Читать книгу Christmas Secrets Collection - Laura Iding - Страница 18

THE wretched woman was driving him mad.

It wasn’t enough that she was back at work long before she should have been, and that the whole of the rest of the department had welcomed her with open arms, or that she’d made herself virtually indispensable as she’d beavered away in minors.

Her bright idea was almost single-handedly responsible for the ‘new initiative’ that the bean-counters had come up with. This meant allocating one member of the medical team per shift to do exactly what Sara had been doing—clearing the department of the vast numbers of niggling minor injuries that, in the strict rotation of normal triage, would ordinarily clog the place up and ruin the hospital’s performance figures.

If he were honest, he would have to admit that the new organisation had certainly raised morale among the A and E staff, with far fewer instances of abuse hurled at them from members of the public who had been forced to wait unacceptable hours before there had been anyone free to sort them out.

Not that their department manager was going to allow medical protocols to be buried by upper-echelon diktats. He was far too experienced a man not to know that there were times when victims brought in with major injuries took absolute priority over everything else, and he wouldn’t have it any other way.

No, the thing that was driving him completely off his head was the careful distance that she’d been keeping between the two of them ever since that morning when he’d woken up in her bed.

It felt as if he’d been trying to speak to her for weeks but there was never a moment when she was alone. Each time he’d had a moment to go looking for her she’d either been with a patient or in the staffroom surrounded by other colleagues willingly fetching and carrying drinks or food for her, or asking about the progress of the pregnancy, or, worst of all, putting their hands on the rapidly swelling bump to feel the increasingly visible movement inside it.

Oh, he’d been so jealous of the fact that she was letting them do that, and his only consolation was that he’d been the very first one to feel that miraculous quickening.

Zara had left the hospital now, with Mr Shah’s final words—telling her that she’d been far luckier than she deserved after doing something so stupid—still ringing in her ears. She had also packed up a substantial amount of her belongings and returned to the welcoming arms of her parents to complete her convalescence. As far as the rest of the world was concerned, this was because her mother would be available to keep her company, whereas he would be out at work for long stretches at a time.

In reality, there was another very different reason and he needed to talk to Sara about it …

Of course he’d thought about turning up at her flat, but all the while she was wearing that cast he’d felt too guilty about the idea of forcing her to climb all those stairs in both directions to let him in. He smiled wryly when he remembered the way she’d tossed her keys out of the window to him. If he’d known then what he knew now he’d have put them in his pocket and kept them. It would have made what he was trying to do so much easier if he could just let himself into the old Victorian house and corner her in her little eyrie. Then she would have to listen while he explained, apologised, did whatever he had to while he tried to persuade her to give him a chance to get close to her, because only if he could get close would he be able to judge if there was a possibility she would give him a second chance.

He was very aware that time wasn’t on his side as far as her pregnancy was concerned, and he had so much to achieve before that day arrived … And then the brainwave had struck and here he was, standing on her front doorstep and ringing the bell on the ground-floor flat.

‘Sorry to disturb you,’ he apologised when the elderly lady cautiously opened the door with the safety chain firmly in position, ‘but could you let me in so that it saves Sara coming down all those stairs?’

‘Why doesn’t she drop her keys down to you … like she did before?’ the sprightly woman asked with a definite twinkle in her eye, and when she saw his surprise gave a chuckle. ‘I don’t seem to need as much sleep these days, lad, and it’s amazing what I see happening outside my window.’

‘I wanted to surprise her,’ Dan admitted, knowing that it was nothing less than the truth. Whether Sara would see it as a good surprise he had yet to find out.

‘And you brought her flowers,’ his inquisitor said with a nod of approval before she released the catch. ‘That’s always a nice touch.’

‘How did you know they were here?’ he asked as he brought the bunch of freesias—Sara’s favourite flowers—out from behind his back.

‘The rest of me might be sagging and crumbling by the minute, but my nose is still working perfectly,’ she said wryly, then a look of sad reminiscence crossed her face. ‘Besides, they’re my favourites and I haven’t been given any since my Dermot died.’

While she stepped back and pulled the door wide, it took no more than a couple of seconds to slide several stems out of the large handful he’d brought.

‘My name’s Dan, not Dermot, but at least it starts with the right letter,’ he said with a smile as he presented her with the sweetly scented blooms, hoping that one day Sara would have such lovely memories.

