Wish Upon A Star: The Christmas Marriage Rescue / The Midwife's Christmas Miracle

About the Author

As a child SARAH MORGAN dreamed of being a writer and, although she took a few interesting detours on the way, she is now living that dream. With her writing career she has successfully combined business with pleasure, and she firmly believes that reading romance is one of the most satisfying and fat-free escapist pleasures available. Her stories are unashamedly optimistic, and she is always pleased when she receives letters from readers saying that her books have helped them through hard times.

Sarah lives near London with her husband and two children, who innocently provide an endless supply of authentic dialogue. When she isn’t writing or reading Sarah enjoys music, movies, and any activity that takes her outdoors.

Readers can find out more about Sarah and her books from her website: www.sarahmorgan.com. She can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.

Wish

Upon a

Star

Christy

Miranda

Sarah Morgan

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For my parents, with love.

And thanks to my children for providing endless authentic dialogue and for proving that any bed can be broken if you bounce hard enough.

To Julia, for her friendship, brainstorming skills and staying power.

Christy

Sarah Morgan

PROLOGUE

‘MUM, where are we spending Christmas?’

Christy glanced up from the letter she was reading. ‘I don’t know. Here, I suppose, with Uncle Pete and your cousins. Why do you ask? Christmas is ages away.’ And she was trying not to think about it. Christmas was a time for families and hers appeared to be disintegrating.

And it was all her fault. She’d done a really stupid thing and now they were all paying the price.

‘Christmas is a month away. Not ages.’ Katy leaned across the table and snatched the cereal packet from her little brother. ‘And I don’t want to stay here. I love Uncle Pete, but I hate London. I want to spend Christmas with Dad in the Lake District. I want to go home.’

Christy felt her insides knot with anguish. They wanted to spend Christmas with their father? She just couldn’t begin to imagine spending Christmas without the children. ‘All right.’ Her voice was husky and she cleared her throat. ‘Of course, that’s fine, if you’re sure that’s what you want.’ Oh, dear God, how would she survive? What would Christmas morning be without the children? ‘I’ll write to your father and tell him that you’re both coming up to stay. You might need to spend some time at Grandma’s because Daddy will be working at the hospital, of course, and it’s always a busy time for the mountain rescue team and—’

‘Not just us.’ Katy reached for the sugar. ‘I didn’t mean that we go without you. That would be hideous. I meant that we all go.’

‘What do you mean, all? And that’s enough sugar, Katy. You’ll rot your teeth.’

‘They go into holes,’ Ben breathed, with the gruesome delight of a seven-year-old. He picked up the milk jug and tried to pour milk into his cup but succeeded in slopping most of it over the table. ‘I learned about it in school last week. You eat sugar, you get holes. Then the dentist has to drill a bigger hole and fill it with cement.’

‘You are so lame! What do you know about anything, anyway?’ Katy threw her brother a disdainful look and doubled the amount of sugar she was putting on her cereal. ‘Stupid, idiot baby.’

‘I’m not a baby! I’m seven!’ Ben shot out of his chair and made a grab at his sister, who immediately put her hands round his throat.

‘Why did I have to be lumbered with a brother?’

‘Stop it, you two! Not his throat, Katy,’ Christy admonished, her head starting to thump as she reached for a cloth and mopped up the milk on the table. ‘You know that you don’t put anything round each other’s throats. You might strangle him.’

‘That was the general idea,’ Katy muttered, glaring at Ben before picking up her spoon and digging into her cereal. ‘Anyway, as I was saying. I don’t want Ben and I to go home for Christmas, I want all three of us to go.’

The throb in Christy’s head grew worse and she rose to her feet in search of paracetamol. ‘This is home now, sweetheart.’ Thanks to her stupidity. ‘London is home now.’

As if to remind herself of that depressing fact, she stared out of the window of their tiny flat, through the sheeting rain and down into the road below. There was a steady hiss as the traffic crawled along the wet, cheerless street. Brick buildings, old, tired and in need of repainting, rose up high, blocking out what there was of the restrained winter light. People shouted abuse and leaned on their horns and all the time the rain fell steadily, dampening streets and spirits with equal effectiveness. On the pavement people jostled and dodged, ears glued to mobile phones, walking and talking, eyes straight ahead, no contact with each other.

