Their Twin Christmas Surprise

‘Sling your perishables in the fridge so they don’t succumb to the central heating,’ he ordered briskly, his mind obviously already racing ahead to what he was going to find when he reached A and E.

‘And make yourself at home,’ he added, almost as an afterthought, with one hand already reaching out to the front door. ‘It shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours to sort through the worst of it.’ And he was gone.

‘Make myself at home?’ Sara said into the sudden emptiness of Dan’s home and knew it would be impossible.

And it wasn’t just because this was the home he shared with Zara. It would have been just as bad whoever he was sharing it with because she’d hoped that any home he lived in would have been her home, too.

It was because she’d started to dream at one time that it would be her future for the two of them to choose the home they were to share together, to decorate it and choose the furniture and accessories together and … She looked around her, able to see into each of the rooms from her position in this compact central hallway. To the kitchen with the clean-lined Scandinavian cupboards trying desperately to soften the over-abundance of cold stainless-steel appliances and work surfaces; to the bathroom with what should have been a stylish art-deco-inspired combination of black and white that had been made overpowering with the excess of black on floors, walls and paintwork; to the bedroom with the oversized four-poster bed that was totally out of place in such a modern setting and whose voluminous floral drapery looked more like something a pre-schooler would prescribe for a fairy-tale princess.

In fact, the only room in which it looked as if Dan had finally put his foot down was the living room. That alone was an oasis of calm understatement with restful neutral colours a backdrop for the stunning views out of the wide uncluttered windows.

The furniture, when she finally made her way to it, was deliciously comfortable, particularly the reclining chair that was in reach of everything she could need, from the remote control for the television and another one for the stereo system to a wall of bookshelves that had everything from Agatha Christie to massive tomes on emergency radiographic diagnosis.

She quickly realised that this was the one place in the whole flat where she might be able to feel at home, but it wasn’t until she turned her head and caught a hint of the shampoo that Dan used that she understood why.

‘This is Dan’s chair,’ she said, and cringed as she heard the words coming back to her sounding like the sort of reverential tones of a besotted fan of her favourite idol.

Disgusted with herself for mooning about like this, she forced herself up onto her feet—well, onto her one weight-bearing foot and her single crutch—and struggled her way into the kitchen.

‘It’s not your home, so don’t go criticising it,’ she told herself sternly as she sorted through her shopping to put the perishables away in the enormous American-style fridge. ‘And don’t go getting comfortable in it either … not even in Dan’s chair. You’re only going to be here for a short time—just until the panic’s over in A and E—and then you’ll be back in your own place.’

Her own place with the little poky rooms that were too small to have anything bigger than doll’s-house furniture and the old draughty windows and iffy heating.

‘But it’s mine, everything in it is something I’ve chosen and it suits me,’ she said aloud, even as she silently wondered who she was trying to convince.

It was two hours later that Dan phoned her.

Of course, she didn’t know that it was Dan until the answering-machine kicked in and she heard his voice projected into the room.

‘Sara, pick up the phone … it’s Dan,’ he announced—as if the sound of his voice wasn’t imprinted on every cell in her body.

‘Dan?’ she said, furious that she sounded so breathless when she’d only had to reach out her hand to pick up the phone. Pathetic!

‘Sara, I’m sorry to do this to you, but they really need me to stay on till the end of the shift. Arne’s had to go home with this wretched flu, too. He was nearly out on his feet and we could just about fry eggs on his head.’

Sara chuckled at the mental image painted of her colleague. Arne Kørsvold was an enormous gentle Swedish doctor who disguised the fact that he was rapidly losing his natural platinum-blond hair by shaving his whole head.

‘Anyway, if you’re OK with it, I’ll stay on and work the rest of the shift, then call in for an update on Zara. I promise I’ll take you back as soon as I can get away.’

What could she say? A and E’s needs were far more urgent than her own so she resigned herself to several more hours of sitting on the chair that faced Dan’s recliner and tried not to imagine what it would be like to spend her evenings sharing this lovely room with him.

Sara had no idea when the television programme finally lost her attention and she drifted off to sleep but she was completely out for the count by the time Dan let himself in.

She didn’t know how long he stood in the doorway to the living room, watching her sleep; didn’t see the way he frowned when he saw the shadows around her eyes that spoke of her exhaustion or the way his eyes softened as they traced the swelling curve of her belly.

The first thing she knew was a hazy realisation that Dan was there and that she was in his arms as he lifted her off the settee. Then he was laying her gently down again and she couldn’t help giving a little whimper of disappointment when he took his arms away again.

‘Shh,’ he whispered softly as he stroked a soothing hand over her head, and as she drifted off to sleep again, comforted by the fact that he was close to her, she imagined that she felt the butterfly brush of his lips on her forehead.

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