Читать книгу Christmas Secrets Collection - Laura Iding - Страница 17

THERE had been no mistaking the expression on Dan’s face that time, Sara thought while he drove her towards her flat in complete silence. That had definitely been more than disappointment on his face, it had been hurt.

‘Can you manage by yourself from here?’ he asked briskly, and she suddenly realised that he had pulled up outside the front of her house.

She sighed heavily, wondering when she was ever going to get anything right.

‘Dan, you saw how difficult it was for me to get into the car once I was out of the wheelchair. There are only two ways of getting up the four flights of stairs once I get in there, and that’s either on my bottom the whole way or if someone helps me.’

‘So why did you move back here, then?’ he demanded impatiently. ‘My place is eminently more suitable for someone in your position because it’s got a lift.’

Unfortunately, it had far more than a lift. It had Dan living there, too, and she just couldn’t cope with staying with him any longer.

‘And it’s Zara’s place, too, and with any luck it won’t be too long until she’s ready to come home to it.’

‘And?’ Those green eyes were far too astute. Sometimes she was convinced that he could read her mind.

‘And there’s no way that Zara and I can live in the same flat, not after what’s happened,’ Sara said bluntly. ‘She said she’s sorry and she didn’t mean to do it, but she said the same thing about this …’ She pulled her hair away from her race to reveal the first scar her twin had inflicted on her so long ago. ‘And she’s said it over and over again until … Well, let’s just say I don’t really trust her because the only one who matters to Zara is Zara.’

He reached his hand out towards her and gently laid it over hers where she’d unconsciously splayed it protectively over the hard curve of her pregnancy.

‘You don’t trust her to be too close to the babies?’ he asked, but they both knew it wasn’t really a question.

He closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath then opened them again and gave a brisk nod as if he’d just come to some momentous decision.

Rather than telling her about it, he released his seat belt and slid out of the car, leaving her feeling strangely dissatisfied.

‘Come on, then, let’s get you up those stairs,’ he said, and hauled her unceremoniously to her feet.

‘All I can say is it’s a good job you’re not coming into work for a few weeks yet, or you’d have to set off the previous day to get there in time for your shift,’ he teased when they finally reached the top floor.

That’s what you think, she mused as she lay in bed later that night and contemplated the prospect of weeks of sitting around, twiddling her thumbs.

‘It would drive me completely mad, just staring at the walls when I could be making myself useful at work,’ she continued aloud.

She tried to remember a precedent for a member of staff coming in to work a shift while they were sporting a cast and couldn’t, but … ‘There’s that doctor who uses a crutch on that American hospital drama!’ she remembered. ‘She can get up a fair turn of speed on it and still manages to take care of patients.’

She gave a quiet snort of laughter, trying to imagine herself using an actress in a fictional hospital to argue her case for an early return to work.

‘Well, that character may be fiction but I’m not. This is reality and the hospital is chronically short of staff. And even if I have to put up with weeks of being stuck in minors until the cast comes off, that’s what I’m going to do.’

An hour later she was still lying there wide awake, her brain going round and round the same scene, even now unable to believe that her sister could have wanted to harm the infant she was carrying. It was hard to drift off to sleep when all she could see in her mind’s eye was the harsh glare of the headlights bearing down on her.

‘Did I do the right thing in promising not to press charges?’ she wondered aloud. ‘Should I have made some sort of formal complaint so that, if at some time in the future something should happen to the babies, they’ll investigate Zara first?’

That hadn’t been the right thing to think about as she was trying to sleep. She felt sick at the very thought of something or somebody hurting them.

But what would she be able to do about it once they were born and she’d handed them over? On that day she would officially become their aunt rather than their mother and would have no legal say in what happened to them.

A feeling close to panic started to fill her and for several mad moments she imagined herself grabbing her passport and slipping out of the country. There was a whole wide world out there and in almost every country there were people crying out for doctors to treat their sick and injured. Surely she would be able to find a way to support herself and the two precious lives inside her?

Then she imagined how Dan would feel, knowing that somewhere in the world there were two children bearing his genes and he’d never seen them … beyond a fuzzy ultrasound picture.

Just the idea of the man she loved gazing longingly at that image year after year was enough to bring the hot press of tears to her eyes and she knew she couldn’t do it to him.

So, what was she going to do?

A strange sensation deep inside drew her attention away from that insoluble conundrum and she pressed her hand over the firm curve, remembering with a smile the way Dan had placed his hand over hers.

