by Sara Wood
She grinned. And then watch out, Dan Shaw! You won’t know what’s hit you!
Tomorrow she would see her baby. And maybe when Dan saw the ultrasound photo his heart would be touched and he’d declare his love in an outburst of passion.
Helen stretched luxuriously, her eyes softening as she imagined herself flying into his arms and all the anger and hurt melting away with their loving kisses.
‘Soon, my little duck,’ she promised her baby, ‘you might have your father back.’
And she went up to bed certain that something was about to change her life for ever.
The hospital was half an hour away. Arriving late—because she’d been told there was always a two hour wait whatever time you turned up—she sailed blithely into the busy clinic, drank the required amount of water straight off and sat down beside a harassed looking mother who was trying to juggle three tiny children as well as her ‘bump’.
Crikey! she thought sympathetically and caught a toddler as it flung itself recklessly over her outstretched foot. And then and there she revised her plans to have four children. Two would be fine.
‘Thanks,’ sighed the mother in a flat, dispirited tone.
‘It’s OK. My, you’ve got your hands full,’ she ventured, alarmed by the woman’s grey complexion.
Helen was uncomfortably aware how bright and fresh she must look in her daffodil-yellow sun-dress and matching pumps and felt almost apologetic about her rude health.
The woman gave her a jaundiced look. ‘First time?’ she enquired, batting one child with the back of her hand and attempting to catch a drippy nose with the other.
‘Er…yes.’
‘Thought so. You’ll learn. Wait till you get projectile vomiting,’ she warned darkly.
Heavens! Sounded awful! Helen thought, jumping up in agitation when she heard her name being called. Following the nurse, she looked around and was alarmed to see that most of the women looked depressed and resigned while children of varying ages hurtled around yelling their heads off.
This wasn’t what she’d imagined at all. Her legs felt weak and wobbly.
‘Sanctuary,’ the nurse said wryly as the door of the examination room closed behind them.
‘Is it always like that?’ Helen probed.
‘No. Sometimes it’s worse,’ conceded the nurse. ‘OK. Let’s be having you. On your own?’
Helen nodded. ‘My husband’s in York,’ she said wistfully.
‘Lucky him.’
Helen was startled by the nurse’s cynicism. The edge had been taken from her pleasure. Nevertheless, she lay on the couch and comforted herself with the knowledge that she would soon be looking at her baby. Even the curt, rushed-off-his-feet doctor didn’t dent her determined enthusiasm.
Until the picture on the screen became clear.
She froze. People were talking to her but she hardly heard. With startled eyes rounded in horror, she nodded as if she understood just so they’d stop and leave her alone. Someone hauled her off the couch, handed her the photo printouts and told her to get dressed.
With shaking hands she did so, fumbling with her buttons like a drunk. She had to get home. Ring Dan.
Oh, God! she moaned, running out of the cubicle, a sea of surprised faces turning in her direction as she flew through the clinic and blindly thrust open the outer door. Numb with shock, she waited at the bus stop outside.
What was she to do? She wanted Dan. Wanted him now. Oh, so very, very badly!
Dan had never driven dangerously in his life. But this time, his head reeling from the sound of Helen’s hysterically pleading cries, he had come close to breaking the law. Only the knowledge that he wasn’t one hundred per cent in control of his body, that it shook with agitation and foreboding and sheer panic, forced him to keep to the speed limit. Just.
It had taken him hours of non-stop driving to reach Deep Dene and now it was dark. He knew she’d been for a scan that day. It didn’t take a genius to work out that she had learnt something terrible.
The baby. Dear heaven, the baby! He dragged his teeth hard across his lip. She’d been incoherent.
‘Get here, Dan!’ she’d screamed. ‘Just get here!’ she’d repeated, over and over again, not listening to his attempts to soothe her, unaware that he was going crazy with fear for her safety and that of the tiny life within her.
Shaking with tension, he had tried to reach Dr Taylor but had failed, picking up only the answering machine. Sick to the stomach, and fighting the urge to scream with frustration, he’d called Diane and had yelled at her to cancel everything till further notice and had then raced for his car as if the hounds of hell had been after him.