And then, just for a moment, the reality disappeared and Christy had a vision of the Lake District. Her real home. The sharp edges of the fells rising up against a perfectly blue sky on a crisp winter morning. The clank of metal and the sound of laughter as the mountain rescue team prepared for another callout. Friendship.

Oh, dear God, she didn’t want to be here. This wasn’t how it was supposed to have turned out.

As if picking up her mood, Ben’s face crumpled as he flopped back into his chair. ‘It isn’t home. It’ll never be home, it’s horrid and I hate it. I hate London, I hate school and most of all I hate you.’ And with that he scraped his chair away from the table and belted out of the door, sobbing noisily, leaving his cereal untouched.

Feeling sick with misery, Christy watched him go, suppressing a desperate urge to follow and give him a cuddle but knowing from experience that it was best to let him calm down in his own time. She sat back down at the table and tried to revive her flagging spirits. It was seven-thirty in the morning, she had to get two children to a school that they hated and she had to go on to a job that she hated, too. What on earth was she doing?

She topped up her coffee-cup and tried to retrieve the situation. ‘London at Christmas will be pretty cool.’

Katy shot her a pitying look. ‘Mum, don’t try and communicate on my level. It’s tragic when grown-ups do that. I can say cool, but it sounds ridiculous coming from anyone over the age of sixteen. Use grown-up words like “interesting” or “exciting”. Leave “cool” and “wicked” to those of us who appreciate the true meaning.’ With all the vast superiority of her eleven years, she pushed her bowl to one side and reached for a piece of toast. ‘And, anyway, it won’t be cool. The shopping’s good, but you can only do so much of that.’

Christy wondered whether she ought to point out that so far her daughter hadn’t shown any signs of tiring of that particular occupation but decided that the atmosphere around the breakfast table was already taut enough. ‘I can’t go back to the Lake District this Christmas,’ she said finally, and Katy lifted the toast to her lips.

‘Why not? Because you and Dad have had a row?’ She shrugged. ‘What’s new?’

Christy bit her lip and reflected on the challenges of having a daughter who was growing up and saw too much. She picked up her coffee-cup, determined to be mature about the whole thing. ‘Katy, we didn’t—’

‘Yes, you did, but it’s hardly surprising, is it? He’s Spanish and you’re half-Irish with red hair. Uncle Pete says that makes for about as explosive combination as it’s possible to get. I suppose things might have been different if you’d been born a blonde.’ Katy chewed thoughtfully. ‘Amazing, really, that the two of you managed to get it together for long enough to produce us.’

Christy choked on her coffee and made a mental note to have a sharp talk with her brother. ‘Katy, that’s enough.’

‘I’m just pointing out that the fact that you two can’t be in a room without trying to kill each other is no reason to keep us down here in London. We hate it, Mum. It’s great seeing Uncle Pete but a short visit is plenty. You hate it, too, I know you do.’

Was it that obvious? ‘I have a job here.’ In the practice where her brother worked as a GP. And it was fine, she told herself firmly. Fine. Perfectly adequate. She was lucky to have it.

‘You’re a nurse, Mum. You can get a job anywhere.’

Oh, to be a child again, when everything seemed so simple and straightforward. ‘Katy—’

‘Just for Christmas. Please? Don’t you miss Dad?’

The knot was back in her stomach. Christy closed her eyes and saw dark, handsome features. An arrogant, possessive smile and a mouth that could bring her close to madness. Oh, yes. Oh, yes, she missed him dreadfully. And, at this distance, some of her anger had faded. But the hurt was still there. All right, so she’d been stupid but she wouldn’t have done it if he hadn’t been so—so aggravating. ‘I can’t discuss my relationship with your father with you.’

‘I’m eleven,’ Katy reminded her. ‘I know about relationships. And I know that the two of you are stubborn.’

He hadn’t contacted her. Pride mingled with pain and Christy pressed her lips together to stop a sob escaping. He was supposed to have followed her. Dragged her back. He was supposed to have fought for what they had. But he hadn’t even been in touch except when they made arrangements about the children. He didn’t care that she’d gone. The knowledge sat like a heavy weight in her heart and stomach. Suddenly she felt a ridiculous urge to confide in her child but she knew that she couldn’t do that, no matter how grown-up Katy seemed. ‘I can’t spend Christmas with your father.’

