‘We…’

‘We,’ Jess said firmly. ‘Geraldine is a first-class masseuse-and I can help with this little one, Dr Mountmarche. I know I can.’

The trembling that she’d felt in Paige had been the same trembling she’d known in all of her wounded wild creatures. Instinctively Jess knew the path to go-and she knew that she could help both father and daughter.

Without getting involved?

Never get involved with your patients, they’d told her at veterinary school. Once your heart is involved with a patient your clinical efficiency goes out the window. You end up making stupid decisions that aren’t in the animal’s or the owner’s best interests.

It was the one training edict Jess had never been able to follow. Somehow Jessie’s heart seemed to get tangled up in every one of her cases.

And how to apply heartlessness to a five-year-old child?

Impossible.

Or was it?

Jess looked up into Niall’s drawn, strained face and knew that she was going to have to work desperately hard at keeping her heart uninvolved.

Impossibly hard.

‘You mean I should uproot Paige all over again?’ Niall asked slowly. ‘Is that what you’re suggesting?’

‘No.’ Jess spread her hands. ‘This is your home and Paige thinks of it as her home. But you could also have a base at the hospital. Sleep down there when you need to-with Paige nearby and myself and the nurses caring for her. And come here when you can. The medical work’s not arduous yet.’

‘Yet?’

‘There’s a hotel being built on the bay,’ Jess told him. ‘You may have noticed. And plans for more. By next autumn the population of the island looks like doubling with the influx of tourists. But by then our permanent doctors will be back, ready to take over. We only need you until then.’

‘And then what?’ Niall asked harshly.

Jess stared. ‘I don’t know,’ she said blankly. ‘You go back to doing whatever you were doing before, I suppose. I mean, you never intended to stay here forever, did you? Don’t you intend to go back to your London medical practice?’

‘I suppose I do.’

‘Well, then…’ Keep it clinically calm, Jess thought briskly. ‘Will you help us?’

‘I don’t want to hurt Paige.’

‘Then ask Paige if she’ll come.’ Jessie’s eyes softened. She took a step forward and laid a hand on Niall’s bare arm. ‘We can advertise for a doctor immediately but until then we’re desperate. And, Niall, maybe isolating the child here won’t force her to trust you. Maybe this is so different to what she’s been used to that she can’t learn to trust. Maybe…Maybe having people around and things going on, with you as the absolute constant, is the way to go. It sounds right to me.’

Niall didn’t move. He stared down at Jessie’s slim hand on his bare arm and his lips moved into a sneer.

‘It sounds convenient to you.’

‘That, too,’ Jess admitted. She lifted her hand away with an effort. A stupid gesture…’But I won’t hurt Paige. If I thought…’

She stopped as the sound of crutches in the passage signalled Paige’s entry. The child hobbled in.

‘Are we ready to go, Daddy?’ Paige asked and the child was smiling. ‘To see Harry?’

Niall looked from Jess to Paige and back again-and then swore softly to himself.

‘You’ll advertise for a locum immediately?’

‘If you won’t do it for the full six months…’

‘I’ll do it while you’re desperate, Dr Harvey,’ Niall snapped. ‘I don’t like being manipulated.’

Jess shook her head. ‘I’m not trying to manipulate you. I’m just…’

‘Saying it’s me or air-ambulancing emergencies to the mainland. If that’s not manipulation I don’t know what is.’ He sighed. ‘OK, Paige,’ he said and his tone was of a man driven against the wall. ‘I’ll just have a few words with Hugo and put some things in a suitcase to leave at the hospital in case of emergencies-and then we’ll go.’

‘Daddy…’The child stood stock still. ‘Are we going to stay with Jess?’

‘Do you want that?’ Niall was watching his daughter with eyes that betrayed nothing of how he was feeling.

‘Yes,’ Paige said definitely. Her small mouth set in a determined line as though here at last was what she was looking for. ‘Yes, please.’

And Niall Mountmarche looked like thunder.

CHAPTER FIVE

JESS left Niall and Paige organising themselves and drove slowly back to the hospital. It was still early. She stopped midway and did some overdue herd testing but she was still well on schedule for her morning’s work as she turned into the hospital car park.

In the space marked ‘Medical Superintendent’ was a gleaming black Range Rover.

Niall hadn’t wasted time.

Swiftly Jess showered and changed her cow-soiled clothing, checked her menagerie and walked through to the hospital.

Geraldine met her as she walked through to the sister’s station.

‘You’re a magician, Jess,’ Geraldine beamed. ‘However did you talk the man into it?’

‘I’m not sure,’ Jess confessed. ‘Has he been here long?’

