Czytaj książkę: «Christmas Secrets Collection»

CHAPTER ONE

SHE was going to die!

Sara’s eyes widened in disbelief as the car headed straight at her in the narrow side street. The headlights almost seemed to pin her in position and she knew in an instant that she would never be able to get out of its path in time.

Instinctively, she took a step back, her foot slipping as it tried to gain purchase on the uneven surface. Her hands flew protectively to her belly to cradle the new life nestling deep inside, a tiny corner of her brain acknowledging the fact that it was far too small to survive even if it were to be delivered by emergency Caesarean.

She heard the car’s engine roar suddenly, almost as though its driver had floored the accelerator in direct response to the defensive gesture.

Then, in that final second before the powerful vehicle made contact, it was as if time ceased to exist. She could see everything around her with the pin-sharp clarity of a high-definition photograph—the gleam of the recent rain on the ancient cobbled street; the skinny cat that had been hunting in the gutter for scraps, quickly darting into the safety of the shadows; the harsh glitter of artificial light on expensive automotive paintwork and chrome, and the reflection of her own face in the windscreen where the driver’s face should be … her reflection contorted in an expression of rage and … Even as she opened her mouth in a scream of denial the sound was cut off instantly as she was flung aside to land on the unforgiving granite.

She felt a sickening thud as her head struck the kerb with a glancing blow, then the world turned black and disappeared.

‘I got the job I was after,’ Sara volunteered diffidently into the lull when her vivacious sister finally stopped talking long enough to draw breath.

It was always this way when her shifts allowed her to join the family for a meal. Her mother listened avidly to every scrap of Zara’s gossip—about the exotic places she’d been, the fabulous clothes she’d modelled, and the A-list celebrities she’d rubbed shoulders with—obviously believing every word.

Sara had her doubts.

She’d known for many years that every one of her sister’s stories was carefully tailored to her audience, regardless of the truth. Even as she listened to yet another tale of her sister’s glamorous life her fingertips were taking a well-worn path, absently tracing the line of scarring at her temple that had become the only way she and her twin could be distinguished from each other as children.

The rest of the world had believed Zara’s tearful tale of a childish prank gone wrong. Sara knew better; she had always known that her twin resented the fact that they’d been born identical and that Zara was the younger. The very idea that the injury might have been deliberate was unthinkable and had sickened her, but it had only taken one glimpse of the satisfied expression on her sister’s perfect face, when she’d returned home from the accident department with a prominent row of stitches marching all the way from her shaven eyebrow into her uneven hairline, to know the truth.

From that day on, although she’d still loved her sister dearly, she’d never totally trusted her.

‘I started the job a couple of months ago … in the accident and emergency department,’ she added into the next pause, although no one had been interested enough by her announcement to ask her for further details. Even the father she adored was dazzled by the show his glamorous younger daughter put on for him.

Then a sudden imp of mischief tempted Sara into one of those rare attempts at competition with her sister. Would she never grow out of the childish urge?

‘By the way, Zara, there are several rather gorgeous doctors in the department … one in particular is every bit as tall, dark and handsome as that actor who was chasing you a while back.’

The blank expression on her sister’s face was enough to confirm Sara’s suspicion that Zara couldn’t even remember the story she’d told them after her last visit to the United States. In all probability, the rather famously married star hadn’t done anything more than smile vaguely in her sister’s direction at a crowded party. Then she saw her twin’s expression change suddenly into a horribly familiar calculating look and instantly felt sick.

What on earth had made her draw Zara’s attention to Daniel’s existence? she berated herself the next day when her beautiful sister just happened to arrive at the end of her shift to be introduced to Sara’s new colleagues. The last thing she needed was for Zara to turn up flaunting her perfection, especially when Sara was looking her exhausted worst at the end of a gruelling shift.

She and her handsome new colleague had quickly discovered that they worked well together, but as for their personal relationship, that was still in the fragile early stages, barely beyond the point where she and Dan had admitted that they enjoyed each other’s company outside work, too, and wanted to see whether it could develop into something lasting.

Well, that had been as much as Dan had been willing to admit, so far. On her part, she’d known from their first meeting that he was special; that he could very well be the man she’d been waiting for her whole life. There had been something about the gentleness and compassion with which he treated his patients allied with the aura of strength and dependability that surrounded him … to say nothing of the fact that he was probably the sexiest man she’d ever met …

Those weeks of tentatively getting to know each other might just as well not have existed the day Zara walked into the department wafting her signature perfume and demanding to be introduced to all her sister’s dedicated colleagues.

