‘It’s baked over a heated stone inside a hole in the ground,’ he said pleasantly.
Sophie actually flinched as she hurried to pay attention. It was as if the tense exchange had never taken place. Xavier might have been conducting a presentation to a class of students, she realised, as he carried on describing the food they had available.
‘What else have you got?’ she said, glad to play along.
‘Papa a la Huancaina,’ he said, removing a lid from the second pot with a flourish.
She was relieved to see him relaxing a little. She guessed his emotions had stalled ten years back at the time of the accident. Rather than confront the deep well of grief inside him at the time, he had simply shut himself off from it. This wasn’t the Xavier she knew—this was a man who cared for nothing and no one; a man who had forgotten how to love, Sophie mused, vowing to cut him some slack.
‘It could have been prepared especially for you, señorita: boiled potatoes with cheese bathed in a mild chilli sauce.’
At least he had forgotten to scowl this time, Sophie noticed wryly. Maybe there was hope for a reasonable working relationship after all. ‘Sounds great,’ she agreed.
‘And for pudding we have tropical fruit.’ He introduced each one in turn. ‘Papaya, mango, passion fruit.’
‘So, what did you have to give the local big shot in exchange for all this?’ she teased. But from the minutest change in his eyes she saw that her attempt at humour had missed its mark by a mile.
‘Is that important?’
His voice was soft and unthreatening, but Sophie knew she had touched a nerve. There was something in his eyes—unanswered questions that must have lain dormant in his mind for years. Suddenly something occurred to her: surely he didn’t imagine she was one of the people who thought him responsible for his brother’s death? The very idea was offensive to her, ludicrous.
‘If it was anything to do with the full moon and virgins, no, not particularly,’ she said in a desperate attempt to lighten the situation. She leapt with alarm as the box hit the floor with a slap.
‘Is that what you think of me?’ Xavier demanded quietly. Tension swirled around them like a mist, making the tiny kitchen feel a good deal smaller.
‘Of course not.’ Sophie was frightened by the intensity in his gaze, and at the same time the thought of Xavier doing anything underhand was inconceivable.
Silently, he returned to the business of lighting the cooker, signalling the end of the exchange.
They had to get to know each other all over again, Sophie realised, as she watched him. The impetuous teenager she had once been was as far removed from her present incarnation as Xavier was from the life-loving young aristocrat who used to rip up the roads with his high performance cars.
Over supper they discussed nothing more controversial than the various treatments for asthma, a condition Sophie had suffered from since infancy. Then, after helping him to clear up the dishes, she made an excuse to escape to her own bed. Away from Xavier’s distracting presence, Sophie hoped it might be possible to get her thoughts in order and have a decent night’s sleep before their early start the next morning.
Snuggling deep into her sleeping bag, half-clothed, she meant to spend an hour or so quietly mulling over everything that had happened. But the moment her head touched the pillow her eyes drifted shut, and she knew nothing more until an insistent tapping on the window brought her fully awake the next morning.
Gathering her thoughts, Sophie clambered out of the low-slung bed and stared out of the window. A Peruvian couple stood waiting outside, a broad smile on the woman’s round face, with just a little more tension showing on the face of her male companion.
‘Just a minute,’ Sophie called to them as a cluster of impressions struck her all at once: Xavier’s bed hadn’t been slept in, the floor felt chilly under her bare feet, even though the sun was beaming promisingly outside, she was in Peru! Excitement ripped through her as she pulled on her jeans and made for the door. Whoever the couple were, they looked friendly, and Xavier had to be somewhere around…didn’t he?
She was here to do a job, Sophie warned herself as she went to open the outer door to the clinic. Even if an unashamedly primitive part of her insisted on responding to the fact that Xavier was masculinity incarnate—a fact that excited and worried her in equal measure—it was high time she got on with it.
But where were the keys? And, more importantly, where was Xavier?
She was fully awake now, her senses on full alert, and she had the unmistakable impression that she was alone. Swinging around, she scanned the sparsely furnished room, and there, on top of the table where they had eaten supper the previous evening, she saw a large bunch of keys resting on top of a sheet of paper. Snatching up both the keys and the paper, she made for the door, reading as she went.
Juan and Lola will take good care of you—
The hand holding the sheet of A4 clenched automatically, scrunching the rest of Xavier’s message into indecipherable gibberish.
He’d gone without her!
CHAPTER THREE
SOPHIE made a furious sound as she wrestled with the door locks. How could she have been so complacent? If Xavier thought she had come all the way to Peru to be incarcerated at Base Camp like some undependable youth— And she didn’t need looking after!