Oh, yes, he was going to be such a good father to this little pair. Kind and gentle and endlessly patient and …

What was that?

She froze into complete stillness and concentrated, aware that all the textbooks said it was far too soon but …

‘There it is again!’ she exclaimed aloud when she felt the faint fluttering, hoping it was something more than gas travelling through her gut.

When she felt it for a third time she was certain and wanted nothing more than to whoop with delight, no matter that it was pitch dark outside and everyone else in the flats was probably fast asleep.

But she couldn’t just lie here in the dark and savour it all alone. She had to share the news with someone else or it wouldn’t feel as if it was real. She had to speak to …

‘Dan? Did I wake you?’ she asked apologetically when he answered the phone.

‘No. I’m in bed but I haven’t gone to sleep yet. What’s the problem? Is something wrong?’

‘No. Nothing’s wrong,’ she reassured him quickly. ‘It’s just that I was lying there and … and …’ Suddenly, it felt so wrong to be telling him such momentous news when he was on the other end of the telephone. These were his babies, too, and he should have been here with her to feel …

‘There is something wrong,’ he said decisively. ‘I can hear you crying.’

There was the sound of a crash on the other end of the line and some muttered words that were probably unprintable, then he was back with her again.

‘I’m coming over,’ he announced in a don’t-argue-with-me voice. ‘I’ll need you to drop a set of keys down to me out of a window, because you’re not to come all the way down those stairs again.’

‘Drive safely,’ she said, worried about his state of mind, but he’d already broken the connection.

Suddenly, she remembered that he didn’t live more than a few streets away and in that powerful car of his it would only take minutes to get there.

‘Keys. Keys,’ she muttered as she heaved herself out of bed, briefly registering that round about the time that she finally had her bulky cast removed it would also be the time when her pregnancy made moving about more difficult.

‘So, this is what my life is going to be like for the next few months,’ she grumbled, then subdued a shriek of horror when she caught sight of herself in the mirror on the back of the bathroom door.

‘Talk about the wreck of the Hesperus,’ she moaned as she dragged a brush through the tangles put there by her restlessness. At least she wasn’t having to do it with her injured arm. If she’d dislocated her right shoulder she would have been strapped up and completely out of action for several weeks yet.

And as for what she was wearing … this old T-shirt hadn’t just seen better days, it had seen better years, and was so worn out that it really was translucent in places.

Before she could strip it off, she heard the deep purr of one of the more expensive makes of car outside the front of the house and her heart did a crazy little tap-dance at the knowledge that Dan had arrived.

‘The keys! What did I do with …? Ah!’ She pounced on them and hobbled over to the window, steadying herself against the furniture. ‘Catch!’ she called in a stage whisper as she lobbed them in a gentle arc towards him, then fastened the window as fast as she could and went back to changing her clothing.

He must have taken all four flights two at a time because he was already at her front door and fitting the key to the lock before she’d pulled a fresh, slightly less disreputable T-shirt on while balancing on one leg.

‘Very fetching!’ he teased, and she knew he’d caught sight of one of the packet of thongs she’d bought with him the morning after her accident.

‘A gentleman wouldn’t have looked, and if he accidentally caught sight of something he shouldn’t, he certainly wouldn’t have mentioned it,’ she said sternly.

‘Whatever made you think that I was a gentleman?’ he said with one of those cheeky grins that never failed to turn her inside out, right from the first time she’d met him.

Oh, how hard it had been, day after day, forcing herself to keep a strict distance between the two of them and making herself treat him the same as all the other A and E staff.

‘So, tell me,’ he said as he guided her back to the side of her bed, the rumpled covers mute evidence of her lack of sleep. ‘What had you so upset that you were crying?’

‘I wasn’t upset,’ she denied, then had to blink as her eyes began to fill with tears again. ‘I was lying in bed and I was resting my hand on the bump—’

‘You do that a lot,’ he interrupted seriously, once more resting his much longer, much broader hand over hers. ‘I’ve seen you doing it around the department, and when you’re sitting having a break you sometimes stroke your hand backwards and forwards and round and round.’

For a moment she lost the power of speech. How had he managed to see so much when she hadn’t even noticed him looking?

‘I’m sorry. I interrupted you,’ he said, sliding his fingers between hers so that their sensitive tips were stroking her, too. And even though there was a layer of soft stretchy fabric between them, his fingers were so warm that she could feel each one of them and the tracks they made on her skin as clearly as if she’d been naked under his touch.