‘Of course, the whole family is so proud of Sara for taking all those exams,’ she gushed with a wide smile. ‘I certainly couldn’t do her job … all that blood and pus and …’ She shook her head so that her artfully dishevelled locks tumbled over one shoulder and shuddered delicately.

Sara could have predicted exactly how the ensuing scene would play. From the day that puberty had given her sister that spectacular set of curves, she’d seen it so often before. She didn’t need to watch to know that every male in the vicinity was about to make a complete fool of himself as they all vied for one of Zara’s smiles, or, better yet, one of the sultry come-hither looks she sent them from under impossibly long dark lashes.

‘You didn’t tell me you were a twin,’ Dan complained as he distractedly delivered the mug of coffee he’d been making for her before Zara’s arrival. His eyes were flicking from one to the other and Sara suppressed a wince, knowing just how badly she would come out in the comparison. There was no way that she could compare with such a polished image of perfection while she stood there in crumpled scrubs without a scrap of make-up on her face, especially with her hair dragged back into an elastic band with only a few straggly tendrils to camouflage the worst of the puckered scar that drew her eyebrow into a permanently quizzical arch.

‘Hard to believe, isn’t it?’ she said with a tired smile. ‘Have you met her yet?’

She needn’t have bothered offering, knowing deep inside that this introduction was the sole reason why her sister was here. In fact, Zara was already undulating her way across the room towards them in her best catwalk strut, her slender legs seeming endless atop heels high enough to induce vertigo. Sara felt sick when she saw the intense way her sister’s eyes focused on Dan as she drew nearer, almost devouring him piece by piece from his slightly tousled dark hair and broad shoulders to his lithe hips and long powerful legs.

‘So, this is the handsomest man in the department, is it?’ she purred, all but rubbing herself against him and blinking coquettishly as she gazed up into his amazing green eyes. ‘Sara was telling me I just had to come and meet you.’

It was far too late to wish that she’d kept her mouth shut.

What can’t be cured must be endured, her grandmother’s voice said inside her head, and Sara felt an almost physical wrench as any lasting relationship she might have had with Dan was torn out of her reach for ever. She shut the pain away with all the rest she kept in the box in a dark corner of her soul, and summoned up the appropriate words.

‘Daniel, this is my sister, Zara,’ she said formally, unable to conjure up even a pretence of a smile. ‘Zara, this is Daniel Lomax. He’s one of the senior …’ She fell silent, realising that she may as well have saved her breath because neither of them was listening to her.

‘Hi, Danny,’ Zara breathed, and Sara winced, knowing that he hated that diminutive … only this time there was no automatic correction. Well, why would he object now that her sister had both hands wrapped around his arm, blatantly testing his muscles?

She knew how those muscles felt, the taut resilience overlaid with warm skin and silky dark hair. She’d been holding that arm on the way out of the hospital just last night at the end of their shift, delighting in the way his free hand had covered hers to reinforce the fact that he had been enjoying the contact, too.

‘If you’ll excuse me, I’ll go and have a shower and change out of these scrubs,’ Sara said, abandoning her untasted coffee as she made a strategic retreat, unable to bear the thought that he might give Zara’s hands that same warm caress.

The last glance she threw over her shoulder as she reached the door left her certain that neither of them had even noticed that she’d gone.

Sara woke to a world of pain and noise and eye-searingly bright light. Slamming her lids shut against the unbearable glare, she groaned, unable to decide which part of her hurt the most.

Her hip was agony, but so was her shoulder … and as for her head …

What on earth had happened to her? Had she fallen out of bed in the night? With nothing more than polished floorboards around the new divan it would certainly account for the feeling that she was bruised from head to foot.

‘Sara?’ said an urgent female voice right beside her ear, but she tried hard to ignore it. It wasn’t until she felt the familiar sensation of disposable gloves against her skin as a gentle hand awkwardly stroked the side of her face that she realised that she had an oxygen mask covering her mouth and nose. She tried to turn her head towards the voice but discovered that she was unable to move because of the padded blocks positioned on either side.

She had seen the situation far too many times not to recognise what those sensations meant. She was strapped to a backboard with her head and neck restrained because of the fear of exacerbating a spinal injury.

