Their Twin Christmas Surprise

‘Sara, are you really well enough to be leaving so soon?’ he asked quietly, and her heart gave a stupid extra beat when she saw the caring expression in his eyes.

He’s a doctor. Caring’s what he does, she reminded herself firmly, just in case she got the idea that it was her as a person that he cared about.

‘I’ll cope,’ she said firmly. ‘I’m a fit, healthy person, so I’ll soon be on the mend. You don’t have to worry about me.’

Her timing was perfect as the doors slid open just as she finished speaking, and the people waiting to board the lift prevented Dan from saying anything more.

‘Ah, Daniel. Good. I’m glad you’re here,’ Mr Shah said, almost as soon as they’d set foot in the unit.

‘Problems?’ Sara heard the edge in his voice that told her he’d been expecting this conversation.

‘More problems than I’d like,’ the consultant admitted as he showed them into his office. ‘Your wife’s liver enzymes are raised and rising but time is critical. If only we knew exactly how long it was since she took the overdose. We’d have some idea how much further they might go.’

Sara felt sick as she took in the information. She knew that the raised enzyme levels were evidence of liver damage but she also knew that the number of hours between overdose and the start of treatment was very important. If a patient received the antidote within eight hours there was a far better chance of saving the liver from permanent, if not fatal, damage.

In her mind’s eye she replayed the split second before she’d been struck by that car, the instant when she’d been looking straight towards whoever was driving it and had seen her own face looking back at her.

Had it been her own face, reflected back at her from the windscreen, or had the person behind the wheel been the only other person in the world with a face exactly like hers?

She didn’t want to know, couldn’t bear to know if it had been Zara, because whoever it had been, there was absolutely no doubt in her mind that they had aimed the car at her deliberately, that they had intended to kill her and the babies inside her.

But … logic told her that knowing might be essential for Zara’s health. If she had been the driver, that would mean that she probably hadn’t taken the paracetamol until she’d returned home. That would give Mr Shah the timeline he needed to gauge how much more aggressive his treatment needed to be if he was to be able to rescue Zara’s liver.

She was still conducting her silent debate when one of the nurses ushered her parents into the office to join them.

‘I’m afraid Zara won’t be going home today,’ the consultant stated firmly as soon as the pleasantries were over.

‘But I’ve got everything ready for—’ Audrey protested.

‘She’s not well enough to leave today,’ he said. ‘Her latest results are showing us a problem with her liver and she needs to stay here until we know she’s stable.’

‘Her liver? What’s wrong with her liver?’ Frank demanded with a look of disbelief. ‘She’s never been a big drinker, not like some of these girls who go out and get drunk all the time.’

‘Partly she’s having the problem because she’s underweight,’ Mr Shah explained patiently. ‘Her liver didn’t have enough reserves, so when her body started to break down the paracetamol, it began damaging the tissues of the liver.’

‘So, how bad is it?’ Frank was suddenly very subdued, as though the severity of the situation was only now coming home to him. ‘And is it going to get any worse?’

‘The damage means that her liver will develop areas of necrosis—that means the tissue dies,’ he explained hastily when he saw their puzzled expressions. ‘We don’t know yet whether it’s going to get any worse. It’s just a case of wait and see.’

‘How long will we have to wait? Weeks? Months?’ Audrey asked tearfully, clutching her husband’s hand like a lifeline.

‘Not as long as that. Usually, it’s no more than a few days before we can tell whether the liver is damaged beyond repair.’

‘What happens then?’ Audrey was pale and shaky but clearly intent on fighting for her precious daughter. ‘What are you going to do to make her well again? Will she need medication or dialysis or what?’

‘Dialysis isn’t an option—it can only be used for kidney failure—but some patients with quite severe liver damage can recover with the right diet and support. For the rest, there are surgical options, but we won’t go into that unless it becomes necessary.’

The meeting broke up then, with her parents hurrying off to spend time with Zara while Sara was left trying to manoeuvre wheelchair and crutches out of the office without taking a chunk out of the door.

‘Let me,’ Dan said, and took over the propulsion again. And even though being this close to him caused every nerve in her body to tense up, she wasn’t about to refuse the loan of some muscle power to get her to the lift.

‘Thank you,’ she murmured, careful not to look in his direction while they waited for the lift to arrive. She was grateful they weren’t the only ones in it this time—the more people sharing the space the better if she wasn’t to risk making a complete fool of herself. How long would it take before he realised that she’d never got over him, even though he’d abandoned her in favour of marrying her sister?

