Heart Surgeon in Portugal (9 page)

Rafe chuckled to himself - then gave a start that jerked the steering wheel to the right, sending a frisson of alarm through the Mercedes following close behind. ‘
My little sleeping what? Get a grip, man!
’ he growled out loud. Ellie and that wretched cat - those two were messing with his mind. Sneaking some weird hallucinatory stuff into the food! She hadn’t poisoned them both - yet. But give her time!

This haute cuisine evening reminded Rafe of what he was missing … maybe he should take Ellie out for a meal - give her a taste of really good cooking, Portuguese-style.

All these thoughts passed swiftly through the surgeon’s mind in the few moments it took to turn into the lane and drive past the farm and on down to the Casa. Reaching the house, he parked and four glossy limousines lined up behind the Renault. Their host strode over to the arched gateway and indicated to the four couples that they should go on ahead. The light was on a sensor and at the first footfall the path to the front door would be illuminated along its entire length.

The ladies went first. Sure enough, on came the lights. As one, they swivelled on their Louboutin heels, looking back and giggling like schoolgirls. Speculative eyes searched out Rafe, bringing up the rear. The men guffawed out loud. Rafe was puzzled, but gratified that everyone seemed so happy to be at the Casa.

Most of his party spoke very good English. Quite how good, their host was about to find out.

‘Aha Rafe - I see you’ve been washing your undies!’

‘You like then a bit of the
cross-dressing
, eh, old chap?’ they joshed, giving the Englishman an amiable clap on the back of his cream linen jacket as with narrowed eyes he surveyed the brightly-lit scene.

All along the line of rosemary bushes was an array of flimsy underwear, laid out like bizarre decorations of welcome.

‘Oh la la,’ sniffed Arielle, the parisienne wife of Senor Rodrigues, ‘there is no co-ordination in these things. None of it matches.’

The formal atmosphere now dissolved into something far more relaxed and friendly. These powerful people were rather enjoying having him at a disadvantage - this eminent heart surgeon from a famous London hospital. ‘Claudia,’ whispered Rafe urgently. ‘The hall light switch is just inside the front door. Would you mind showing everyone into the salon? Be with you in two ticks …’

The minute he was alone Rafe began snatching up a lacy pink bra here, a wispy black thong there, a pair of flowery briefs that didn’t look as if they’d fit the cat let alone Ellie’s curvy backside, carrying on until he had an armful in all colours of the rainbow, and the smell of rosemary filled the warm night air. Recalling Arielle’s exclamation of disapproval, his mouth quirked in a grin. How mortified Ellie would be! Not that he would be unchivalrous enough to tell her. No, certainly not. She hadn’t set out to make a laughing stock of him.

Rafe could guess exactly what had happened. In his absence the girl had dealt with her intimate laundry and set it out to dry as best she could … had been overcome by the onset of one of those regular bouts of weariness… gone to bed early and forgotten. Well, fair enough. She couldn’t have known he would be bringing back a bunch of VIPs, of course she couldn’t.

His guests were now in the salon. Rafe could hear their animated voices echoing round the big formal room, relaxed and cheerful. So no harm done. Flora would be over the moon if these wealthy people decided to help the Centre get its new buildings. Rafe would do anything to make Flora happy, this wonderful, unselfish woman. He dumped Ellie’s laundry on the kitchen worktop, stripped off his linen jacket and began to prepare a tray of drinks.

Ellie was so buried in cushions that at first no one noticed the sleeping girl. But the blaze of lights and the rapid foreign voices woke her and up she sprang, all bedhead hair and little crumpled shorts, her face red all down one side and marked with a deep stripe where the piped edge of a cushion had pressed into her cheek.

Eight pairs of eyes were staring at her. At a glance she assessed the situation and made a quick judgement on how best to deal with it - another nursing skill coming in useful. These were not burglars. Evidently on his visits to Portugal Rafe had made some wealthy and influential friends. And he couldn’t have been planning on sleeping tonight with any of these soignée ladies since there were four of them, each with a man to match.

‘Good evening,’ said Ellie, smiling round to greet each one of them, self-possessed and quite unaware that her hair was standing on end and her face slashed with red. ‘I
am
sorry if I startled you - I must have fallen asleep.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘Goodness, is that really the time?’