She’d started this but she didn’t know how to finish it. He was supposed to have finished it. He was supposed to have come after her. That was why she’d left. To try and make him listen. ‘A wake-up call’, a marriage counsellor would probably call it.

‘If I have a row with one of my friends you always say, “Sit down, Katy, and discuss it like a grown-up.”’ Katy rolled her eyes, her imitation next to perfect. ‘And what do you do? You move to opposite ends of the country. Hardly a good example to set, is it?’

Christy stiffened and decided that some discipline was called for. ‘I’m not sure I like your tone.’

‘And I’m not sure I like being the product of a broken home.’ Katy finished her toast and took a sip from her glass of milk. ‘Goodness knows what it will do to me. You read about it every day in the papers. There’s a strong chance I’m going to go off the rails. Theft. Pregnancy—’

Christy banged her cup down onto the table. ‘What do you know about pregnancy?’

Katy shot her a pitying look. ‘Oh, get a life, Mum. I know plenty.’

‘You do?’ She just wasn’t ready to handle this stage of child development on her own, Christy thought weakly. She needed Alessandro. She needed—

Oh, help…

‘And don’t write to him. Ring him up.’ Katy glanced at the clock and stood up, ponytail swinging. ‘We’d better go or we’ll be late. The traffic never moves in this awful place. I’ve never spent so many hours standing still in my whole life and I don’t think I can stand it any more. I’ll ring him if you’re too cowardly.’

‘I’m not cowardly.’ Or maybe she was. He hadn’t rung her. Gorgeous, sexy Alessandro, who was always wrapped up in his job or his role on the mountain rescue team, always the object of a million women’s fantasies. Once she’d been wrapped up in the same things but then the children had come and somehow she’d been left behind…

And he didn’t notice her any more. He didn’t have time for their relationship. For her.

‘Ben’s upstairs, crying. I’m here eating far too much sugar and you’re ingesting a lethal dose of caffeine,’ Katy said dramatically as she walked to the door, her performance worthy of the London stage. ‘We’re a family in crisis. We need our father or goodness knows what might happen to us.’

Christy didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. ‘You haven’t finished your milk,’ she said wearily. ‘All right, I’ll talk to him. See what he says.’

It would be just for the festive season, she told herself. The children shouldn’t suffer because of her stupidity and Alessandro’s arrogant, stubborn nature.

‘Really?’

‘Really.’

‘Yay!’ Katy punched the air, her ponytail swinging. ‘We’re going back to the Lake District for Christmas. Snow. Rain. Howling winds. I’ll see my old friends. My phone bill will plummet. Thanks Mum, you’re the best.’

As she danced out of the room, no doubt en route to pass the joyful news on to her brother, Christy felt her stomach sink down to her ankles. Now all she had to do was summon the courage to phone Alessandro and tell him that they were planning to return home for Christmas. How on earth was she going to do that?

CHAPTER ONE

‘EMERGENCY on its way in, Mr Garcia.’ The pretty nurse stuck her head round the office door. ‘You’re needed in Resus.’

Alessandro dropped the report on staffing that he was reading and wondered how many times a day he heard that statement. He was always needed in Resus. Sometimes he felt as though he lived in Resus. Particularly at the moment when almost forty per cent of the staff were off with flu.

He strode out of his office, nodded to one of the A and E sisters who hurried past him, looking harassed, and shouldered his way through the double doors into Resus.

Chaos reigned.

‘She’s bleeding from somewhere, we need to find out where.’ Billy, one of the casualty officers, was trying to direct operations and he looked up with a sigh of relief as Alessandro appeared by the side of the trolley. ‘Oh, Mr Garcia. Thank goodness. Dr Nicholson is already tied up with that climbing accident and—’

‘What’s the story?’ Alessandro cut him off and Billy sucked in a breath.

‘Her husband brought her in by car. She was complaining of abdominal pain all night and he was driving quickly in an attempt to get her here and took the car into the ditch.’ Clearly out of his comfort zone, he dragged a hand through his hair, leaving it more untidy than ever. ‘She’s had a bang on her head and her obs suggests that she’s bleeding but we don’t know where from.’

Alessandro took the gloves that a nurse was holding out to him and made a mental note to speak to Billy about the quality of his handover skills at some point in the near future.

