Christmas Secrets Collection. Laura Iding

      Dan didn’t make the situation any better when he leaned forward and murmured in her ear, ‘Comfortable underwear, Sara? Is that what they call black lace thongs these days?’

      ‘Shut up!’ she hissed. ‘Just shut up and get me to the car.’

      ‘Ah … in just a second,’ he promised as he veered the chair towards the policeman who had just entered the reception area. Then he abandoned her in the middle of the floor to hail the man and the two of them stood talking earnestly for several minutes.

      Sara was puzzled when Dan reached into his pocket to pull out a disposable glove, especially when the two of them peered at something inside the glove.

      They both had serious expressions on their faces but she was far too far away to hear a single word either of them said, especially with the constant hubbub of passing humanity around her.

      ‘Right! To the car!’ Dan announced as he came back to her with the air of a man pleased with a mission accomplished. ‘Which would you rather do first—groceries or underwear?’ he demanded cheerfully, and the chance to ask what that little episode had been about was lost in the return of her embarrassment.

      The grocery shopping was done and they were standing in front of an embarrassing display of female underwear in her favourite high-street shop when Dan’s mobile burst into the opening bars of the 1812 Overture.

      Grateful for the fact that he wouldn’t be looking over her shoulder for a moment, Sara grabbed a packet containing some very definitely non-sexy underwear in a size several larger than her usual one, in the hope that the leg opening would be loose enough to accommodate her cast. But she couldn’t resist grabbing another containing a rainbow mix of coloured thongs, telling herself that at least she knew that they were relatively easy to get on. The fact that they were far sexier than the ‘old lady’ pants in her other hand had absolutely nothing to do with her choice.

      There was a frown on his face when he turned back to her.

      ‘That was the hospital,’ he began, and her heart leapt into her throat.

      ‘Zara?’ she said, immediately feeling guilty that she and Dan were out shopping for her underwear when he should have been waiting for news of his wife. ‘Is she worse?’

      ‘No, Sara, no,’ he soothed, looking contrite that he hadn’t realised that she’d immediately panic. ‘It was nothing to do with your sister. It was A and E, asking if I could possibly go in. With the two of us out and two others called in sick—that flu bug that’s going around has finally felled Derek when he was only boasting the other day that he never catches anything—they’re desperate for another doctor.’

      ‘Desperate? As in … they’re building up a logjam of patients and the waiting time’s becoming unacceptable?’ she asked as she handed over the two packages and had to submit to the indignity of having Dan pay for her underwear, too. He’d already paid for her groceries when she’d belatedly realised that sneaking out of the ward meant that she hadn’t collected the purse that had been given into Sister’s safekeeping.

      ‘That, and the fact that the traffic lights are on the blink at one of the crossroads and there’s been a whole series of prangs as people take the law into their own hands. Pedestrians, cyclists and car-drivers, some more serious than others.’

      ‘Ouch!’ She pursed her lips as frustration swept through her. She was certain she would be able to work if she’d only injured her leg. Having a doctor working away in minors, doing the bread-and-butter jobs of stitching and retrieving foreign bodies from various apertures, wouldn’t be too taxing as she would probably be able to sit down for much of it, and it would definitely take some of the load off the rest of them. But with her shoulder strapped to prevent her using anywhere near the full range of motion and with the rest of her body complaining whenever she moved a bruised portion, she’d be more of a liability than a help.

      ‘Stop brooding,’ he chided as he pushed her back towards his car at a far faster rate than the companionable stroll with which they’d started their outing. ‘You’re in no fit state to work, so don’t even think about it.’

      ‘Hmm! I see you’ve added mind-reading to your diagnostic skills,’ she sniped, uncomfortable that he’d been able to tell what she was thinking. She hadn’t realised that she was so transparent and now worried just how many of her other thoughts he’d been privy to. ‘Was that the Masters course in Mind-reading or just the Diploma?’

      He laughed. ‘Nothing so low-brow. I found I was so good at it that I went all the way to PhD.’

      He quickly had her settled in the blissful comfort of the passenger seat and they were on their way—at least, they should have been on their way. The journey from the car park to her flat was only a matter of two streets but they weren’t even able to join the stream of traffic on the first one because nothing was moving.

      ‘This isn’t going to work,’ he said aloud as, with a careful look around, he put the car into a swift U-turn and went back the way they’d come. ‘I’m sorry, Sara, but if I’m going to arrive at the hospital in time to do any good I’m going to have to drop you off at our place instead.’

      She wanted to object because she really didn’t want to spend any time at all in the place that her sister shared with the man she loved, but logic told her that she didn’t have any other option. Even if she were to ring for a taxi, that would still leave her with the insurmountable obstacle of getting herself and her groceries up four flights of stairs with only one leg and one arm in any sort of usable state.

      ‘I’ll come back as soon as the panic’s over and deliver you and your goods and chattels as promised,’ he assured her as he deposited her shopping bags on the pristine work surface in his kitchen. The journey up in the lift had been a breeze in comparison to the struggle it would have been to install her in her own flat.

      ‘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