Arielle muttered something to her husband in French. Ellie lip-read the words “petite amie” and the warning bells rang. ‘I’m Ellie,’ she said quickly. ‘I’m here for the summer. I work for Mr Harland. I’m the -er - the
chef
,’ she declared boldly. Well, why not? “Chef” carried more
gravitas
than “helping with the food.”

Enlightenment dawned.
This charming little English girl would not have been expecting…

Ellie stitched a smile to her warm face.
Hell’s bells! I didn’t … I forgot! … I’m going to get skinned alive!

And Arielle wasn’t going to let her off the hook either. This naïve little English person must be taught a most important lesson: she should take as much care with what she wore
under
her clothes as the things she wore on top. Though from the look of her - Arielle’s disapproving stare raked Ellie from head to the tips of her bare toes and back again - the girl was a lost cause.

‘Then it was you, mademoiselle,’ she said coldly, ‘who left those - those
things
all over the bushes.’

‘Arielle!’ protested her husband uselessly.

Ellie gave a ‘who else could it be’ shrug of her slim shoulders. Rafe had come into the salon, standing silently at the back of the throng whose full attention was on this pretty dishevelled girl.

‘You need to remember, mademoiselle, that Everything Must Match! What I am saying is that for each -’ Arielle pouted with the effort of trying to recall the English term - ‘
soutien-gorge,
you should buy of the same at least three pairs to match of the -’ Another pout and some dainty hand gestures in the area of her tiny size 4 hips.

‘
Culottes, peut-être
?’ Ellie supplied helpfully, quite expecting the supercilious
parisienne
to say her accent was
incompréhensible
. Arielle, however, seemed rather pleased. ‘Mais, vous parlez français?’ ‘Certes, je parle français,’ responded Ellie calmly, ‘why not? Now, can I get drinks for everyone?’ she asked in her best ‘hostess’ voice.

‘Coffee. Black,’ chimed a chorus of voices.

Rafe who had gone to all the trouble of preparing a tray of drinks decided it was time to interrupt before his ‘chef’ hijacked the evening. He nodded at Ellie to accompany him to the kitchen where they shook their English heads over the extraordinary foreignness of drinking coffee so near to bedtime. Rafe put the chilled white port back into the fridge and Ellie ground the coffee beans. He thought she had never looked so pretty. A trifle rumpled but very very sweet. And how she had charmed his important guests with her cool self-possession. As for speaking French … clearly he didn’t know quite as much about her as he had thought.

The mark was still there on her cheek. With a gentle finger Rafe traced the crimson indentation marking her soft skin. ‘Go to bed,’ he murmured and then did something so unexpected, so amazing that it left Ellie shaken and too stirred for sleep. She opened her French windows and lay spread-eagled on the top sheet, letting the night air cool her hot and sweating body.

He kissed me! Rafe Harland kissed me!

Truth to tell, his lips had brushed her forehead and it was all over in a fraction of a second. But it was still a kiss. And he had thanked her before despatching her to her room with her arms full of her belongings. ‘Thank you, sweetie,’ he had said.
Thank you! After that fiasco with her washing. After his guests coming across a sleeping scarecrow in his salon.

It was all a puzzle. But - the kiss was real and the ‘sweetie’ couldn’t be unsaid.

Voices could be heard in the hall, those women would be kissing him goodnight … their hands on his shoulders, reaching up on tiptoe to get at him. Ellie stared wide-awake into the darkness. Moments later, car engines started up and Rafe’s elegant guests purred away into the night.

He came back into the house and turned the key in the lock. Ellie held her breath! Would he come to her to say goodnight?

But the tread of his feet on the stairs was taking him away from her. His bedroom door closed firmly behind him. Ellie lay there, aching with disappointment and mingled relief, finally slipping into unconsciousness …

Ellie’s scream pierced the darkness and rang around the bedroom, ricocheting off the four walls and echoing in the tiled ensuite bathroom. Someone was in her room! Something had been right here, on her bed! Someone! Or Something! Terrified to move she lay rigid, waiting for Rafe to come dashing to her rescue. Where was he? How could he not have heard her scream of terror? Clutching the sheet, she sat up and saw a dark shape race out of her bathroom and make a dash for freedom, out between the fluttering curtains and through the open French windows. A rat!! It looked like a rat! There could be more. Here in her room. Under her bed!

One thing was sure - Ellie wasn’t going to wait to find out. Quick as lightning she slammed shut the French doors, wrapped her shivering form in a sheet and raced on bare feet up the stairs to hammer on Rafe’s door.

