Excerpt.html

by Jennifer Taylor

CHAPTER ONE

WHAT IN HEAVEN’S name was he doing here?

As the plane began the final stages of its descent, Jude Slater was struck by an unexpected rush of panic. Up to this point anger had buoyed him up. He had been so furious when his former mentor, a man he greatly admired, had accused him of choosing the easy option that he had set out to prove him wrong. Maybe it wouldn’t have stung quite so much if Jude hadn’t had the sneaking suspicion that the other man was right. He had been coasting for the past few years, although he had refused to justify himself by explaining why. He tried not to think about that period in his life; it was too painful. Suffice to say that he had paid his dues, even if it didn’t appear so to an outsider.

Nevertheless, the accusation had spurred him on so that almost before he knew it, he had signed up to work for Worlds Together, a leading medical aid agency. True, he had been a little disconcerted when he had been invited for an interview a couple of weeks later and offered a post. He hadn’t expected things to move quite so quickly but he had been determined not to back down. Nobody would be able to accuse him of losing sight of the real issues once he had done a stint overseas, he had assured himself. He would be accorded his true standing within the medical fraternity and that was all he wanted. It had all sounded so perfect in theory but now that he was about to land in the tiny central African country of Mwuranda reality had set in.

What did he know about the problems of working in the developing world? Jude thought a shade desperately. He was London born and London bred, and he thrived in the constant bustle of city life. When he travelled abroad, he visited other cities—New York, Paris, Rome—places where he felt at home. Wherever he went, he stayed in five-star luxury hotels too; however, recalling what he had been told at his interview—something about Mwuranda recovering from the effects of civil war—it appeared that five-star luxuries were going to be very thin on the ground here!

The plane rumbled to a halt and Jude unfastened his seat belt. Ten hours spent squeezed into a gap between piles of packing cases hadn’t made for the most comfortable journey but, hopefully, things would improve from here on. The one thing he mustn’t do was panic. Conditions couldn’t be that bad or nobody would volunteer to work here, so it was just a question of putting everything into perspective. Maybe luxuries would be few and far between, but so long as he had the basic necessities he would cope. He was only here for three months and he could put up with a bit of hardship for that length of time.

Jude felt much better once he had reasoned everything out. He had been told that he would be collected from the airfield, so as soon as the ramp was lowered, he made his way out of the plane. His heart sank as he stepped onto the runway and looked around. All he could see in every direction was khaki-coloured landscape, the few scrubby trees which were dotted about providing the only relief from the monotony. It was mid-afternoon and the air was blisteringly hot. Apart from the plane he had arrived on, the airfield was deserted. He couldn’t see any sign of a car waiting to collect him and his spirits sank even further at the thought of having to hang around in the heat until his transport arrived.

‘Dr Slater?’

The voice was female but that was the only indication of the speaker’s gender, Jude discovered when he turned around. The figure standing before him was dressed in a bulky old boiler suit which completely disguised the wearer’s shape. Heavy boots on her feet and an old baseball cap pulled low over her eyes completed her ensemble.

Jude could just make out the lower part of her face—a softly rounded chin and a mouth which was bare of any trace of lipstick. He had no idea if she was young, old or somewhere in between, and it was unsettling when it meant that he wasn’t sure how to pitch his response.

‘That’s right. I’m Jude Slater.’ He held out his hand and smiled charmingly at her. ‘And you are—?’

‘Your driver.’

The woman ignored his outstretched hand as she stared past him into the hold and Jude felt himself bridle. Quite frankly, he wasn’t used to women of any age ignoring him. The older ones wanted to mother him, the younger ones wanted to sleep with him, while those in between could go either way.

‘If you’ve brought any luggage with you then you’d better fetch it. There’s a truck on its way to pick up our supplies, but there’s no guarantee it will make it back to town tonight. It all depends how long it takes to unload the cargo.’ The woman treated him to a cursory glance and he could tell how unimpressed she was by his attempts to charm her by the sneering curve of her unadorned lips. ‘We don’t drive around after dark. It’s far too dangerous.’ Jude’s chagrin faded in the face of this fresh snippet of information. He managed to hide his dismay but the situation seemed to be going from bad to worse at a rate of knots.

‘I’ll get my bag,’ he said shortly.

‘You do that. I just need a word with the pilot and I’ll be right with you. The bike’s over there.’

Jude stopped dead, wondering if he had misheard her. It had been extremely noisy in the plane and his ears were still ringing from the throbbing of the engines, but he could have sworn she had said something about a... ‘Bike?’

‘Uh-huh.’ She pointed across the runway. ‘That’s it over there. There’s some rope under the seat, so I suggest you tie your bag onto the back. It should be safe enough so long as we don’t hit too many potholes.’

Jude’s jaw dropped when he spotted the battered old motorbike propped against the perimeter fence. Its bodywork was pitted with rust and even from this distance he could tell that the tyres were completely bald of any tread. She didn’t really think that he was going to travel on the back of that thing, did she?