Now he was almost home and the nausea was churning up his guts, vying with his violent headache for his attention. But he could only think of Helen. And the baby.
Blanking out what might be wrong.
With scant regard for his car’s suspension, he drove furiously up the lane and across the still-lumpy clay to the front door, stopping with a screech of brakes and a shudder of the outraged suspension.
‘Helen!’ he yelled, sending the front door flying.
Silence. His heart bounded like a hard cricket ball. He tried the drawing room first and there she was. Her mute, tear-stained face brought him to a shocked halt. He watched her stand up and prepare to speak and something about her abject misery kept him totally paralysed.
‘You brute! How could you do this to me?’ she whimpered pathetically.
He frowned, his breath still suspended in his chest. That wasn’t what he’d been expecting.
‘What?’
‘This!’
On the edge of hysteria, she thrust something at him with an awkward jerk of her arm. Bewildered, he strode forwards and took the paper she held out, with so much fury in the simple gesture. It was a black and white printout, presumably the ultrasound image of their baby…
His jaw dropped. Every cell in his body froze as his brain dealt with the image before him.
Not a baby. Two babies.
CHAPTER EIGHT
DAN stared in disbelief at the picture of the two small faces, which were so perfectly outlined in profile against a dark background. Two up-tilted noses. A delicate chin each. The small curve of the skull. Skinny bodies lost in a swirl of white.
Twins. Two to love. Two to hold, to watch as they grew and learnt to toddle…
A huge rush of emotion swamped him. He wanted to cry. Did his best not to. These were his unborn children. It was nothing short of a miracle.
‘Oh my good grief!’ he breathed and floundered towards a seat and collapsed limply into it, overwhelmed by the bounty that had come into his life.
‘I don’t believe it!’ he muttered, studying the strip again, mesmerised by the sight of the two perfect heads—when he’d expected a vague shape not remotely human. These were miraculously real with their detailed features. And he was looking at them. His children, his babies. The wonders of science, the wonder of nature. ‘Helen!’ he murmured shakily, lifting his limpid gaze to her in awe.
She had already dropped down into the sofa again. His eyes were bleary with ecstatic tears but, when he impatiently brushed them with the back of his hand, he suddenly became aware of how incredibly beautiful she looked.
Her hair had grown since he’d last been here with her, and it fell in soft, shiny waves about her face. Despite her pallor there was a warm, rich peachiness to her skin, and a clarity to her stunningly smoky eyes that he remembered from her teenage days when her beauty and loving heart had knocked him for six.
The mother of his babies, he thought with a flash of sentimentality. His throat clogged up.
‘I’m stunned. Words fail me,’ he admitted, ruffling his hair in bewilderment.
‘Well, they don’t fail me! How dare you give me twins?’ she jerked.
Affectionately he grinned, close to getting up and shouting for joy then running to the village and banging on everyone’s door so they all knew, too.
‘You don’t know anything!’ she accused with a sniff. ‘One baby’s hard enough to manage, but two! You might have warned me if you had twins in your fam…’ She went pink and bit her lip. ‘I’m sorry,’ she mumbled. ‘I forgot you wouldn’t know.’
Almost driven to take her in his arms and kiss her breathless, he got up and poured himself a drink instead, his hand quivering like a dipsomaniac’s. Babies. Two of them, he kept thinking over and over in his mind. I’m a dad. Of twins!
‘It’s OK.’ Bemused, he sipped the whisky, his heart skipping about like a kid in the playground. ‘Am I relieved! You don’t know what you put me through for the past few hours!’ he declared ruefully. ‘I thought you were seriously ill, or the baby was not normal in some way… I can’t tell you what a nightmare the journey’s been—’
‘Really?’ she quavered, her lower lip wobbling. But there was something bright and hopeful about her eyes.
Dan averted his gaze. ‘Thought my kid was in trouble,’ he said gruffly.