‘An hour. He’s seen Frank and given me orders and seen old Mrs Fryor, too. Guess what? He says she can go home. He says she’s risking making herself really ill lying on her back recuperating from a sprained ankle and he’s ordered a walking frame, a few lessons to make sure she’s stable and then an ambulance trip home. She’s tickled pink.’

‘I’ll bet.’ Jess hesitated. ‘Geraldine, have you or have you not been on duty for over twelve hours?’

‘Sixteen,’ Geraldine grimaced. ‘But I thought…Well, Sarah doesn’t like being on her own and there’s the little one…’

‘Little one?’

‘Paige.’ Geraldine’s face softened. ‘Oh, Jess, isn’t she a poppet? Her dad’s been explaining about her legs. He’s going to take Dr Hurd’s clinic at one-there are seven patients booked and he’s going through their records now-and I’ll massage Paige’s legs then and look after her till he’s finished.’

‘No.’ Jess shook her head. Running Geraldine into the ground wasn’t in her master plan at all. ‘You’re off duty. Do Paige’s legs now if it’s OK with Paige and her dad and then I’ll take charge of Paige while Dr Mountmarche does the clinic.’

‘But you’ve your vet clinic as well…’ ‘Small animal clinic,’ Jess smiled. ‘I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if Paige loves it.’

Paige did.

The child endured Geraldine’s gentle massage with stoic indifference to the pain. ‘It’s enough to make you cry to see her,’ Geraldine whispered as the nurse finally took herself off duty. ‘Now, you’re sure you’ll be right with her?’

‘I’m sure.’

Jess had to reiterate her assurances to Niall. He’d done what Jess suggested and stayed out of the way while Geraldine massaged Paige’s legs, and then returned to comfort his small daughter and take her to the kitchen for lunch. Surrounded by welcoming kitchen staff, Paige ate more than she’d eaten for a week.

‘I don’t believe it,’ Niall told Jess as lunch drew to a close. ‘At the vineyard it’s a battle to get her to eat anything.’

‘Maybe this is what she’s used to,’ Jess said thoughtfully. ‘If her mother’s taken her from one group of friends to another-one commune to another, or whatever-then noise and laughter and general chaos won’t be strange. A formal meal with just one or two people-and both of them male-will be something she’s not used to.’

‘Maybe…’ Niall looked at Jess strangely as if he was trying to figure out whether she was being impertinent, pushy or just plain sensible. In the end, his expression said, he hadn’t decided. And he didn’t much like the sensation.

‘I don’t like leaving her again this afternoon,’ he told Jess bitterly. ‘This is some mess you’ve got me into, Dr Harvey.’

‘Mess?’ Jess watched Paige drain the last of a huge glass of milk and smiled reassuringly across the table at the child. ‘What sort of mess?’

‘I mean the medical treatment in this island has been a shambles from the time this so-called Dr Hurd arrived. Nothing’s been done. Regular tests have been missed. Every patient booked this afternoon shows some sign of mismanagement on their record. I suppose I have to be grateful that he has at least documented his pseudo-treatments.

‘The worst…Well, it seems your Dr Hurd has been giving pethidine injections almost on demand. There are three people booked in for what’s written up as a regular injection. That alone is just about grounds for having the man struck off-if he was ever on any medical register in the first place. It looks like I’ll have to instigate withdrawal treatment for people who never should have been allowed to become addicted.’

Jess flinched. ‘I’m…I’m sorry.’ She shook her head. ‘1 didn’t realise how bad…Well, Lionel never let me know what he was doing. I wasn’t welcome…’

‘To stick your nose into his affairs.’ Niall gave a bitter smile. ‘You seem content enough to stick the same appendage into mine.’

It was a rebuke and Jess’s eyes flew up to his. There was a softness there, though, that said that maybe judgement was being suspended. A faint easing of the bitterness…

His daughter was at least eating…and smiling…

‘There’s a mess to sort out this afternoon if I’m to do any good.’ Niall told her. ‘Are you sure you have time for Paige?’

For answer, Jess smiled across at the little girl.

‘Paige, this afternoon I have to see a cocker spaniel who was hit by a car last week. I put twelve stitches in his rump ten days ago. Would you like to come and see Harry and then help me take the cocker spaniel’s stitches out?’

The empty glass was put down with a thump. Paige grabbed her crutches.

‘I’m ready,’ she said.

It was after seven by the time Niall finished and Jess was starting to feel incredibly guilty.

She and Paige had worked their way through the ills of the island’s small animals and Paige had helped to feed Jessie’s orphaned wallaby and wombat Afterwards Jess had made Paige an omelette. As Paige had finished her tea Harry had stirred in his cage by the fire and decided to show some interest in proceedings. To Paige’s wide-eyed astonishment, Jess had made another omelette.