‘Oh!’ A shaky hand came up to cover her mouth and she blinked rapidly as though fighting back tears. ‘Oh, my dear boy … Thank you so much, but you didn’t have to …’ She bent her silvery head to sniff the perfume before looking back up at him, her eyes misty with memories. ‘You tell your Sara from me that she’s a lucky young woman.’

‘I couldn’t possibly do that,’ he said, wondering if there was a chance that Sara would ever agree with her. ‘It would sound far too much like boasting. I’ll leave it up to you to tell her yourself.’

She was still chuckling at his nonsense when he set off up the stairs, the flowers clutched tightly in her hand.

‘Dan!’ Sara gasped when she opened the door to his knock and saw him standing there, obviously the last person she’d expected to see. His heart sank when he wondered if he might be the last person she wanted to see.

‘I come bearing gifts,’ he said, suddenly remembering the flowers he was in danger of strangling to death.

‘Oh, thank you!’ she exclaimed, and threw him a smile that seriously weakened his knees before burying her nose in the delicate blossoms.

This time there was only the slightest hesitation before she stepped back and invited him in. ‘Would you like a cup of tea? I’m afraid I’ve only got herbal now. Caffeine-free.’

He pulled a face and she chuckled, the simple spontaneity of the sound like balm to his soul.

‘I don’t much like it either, but it’s better for my blood pressure and therefore better for the babies, so I have to put up with it.’ She turned to lead the way into her compact kitchen and he stopped in the doorway, leaning one shoulder against the frame as he watched her bustling about.

Except she didn’t bustle any more, not now that her pregnancy was advancing so rapidly. Well, rapidly wasn’t quite the right word, as the duration of most pregnancies was the same, give or take a week or two. What he’d meant was that the size of her bump had increased rapidly over the last few weeks, and he hadn’t really noticed the extent because she’d been spending so much of her time sitting down, working in minors.

But today had been the day that her cast had finally come off, and the first day in a long time since he’d seen her in anything other than the soft drape of a shapeless uniform dress or in a tunic top that only fitted where it touched.

Since she’d come home from work, no doubt ferried by her own personal taxi driver, she’d obviously had a bath and had donned a pair of stretchy trousers that did absolutely nothing to disguise her shape and size … and she looked wonderful, so ripe and womanly and sexy and …

‘Whoa, boy! Down!’ he muttered under his breath, grateful that she’d turned her back on him for a moment to give him a reprieve, and he dragged his eyes away from her lest he leap on her and carry her through to her bedroom.

‘What did you say?’ she asked as she turned to face him again with a steaming mug in each hand.

‘I was just thinking how good you’re looking, Sara.’ Which was at least the polite way of voicing his thoughts as he stepped aside to allow her out of the kitchen and into her cosy little sitting room.

‘It’s such a relief to be out of that cast, I can’t tell you.’ She sank gratefully onto the settee and immediately raised her legs up onto the other seat.

He could applaud her sensible decision to rest her legs but there was no way that Dan was going to sit in the chair on the other side of the fireplace. That was much too far away for his purposes.

‘Hang on to this for a second,’ he directed as he held out his mug to her, and she automatically took hold of the handle. ‘I’ll just do this … and then settle myself here,’ he said as he lifted her feet and slid onto the settee beside her before lowering her feet onto his lap.

‘Dan …’

‘That raises your feet slightly and improves postural drainage in your legs,’ he pointed out quickly, afraid that she was going to object. ‘It also means that I can do this,’ he added softly, as he chose one foot and began the sort of massage that he’d learned she loved back in those days before he’d been so stupid.

‘Oh! Oh … that feels so good it must be illegal,’ she groaned as he worked on each individual muscle until he’d worked all the knots out of both feet.

‘Oh,’ she said again when he finally stopped, and this time it was in tones of disappointment. ‘It would almost be worth getting married to have my feet massaged like that every night,’ she added, and completely stole his breath away.

She’d been so relaxed by the time he’d finished that he was certain she hadn’t really been thinking about what she’d said, but it was too good an opportunity to pass up.

‘That could be arranged,’ he said seriously, his heart beating so hard that it almost felt as if it would burst out of his chest.

He felt the tension return as if he’d flicked a switch, and he regretted that he’d spoiled her moment of rest.

‘Dan, that’s not funny,’ she said stiffly as she started to struggle up out of the settee and he put his hand on her knee to stop her for a moment.

‘I didn’t mean it as a joke,’ he told her, and leaned down to reach into the pocket of the jacket on the floor beside the settee.