‘You were saying that that you were lying with your hand on your bump, and.’ His voice was deeper and huskier than before, almost as though he was as affected by the contact between them as she was.

‘And I felt them move,’ she finished in a whisper, and saw his eyes flare wide in response.

‘Are you sure?’ Now he was staring down at the curve that was still almost small enough to be spanned by fingers as long as his. ‘Surely it’s still far too early?’

‘That’s what I told myself,’ she agreed, ‘but then it happened again, and a third time and … and I thought you would want to know and …’

He drew in a shuddering breath and she was stunned to see the bright sparkle of tears gathering in his eyes.

‘Oh, thank you, Sara,’ he said, so softly that she almost had to lip-read the words. ‘I can’t tell you how much …’ He shook his head, obviously moved beyond mere conversation.

‘I don’t know if they’re still moving, but do you want to …?’ She slid her hand out from under his and lay back across her bed, leaving his much larger hand spread across her.

It was so silent in the room that she could hear the numbers click over on the radio alarm beside the bed, so silent that both of them seemed to have forgotten to breathe while they waited for something to happen.

‘What did it feel like?’ he murmured so softly that it was almost as if he was afraid of frightening them, as if those tiny forms were timid wild animals.

She concentrated for a moment, recalling the movement deep inside her.

‘It felt like a cross between a flutter and a squiggle,’ she said in the end. ‘It wasn’t quite as delicate as a butterfly’s wing—it was slightly too substantial for that. But it wasn’t strong enough to be called a—’

‘There!’ he exclaimed with a look of awe on his face as he stared down at the place covered by his hand. ‘Was that what you felt?’

Sara concentrated for several long seconds and was growing worried that they’d reached the end of the performance when she felt the strongest movement yet.

‘Yes!’ she agreed joyfully, overwhelmed to be sharing this special moment with him. ‘That’s exactly what I felt. What do you think?’

‘What do I think?’ he asked seriously, a hint of a frown drawing those straight dark eyebrows together. ‘I think it’s boys, because that was definitely the sort of kick that will score goals.’

‘Idiot.’ She chuckled, delighting in his nonsense, but when she thought he would take his hand away again, he didn’t, propping himself on one elbow on the bed beside her so that he could leave it just where it was.

‘I was being serious,’ he said with a deliberately solemn expression, then asked, ‘What do you think they are? Identical or fraternal? Girls or boys?’

‘Or one of each?’ she suggested. ‘I’ve never understood some people being adamant about the sex they want their baby to be. I’ve always believed that it’s far more important that it arrives as healthy and as safely as possible.’

Their undemanding conversation had drifted from topic to topic, all loosely connected with pregnancy, labour and the care of newborns, and it was some time before Dan realised that Sara had fallen asleep.

For some while he lay there watching her, glad that the room was still warm enough so that he didn’t need to cover her with the bedclothes just yet, not while he was enjoying looking at the changes this pregnancy was causing to her body.

She’d never been as artificially slender as Zara and the soft curves of her burgeoning breasts and the full curve of her swelling belly were so naturally sexy that he’d been hard from the moment he’d walked into her flat and caught a glimpse of that skimpy purple thong.

Oh, what a fool he’d been, to be taken in by Zara’s spiteful games. How could he not have seen while he’d been reaching for the paste imitation that he’d already had a diamond within his reach? Sara wasn’t just a gifted and hard-working doctor, she was also one of the most genuinely good-hearted people he’d ever met. And, unless some sort of miracle happened, he’d lost her for ever.

So you’d better make the best of this special time, then, said a stern voice inside his head, and he took the words to heart. It might be the only opportunity he ever had to spend the night with her and he wasn’t going to waste a moment of it.

In the end, exhaustion got the better of him and the next thing he knew he was waking up with Sara’s softly curvy form wrapped firmly in his arms as if he was never going to let her go.

‘If only,’ he mouthed, full of regret, and whispered a kiss over the crown of her head.

A casual glance towards her bedside cabinet brought her clock into focus and he had to stifle an oath when he saw what time it was.

He hated having to do it, but there was no way he could untangle himself from her without disturbing her sleep. Besides, her cast had been resting over one of his ankles and he didn’t know whether he was even going to be able to walk on it. It felt as if the weight might have caused permanent damage to his circulation.

‘Sara?’ he called gently, hoping he might be able to rouse her just far enough to extricate himself. ‘Sweetheart, I’ve got to go,’ he said a little more firmly when she just tightened her hold on him. ‘I’m going to be late.’