Swinging open the door, the sunlight hit her face. It was gloriously warm and, as the woman waiting outside began to speak, Sophie’s anger took a back seat.
‘Welcome to Peru, Dr Ford!’
A genuine beam of delight split the older woman’s face from ear to ear, displaying an enviable set of strong white teeth. ‘I’m Lola,’ she said, cocking her head to one side. Then she sighed wearily as she turned to view the man hovering in her substantial shadow. ‘And this is my husband, Juan.’
‘You speak English,’ Sophie said with relief, returning the smile as she extended her hand. ‘As you guessed, I’m Sophie Ford, a new doctor with the project. I’m very pleased to meet you, Lola. And I’m relieved to—’
‘Not as relieved as I am to have another woman around the place,’ Lola interrupted, bustling past her into the clinic. ‘Take the bike,’ she instructed Juan. ‘Put it away. Mind you stand it up properly.’
Sophie smiled. Something told her this wasn’t the first time Juan had received his orders for the day from Lola. ‘Bike?’ she said ingenuously, following Lola into the clinic, the kernel of an idea beginning to take shape in her mind.
‘Sí,’ Lola said, moving behind the improvised counter to check the boxes Xavier had found time to bring in from the truck before he left.
Sophie tried again. ‘You arrived here on a bike?’ The image of Lola and Juan teetering along together on a pushbike seemed unlikely, particularly as Xavier had said the next village was quite a distance away.
‘Sí,’ Lola said with a heavy sigh. ‘This man of mine is a little crazy,’ she confided fondly, twirling a finger around her head to illustrate the point. ‘He thinks he is a Hell’s Angel.’
‘Ah, a motorbike.’ A motorbike! Sophie could hardly contain her excitement. Her idea was rapidly blossoming into a fully fledged plan. ‘Could I borrow it?’
‘Borrow it! For what? Where would you go?’ Lola declaimed, her eyes as large as saucers. ‘No, Dr Ford,’ she said firmly. ‘This is not your London with traffic lights and zebras crossing. This is Peru, with spectacled bears and monkeys!’
‘Wonderful!’ Sophie said as her mind took a flight over the rugged terrain. She hadn’t even known there were bears in Peru. Well, except for Paddington, of course, who, according to the luggage tag thoughtfully placed around his neck by Michael Bond, the author of his bear-tales, came from Darkest Peru.
Gradually Sophie became aware of Lola’s curious glances and realised what a great first impression she was giving—a daydreaming doctor with hair sticking out all over her head, bare feet, and a rumpled top she’d slept in—hardly an image to inspire confidence in the patients. ?
??What I mean is,’ she tried again, running her fingers through her hair in a failed attempt to tame it, ‘would you let Juan take me to find Xavier? You see,’ she said, uncomfortable with the lie, but forced to go on with it, ‘I overslept this morning, and he had to leave without me…’
Maybe it was the sheer desperation in her voice that had persuaded Lola to loan out her husband for the day, Sophie decided, clinging to Juan’s scrawny form as he leaned low over the handlebars. Right now, Sophie wished she hadn’t! The bike’s bald tyres kept skimming the edge of the narrow track, and beyond that there was a sheer drop half hidden in cloud. There was no point trying to say anything to Juan. He couldn’t hear a thing with the wind whistling in his ears. All Sophie could do was close her eyes.
She felt the ground smooth out abruptly and then her eyes flew open in alarm as Juan executed a wide, skidding turn. The first thing Sophie knew of the fall was staring at the dusty ground, wondering how she got there. The next few impressions came in a rush all at once. Xavier’s feet by her face, his voice like a report from a gun: ‘Estúpida!’ Shock that stopped her breathing for a few moments… And pain—in her leg, in her head, on her hands—everywhere. She shook him off furiously when he went to haul her to her feet.
‘What are you doing here, Xavier?’ Sophie struggled to recapture what little remained of her dignity, swiping dust from her face, mouth and hands while she waited for his explanation.
‘I heard the bike,’ he growled in a menacing tone, putting his face very close up to hers. ‘Sound travels in the mountains.’
He went to check her over, but Sophie broke away. ‘So, where the hell am I?’ she said, looking around. The groomed track where she was standing and the impressive gates in front of her might have been constructed to harmonise with nature but they smacked of high-spending tourists, not local patients.
Ignoring her question for the moment, Xavier turned to Juan. ‘Why have you brought Dr Ford here?’