comes closer to the mark. I went down to see your parents to tell them in person what was going on as Zara’s already gone back to the States.’
‘What did she say?’ There was an awful fascination in the question.
‘She began by trying to forbid the two of us to divorce at all. Far too scandalous.’ She’d also tried to persuade him to say that he’d been the one to commit adultery, but he’d been completely innocent, at least in fact if not in his head and his heart. Besides, he’d wanted to be able to come to Sara with the fewest blemishes on his character possible. He’d ruined things between them once—he didn’t want to risk doing it again.
‘When I finally left, after convincing her that the divorce was already a done deal, she was muttering, “Adultery!” and “The shame of it!” under her breath and your father was going to pour her a large medicinal brandy.’
‘Oh, Dan, I know I shouldn’t laugh, but …’ Gradually, her smile faded, to be replaced by a pensive frown, and he knew her thoughts had moved on. It was only moments later that she proved him right by asking, ‘So what are you going to do now?’
It was time for another swift prayer for courage.
‘My plans are already made,’ he said, hoping he didn’t sound as nervous as he felt. ‘I’ve got two babies due in a matter of weeks now, and I need to find someone willing to be a mother to them, someone who will protect them as fiercely as any mother lioness defends her cubs and will love them to distraction—in fact, almost as much as she loves me.’
Sara’s heart felt as if it stopped completely when she heard those words, and it seemed to take for ever before it stuttered into a proper rhythm again.
Dan was going to go looking for a good mother for his babies? But they were her babies, too, and …
This time she didn’t let him stop her from getting up. This wasn’t the sort of news she could absorb while she was lolling back on her settee with her feet propped on his muscular thigh.
Too furious to stay still, she started striding backwards and forwards in the limited space in her little living room while thoughts whirled around inside her head.
How dared he think of finding someone else to love her babies when she loved them enough to die for them—had already proved it by protecting them at the risk of her own health when Zara’s car had come towards her.
She knew he didn’t love her … he couldn’t have if he’d chosen Zara instead … but he’d only stipulated that the woman he wanted should love him to distraction. And she did!
But how could she tell him how she felt?
At this precise moment he was still married to her sister … or at least still legally connected so that he couldn’t marry anyone else …
She stopped in her tracks as a sudden thought struck her.
Perhaps that was the problem! Perhaps the fact that he’d been married to her sister was the reason why he wouldn’t even consider marrying her.
She stared out of the window into the late autumn darkness, a tiny corner of her brain telling her that she should have closed the curtains to keep the heat in, and had to concede that there would be many people who would think it creepy that he could switch allegiance from one twin to the other, as though they were as easily interchangeable as a pair of identical socks.
‘When, in fact, we’re more like a pair of shoes,’ she muttered under her breath as she began pacing again. ‘Fit perfectly one way and complete agony if you put them on the wrong foot.’
Oh, but she and Dan would have been such a good fit, she mourned as her steps gradually slowed. If only she had been just a little more like her glamorous, confident sister instead of her quiet bookish self, perhaps Dan wouldn’t have been so dazzled when Zara had deliberately set out to attract him. It was all too late now, she admitted with a sigh, and her feet were dragging as she started to make her way to the chair on the other side of the fireplace, too downhearted to sit next to Dan again.
‘Uh-uh!’ Dan shook his head as he caught her hand and pulled her back to his side. ‘That’s too far away when there’s still so much to talk about.’
It wasn’t worth fighting about so she gave in and sat down in her corner again, resigned to listening to his plans for the rest of his life then wishing him good luck.
‘Are you ready now?’ he asked, and used a gentle finger to turn her head to face him.
‘Ready?’ she repeated listlessly, her last forlorn hopes already faded to nothing.
‘Ready to listen to the biggest most grovelling apology I’ve ever had to make in my life.’
‘Apology?’ She frowned. ‘What have you got to apologise for? It was your marriage and it’s your right to end it. It’s got nothing to do with me.’
‘Oh, but it does if it should have been you I married in the first place,’ he said softly, the expression in those beautiful green eyes so sincere that her heart did that crazy stuttering thing again.
‘I was a stupid, gullible idiot when Zara came on to me like that,’ he said bluntly, shocking her with his brutal honesty. ‘My only excuse is that she seemed to have tapped into the way I was wishing you felt about me—that you enjoyed my company, that you found me sexy, that you desired me—and the fact that it all came in a package that looked identical to the woman I was already attracted to seemed to completely scramble my brains and short-circuit any attempt at rational thought.’
He hesitated a moment before he picked up her hand, as though he was expecting her to refuse to let him hold it, but she couldn’t refuse him, not when he wore an expression of such despair.
‘I knew I was doing the wrong thing even as I was standing waiting for the ceremony to start,’ he admitted in a defeated voice so at odds with the dynamic man she knew him to be. ‘I saw you walk in looking like a princess, wearing that beautiful dress—’
‘My grandmother’s dress,’ she interrupted briefly, so glad that at least he’d noticed her when she’d been looking her best. He’d seen all too much of her at the end of gruelling twelve-hour shifts.
‘I knew what I was doing was wrong,’ he continued, ‘but I was convinced that I’d completely burned my boats with you … and, besides, I couldn’t just walk out and leave Zara at the altar, so to speak. If she hadn’t killed me, your parents would.’
‘You’re right there,’ she agreed. ‘My mother had moved heaven and earth to get everything organised so quickly. She was convinced that the reason Zara didn’t want to wait was because she was pregnant.’
‘Hardly!’ he scoffed. ‘Even when we were supposed to be “trying for a baby” she was on the Pill. Then, so I wouldn’t “waste my energy”, she started taking the packs consecutively so it seemed as if she never ovulated and I was never invited to go near her.’
‘But … she seemed so heart-broken that she couldn’t have a child with you.’ This was one facet of Zara’s deception that she hadn’t known about before. If she had, her parents would have had no chance of browbeating her into acting as surrogate for her sister … except …
Except in her heart it had never been Zara’s child she’d agreed to carry but Dan’s. It had been his sadness she’d wanted to banish with her gift.
‘Sara, there isn’t really a socially acceptable way of bringing this up but … your sister and I haven’t … haven’t been intimate for a long time … About a year before you became pregnant or even more than that. It certainly wouldn’t be as if I were leaping out of one twin’s bed and into the other …’
‘Leaping into …’ Sara felt her eyes grow wide. She seemed to have missed part of the conversation somewhere along the line because it had almost sounded as if he was saying … as if he was asking