‘Does “she” have a name?’ he enquired softly and Billy coloured.

‘Megan. Megan Yates.’

Alessandro swiftly dragged on the gloves and turned to the woman who was lying on the trolley, noted her pale, blood-streaked cheeks and the fear in her eyes. ‘Megan, this must be very frightening for you, but you’re in hospital now and we’re going to make you comfortable as quickly as we can.’ He lifted his gaze to Billy. ‘Bleep the on-call gynae team,’ he instructed calmly, donning the rest of the necessary protective clothing and glancing at the monitor. ‘We need to keep an eye on her pulse and blood pressure.’

Her pulse was up, her blood pressure was dropping and she was showing all the signs of haemorrhage. But, unlike his less experienced colleague, he had no intention of sharing his concerns with an already worried patient.

Billy followed his gaze. ‘The gynae team?’ His tone was level but his expression was confused. ‘I thought after an RTA and trauma, she’d need—’

‘And she’s of childbearing age, and before her husband landed the car in the ditch she was suffering from abdominal pain,’ Alessandro reminded him, ‘so that is not to be forgotten. I want two lines in her straight away, wide-bore cannulae.’

Responding immediately to his decisive tone, Nicky, one of the A and E sisters, pushed a trolley across Resus and Billy put a tourniquet on the woman’s arm and ripped open the first cannula. ‘You think she might have a ruptured ectopic?’

‘I don’t know yet, but let’s just say I have a low threshold of suspicion so I’m treating it as that until I have reason to think otherwise.’ Alessandro continued to deliver a steady stream of instructions while the staff around him bobbed and moved in perfect unison. They were so used to working together that they often anticipated each other’s needs. He turned back to his patient. ‘Megan, is there any chance that you could be pregnant?’

‘No—well, I mean…’ The woman closed her eyes briefly. ‘It’s so unlikely it’s virtually impossible.’

‘In this department we deal with the unlikely and the impossible on a fairly regular basis,’ Alessandro replied with a wry smile. ‘When was your last period?’

‘Months ago,’ she whispered. ‘I have endometriosis.’

He heard the catch in her voice and put a hand on her shoulder. ‘That must be hard for you,’ he said gently. ‘But right now we need to find out what injuries you suffered in the accident and try and get to the bottom of your abdominal pain. We need to undress you so that we can do a proper examination, head to toe, and find out exactly what is going on. Nicky?’

Nicky was already removing clothes, fingers and scissors moving swiftly as Alessandro started his examination.

‘Where’s her husband?’ He was checking the body methodically, on the alert for anything life-threatening. ‘Was he injured?’

‘He’s fine,’ Billy muttered as he successfully put the second line in and taped it in place. ‘Waiting in the relatives’ room. Nicky put him there.’

‘She has a nasty laceration of her shoulder.’ Nicky reached for a sterile pad while Alessandro examined it swiftly.

‘That’s going to need stitching but it can wait,’ he murmured, his gaze sliding to the monitor again. ‘Her pressure is still dropping. I want to know why. And I want to know now. Did someone bleep the gynae team?’

‘On their way,’ a staff nurse reported and Alessandro’s eyes narrowed.

He didn’t like the look of his patient.

‘Oh…’ Nicky finished cutting off the woman’s clothes and her face reflected shock before she quickly masked it. ‘We have some blood loss here, Alessandro.’

One glance was all it took for him to measure the degree of the understatement. ‘Fast-bleep Jake Blackwell,’ he ordered in a calm voice. ‘Cross-match six units of blood and get her rhesus status. We may need to give her anti-D. And someone get a blanket on her before she gets hypothermia.’

Jake Blackwell, the consultant obstetrician, strode into the room minutes later. ‘You need my advice, Garcia? Struggling?’ His eyes mocked but Alessandro was too worried about his patient to take the bait.

‘I need you to do some work for a change,’ he drawled, but although his tone was casual and relaxed, his eyes were sharp and alert and his handover to his colleague was so succinct that Billy threw him a look of admiration.