‘Sara, can you hear me?’ the voice said over the cacophony of bleeping monitors and voices snapping out orders. ‘Sara, love, you’ve had a bit of an accident and you’re in the hospital …’ And with those few words terror gripped her. Suddenly she remembered everything that had happened to her in excruciating detail.

The car appearing in the narrow road just as she started to cross it on her way back to her flat … the brightness of the headlights as it came straight towards her … as it hit her and sent her tumbling to the ground … deliberately?

Then she remembered something even more important.

‘My baby …!’ she keened, her voice muffled behind the oxygen mask, panicking when she was unable to move her hand to her belly, so desperate to know by the familiar feel of the gentle swell that it was still safely inside her.

Then she heard the echo of what she’d said and guilt hit her hard. ‘The baby,’ she said, deliberately damping the forbidden emotions the way she’d been forced to right from the first day she’d had the pregnancy confirmed. ‘Is it all right? Has anything happened to the baby?’

‘Stay still, Sara,’ ordered the familiar voice of the senior orthopaedic consultant. ‘You know better than to move until we’ve taken spinal X-rays and checked them.’

‘No! No X-rays!’ she gasped, feeling almost as if she was trapped in a terrifying nightmare. ‘I’m pregnant! No X-rays!’

‘Hush, sweetheart,’ said a softly accented voice, just another of those voices that she’d only recognised in the guise of colleagues before. Everything was so very different now that she was the helpless patient; they were her doctors and nurses and they would decide what treatment was best for her. ‘You just lie there and trust Sean O’Malley to know how to take an X-ray without harming your child,’ he said, coming to stand in exactly the right place so that she could see his familiar freckled face and carroty curls and the sincerity in his bright blue eyes. ‘I promise you on my word as an Irishman that the wee angel won’t come out glowing in the dark.’

Sara gave a hiccup that was part laughter, part sob and somehow found a smile. ‘I trust you, Sean O’Malley,’ she whispered, knowing absolutely that a man who delighted in every one of his four rambunctious red-headed sons would never do anything to risk anyone’s child, let alone a colleague’s.

The one voice she didn’t hear, even though it seemed as if every last member of the A and E department was crammed into the resus room around her, was Daniel’s.

What sort of irony was that? she mused silently, a tear tracking from the corner of her eye into her hair and stinging as it reached the place where her head had come into contact with the granite kerbstone. The one person she wanted beside her as she tried to cope with the terror, the one colleague who had the most to lose if anything happened to the child she was carrying—and he wasn’t there for her.

‘You’re late, Sara,’ her mother scolded, almost dragging her into the house as soon as she set foot on the doorstep. ‘You could at least have tried to get here on time for your sister’s big announcement.’

‘Sorry, Mum,’ she apologised automatically as she shrugged out of her voluminous jacket. ‘Where’s Zara going this time? Or is it a contract with one of the really big fashion shows?’

‘Oh, Sara! You’re not wearing that old thing again! You could at least have made an effort.’ This time there was a sharper edge to her mother’s voice as she saw what her daughter was wearing. ‘I really don’t understand why you always look such a dowdy mess. No one would ever believe that the two of you were identical twins.’ She flung up her hands in despair as Sara glanced down at her favourite black trousers teamed with the soft ivory blouse that she usually wore with it. It had always been enough for a family supper before, so what was different tonight?

Then her mother opened the door into the lounge and she heard the buzz of conversation that could only be made by several dozen voices and froze.

‘Mum? Is there a party or something?’ she demanded, hanging back. She was suddenly horribly conscious that she hadn’t bothered putting any make-up on after her shower and had done nothing other than run a brush through her hair either.

‘Sara, you know very well that your sister and Danny are making their big announcement this evening,’ her mother snapped as she beckoned her with an insistent hand. ‘She rang you up and told you all about it more than a week ago and everyone else has been here for hours. We’ve only been waiting for you to arrive.’

‘Dan …?’ Sara felt her eyes widen as the implication hit her with the force of a wrecking ball.

Zara and Dan?

A big announcement that her sister had told her about?

For just a moment she thought she was going to be sick, but with her mother’s hand now firmly clamped around her elbow she had no choice but to enter the room beside her as she pushed the door wide.

The room seemed to be crammed with people, every one of them dressed to the nines in their most elegant finery, but the glittering butterfly in their midst, effortlessly outshining them all, was Zara.

So why was it that the first pair of eyes she met were the luminous green ones that belonged to Dan … eyes that only had to glance in her direction to double her pulse rate and send her blood pressure into orbit no matter how serious the medical emergency they were working on.