He drew a swift breath and sent up a prayer that he’d be able to find the words he needed before he handed her the envelope he’d brought with him.

‘That’s a decree nisi,’ he told her. ‘In exactly six weeks and one day after the date on that, I can apply for a decree absolute and my marriage to your sister will be over.’

Wordlessly she stared at him then dragged her eyes down to the papers she’d withdrawn from the envelope.

‘So soon!’ she whispered, and he knew she’d seen the date.

‘After that awful scene in her room at the hospital, I went back and had a long conversation with Zara,’ he explained. ‘The upshot was that our divorce petition papers had already been filed with the county court before she was discharged.’

‘But … I thought you had to wait years, or for one of you to be caught being unfaithful or …’ She shrugged, admitting her ignorance of such matters.

‘I knew as little as you before I did some research on the internet and found out that there are five criteria but the two that applied to our situation were what they call “unreasonable behaviour”—and I would definitely class trying to murder my babies as unreasonable behaviour or …’

‘You didn’t tell anybody what Zara did?’ she interrupted urgently. ‘I promised that I wasn’t going to press charges but if you’ve put it on the divorce papers …’

‘Shh! Of course I didn’t,’ he soothed, taking her free hand in his and lacing their fingers together. ‘But that doesn’t mean I didn’t use the threat of it to get what I wanted—her admission that she’d been carrying on with a man over in America. The one who’s going to finance the film she’s been offered a part in,’ he added, although that was neither here nor there to their situation.

‘And she admitted it? To adultery?’ Her eyes were scanning the papers still clutched in her hand. ‘Oh, Lord, I bet Mother wasn’t happy about that.’

‘I think “incandescent with rage that she wasn’t going to be able to hold her head up in the neighbourhood” comes closer to the mark. I went down to see your parents to tell them in person what was going on as Zara’s already gone back to the States.’

‘What did she say?’ There was an awful fascination in the question.

‘She began by trying to forbid the two of us to divorce at all. Far too scandalous.’ She’d also tried to persuade him to say that he’d been the one to commit adultery, but he’d been completely innocent, at least in fact if not in his head and his heart. Besides, he’d wanted to be able to come to Sara with the fewest blemishes on his character possible. He’d ruined things between them once—he didn’t want to risk doing it again.

‘When I finally left, after convincing her that the divorce was already a done deal, she was muttering, “Adultery!” and “The shame of it!” under her breath and your father was going to pour her a large medicinal brandy.’

‘Oh, Dan, I know I shouldn’t laugh, but …’ Gradually, her smile faded, to be replaced by a pensive frown, and he knew her thoughts had moved on. It was only moments later that she proved him right by asking, ‘So what are you going to do now?’

It was time for another swift prayer for courage.

‘My plans are already made,’ he said, hoping he didn’t sound as nervous as he felt. ‘I’ve got two babies due in a matter of weeks now, and I need to find someone willing to be a mother to them, someone who will protect them as fiercely as any mother lioness defends her cubs and will love them to distraction—in fact, almost as much as she loves me.’

Sara’s heart felt as if it stopped completely when she heard those words, and it seemed to take for ever before it stuttered into a proper rhythm again.

Dan was going to go looking for a good mother for his babies? But they were her babies, too, and …

This time she didn’t let him stop her from getting up. This wasn’t the sort of news she could absorb while she was lolling back on her settee with her feet propped on his muscular thigh.

Too furious to stay still, she started striding backwards and forwards in the limited space in her little living room while thoughts whirled around inside her head.

How dared he think of finding someone else to love her babies when she loved them enough to die for them—had already proved it by protecting them at the risk of her own health when Zara’s car had come towards her.

She knew he didn’t love her … he couldn’t have if he’d chosen Zara instead … but he’d only stipulated that the woman he wanted should love him to distraction. And she did!

But how could she tell him how she felt?

At this precise moment he was still married to her sister … or at least still legally connected so that he couldn’t marry anyone else …

She stopped in her tracks as a sudden thought struck her.

Perhaps that was the problem! Perhaps the fact that he’d been married to her sister was the reason why he wouldn’t even consider marrying her.

She stared out of the window into the late autumn darkness, a tiny corner of her brain telling her that she should have closed the curtains to keep the heat in, and had to concede that there would be many people who would think it creepy that he could switch allegiance from one twin to the other, as though they were as easily interchangeable as a pair of identical socks.

‘When, in fact, we’re more like a pair of shoes,’ she muttered under her breath as she began pacing again. ‘Fit perfectly one way and complete agony if you put them on the wrong foot.’