Jake listened, examined the woman swiftly and then nodded, all traces of humour gone. ‘Megan, it looks as though you might have an ectopic pregnancy—that means that the egg has implanted somewhere other than your uterus and, in your case, it seems that it may have done some damage that we need to put right with an operation.’ He lifted his eyes to Alessandro. ‘She’s going to need surgery. We’ll take her straight to Theatre. Damn. I’m supposed to be somewhere else. I need to make a couple of calls—speak to the anaesthetist, juggle my list.’

Alessandro leaned across and increased the flow of both the oxygen and the IV himself. ‘Just so long as you juggle it quickly. We’ll transfer her to Theatre while you do what you need to do. Her husband is in our relatives’ room if you want to tackle the issue of consent.’

‘Great.’ Jake walked to the phone and punched in a number while Alessandro monitored his patient.

‘Phone down and get that blood sent up to Theatre as soon as it’s available,’ he ordered, and Nicky hurried to the nearest phone to do as he’d instructed.

Minutes later the woman was on her way to Theatre and Jake disappeared to talk to her husband.

He reappeared in the department hours later, after Alessandro had dealt with what felt like a million road accidents, intermingled with a significant number of people with flu.

‘Why don’t people stay in bed when they have flu?’ he grumbled as Jake appeared in the doorway of his office. ‘For a start, if they can get out of bed then it isn’t flu and it certainly isn’t an accident or an emergency. Why come to a hospital and spread it around?’

‘Because they’re generous?’ Jake strolled into the office and dropped onto the nearest chair without even bothering to move the pile of files that were covering it. ‘Hell, I’m knackered. I’ve spent the whole day in Theatre saving lives. One drama after another. You don’t know you’re born, working down here.’

Alessandro thought of the two major RTAs, the heart attack and the sickle-cell crisis he’d dealt with since lunchtime. And the only way he’d known it had been lunchtime had been because he’d looked at the clock on the wall. He hadn’t eaten for hours. ‘That’s right. I spend my life sitting on my backside.’

‘Backside?’ Jake grinned. ‘That doesn’t sound like a particularly Spanish word, amigo.’

Feeling tired and bad-tempered, Alessandro scowled at him. ‘Haven’t you got anything better to do with your time than sit in my office, moaning?’

‘Actually, I came down to see if you fancy grabbing a couple of beers after work. I have a feeling that our problems are nothing that alcohol can’t fix.’

Alessandro pulled a face. ‘Not tonight.’

Jake yawned. ‘You working late?’

‘I’m cleaning up the house.’ Alessandro felt the tension rise inside him. ‘Christy and the kids are arriving tomorrow for Christmas. I need to throw out four months’ worth of take-away cartons and fill the fridge with broccoli or she’ll hit the roof. You know Christy and her obsession with nutrition.’

Jake stared, his blue eyes suddenly keen and interested. ‘You guys are back together?’

‘No. We’re not back together.’ Alessandro all but snapped the words out, his anger suddenly so close to the surface that his fingers tightened on the pencil he was holding and broke it in two. ‘We’re spending Christmas in the same house for the sake of the kids.’

‘I see.’ Jake’s eyes rested on the broken pencil, his expression thoughtful. ‘Well, that promises to be a peaceful Christmas, then. Better warn Santa to wear his flak jacket when he flies over your barn. Wouldn’t want him to be caught in flying shrapnel as you two tear bits off each other.’

Alessandro thought about all the occasions he’d seen Christy in the last six weeks. Brief occasions when they’d handed over the children. They’d barely spoken, let alone rowed. ‘It isn’t like that any more.’ Christmas promised to be as icy cold as the weather and Alessandro was suddenly struck by inspiration. ‘Why don’t you join us? You’re their godfather.’

Jake nodded. ‘I might do that if I can drag myself away from the irresistible lure of this place. You know how I am with cold hospital turkey and lumpy gravy. I’ve been trying to break myself of the addiction for years.’ He stretched his legs out in front of him. ‘You know, about this thing that’s going on with you and Christy—’

‘There’s nothing going on. We’re separated and that’s all there is to it. And I don’t want to talk about it.’ Alessandro’s gaze was shuttered and Jake sighed.

‘I just hate to see the two of you like this. You’re my best friends and if anyone was ever meant to be together, it’s you two. You should hang onto what you’ve got. It’s hard enough finding anyone you get on vaguely well with in this world. Christy was crazy about you, right from day one. And you were crazy about her. I remember the day you guys met—’