Twins for a Christmas Bride

by Josie Metcalfe

  ‘I could keep my eyes closed and take directions if you need a hand,’ he offered, and the suggestion was so sensible, so helpful, so considerate, so Daniel that she felt the threat of tears again. And he wouldn’t even have to see her bruises, scabs and bulges if he kept his eyes shut.

  ‘You promise to keep your eyes shut?’ she demanded as a strange thrill of excitement shot through her that he would offer to do such an intimate thing for her.

  ‘I promise,’ he said firmly. ‘Now, is it safe to come in?’

  ‘No! Wait!’ she shrieked as she saw the door start to swing open, and grabbed for the nearest thing to cover her naked lower half. ‘Now it’s safe,’ she announced, all too conscious of the slight quiver in her voice and hoping like mad that Dan couldn’t hear it.

  ‘So, what do you want me to do?’ he offered, and suddenly a whole X-rated scenario leapt into her head and she could feel the heat of a deep crimson blush move up her throat and over her face. ‘Which bit do you want to do first and how do you want to play it?’

  Her imagination leapt into overdrive and it was only the patient expression on his face and the interrogative eyebrow sending creases over his forehead that reminded her he was waiting for an answer.

  ‘Um, if I put my … my underwear on the floor and step into it, could you pull it up for me—just as far as my knees?’ she added hastily, and was treated to one of Dan’s most devastating grins.

  ‘Spoilsport!’ he complained with a long-suffering air. ‘OK, where is this … underwear?’ She knew his hesitation was a deliberate copy of her own but was determined to ignore it. It was enough that she had to sort out which way the thong needed to be placed on the floor without having to cope with the soft wolf-whistle Dan gave when he caught sight of them.

  ‘Well, well, well!’ he murmured as he bent to position the scrap of fabric at her feet. ‘Who would have thought it?’

  ‘And why shouldn’t I wear something pretty?’ she demanded, stung by his reaction.

  ‘These aren’t just pretty,’ he said, his voice sounding strangely husky as he began to slide them up past her ankles and on towards her knees, every inch a sensual torment as her eyes followed them all the way. ‘Pretty is lace and flowers and pink and white. This scrap of nothingness is something else entirely!’

  ‘That’s far enough,’ she said hurriedly, embarrassed all over again when her voice ended on a squeak. ‘I can manage from there,’ she assured him, and he gave another sigh and shook his head.

  ‘What’s next, then?’ he asked, nearly catching her settling the slender elastic straps over her hips.

  ‘Those trousers, please.’ She pointed at the silky pile on the corner of the bed. ‘You might need to feed them up my legs a little way before I can stand up without treading on the bottoms of them.’

  ‘Hey,’ he said brightly as he got the job right the first time. ‘I’ve just realised that this is good practice for when I’m helping those children in there to learn how to dress.’

  And that was just the reminder she’d needed, she told herself when she was sitting in his car a few minutes later.

  It had been absolute agony to try to keep some distance between them on the way down the stairs when she had needed his help every step of the way, but that was what she’d had to do. It had been so wonderful to slip into the light-hearted banter that had been so much a part of their relationship, even in those early days, but that was all in the past.

  She couldn’t believe what the two of them had been doing up in her room. They’d almost been flirting with each other and there was no excuse for that. Dan was a married man and he was married to her sister. To allow anything to happen between them would be the worst sort of betrayal and she just couldn’t be a part of it.

  The trouble was, her love for him hadn’t died when he’d married Zara, no matter how much she’d prayed that it would. Yes, he was the father of the babies she carried and, yes, she would love nothing better than that he would be at her side as together they guided them through childhood and into adulthood, but it wasn’t going to happen.

  ‘Because he’s married,’ she whispered fiercely as he circled the front of the car. ‘He’s married to your sister and the only thing he wants of you is what you’re carrying in your womb—the babies that Zara can’t give him.’

  Something in her expression must have told him that her mood had changed because the atmosphere in the car that could have been too cosy and intimate was all business as he put the key into the ignition.

  ‘So, what do you remember of your accident?’ he asked as he joined the stream of traffic heading back into town.

  Too much, was the first thought that came into her head, but she knew he needed a logical answer from her. She was just overwhelmingly grateful that he hadn’t angrily brushed her suggestion off as the ravings of someone who’d had an unfortunate random accident. He could have accused her of using the incident to get some sort of petty revenge against Zara or …

  ‘Sara?’ She’d almost forgotten he was waiting for an answer, so lost had she become in her thoughts.

  ‘I always walk home the same way … out of the back of the hospital and past that little parade of shops, just in case I need to pick anything up on the way.’ She glanced across briefly and saw the tiny frown pulling his dark brows together, the way they always did when he was concentrating. Afraid she’d lose her train of thought if she looked any longer, she stared straight ahead and continued.

  ‘I’d gone over the crossroads and was just crossing one of those little turnings that seem to lead round to the back of the shops, for deliveries or something … not a real residential road, if you know what I mean?’

  Out of the corner of her eye she saw his brief nod but he didn’t say a word to distract her—she could manage to distract herself without any help.

