The Sheikh's Collection. Оливия Гейтс

did fall pregnant, what would she do about it? She had friends who would rush to request the morning-after pill after such a mishap to ensure that no conception took place, but if against all the odds new life did begin inside her, Saffy registered that she was totally unwilling to consider a termination. In that moment she was suddenly realising with a heart that felt full enough to burst that a baby would mean the sun, the moon and the stars to her and that there was nothing she would cherish more. It might be a disaster as far as her current clients were concerned, but it would only be a short-term one and surely her earning power wouldn’t die overnight. She breathed in deep and slow, both terrified and enervated by the risk she was prepared to take with her own body. If conception happened, she decided, it would happen and she would embrace it without regret.

      Having dropped off the film of the shoot with the exceedingly relieved production company, Saffy caught the tube back to the two-bedroom apartment she had bought with Cameron. Cameron, a keen cook, was in the kitchen dicing vegetables, but it was the sight of the small brunette perched on the counter chatting nineteen to the dozen to him that startled Saffy.

      ‘Saffy!’ Topsy cried, velvety somber eyes full of warmth as she leapt off the counter like a miniature whirlwind and threw herself exuberantly into her much taller sister’s arms. At slightly less than four feet eleven inches tall, Topsy was tiny. ‘I wish you hadn’t been away this week. I wanted to go out with you to celebrate the end of my exams!’

      Saffy’s eyes stung as she gratefully accepted her youngest sister’s affectionate hug. Topsy always wore her feelings on her sleeve. At eighteen years of age, having just finished school, Topsy was much less damaged by their disturbed childhood and more outgoing than her older sisters. She was also exceptionally clever and overflowing with an irrepressible joie de vivre that few could resist. Yet as Saffy studied the younger woman she saw shadows below her eyes and a tension far removed from Topsy’s usual laid-back vibe and she wondered what was wrong.

      ‘How did you find out that I was back so quickly?’ Saffy prompted.

      ‘She’s been phoning here every day…I texted her after you called me from the airport,’ Cameron, a tall attractive man with close-cropped dark curls, told her from his position by the state-of-the-art cooker.

      ‘I assumed you’d want to stay on at Kat’s with Emmie,’ Saffy remarked.

      ‘No, Kat and Mikhail are hosting a big dinner tonight and I wasn’t in the mood to play nice with loads of strangers,’ Topsy confided with a slightly guilty wince. ‘And Emmie has already gone home again.’

      Saffy’s heart sank at that news because it was obvious to her that once again her twin had chosen to dodge meeting her. Her estranged twin was still avoiding her, Saffy acknowledged unhappily, wounded by Emmie’s reluctance to even be in her company. Was she that bad? Was she truly so hateful to her twin? Or was it a simple if unpalatable fact that her past sins were beyond forgiveness?

      ‘Emmie’s gone back to Birkside?’ she checked, referring to Kat’s former home in the Lake District, the farmhouse her elder sister had inherited from her late father.

      Kat was the daughter of their mother Odette’s first marriage, the twins the daughters of her second marital foray while Topsy was the result of their mother’s short-lived liaison with a South American polo player. By the time the twins reached twelve years of age they were a handful and Odette had placed all three girls in foster care. Kat, then in her twenties, had made a home at Birkside for all three of her sisters and Odette had had very little to do with her children since then. In every way that mattered, Kat had become the loving, caring mother her sisters had never really had.

      ‘Should Emmie be on her own up there?’ Saffy questioned the younger woman anxiously. ‘I mean, it’s a lonely house and now that she’s pregnant…?’

      Topsy rolled her eyes. ‘Emmie always does her own thing and she has friends up there and a job,’ she pointed out breezily. ‘I also think that just at the minute Kat and Mikhail being so lovey-dovey makes them hard for Emmie to be around.’

      Even while Saffy adored the fact that Kat had found happiness with a man who so obviously loved her, she too had felt like a gooseberry more than once in the couple’s company. If her twin’s solo pregnancy was the result of a recent relationship breakdown, Emmie was probably feeling a great deal more sensitive to that loving ambiance.

      ‘Dinner will be ready in ten minutes,’ Cameron announced.

      ‘I’ve got time to get changed, then?’

      ‘Yes. Let’s go into your room,’ Topsy urged, tugging at Saffy’s arm.

      A frown indented Saffy’s brow at her sister’s obvious eagerness to get her alone. ‘What’s up?’ she asked as she closed her bedroom door.

      Topsy, all liveliness sliding from her expressive face, sank down on the edge of the bed, hunched her shoulders and muttered, ‘I found out something I wasn’t prepared for this week and I didn’t want to bother Kat with it,’ she admitted.

      Saffy dropped down on the stool by the dressing table. ‘Tell me…’

      ‘You’ll probably think it’s really silly,’ Topsy confided.

      ‘If it’s upset you, it’s not silly,’ Saffy declared staunchly.

      Topsy pulled a face. ‘I don’t know if I am upset. I don’t know how I feel about it—’

      ‘How you feel about what?’ Saffy prompted patiently.

      ‘A few weeks ago, my dad, Paulo, asked me to agree to a DNA test. I’m eighteen. We didn’t need Kat’s permission,’ Topsy explained as Saffy raised her brows in astonishment at the admission. ‘Apparently Dad had always had doubts that I was his child and since he got married he and his wife have had difficulty conceiving—’

      ‘Your dad’s got married? Since when? You never told us that!’ Saffy exclaimed.

      Topsy sighed. ‘It didn’t seem important. I mean, I’ve only met him a half-dozen times in my whole life. With him living in Brazil, it’s not like we ever had the chance to get close,’ she pointed out ruefully. ‘Anyway, his new wife and him went for testing when she didn’t fall pregnant and it turns out he’s sterile.’

      Saffy stiffened at the news. ‘Hence the DNA testing…’

      ‘And it turns out that I couldn’t possibly be his kid,’ Topsy confided with a valiant smile. ‘So, I went to see Mum—’

      Saffy gave her a look of dismay, for Odette was a challenging and devious personality. ‘Please tell me you didn’t!’

      ‘Well, she was the only possible person I could approach on the score of my parentage,’ Topsy pointed out ruefully. ‘First of all she tried to argue that in spite of the DNA evidence I was Paulo’s kid—’

      ‘I doubt if she wanted the subject dug up after this length of time,’ Saffy remarked stiffly, cursing their irresponsible and selfish mother and hoping she had dealt kindly with her youngest daughter.

      ‘She definitely didn’t,’ Topsy admitted with a grimace of remembrance. ‘She just said that if Paulo wasn’t my father, she didn’t know who was. Did she really sleep with that many men that she wouldn’t know, Saffy?’

      Saffy reddened and veiled her eyes. ‘There were periods in her life when she was very promiscuous. I’m sorry, Topsy. That was an upsetting thing for you to find out. How did Paulo react?’

      ‘I think he had already guessed. He didn’t seem surprised. Let’s face it, I don’t look the slightest bit like him. He’s over six foot tall and built like a rugby player,’ Topsy reminded her companion ruefully. ‘Now I’ll probably never find out who my father is but why should that matter to me? After all, you and Emmie have a father who lives right here in London but who still takes no interest in you.’

      Saffy groaned. ‘That’s different. Mum and him had a very bitter divorce. She dumped him because he