She could have groaned when he insisted on pushing her across the expanse of the main reception hall and out of the electronically controlled doors.

‘Where do you want to go?’ he asked, absent-mindedly flicking the keys in his hand against his leg.

‘I can get a taxi,’ she pointed out with a glance towards the couple already waiting outside the front of the hospital, their drivers chatting to each other with the ease of long acquaintance.

‘Ah, but will it be driven by someone willing to stay long enough to make sure you get up your stairs safely? Are you willing to risk falling down and breaking something else—or injuring the babies?’

He didn’t play fair, Sara grumbled silently as she tried to make herself comfortable on the plush grey upholstery. If he hadn’t mentioned the babies, she would have stuck to her guns, she told herself as she tried to get her cast into the footwell, grateful that he’d thought to slide the passenger seat back as far as possible to accommodate her lack of mobility.

She breathed a sigh of relief when she was finally able to click the seat belt into position then regretted it when she drew in that tantalising mixture of soap and man that would forever signify Dan.

Think of something to talk about, she told herself sternly as he pulled out of the car park, but the only topic that came to mind was Zara. Still, it did prompt an idea.

‘Nice car,’ she commented blandly. ‘What sort is Zara driving these days?’

‘I didn’t think you were into cars.’ There was a hint of laughter in his voice, the laughter that she’d loved to share with him when she’d believed they’d had a future together. ‘You don’t even own one, do you?’

‘I didn’t see the point of buying one for the sake of it,’ she said stiffly, fighting off the memories. ‘I live within walking distance of the hospital and the shops, and if I need to go further afield, there’s always a taxi or the train.’

‘So, why the interest in Zara’s vehicle?’

‘Just wondering if you ever let her drive yours.’ That was bound to get her the information she wanted. She knew how much he loved his bad-boy black BMW with its pale grey interior, had been with him the day he’d taken delivery of it, the first new car he’d ever owned.

‘No way!’ he exclaimed fervently. ‘But she insisted that she needed to be able to get about and wanted something equally sporty, so …’

‘His and hers? Matching cars?’ she teased and held her breath.

‘Well, yes,’ he admitted uncomfortably, then added, ‘Except hers is metallic silver with black upholstery.’

‘Big difference!’ she teased again, although how she found the words she didn’t know. A silver car with dark upholstery. That was an image that would be imprinted in her memory for the rest of her life.

But there must be thousands of silver BMWs. It could have been any one of them, said the corner of her brain that didn’t want to believe that her sister could have done that to her. Except, she argued with herself as her fingers crept up to trace the scar on her forehead, you know what she was capable of when she was just a little girl. She’s grown up now, but has she grown out of such tendencies or has the scale of them grown with her?

‘I hope you won’t mind if I stop off at my flat first,’ he said, and she was so relieved that he was interrupting the darkening spiral of her thoughts that she would have agreed to almost anything. ‘It shouldn’t take me long, but you can come up and wait for me if you like.’

‘And have to go through all that effort of posting myself back into the car? No, thank you,’ she said. ‘If you park in the underground car park, I’ll be quite safe while I wait for you.’

He tried to change her mind but she was adamant, a new plan already fully formed in her head.

As soon as he disappeared from view she opened the passenger door and began the time-consuming struggle to extricate herself from the car. All the while her pulse was racing, afraid that she wouldn’t have time to achieve what she wanted to before he came back.

‘A silver BMW with a black interior,’ she muttered aloud, having had to admit defeat with the crutches when her recently dislocated shoulder refused to take the pressure. Anyway the pain was too great and she didn’t dare to do it any more damage or it could be a problem for the rest of her life.

So it was her eyes rather than her feet that set off along the row of cars while she leant against Dan’s, her eyebrows lifting a little more with each expensive model she recognised, but in spite of the fact that there were two other BMWs, neither was silver with a black interior.

‘So much for my idea of seeing whether there was any damage on her car,’ she grumbled as she made her halting way back to Dan’s vehicle. But if it wasn’t here, where could it be? Zara certainly hadn’t driven herself to the hospital in it.

‘Sara, what’s the matter? Why did you get out of the car?’ She hadn’t even heard the lift coming down but there was Dan hurrying towards her across the oil-stained concrete.

‘Um … I had a touch of cramp and needed to get out to move about a bit,’ she invented clumsily, hating not to tell the truth, but how could she make such an accusation without a single shred of proof?

‘Are you ready to get back in or would you rather change your mind?’ he offered. ‘It wouldn’t take me five minutes to put clean sheets on the bed.’