Hastily, she dragged her gaze away, knowing that she couldn’t afford for anyone to guess just how much it was costing her to keep herself together while her world fell apart around her.

This was the first time that she’d seen her sister since the day that she’d turned up in A and E to be introduced to Dan, and when she’d heard nothing more, Sara had dared to breathe a sigh of relief. Even if they had gone out together, Zara’s attention span was notoriously short and she was certain her fickle sister would soon tire of an escort who would never be at her beck and call.

She was so confident that the two of them hadn’t hit it off together after all that she’d actually been contemplating screwing up her courage to ask Dan out for a drink later in the week, hoping that the two of them could continue the relationship they’d embarked on when she’d joined the department, longing to see where it would lead them.

The last thing she’d expected was that he and Zara had been carrying on a whirlwind courtship that would result in an engagement. Zara hadn’t dropped a single hint … and she certainly hadn’t phoned her a week ago to invite her to their engagement party.

It was a good job that she’d had years of practice at hiding her feelings from her manipulative sister. Even so, she needed a moment or two to compose herself, grateful for the time it took for her mother to walk across the room to join her father. Then he tapped the edge of his glass to attract everyone’s attention. He beckoned Zara and Daniel to join the two of them in front of the fireplace before he cleared his throat portentously.

‘Friends,’ he began.

‘Romans and countrymen,’ added one of Zara’s modelling friends with an inebriated giggle, only to be hushed by one of the older, more sober guests.

‘Friends, as you all know, this is a very special occasion,’ Frank Walker began again as Zara finally met Sara’s gaze and she saw that, oh, so familiar smug expression followed by a cuttingly dismissive glance from head to toe that told Sara as clearly as anything that her sister had deliberately neglected to tell her about the purpose of this evening’s gathering for exactly this reason.

If ever there had been a moment that demonstrated how different the two of them were it was this one, with Zara … flawless, beautiful Zara … the centre of everyone’s admiring gaze while she was purposely relegated into the background, not even afforded the courtesy call that would have allowed her to look her best. No one would be left in any doubt why Dan would choose Zara over her dowdy, less-than-perfect twin.

‘Audrey and I are delighted to welcome you all this evening to celebrate the engagement of our beautiful daughter Zara to this handsome chap here.’ There was a muted cheer and happy laughter from a small group who could only be Dan’s family—not that she’d ever had the chance of meeting them before. ‘In case you haven’t heard all about him yet, he’s Dr Daniel Lomax, and I have no doubt at all that he’ll soon be a consultant in emergency medicine at one of the top hospitals in the country. So, I’d like you all to raise your glasses to wish them both every happiness. To Zara and Danny!’

With all the glasses being raised and the voices echoing her father’s words, the fact that she hadn’t been given a glass shouldn’t have been noticed, neither should the small detail that she was totally unable to utter a word, her eyes burning with the threat of tears. But Zara noticed, and once more smiled like the proverbial cat that had got the cream.

Then Daniel noticed too, his slightly dazzled expression replaced by a puzzled frown when he caught sight of her standing alone just inside the door with her hands hanging heavily by her sides.

Then Zara noticed the focus of her new fiancé's attention and put an immediate end to it, reaching up to cup his cheek with a hand that glittered with a million points of fire as the light caught her engagement ring, then she leaned possessively against him to give him a prolonged kiss that had the room hooting encouragement and left him branded with her scarlet lipstick.

This time when her gaze met Sara’s from the circle of Daniel’s arms her expression screamed just one word—mine.

‘Relax. The baby’s fine,’ soothed the technician as she slid the probe through the gel on the pale curve of Sara’s exposed belly. How few weeks ago it had been that she’d celebrated the fact that she was actually beginning to look pregnant. ‘Look, Sara, you can see the heart beating for yourself and there is absolutely no sign of an abruption or any other sort of a bleed in there. Now, did you want me to print an extra copy for you? I might even be able to get a shot that tells you whether you’re having a—’ Her cheerful patter halted abruptly as she leant forward to take a closer look at the screen then moved the probe to change the angle of the view. ‘What on earth …?’ she muttered under her breath.

‘What? Rosalie, what’s wrong with the baby?’ Sara demanded, the pain in her head intensifying with her fear for the life of the child. ‘Is it something to do with the accident? Was the baby injured or …?’