‘Oh. Of course.’ Her face fell. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, compressing her lips. ‘I couldn’t speak properly to explain. I just freaked out. My brain went into free fall.’
‘I’m not surprised,’ he said gently. ‘I should have been there with you. I wish I had. I could have taken care of you.’
‘That would have been nice.’
‘How the devil did you get home in that state? You shouldn’t have been driving—’
‘I wasn’t. I took the bus. It’s a pretty journey.’ She made a wry face. ‘Well, it was nice on the way out. It could have been war-torn Beirut on the way back for all I knew.’
‘Yes. I’m sure. What a shock you must have had,’ he soothed and rubbed his moist eyes again.
‘You look shattered,’ she said sympathetically. ‘Your eyes must be tired from concentrating on the road for so many hours. Thank you for coming. I’m sorry to have dragged you all this way but…I thought you should know.’
His eyes kindled because his head was full of dreams and bursting with love for his two—two!—babies. It was wonderful. Heart-stopping.
And…what else contributed to that surge of pleasure and affection? Did he detect a weakening of his resolve to be detached from her? It wasn’t surprising. She looked so vulnerable. So utterly gorgeous in the bright yellow dress with its scooped neck that showed off her lovely throat. Dangerous, he warned himself. Not to be followed up in any way. But how he regretted not being with her during the scan…
‘I really wish I’d gone with you today,’ he told her with deep sincerity.
A movement in her throat told him that she had swallowed nervously. She managed a pathetic little laugh that touched his heart.
‘Me, too. You could have stopped me from hyperventilating and running around like a headless chicken. I couldn’t say much when they told me because I was at the hospital and they were madly busy—it was a bit of a production line, to be honest. The doctor hardly blinked when he saw the two heads. At first I thought…’ she gulped, her voice wavering ‘…I thought it was one baby, d-de-f-formed!’ she stumbled, bursting into tears.
‘Oh, Helen!’
Desperately regretting his decision to stay in York—and thus avoid becoming emotional on seeing the first real evidence of their baby on the ultrasound monitor—he went over and sat next to her on the sofa. With a little sob that jerked from her trembling lips she came into his arms and he held her as close as he dared.
No kisses, he told himself. This is an old friend who’s upset. Sympathy, comfort and understanding. But keep off the emotion stuff.
‘I’m going to get the size of a marquee!’ she said mournfully, unfortunately for him, raising her tear-streaked face to blink with heart-wrenching appeal. ‘I’ll never get my figure back!’
Dan stroked her arm reassuringly, fiercely trying to stick to his resolutions.
‘Yes, you will. If necessary we’ll hire a personal trainer to get you into shape afterwards. Though I doubt you’ll need it,’ he added with a rueful smile. ‘You’ll be pretty active, I should imagine.’
‘I know!’ She gave a horrified groan. ‘Two babies at once! It’s a nightmare! I’ll never have time to go to bed! And…they said…they said I might have to have a Caesarean, Dan, and I don’t want one, I want everything to be natural and soothing with lovely music and subdued lights and gorgeous scented oils burning in my aroma-therapy thing. I’ve planned it all!’ she wailed. ‘Instead I’ll probably be bunged full of drugs to bring on the birth at a time suitable to the hospital, because they need a specialist on hand for twins—and I won’t even be conscious!’
Flinging herself against him in a storm of weeping, she clung to him tightly while her body heaved up and down alarmingly.
‘I want to see my baby—babies—born!’ she sobbed. ‘It’s the best moment. Everyone cries buckets. But I’ll go to sleep and when I wake up they’ll be there—as if they’re nothing to do with me!’
‘Please, Helen,’ Dan said anxiously. ‘This isn’t good for the babies.’
He began to worry as reality kicked in. It would be unbelievably tough on her. She’d need a lot of support. More than he’d been prepared to give. Now what?
‘It’s not good for me, either!’ she wailed into his chest, which was feeling decidedly damp. ‘For months I’ll be b-blundering about like a—a hip-hippopotamus, knocking over chairs and sweeping entire meals off tables and waddling down the street in elasticated stockings and a h-horrible double-J-cup bra!’