‘This is a joke, isn’t it? Some sort of a...stunt you pull on new recruits like me?’ His good humour returned in a rush as he realised what was going on and he laughed. ‘You wind us up by telling us that we’re expected to ride on the back of that heap of junk and I, in my innocence, very nearly fell for it!’

‘I hate to disillusion you, Dr Slater, but it isn’t a wind-up. We’ll be travelling back to town on that bike, so I suggest you get your belongings together.’ The woman pushed back her cuff. ‘It’s almost two o’clock and I haven’t got time to waste, hanging about here. If you don’t want to spend the night sleeping in the plane then you’d better get a move on.’

With that she walked away. Jude watched her make her way over to where the crew were standing then realised that he was holding his breath. He breathed out and then in, but not even a fresh shot of oxygen made him feel any better. His gaze went to the rusty old motorbike and his mouth thinned. Given the choice, he would have refused to get on the blasted thing but he didn’t have a choice, did he? He was a stranger in this country and one who knew very little about what it took to survive here too. He might be able to hold his own in any city in the world but he was as vulnerable as a newborn babe out here and it was galling to admit it.

He was used to running his life the way he chose these days. It had taken him a while to get back on track after he had quit working for the NHS and he had no intention of relinquishing his autonomy ever again. Maybe he was at a disadvantage here but he still intended to be in charge of his own destiny.

Jude took another deep breath and used it this time for a specific purpose, i.e. shoring up his anger. He would start as he meant to go on. No way was he going to be ordered about by some overbearing, pushy woman!

* * *

‘I’m sorry about the delay but our usual driver didn’t show up this morning and we had to find a replacement.’ Claire Morgan glanced at her watch again and frowned. ‘The truck should have been here by now, though, so I don’t know what’s happened to it. I’ll have to check back with base and see if they’ve heard anything.’

She left the crew to begin the task of unloading the cargo and made her way over to the bike. Dr Slater had just finished roping his very expensive leather holdall onto the back and he looked round when he heard her approaching. Claire pulled the peak of her cap lower over her eyes, hating the fact that she felt it necessary to hide beneath it. She had hoped that she had got over this fear but as soon as she had seen Dr Jude Slater disembarking from the plane, her internal alarm bells had started ringing.

She knew what the problem was, of course: he reminded her of Andrew. There was something about that air of self-confidence he exuded that put her in mind of her ex so that it was an effort to carry on walking towards him. The thought of having to live with this fear gnawing away inside her for the next few months was more than she could bear, so maybe she needed to focus on the differences between the two men rather than the similarities?

It was worth a try, so Claire tested out the theory as she crossed the runway. Jude Slater was tall like Andrew, but whereas Andrew was heavily built, Jude had the lithely muscular physique of an athlete. Both men had dark hair, but Jude’s hair was jet black with the hint of a wave to it whereas Andrew’s was a rather muddy shade of brown and poker-straight. Jude’s eyes were a different colour, too, Claire realised as she drew closer—a warm hazel with flecks of gold in them. Andrew’s eyes were pale blue, very cold and frosty. In fact, if she had to choose one feature which she had disliked it would have been Andrew’s eyes. Even when they had been sharing their most intimate moments, his eyes had never held any real warmth.

Claire sighed. With the benefit of hindsight, she could see that she should have taken it as a warning but she had been too besotted at the time to read the signs properly. It was a mistake she wouldn’t make again. If she ever reached a point where she could consider having a relationship with a man again then she wouldn’t choose someone who looked like Andrew or Jude Slater, for that matter.

‘Is everything sorted out?’

‘Nearly.’ Claire’s tone was clipped as she stopped beside the motorbike. She didn’t look at him as she lifted the seat and took out the two-way radio transmitter. She had done her best—flagged up the differences—but it hadn’t helped as much as she had hoped it would. She still had this deep-seated urge to run away and hide, and it was painful to acknowledge how little progress she had made in the past two years.

‘Nearly? So do I take it there’s a problem?’ he persisted, obviously not satisfied with her less-than-fulsome reply.

Claire ignored him as she tuned the radio to the correct frequency. Although most of the rebel fighters had been driven out of the area, there were still pockets of resistance and keeping in touch with base was vital.

‘Hello!’ He stepped forward and bent to peer under the peak of her cap. ‘I asked you a question. Did you hear me?’

Claire immediately recoiled. ‘Do you mind,’ she snapped, twisting the dial this way and that in the hope that it would disguise the fact that her hands were trembling. She hated it when anyone invaded her personal space. It was a trick Andrew had used to intimidate her and even though there was no reason to think that Jude Slater was trying to do the same, she resented it. Bitterly.

‘I’m sorry. I just find it frustrating when people won’t answer a simple question.’

He stepped back, folding his arms across his chest as he leant against the fence post, but Claire knew that he had sensed her discomfort. Colour ran up her face as she bent over the radio. Nobody knew about her past. Not even her family or her friends knew what she had been through. She had been too devastated to tell them the truth, that Andrew had forced her to have sex with him, that he had raped her. Women like her—intelligent, independent women—were supposed to be able to look after themselves. They weren’t supposed to put themselves in a situation whereby something like that could happen. If they did then the consensus was that they were to blame for leading the man on.