  ‘I heard a car coming and glanced towards it and I remember thinking that it wasn’t the sort of vehicle I expected to see coming out of there, then I realised that it didn’t seem to be slowing down and I realised that I was too far away from the kerb to get to safety and when I tried to turn away so that the impact wouldn’t hurt the baby, my foot slipped on the wet cobbles and then the car hit me and I went down and my head hit the kerb and … and I woke up in A and E.’

  ‘So, what made you think it might have been Zara?’ he asked, his white knuckles clenched around the steering-wheel testament to the fact that he wasn’t nearly as calm as he sounded. ‘It sounds as if it all happened pretty quickly … too quickly to have seen anything much.’

  Sara knew he was right, but she also knew what she’d seen. ‘Well, I can now tell you from firsthand experience that when it looks as if you’re going to die, there is a split second that’s imprinted indelibly in your mind. It’s so clear that if I were any sort of an artist, I’d be able to draw it for you with the accuracy of a photograph.’

  ‘Tell me,’ he prompted softly. ‘What do you see in the photo in your mind?’

  ‘The cobbles are wet and shiny, and there’s a skinny cat running towards the shadows of a pile of cardboard boxes and his fur’s all wet from the rain, and the light is gleaming off the car as it comes towards me … off the paintwork and the chrome and the windscreen as it’s getting closer … And when I realised that it was going to hit me, I realised that it might hurt the baby … this was before I knew there were two of them,’ she interjected in a crazy non sequitur. ‘But when I put my hand over my bump—as if that would protect it from half a ton of car—the person in the car pressed their foot down on the accelerator and I heard the engine roar in response.’

  Dan muttered something under his breath but the scene inside her head and the emotions she’d been feeling at the time were so strong that she paid him no heed.

  ‘I was staring at it in disbelief, so sure that the person would put the brakes on, but she was staring straight ahead—straight at me—and her hair was long and blonde and down over her shoulders and her face … At first I thought it was m
y face reflected back at me and that could still be what I saw but …’ She drew in a shaky breath and continued, ‘Her hands were gripped round the steering-wheel … up at the top of the wheel so that her thumbs were nearly touching … and I have the impression that her nails were really long and painted with a dark varnish, but I can’t be sure what colour …’ She closed her eyes for a moment in the hope that it would help her to focus, but it didn’t get any clearer so she went back to her narrative, to the part that still made her feel guilty that it had happened at all.

  ‘Dan, I really did try to get out of its path,’ she assured him fervently, desperate that he should believe that she’d done her best to protect his child, ‘but it was coming at me far too fast and then my foot slipped but the car still hit my leg and I spun round … Actually at the time I thought it was the streetlight that was spinning round me … but I was falling and falling and I couldn’t stop myself and then my head hit the ground and everything went black.’

  He was silent for so long that she wondered if he was ever going to speak to her again. What was he thinking? That she was crazy? That he’d made a monumental mistake in asking her to carry his children in case she passed her craziness on to his innocent offspring?

  ‘So, what part of the car would have hit you?’ he asked, his voice sounding more like a rough growl until he cleared his throat, and tears threatened when she realised that his question meant he hadn’t dismissed what she’d told him out of hand. ‘Would it have been the front, the wing or both?’

  CHAPTER SIX

  DAN and Sara stared down at the broken light on the passenger side of the BMW while the mechanic wiped his hands on a rag so black and oily that it couldn’t possibly be doing any good.

  ‘It’s not the first time she’s brought it in but, then, that’s women drivers for you,’ he added with blatant chauvinism and a knowing wink for Dan.

  Sara didn’t have the breath to argue this slur on her half of mankind. She was still devastated by the evident damage to her sister’s car.

  ‘You say she’s brought it in for repairs before?’ Dan questioned, and from the tone of his voice that fact was news to him.

  ‘Oops! Sorry if I’m dumping you in it, love,’ he said to Sara, ‘but last time it was the back bumper. She said she’d managed to reverse it into a bollard somewhere up near the London Eye.’

  ‘And what did she tell you about this?’ Dan pointed to the recent damage.

  His uncomfortable look in her direction, not quite meeting her eye, made Sara suddenly realise that he thought she was Zara, being taken to task by a far-too-calm husband. He probably thought her rapidly developing black eye and the dressing on her forehead were signs of wife abuse, she realized with a crazy urge to laugh.

  ‘Actually, she didn’t say anything because she didn’t drop it off until after the garage closed. And last night, that was six o’clock because we were waiting for a customer to come and pick his vehicle up and settle his bill—you don’t mind staying open a bit longer when it’s for a good customer bringing you money, do you?’

  His attempt at comradeship fell flat as Dan leant forward to take a closer look at the damaged light, reaching out to fiddle with the shattered remains for a second before he straightened up again.

  ‘Well, thank you for your time,’ he said politely. ‘Let me know when the vehicle’s ready for collection, won’t you?’ He wrapped a supportive arm around Sara’s waist and helped her to hop the couple of steps to his car.

  ‘So, it could have been any number of things that caused the damage, if she’s in the habit of bumping into things,’ Sara said almost before he’d closed his door, trying to find a logical reason why the damage they’d seen had nothing to do with her injuries.