Dan hid his smile in her hair. He loved her exaggerations. Adored and envied the way she leapt at life, emotions flying here, there and everywhere. He had never let go. Would never dare.
‘It won’t be that bad, Helen.’
‘It will!’ she yelled, deafening him. ‘What do you know? You’re a man!’
‘Short of a sex change,’ he said drily, ‘I can’t do anything about that. But I can be here with you from now on,’ he offered, before he could stop himself.
She froze. ‘What?’
And then she looked up with such a pathetic, unhappy face that he found himself saying, ‘I mean it, Helen.’
‘How?’
He thought rapidly. ‘Easy,’ he said, and invented a way, off the top of his head. ‘I can take on someone high-powered enough to do a good deal of my client work.’ Who could do it? he wondered. Who’d have the skills, the sharpness of mind, the instant grasp of his business that would be needed? Ignoring the problem, he continued, inventing an atmosphere of calm organisation. ‘I can arrange things so I do all the programming here, at Deep Dene. I’ll be in my study whenever you need a hand with something and I can muck in every day. I helped get you in this, Helen. I think I ought to be here with you, whenever you need me.’
Her tears dried as if by magic. Shining-eyed, she stared at him with such naked trust that it made his heart turn over.
‘You—you mean you’re coming back to live here…now?’ she breathed.
Someone help me! Dan thought in dazed confusion, his eyes fixed on her hypnotic lips. When would his sex urge die down?
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Oh, Dan!’ she sighed, her sweet breath sending the sensors on his mouth into seizures. She seemed to wriggle and stretch with pleasure. Whatever it was, it had a startling effect on his hungry body. She let out a little sigh. ‘Mmm. It would be lovely. Just marvellous!’
What would any red-blooded male do under those circumstances? he found himself musing, two minutes into a long, breathless kiss. Helen had wound her arms around his neck and he couldn’t escape, not without peeling her fingers off one by one.
Nor did he want to. It was glorious feeling her softness again. Letting the dammed-up passion flow out of his body. Settling down for a long and thorough exploration of her mouth. And neck. And throat.
He quivered. Firm,
ripe breasts.
He was hot. Shed clothes. Felt her naked skin against his. How had that happened? Warmth enfolded him. His brain didn’t exist.
This was the need for love. For the touch of a woman. A moment when he could pretend that all was well and they cared about each other. So what, if it was a lie? He couldn’t stop. Didn’t want to. And she wouldn’t let him.
‘Is it…?’
‘Yes. It’s all right. I’ve read the books,’ she whispered.
Who was he to argue? Guided by her, he found himself on his back, watching hazily while she moaned above him in pleasure. His eyes closed as a tenderness cut through him like a knife. The gentleness, the sweetness of their love-making, pained and thrilled him.
Clenching his fists, he abandoned himself to his climax. But when she curled up beside him, murmuring contented little sighs, he went cold.
What had he done?
Her breathing slowed and she slept, nestled trustingly in his arms. Unable to move, he studied her, wondering how he was going to get out of this situation. It would be disastrous if she got the wrong idea.
For a while Dan fought the heavy wave of fatigue that rolled through his exhausted body. But one by one his tense muscles relaxed and he drifted off to sleep.
Sometime in the night, Helen’s soft voice roused him.
‘Bed,’ she murmured.
And too tired to argue, he went, trying not to enjoy the sensation of snuggling up with her and wondering how the hell he was going to tell her that nothing fundamental had changed. He would love the babies. Not her.
‘I thought,’ she said chattily the next morning, while she was trying to steam the creases from his crumpled suit, ‘that under the circumstances it would be wise if we got sorted out early.’
She snatched a quick bite of toast, intending to elaborate, but he forestalled her.
‘Sorted…what?’
‘Nappies. Clothes. Double buggy. Cots and stuff. What did you think I meant?’
‘I don’t know. That’s why I asked.’