‘Not at all! There is absolutely nothing wrong with your baby,’ the young woman announced as she turned with a wide grin on her face. ‘In fact, there’s nothing wrong with either of them. Look, Sara … it’s twins! There are two heartbeats!’

Suddenly, Sara didn’t know whether to laugh hysterically or cry. As if her life wasn’t in enough of a tangle already. Now she was going to have to tell everyone that it wasn’t just one baby she was carrying but two. Both sets of future grandparents would be ecstatic, without a doubt, but Dan would be the only other one in the family who would understand just how much more perilous this pregnancy had become.

As if thinking his name had finally conjured him up, there he was, standing in the doorway with an expression Sara had longed to see on his face for so long … concern for her welfare. Or was it, as ever, concern for the pregnancy?

‘What on earth have you done?’ he demanded as he strode in, grabbing her case notes as if he had every right to examine them, and she realised that nothing had changed. Any concern he felt was obviously for his precious offspring.

Disappointment made her headache even fiercer and lent an acid edge to her tongue.

‘Don’t worry, Danny, the baby’s fine. In fact, you could even say you’re getting a genuine bargain—buy one, get one free.’

‘What on earth are you talking about?’ he snapped, and turned towards the startled woman standing in front of the high-tech control panel. ‘Has she been concussed?’

‘No, I’m not concussed,’ Sara insisted before Rosalie could even draw a breath to answer, completely ignoring the fact that she’d apparently been unconscious among a stack of soggy cardboard boxes for the better part of half an hour before anyone had found her after the accident. ‘In fact, according to everybody, I’ve been extremely lucky. My foot slipped on the wet cobbles as I tried to turn away from the impact to protect the baby, so I only sustained a glancing blow from the car.’ She ticked her injuries off on her fingers, a slightly difficult feat with one arm strapped across her body.

‘I’ve had a couple of stitches and got a goose egg on my forehead and I’ll probably end up with one or even two black eyes; I dislocated my shoulder, but that’s been put back where it belongs—hence the strapping; my hip is black and blue where it hit the granite cobbles, but even without X-rays of the region the orthopaedic consultant’s almost certain I didn’t break anything there and he says the cracked fibula should heal without any complications. Oh, and apart from that, I feel as if I’ve lost several yards of skin from various portions of my anatomy.’

She’d been glaring at him throughout her recitation and couldn’t help feeling a little remorse when she saw the colour swiftly drain from his face. Not that she intended letting him off the hook. After all, it wasn’t Sara, the person, that he was worried about, it was Sara, the person who had been systematically browbeaten by her family into agreeing to carry a surrogate baby for Dan and her inexplicably infertile sister.

‘So, let’s get to the really good news,’ she continued bitterly, with a gesture towards the image frozen on the screen between them. ‘Exhibit A is the scan that not only confirms that there is no evidence of injury to the brood mare’s procreative organs, but also the fact that she’s carrying not one but two babies. Congratulations, Dannyboy! You hit the jackpot first time!’

And even though it brought tears of agony to her eyes to force herself to turn away from him, she made herself to do it, unable to bear looking at those heart-stopping green eyes any longer.

‘Are you sure you don’t want to change your mind about the pain relief?’ Rosalie murmured, startling Sara into the realisation that the young woman was still standing there. She’d been so focused on her acrimonious conversation with Dan that for a moment she’d completely forgotten that there was anyone else in the room with them. Not only had the technician heard her swiftly muffled groan of pain when she’d turned away from the man but she’d had a ringside seat for every word that had gone before it. Now, the fact that she was pregnant by her sister’s husband would be food for gossip right around the hospital.

‘Hasn’t anyone given her any analgesia yet?’ Daniel exploded, confirming her suspicion that he was still standing behind her … still gloating over the image of his children, no doubt.

‘I don’t want any unnecessary drugs,’ she snapped. ‘I used the Entonox while they put my shoulder back and stitched me, knowing that was safe for the baby … oh, excuse me, babies. I’m quite capable of deciding for myself if I want or need anything else. Now, please, go away and leave me alone. Shouldn’t you be off duty by now? Zara will be waiting for you,’ she added pointedly.

That thought caused a different pain altogether and was nearly enough to persuade her to accept the drugs on offer. The idea of wiping all the agony away with a swift injection was growing more attractive by the moment. After all, if she was unconscious, she wouldn’t be able to think … wouldn’t have to try to unscramble the images inside her head, the impossible images that were trying to tell her that it had been her own sister who had tried to run her down in that narrow side.