‘Late?’ she repeated sleepily, and blinked … then blinked again and stared at him in disbelief. ‘Dan? What are you doing here?’

‘You invited me. Remember?’ He only meant to prompt her memory by stroking his hand over the curve of her belly but when he found himself stroking naked skin he pulled his hand away as swiftly as though he’d been burned.

‘Sorry,’ he muttered, mortified to feel the heat searing his cheeks as he rolled swiftly out of reach and leapt to his feet.

His shoes were scattered on the floor and his keys were … under the edge of her bed, and his brain was definitely lodged south of his belt while she was curled up in the middle of all those crumpled bedclothes like a sleepy cat.

‘I’m sorry but I’ve got to run or I’ll be late for my shift,’ he apologized, and let himself swiftly out of her flat, then nearly tripped on his way down the stairs when his hormones reminded him that he’d never seen a sleepy cat with such long slender legs … even though one of them was temporarily encumbered with a clumsy cast … or wearing such an outrageous scrap of underwear.

To lessen the danger that his preoccupation might cause an accident in the early-morning traffic, he forced himself to concentrate on the evidence he’d seen of how well her injuries were healing.

It hadn’t been many days since she’d cheated death by inches, but already some of the bruises were starting to fade, working their way through the colour progression that marked the body’s reabsorption of the various constituents in the blood.

He’d only caught a glimpse of her shoulder and most of the injured area was still covered by the strapping that was providing stability and support while the internal damage to the structures in and around the rotator cuff were repairing.

The grazes on her arm were much better than when he’d last seen them. Then, she’d been with Rosalie, the technician, having an ultrasound to find out if the pregnancy had been compromised, and she’d looked as if she’d been flayed raw almost from wrist to elbow.

It was all scabbed over now, evidence that none of the damage had gone very deep, and within a few more days she would be left with nothing worse than a deep pink mark on her skin that would probably be completely un-detectable in a matter of weeks.

The rest of her skin had looked silky-smooth and perfect and he’d longed to explore every inch of it in great detail and …

Whoa! That sort of thinking wasn’t the right way to keep his car safely on the road. For that, he needed to keep his thoughts on the straight and narrow, too, as befitted a married man.

And if that reminder wasn’t enough to take the shine off a morning that had started so sweetly, with the mother of his unborn children wrapped so trustingly in his arms, then nothing could.

Sara was cross with herself that she hadn’t remembered to set her alarm the previous night. This morning she’d intended getting up bright and early so that she could go in to the hospital to negotiate her partial return to work.

By the time she managed to get herself washed and dressed, she was going to arrive hours after the morning shift had started and was going to give the department manager grounds to doubt that she could cope with coming back to work so soon.

Ah, but she couldn’t really find it in her to regret the reason why her plans had become so disrupted. Feeling the babies move for the first time had been amazing, and it had been made even more magical when she’d been able to share it with Dan.

Waking up this morning to find that he was still with her and knowing that his body had been wrapped protectively around hers while she’d slept was a bonus she’d never expected, and she refused to feel guilty about it. To have heard that her sister had deliberately ensnared Dan purely out of spite and, worse, that she hadn’t even loved him when she’d married him—the whole situation seemed an utter travesty of everything that a marriage should be.

‘If he had married me …’ she whispered wistfully, then gave herself a shake. ‘“If wishes were horses then beggars would ride,” Granny Walker used to say, and I’m just wishing for the moon, too.’ And nothing could come of those wishes because even though Zara might not have loved Dan, he must have loved her or he would never have proposed to and married her.

‘And none of that will get this beggar a ride, but a phone call will,’ she declared when she was finally as ready as she could be. She reached for her purse and the business card of her own personal knight on a white charger … or in a black cab if she really wanted to be pedantic.

‘Sara! What on earth are you doing here?’ called one colleague when he caught sight of her.

‘You’re supposed to be on sick leave, darlin', taking it easy while the rest of us soldier on,’ added Sean O’Malley in his lilting Irish accent. ‘Have you just come to gloat?’

Everywhere she looked there was the usual morning chaos, except it seemed even worse than usual—or was that just wishful thinking? If everyone was being rushed off their feet, would that mean that she would be welcomed with open arms or would she be seen as a liability and shown the door?

There was only one way to find out.