‘What the devil’s the matter with you, woman?’ came a bad-tempered growl from the darkness inside.

‘Rafe Rafe! Something’s in my room! A rat - I saw something like a rat! It jumped on my bed.’

‘More likely that dratted cat.’ He sounded weary and disinterested. ‘Your own fault. You encourage it.’

This was a bit much. ‘I do
not
,’ she said indignantly.

‘Well, don’t leave your window open at night. Shut it, lock it and get back to bed.’

‘I have.’ Her voice quavered, ‘But there might still be -’

Rafe swore. His language was disgraceful and Ellie was quite shocked. Had he so completely forgotten the kiss, the ‘sweetie’… ‘Can I sleep up here?’ she pleaded, ‘in the other bedroom?’

‘Do whatever you want. Now just leave me in peace.’

With Rafe on the other side of the wall, Ellie slept like a top, waking bright and early. She decided she really liked this bedroom. It was huge. And if she wanted she could lie right across the bed and still have loads of room. What’s more the ensuite up here had the swishest shower cubicle with one of those deluge shower-heads that let the water pound down on you till you gasped for mercy. As she showered she imagined Rafe hearing the water and coming in to join her … ha ha, as if!

Why shouldn’t she move her gear upstairs? Why not? No rats or cats up here - though Rafe was probably right and Miss Moggs had jumped on her in the night.

Rafe had some impressive friends, she mused, lathering her head with camomile shampoo. But I coped ok, didn’t I. Considering.

Back in her own room Ellie sprayed herself lavishly with her magical perfume. Rafe would be mesmerised… the scales would fall from his eyes. There standing before him would be the desirable woman of his dreams, worth so much more than a ‘sweetheart’ and a peck on the forehead. She would go down and prepare him the most delicious of breakfasts…

Rafe showered and dressed in double-quick time. Thanks to Ellie and her plague of rats he had overslept! Noticing the open door of the second suite he peered in, expecting to see Ellie in one of her dead-to-the-world sleeps, but the sheets on the king-size bed had been turned neatly down and the balcony door opened wide to air the room. On the landing a strange odour clung to the air as if too heavy, too cloying to disperse. Frowning, Rafe wrinkled his nose, delving into his olfactory memory.

At the bottom of the stairs the smell was even more pungent. He knew what it was now! That awful pong Ellie reeked of on the Faro flight. Why on earth, at nine in the morning on another brilliant high-summer’s day, would someone decide to douse themselves in…

It suddenly dawned! That old familiar scenario.
You idiot, Harland! One peck and a kind word – and see what you’ve done? Just because you were feeling pleased with life, you’ve made her think … well, G.O.K. what she’s thinking, she’s a super kid and she doesn’t deserve to get tangled up with a big bad wolf like you.

Ellie’s smile as he came out onto the verandah was enough to melt the hardest heart, but Rafe knew what he had to do. He sat down at the table and sent Ellie’s lovingly-prepared fruit salad back to the fridge, waved away the home-mixed muesli. ‘I’m not hungry. Not after what we ate last night.’

‘It was good then?’

‘Sublime.’

Ellie blinked.
Can’t compete with that then, can we!
she said to herself.

‘Coffee, toast and marmalade,’ ordered her boss. ‘And from tomorrow it will be breakfast at the Centre.’

‘OK,’ said Ellie equably. ‘Peach jam or apricot?’

‘Marmalade.’

‘They don’t do marmalade out here. At any rate, I’ve never seen any.’

‘Have you bothered to look?’

He looked so comically grumpy that Ellie wanted to reach out and rumple that thick dark hair and say,
there there …
‘Yes,’ she smiled, ‘as a matter of fact I have. I try very hard to give you everything you ask for, Mr Harland.’

Still he persisted. ‘Marmalade is made from oranges. In that kitchen we have sufficient to stock a fruit-stall, do we not?’ Rafe put on a glowering expression - but it clearly wasn’t working for Ellie didn’t seem at all perturbed.

‘Well,’ she said patiently, as if humouring a child having a bit of a strop, ‘Perhaps a very small fruit stall. But to make good marmalade you need bitter Seville oranges. Here, you see, they are not. The right. Sort.’

‘Thick, dark and chunky. That’s how I like it. Not this apricot mush,’ he grumbled.