Oh, but she and Dan would have been such a good fit, she mourned as her steps gradually slowed. If only she had been just a little more like her glamorous, confident sister instead of her quiet bookish self, perhaps Dan wouldn’t have been so dazzled when Zara had deliberately set out to attract him. It was all too late now, she admitted with a sigh, and her feet were dragging as she started to make her way to the chair on the other side of the fireplace, too downhearted to sit next to Dan again.

‘Uh-uh!’ Dan shook his head as he caught her hand and pulled her back to his side. ‘That’s too far away when there’s still so much to talk about.’

It wasn’t worth fighting about so she gave in and sat down in her corner again, resigned to listening to his plans for the rest of his life then wishing him good luck.

‘Are you ready now?’ he asked, and used a gentle finger to turn her head to face him.

‘Ready?’ she repeated listlessly, her last forlorn hopes already faded to nothing.

‘Ready to listen to the biggest most grovelling apology I’ve ever had to make in my life.’

‘Apology?’ She frowned. ‘What have you got to apologise for? It was your marriage and it’s your right to end it. It’s got nothing to do with me.’

‘Oh, but it does if it should have been you I married in the first place,’ he said softly, the expression in those beautiful green eyes so sincere that her heart did that crazy stuttering thing again.

‘I was a stupid, gullible idiot when Zara came on to me like that,’ he said bluntly, shocking her with his brutal honesty. ‘My only excuse is that she seemed to have tapped into the way I was wishing you felt about me—that you enjoyed my company, that you found me sexy, that you desired me—and the fact that it all came in a package that looked identical to the woman I was already attracted to seemed to completely scramble my brains and short-circuit any attempt at rational thought.’

He hesitated a moment before he picked up her hand, as though he was expecting her to refuse to let him hold it, but she couldn’t refuse him, not when he wore an expression of such despair.

‘I knew I was doing the wrong thing even as I was standing waiting for the ceremony to start,’ he admitted in a defeated voice so at odds with the dynamic man she knew him to be. ‘I saw you walk in looking like a princess, wearing that beautiful dress—’

‘My grandmother’s dress,’ she interrupted briefly, so glad that at least he’d noticed her when she’d been looking her best. He’d seen all too much of her at the end of gruelling twelve-hour shifts.

‘I knew what I was doing was wrong,’ he continued, ‘but I was convinced that I’d completely burned my boats with you … and, besides, I couldn’t just walk out and leave Zara at the altar, so to speak. If she hadn’t killed me, your parents would.’

‘You’re right there,’ she agreed. ‘My mother had moved heaven and earth to get everything organised so quickly. She was convinced that the reason Zara didn’t want to wait was because she was pregnant.’

‘Hardly!’ he scoffed. ‘Even when we were supposed to be “trying for a baby” she was on the Pill. Then, so I wouldn’t “waste my energy”, she started taking the packs consecutively so it seemed as if she never ovulated and I was never invited to go near her.’

‘But … she seemed so heart-broken that she couldn’t have a child with you.’ This was one facet of Zara’s deception that she hadn’t known about before. If she had, her parents would have had no chance of browbeating her into acting as surrogate for her sister … except …

Except in her heart it had never been Zara’s child she’d agreed to carry but Dan’s. It had been his sadness she’d wanted to banish with her gift.

‘Sara, there isn’t really a socially acceptable way of bringing this up but … your sister and I haven’t … haven’t been intimate for a long time … About a year before you became pregnant or even more than that. It certainly wouldn’t be as if I were leaping out of one twin’s bed and into the other …’

‘Leaping into …’ Sara felt her eyes grow wide. She seemed to have missed part of the conversation somewhere along the line because it had almost sounded as if he was saying … as if he was asking … And to her utter shock he slid off the settee onto one knee in front of her, taking both her hands in his as he looked up into her face.

‘Sara, I’ve had to live with the knowledge that I made an utter mess of everything when we were just starting our relationship … when I was falling in love with you. I’ll never be able to forgive myself that I’ve completely wasted the years between when we could have been married, because it was all my own fault. Can you ever forgive me for being so stupid?’

Sara wasn’t certain whether she was laughing or crying … probably both, with her emotions in such turmoil.

‘Oh, Dan, if it means the difference between not having you in my life and being married to you and making a family with you … of course I can forgive you.’

She quickly realised that pulling her into his arms really wasn’t a possibility with such a large bump getting in the way, but she’d loved him for so long that missing out on any more of his kisses wasn’t an option.

