even intelligent humans do that,’ she pointed out.
‘You really expect him to do it?’ he wondered.
Rather than following the upward movement of her arms, the blue eyes had drifted in the opposite direction. Nina looked down to see her drenched sweatshirt plastered to her uplifted breasts, shaping their modest fullness and explicitly revealing her lack of a bra. She hastily plucked the wrinkled fabric away from her unpleasantly chilled skin. ‘I know he will. Zorro’s very dedicated when he thinks he’s on a mission,’ she said more confidently than she actually felt. She wouldn’t relish going back out into the storm herself. ‘In the meantime, I’m going to get into some dry clothes.’
‘Don’t bother on my account.’
His mocking drawl made her cold nipples tingle with embarrassment. She had taken her body for granted for so long that it was a shock to find it responsive to a casual male comment, particularly in such inappropriate circumstances.
‘Just keep that towel pressed against your head until I get back!’
She would have liked to have a shower, but the thought of standing naked under a steamy flow of water with the silver-eyed stranger just the other side of the wall made her insides turn over. Instead, she managed to change top and bottom without ever being completely nude, towelling herself roughly and pulling on dry underwear, including a sturdy white cotton bra, woollen stretch pants and a roomy checked shirt with the sleeves rolled up. She blotted her hair and rubbed it with a towel before fastening it high on her head in a loose ponytail that would enable it to dry naturally without getting totally out of control.
She needn’t have worried about her unexpected guest wandering in on her shower. When she returned to the lounge after dumping her wet clothes in the laundry tub, he was still lying on the couch in exactly the same position, eyes closed, towel obediently clamped to his temple.
She felt a brief tremor of uncertainty at his stillness but relaxed when she picked up the steady rise and fall of his chest. The battering gusts of wind and roaring barrage of rain on the iron roof masked her movements as she quietly picked up his bunched coat from the floor, surprised at its weight, the musty smell of wet wool clogging her nostrils as she carried it into the bathroom and draped it over the curtain rail of the shower.
Turning to leave, she hesitated, then, feeling guilty, explored each of the pockets in turn. She found no wallet, but in one of the deep side pockets she found a bunch of keys, and from the breast pocket in the grey silk lining she drew out an elegant silver cigarette lighter, sculpted in voluptuous lines that stressed art over pure functionality.
It was agreeably heavy, fitting perfectly in the hollow of her hand, the smooth metal cool to the touch as it rested on her open palm. Her fingers closed possessively around the curving shape and she battled an unexpectedly compelling urge to slip it into her own pocket.
Appalled by her unaccustomed craving, Nina hurried out to rid herself of the temptation, dropping the keys quietly onto the table by the couch and placing the cigarette lighter carefully beside it.
She glanced over at the recumbent figure as she did so and her heart jerked in her chest as she found him quietly watching her, his narrowed blue eyes moving between the articles on the table and the naked oval of her face.
She moistened her dry lips. ‘Uh, I emptied the pockets of your coat so I could hang it up to dry,’ she explained, inwardly squirming at the lie. ‘I found these….’
As her fingers reluctantly withdrew from the seductive contours of the lighter, her thumb smoothed over a slight roughness in the casing. It could have been the jeweller’s mark, but Nina knew with a hitch in her breathing that it wasn’t a silver stamp the sensitive pad of her thumb was identifying. Sure enough, when she tilted it to the light, she found herself looking down at a brief inscription in flowing letters, too small to read at arm’s length.
‘What’s the matter?’ In spite of his air of exhausted confusion, he was alert enough to notice her subtle change of expression.
‘There’s an engraving…’ she began, torn between her intense curiosity and the need to deny the powerful allure of the silver talisman.
‘Is there?’ No spark of enlightenment ignited his gaze. ‘Well—what does it say?’ he prompted, struggling up on one elbow as the seconds ticked by and she made no attempt to read the tiny inscription.
She bit her lip as she held it up, her dark lashes fanning down like sable brushes over her troubled green eyes, painting out his view of their expression.
“‘For Ryan, the bright foreigner in my life,’” she read, and frowned as she tried to make sense of the cryptic words, grappling with an elusive sense of familiarity. The inscription was put there by a woman, she was sure, but its meaning continued to lie stubbornly just beyond her comprehension.
‘What does it mean? Foreigner in what way? Do you think it means that you’re not a New Zealander?’
She was aware of him slumping back against the cushion. ‘I have no idea,’ he murmured, his voice so flat with disappointment that she knew he spoke the absolute truth.
But at least she now had one clue as to his identity. ‘Ryan…’ She tested it out on her tongue, hoping the sound of it might trigger his memory. ‘Ryan must be your first name—does it ring any bells?’
‘I…my head…’
‘Is it hurting more?’
She broke off, relieved by the thumping on the back door, which heralded the arrival of an oilskin-clad Dave Freeman with a rather subdued-looking dog tucked under one arm and a briefcase under the other.
‘Oh, God, Dr Freeman—what happened!’ she gasped.
‘I thought that was my li
ne,’ he said, smiling wryly, handing Zorro over as the wind whisked the door out of Nina’s hand and slammed it shut with a violent bang behind them. ‘He’s okay. He just got bowled over by the wind when he jumped out of the Range Rover. It’s only his pride that’s hurt,’ he explained.
‘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!’