It had taken Claire a long time to accept that she hadn’t been at fault and that it was Andrew who was the guilty party. However, she knew how fragile her confidence was and there was no way that she was going to risk undoing all her hard work. Maybe Dr Slater wasn’t cut from the same cloth but she wasn’t going to test out that theory. For the next three months she intended to keep her distance from him and, more important, make sure he kept his distance from her.

‘I need to contact base,’ she explained as coolly as she could. ‘The truck that was supposed to collect our supplies should have arrived by now and I need to find out what’s happened to it.’

‘It could have broken down en route.’ Jude shrugged when she looked at him. ‘If it’s the same vintage as this machine then I’d say it’s more than likely, wouldn’t you?’

‘It’s possible. But I drove along the route the truck would have taken on my way here and I didn’t see any sign of it—’ She broke off when the radio crackled. The reception was terrible and she winced when a series of ear-splitting shrieks erupted from the handset. Twisting the dial, she tried to find a better signal, but it was no clearer.

‘Here, let me have a go.’

He reached over and took the radio off her before she could object. He turned the dial the merest fraction and the next moment, Claire heard Lola’s voice flowing across the airwaves. He handed the handset back to her with a smile that immediately set her teeth on edge. She knew it was silly to get upset over something so trivial, but his actions smacked of condescension and it was the one thing guaranteed to rile her.

Andrew had displayed the same high-handed attitude towards her. He had treated her with a mixture of charm and contempt from the moment they had met only she had been too naive to realise it. The way he had taken over at every opportunity had seemed touchingly gallant and she had enjoyed having him take care of her. It had taken her a while to realise that there was nothing gallant about his desire to rule her life, and definitely nothing gallant about the way he had reacted when she had told him that she no longer wanted to see him. Sickness roiled inside her at the memory and she forced it down. She had nothing to fear because she wasn’t going to put herself in that position again.

‘Thank you,’ she said coldly, turning so that she could speak to Lola without having to look at Jude. ‘Hi, Lola, it’s me—Claire. I’m at the airfield and the truck hasn’t arrived. Have you heard anything?’

‘Not a word, hon. Give me a second and I’ll see if I can get hold of the driver.’

Claire waited while Lola tried to contact Ezra, the truck driver. The heat was stifling that day and she could feel sweat trickling between her shoulder blades. The boiler suit she was wearing wasn’t the most comfortable outfit in these conditions but all the women on the team made a point of covering themselves up whenever they left the hospital. Although the Mwurandans were lovely people on the whole, there had been a few unpleasant incidents recently, and it was safer to err on the side of caution.

‘I can’t raise him, Claire. I’ll keep trying but at the moment I can’t get a reply.’

Lola came back on the line. Claire frowned when she heard what the other woman said. ‘Maybe his radio’s down. Some of the sets are on their last legs, so that could be the problem.’

‘Could be. Anyway, you’ll be driving back along the same route, won’t you, so you should pass him on the way.’

‘I suppose so. Thanks, Lola.’ Claire switched off the radio and stowed it under the seat then turned to Jude, trying not to let him see that she was concerned about what might have happened to the truck. ‘We’d better make a move. There’s no point hanging around here. The driver will just have to bed down in the plane if it’s too late for him to drive back to town tonight.’

She straddled the scooter and started the engine then looked round when she realised that he hadn’t moved. ‘Are you coming or not?’

‘Do I have a choice?’ He sighed as he swung his leg over the seat. ‘It’s either a ride on this contraption or a night in the hold. Not much of a choice really, is it?’

‘What did you expect? A chauffeur-driven limousine?’ Claire retorted, letting out the clutch. The motorbike bucked as the gears engaged and she heard him swear as he grabbed hold of her around the waist.

‘Do you have a licence for this thing?’ he demanded, leaning forward so she could hear him above the roar of the engine.

Claire gripped the handlebars, her heart pounding as she felt the weight of his body pressing against her back. It had been a long time since she had been this close to a man and the memories it evoked weren’t pleasant ones, either. It was all she could do to behave with apparent calm as they set off. ‘No, I don’t have a licence as it happens. However, I’ve not had an accident yet, so you should be safe enough.’

She increased their speed as they left the airfield, weaving her way around the potholes that peppered the road, and felt Jude’s grip on her tighten.

‘You really know how to reassure a guy, don’t you?’

‘I try,’ Claire retorted.

She skirted around a particularly large hole, grinning to herself when she heard his breath hiss out as the rear wheel clipped the edge. Maybe it wasn’t a kind thing to do but she had to admit that it felt good to be in control. She had a feeling that Jude Slater rarely allowed other people to order him about and she may as well make the most of it while she could. Once they were back at the hospital, she was going to do as she had said and steer well clear of him. It wouldn’t be a hardship. From what she had seen so far, he was more trouble than he was worth!