  She hated the thought that her sister might have wished her ill, although that long-ago episode with the piece of wood and the ‘accident’ that hadn’t been accidental at all. Still, she was desperately afraid that she’d set something in motion that couldn’t be stopped.

  But, then, did she want it stopped? If her sister had tried to hurt her by driving that car straight at her then it was important to find out why or she might never be safe. And what if it had been the pregnancy that had been Zara’s target? Sara couldn’t bear the thought that her precious babies might be put at risk if she handed them over to her sister.

  Had Zara been taking some of the more exotic designer drugs that her colleagues brought back from their foreign photo shoots? If so, they could have disturbed the balance of her mind and caused her to do such an outrageous thing.

  But there hadn’t been any evidence of strange chemicals in any of her blood tests—at least, nothing beyond the sleeping tablets and paracetamol that they already knew about.

  She shook her head, at a loss to know what to think. It was already aching enough with out this mental stress, but that was probably because she’d been on her feet far too much already today. It certainly wasn’t what she would want a patient of hers to do after such an incident.

  Into the silence of the car came the unmistakable sound of Dan’s pager and he cursed softly under his breath as he tried to find a break in the busy traffic to pull over to the side of the road.

  Once there, it only took seconds before he’d used his mobile phone to call the unit and Sara suddenly realised that it was the first time she’d heard him speak since they’d left the garage.

  What had he been thinking while her brain had been strangled by conflicting ideas? Had he dismissed her claim that she’d recognised Zara as her assailant now that he’d seen that there was no real evidence or was he, too, worried about the ramifications for the children she was carrying if their mother-to-be had really tried to injure them?

  ‘That was your mother,’ he announced as he ended the call and pulled back out into the traffic. ‘She says that we need to go back to the hospital straight away. Zara’s next set of tests results have come in.’

  ‘Is she worse?’ Sara demanded anxiously, because, no matter what she’d done, Zara was her twin and she loved her.

  ‘Your mother didn’t say. All she told me was that we had to go straight to the hospital, so …’ He shrugged, his eyes never leaving the road as he navigated the quickest route.

  ‘Mum. Dad. What’s happened? What’s the problem with the latest results?’ Sara asked as soon as Dan pushed her into the unit in a hastily purloined wheelchair and found her parents just inside the doors, as though they’d been waiting impatiently for them to arrive.

  ‘What took you so long?’ her mother demanded, whirling to hurry up the corridor. ‘Mr Shah has got the results in his office and he needs to have a word with us.’

  Sara suspected that the consultant was waiting to have a word with Dan rather than her parents. After all, as her husband he was legally Zara’s next of kin.

  ‘Daniel, come in, come in,’ the dapper gentleman invited, but it was Audrey who pushed in ahead of the wheelchair and took one of the two available chairs, closely followed by her husband. Daniel was left to prop himself up on the wall beside Sara to wait for Mr Shah to open Zara’s file sitting on his desk.

  ‘The nurse said you’ve had some more results, and I want to know when we’re going to be able to take our daughter home,’ Audrey said with the air of a general firing the opening salvo in a war she fully intended winning.

  An expression of annoyance slid briefly across the consultant’s face, probably at the knowledge that a nurse had been giving out more information than she should have. Sara could imagine that before the shift was over her superior would be having a sharply worded conversation with whoever was responsible.

  In the meantime, the man’s face had settled into the sort of bland expression that always preceded less-than-welcome news.

  ‘Unfortunately, the news isn’t good enough for us to be able to give you that sort of information,’ he said quietly. ‘Her liver function tests are giving us more cause for concern and it looks as if there may be more necrosis than we’d expected.�
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  ‘Necrosis?’ Audrey pounced on the word. ‘What’s necrosis?’

  ‘It means that sections of her liver have been damaged and are dying, so they are no longer able to perform their proper function.’

  ‘So it’s the same as what you found on the last tests,’ she summarised for herself.

  ‘Yes and no,’ he prevaricated. ‘Yes, it’s the same condition but, no, it’s not the same as before because the condition has worsened.’

  ‘So, what are you going to do about it?’ Frank asked, and Sara wasn’t surprised to see how pale he was looking at the thought that his precious daughter’s health wasn’t improving the way they’d hoped.

  ‘I’m afraid we can’t do much more than we’re already doing as far as infusing the antidote into her system and supporting her and keeping an eye on the concentration of various components in her blood. It’s still very much a case of wait and see, but I thought you would want to be informed of the results so that you would know to prepare yourselves in case—’

  ‘Would a transplant cure it?’ Audrey interrupted, clearly unwilling to hear that particular eventuality even as a theory.

  ‘Well, yes, we can do liver transplants in some conditions—for example, in people with cirrhosis or hepatitis and also in some cases where the patient has had medication toxic to the liver—but the success rate is not as good as for kidney transplantation and there’s still the problem of finding a compatible liver donor while there’s still time to do the operation.’

  ‘Well, that’s not a problem, then … not for Zara,’ her mother announced with a beaming smile. ‘Sara will give her one of hers. I’ve seen it on television and they said that identical twins are a perfect match. Once you operate, Zara will be as good as new.’