Dan and bed in the same sentence weren’t the ideal combination to ensure she had a good sleep. ‘I’d rather go where I’m surrounded by my own things,’ she said, while her brain was trying to find a way to get the answers she needed.

Finally, there was only one way.

‘I couldn’t see Zara’s car in the garage,’ she said, hoping it sounded like idle conversation while he steered them out of the garage and back onto the street.

‘You wouldn’t. It’s usually parked in the slot next to mine, but apparently she had an argument with a bollard the other day and dropped it off at the garage to have some scratches repaired … not for the first time, I might tell you,’ he added with a chuckle.

‘So, when did she take it to the garage?’ Sara asked, and the frowning glance he threw her way told her that she’d pushed too far.

‘Sara, what’s all this about?’ he asked as he drew up in front of the converted Victorian house she lived in. He turned to face her. ‘Why so many questions about Zara’s car? What do you really want to know?’

Sara swallowed hard when she met his gaze, knowing the frightening level of intelligence contained behind those green eyes. There would be no point insulting that intelligence with a half-baked invention.

‘I wanted to know because …’ She swallowed again, afraid that this was going to be the moment when she lost all semblance of friendship with the man she’d never stopped loving. ‘Because the car that ran me down was a silver BMW with dark-coloured upholstery and I’m almost certain that it was driven by a woman with long blonde hair.’

To say he looked shocked by the implied accusation was an understatement, and the longer she looked at those eyes and the way they widened and darkened endlessly with the repercussions had her hurrying into speech again.

‘I can’t believe that anyone would want to do such a thing deliberately, least of all Zara, but … but I needed to know … about her car, and about the damage she did to it. Then I’ll have the proof that it wasn’t my sister who tried to … to …’ She choked on the press of tears and couldn’t say another word but, then, she’d already said more than enough if his expression was anything to go by.

There was an agonisingly long silence in the car while she tried to concentrate on keeping the tears back. Crying was one of Zara’s favourite weapons and all her life Sara had consciously fought against them for just that reason.

‘Well, then, there’s only one thing to do, isn’t there?’ Dan said suddenly as he released his seat belt. His voice was so frighteningly devoid of any emotion that Sara felt sick.

‘W-what?’ she stammered as he threw his door open and prepared to slide out. ‘What are you going to do, Dan?’

He didn’t answer until he reached her side of the car and pulled the passenger door wide. ‘Find some answers, of course,’ he said briskly. ‘Now, leave your crutches in the car because they’re no use to you till your shoulder’s a good deal less painful, and let me give you a hand out of there. You need to get some proper clothes on if you want to travel in my car again.’

Her startled grin must have been the reason he’d added that last proviso, and it had worked. In fact, it had worked so well that she didn’t even think of objecting when he virtually carried her up the four flights of stairs that led to her little flat up under the eaves.

‘Hop to it,’ he joked as she did just that with one hand against the wall on her way to her minuscule bedroom. ‘Give me a shout if you need any help.’

‘As if,’ she growled as she unwrapped herself from the grubby coat and shed the hospital scrubs in short order.

Clothing for her upper half wasn’t a problem, barring the twinges from multiple bruises and pulling scabs while she put them on. All she had to remember was to put her injured arm in first because the strapping didn’t allow for very much mobility.

Unfortunately, her underwear didn’t come with a tie waist and the cast wouldn’t fit through the appropriate hole when she did manage to get her foot through it and pull it up with her other toes, even though it was a pair designed for halfway-through-pregnancy mums.

‘Damn, damn, damn,’ she muttered as she pushed the stretchy fabric off with the other foot and heaved herself up off the end of the bed for another trawl through her underwear drawer.

‘Sara, I’m not being funny but … You must be very stiff and sore this morning and I can imagine that it’s almost impossible to manoeuvre things over that cast,’ Dan said at the very moment that she unearthed the black lacy thong that she’d bought to cheer herself up shortly after Zara had made that fateful visit to A and E. It was testament to how well it had worked that it still sported a dangling price tag.

Well, she thought with a fatalistic shrug as she tugged the tag off and flicked it towards the bin in the corner, it was probably the only underwear she possessed that would work. As for outer clothes, the only ones to hand that were wide enough to encompass the cast without having to resort to splitting a seam was a pair of heavy silk loose-fitting palazzo pants with a drawstring waist, not unlike the scrubs she’d just taken off, now that she came to think about it.

‘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 my 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.