‘I want to hold you,’ he murmured when they came up for air a while later, then smiled at her with that same boyish grin that had always set her pulse somersaulting. ‘This settee definitely isn’t big enough for the four of us.’

He helped her to her feet, the process taking far longer than it should have, in spite of the fact she no longer sported a cast, because neither of them could resist another kiss.

She was a little uncertain that this was the right time for them—after all, it hadn’t been very long ago that she’d believed he was going to hunt for someone else to be a mother for his children. But she was wrapped in his arms and she knew that if she led him through to her bedroom she could trust him to be gentle with her because he loved her.

Then, almost at the foot of her bed, he hesitated, as though having serious second thoughts.

‘Um, Sara … would you think me very strange if I said I’d rather we didn’t make love yet?’

Disappointment had her heart plummeting to her feet. She’d honestly believed that he was just as aroused as she was, but, then, he was a handsome, fit man while she … she was a vast bulky blimp who would soon need a marquee to cover her enormous belly full of babies—definitely not anyone’s idea of an ideal sex partner.

‘It’s not that I don’t want to,’ he said hurriedly, and squeezed her hand, apparently only realising that there must be something wrong when she hadn’t managed to find the words to tell him she didn’t mind the delay. ‘You only have to look south to know that’s not true.’

Her eyes followed his directions and she couldn’t help blushing when she saw the evidence that he definitely found her desirable, despite her advanced pregnancy.

So why was she feeling a strange sense of relief that he wanted to take the decision out of her hands, that he wanted to wait for another time to become intimate with her? But she still had questions.

‘So why don’t you want to go to bed with me?’ she asked, needing to hear him spell out his reasons so that she knew what she was going to have to deal with. If his time married to Zara had given him unreasonable expectations about how slim and elegant his wife was going to be …

‘It just doesn’t feel right to be together yet,’ he explained quietly, and gave a self-deprecating shrug. ‘I know it’s not really logical and there isn’t long to wait before I can apply for the decree absolute and I’ve been wanting to make love to you for so long that even my hair aches with it, but …’

Suddenly she realised exactly what he was saying and that she felt the same way, too.

‘You mean, you don’t want to make love with me until you’re completely free of Zara, so that there’s a … a separation between those two parts of your life and a real new start,’ she suggested, and felt like the brightest pupil in the class when he smiled at her.

‘Exactly,’ he said with patent relief. ‘Do you mind?’

‘How can I when I’ve just realised that I feel the same way?’ she admitted. ‘But I would feel more than disappointed if you were also putting an embargo on kisses and cuddles.’

‘There’s no embargo on those,’ he reassured her as he finally guided her across to the bed and laid her down on it, quickly joining her there. ‘You can have as many kisses and cuddles as you want.’

In spite of the fact that the hospital was very busy, due to a combination of increasing numbers of patients with seasonal ailments and the resulting staff shortages, the next weeks simply flew by.

Sara had shared a wry joke with Dan that almost as soon as she’d be signed off as fit to return to full-time work she would be eligible to start her maternity leave.

‘And not a minute too soon,’ Dan growled, when he saw how exhausted she was at the end of a full shift.

In a move that had become a daily ritual since she’d accepted his proposal, he pushed her gently in the direction of the bathroom and flipped the taps on full before he turned to help her out of her clothes. ‘You’ve got to make allowances for the fact that you’re carrying twins,’ he scolded gently, his eyes already scanning her from head to foot as he searched for any external signs of problems such as pre-eclampsia.

‘Nothing untoward?’ she prompted when he’d finished checking, but she could already tell from his face that he’d found nothing new to worry about.

‘Grab hold of me,’ he directed as he offered her a hand to steady her while she climbed into the bath, but she opted to throw her arms around him and share a heartfelt kiss with him first.

Next in the ritual was a leisurely soak while he made preparations for their evening meal, then an equally leisurely foot massage that, more often than not, resulted in Sara falling asleep.

It was such a relaxing routine and so devoid of anything stressful that at times she wondered if she was the only one who was aware of the gradually building level of tension. It was worse when they slept together, curled up on the bed on a day off duty when he managed to persuade her to take a nap, or latterly even in the bed when cramp and backache made her nights misery and it was easier to have her own personal physician close at hand to administer the relevant massage techniques.

Finally came the day that he arrived with an even bigger bunch of freesias and a mysterious parcel that he presented to her with a smile from ear to ear.