‘Actually, Sean, I wanted to have a word with the department manager and—’

‘Oh. Admin stuff,’ he said dismissively. ‘Well, while you’re in those recently refurbished offices sitting on one of their ultra-expensive chairs, will you remind someone that they still haven’t scraped the loose change together to find us any replacement staff, not even part-timers? And we’re already two and a half doctors down. It’s getting beyond a joke.’

The staff in the human resources office reminded Sara of an ants’ nest that had just been given a vigorous stir with a big stick.

Not that any of them seemed to be moving with the same innate sense of purpose that you’d find among ants. In fact, as far as she could tell, there was interminable duplication of effort going on while they seemed to concentrate most of their efforts on finding reasons why things couldn’t be done.

‘Have you found the new staff for A and E yet?’ she asked sweetly, then gave the nest a deliberate extra stir. ‘I heard a rumour that if you don’t find them soon, it may have to be shut down because it’s dangerously understaffed, and all the patients will be diverted to other hospitals. Doesn’t the hospital get a massive fine if that happens?’

By the time she was shown in for her ‘chat’ with one of the more senior members of the department, the rumour she’d started seemed to have taken on a life of its own.

‘Have you any idea exactly how long you’re going to need to be on sick leave?’ the man asked from behind a desk that was laden with piles of paperwork nearly tall enough to hide behind.

‘That’s what I wanted to talk about,’ she said brightly. ‘The only thing wrong with me is this cast on my leg.’ After all, the strapping on her shoulder was invisible under her clothing. ‘And the wheelchair is only for show and to give my arms a rest from using crutches.’

It was such a long way from the truth that she almost expected to feel the searing heat of a thunderbolt from on high, but what she got instead was an administrator almost grovelling at her feet when she offered to pitch in to do an hour or two in minors to help clear the backlog. There was absolutely no mention of health and safety regulations, at least not in relation to her own fitness to work. The poor man seemed far more worried about the national disgrace that would ensue if his accident department was summarily shut down due to lack of staff.

‘What on earth are you doing here?’ Dan growled when he finally had a moment free to get into minors.

All morning he’d been regaled with one after another of his colleagues telling him how good it was to see Sara looking so well, and what a good job she was doing, and what a clever idea it was to have her ploughing her way through all that time-consuming debriding of wounds and painstaking stitchery, leaving the more mobile staff to do the rest of the work in the department.

‘You should be at home, in bed.’ And with that one sentence there was only one thing that she could think about, and she hardly needed to see the way those green eyes of his darkened with awareness to know he was thinking exactly the same thing.

‘Ah … it’s purely a temporary measure,’ she finally managed to say. ‘Someone said that they might be forced to close the department if they didn’t find a few more staff—health and safety or something—and you know what chaos it causes when you have new staff who haven’t a clue where anything is or how our system works …’

Enough! she ordered herself. Don’t babble! Just because you can’t stop thinking about the way his face lit up when he felt the babies move, and how it felt to have his arms wrapped around you … none of that means that you have to develop verbal diarrhoea.

For just a moment the way he looked at her made her think that he was going to say something of a personal nature but then he shook his head and gave a sigh of resignation.

‘Don’t get overtired,’ he said softly, and she knew his concern was genuine.

‘Don’t worry, I won’t do anything to risk the babies,’ she reassured him. ‘They’ve had enough trauma already.’

She was tired by the end of the day but it was a good tiredness that came from doing a worthwhile job to the best of her ability, and just before Dan appeared to offer her a lift back to her flat, she was given official permission to turn up the next day, too, so the precedent was set.

‘I’m still not sure that you should be doing it,’ Dan grumbled as he steered around the road that circled the whole of the hospital grounds and aimed for the exit. ‘You’re entitled to paid sick leave.’

‘I know I am, but I really don’t see the point of being paid to go mad when I can make myself useful. Go on, admit it. It worked well today, having me restricted to the needlework department. I already know the system and the staff, and everybody’s been willing to help me, doing things like fetching more supplies.’

He stopped arguing after that, obviously deciding that there was little point as she had permission, and she was grateful that he would never know the real reason why she’d wanted so much to come back to work so ridiculously early.

‘Because that’s the only place where I can legitimately spend time with Dan,’ she whispered as she watched from her window while he climbed back into his car and drove away.

She’d only had to see the longing on his face when he’d looked at her belly just a few minutes ago to know that he was yearning to feel the babies move again … probably as much as she did. But their situation as nothing more than the genetic parents of those babies made the relationship between them too strained for such intimacy to take place again.

As for the possibility that Dan would wrap her in his arms again and cradle her all night long, she may as well cry for the moon.