Christmas Secrets Collection. Laura Iding

of her own face in the windscreen where the driver’s face should be … her reflection contorted in an expression of rage and … Even as she opened her mouth in a scream of denial the sound was cut off instantly as she was flung aside to land on the unforgiving granite.

      She felt a sickening thud as her head struck the kerb with a glancing blow, then the world turned black and disappeared.

       ‘I got the job I was after,’ Sara volunteered diffidently into the lull when her vivacious sister finally stopped talking long enough to draw breath.

       It was always this way when her shifts allowed her to join the family for a meal. Her mother listened avidly to every scrap of Zara’s gossip—about the exotic places she’d been, the fabulous clothes she’d modelled, and the A-list celebrities she’d rubbed shoulders with—obviously believing every word.

       Sara had her doubts.

       She’d known for many years that every one of her sister’s stories was carefully tailored to her audience, regardless of the truth. Even as she listened to yet another tale of her sister’s glamorous life her fingertips were taking a well-worn path, absently tracing the line of scarring at her temple that had become the only way she and her twin could be distinguished from each other as children.

       The rest of the world had believed Zara’s tearful tale of a childish prank gone wrong. Sara knew better; she had always known that her twin resented the fact that they’d been born identical and that Zara was the younger. The very idea that the injury might have been deliberate was unthinkable and had sickened her, but it had only taken one glimpse of the satisfied expression on her sister’s perfect face, when she’d returned home from the accident department with a prominent row of stitches marching all the way from her shaven eyebrow into her uneven hairline, to know the truth.

       From that day on, although she’d still loved her sister dearly, she’d never totally trusted her.

       ‘I started the job a couple of months ago … in the accident and emergency department,’ she added into the next pause, although no one had been interested enough by her announcement to ask her for further details. Even the father she adored was dazzled by the show his glamorous younger daughter put on for him.

       Then a sudden imp of mischief tempted Sara into one of those rare attempts at competition with her sister. Would she never grow out of the childish urge?

       ‘By the way, Zara, there are several rather gorgeous doctors in the department … one in particular is every bit as tall, dark and handsome as that actor who was chasing you a while back.’

       The blank expression on her sister’s face was enough to confirm Sara’s suspicion that Zara couldn’t even remember the story she’d told them after her last visit to the United States. In all probability, the rather famously married star hadn’t done anything more than smile vaguely in her sister’s direction at a crowded party. Then she saw her twin’s expression change suddenly into a horribly familiar calculating look and instantly felt sick.

       What on earth had made her draw Zara’s attention to Daniel’s existence? she berated herself the next day when her beautiful sister just happened to arrive at the end of her shift to be introduced to Sara’s new colleagues. The last thing she needed was for Zara to turn up flaunting her perfection, especially when Sara was looking her exhausted worst at the end of a gruelling shift.

       She and her handsome new colleague had quickly discovered that they worked well together, but as for their personal relationship, that was still in the fragile early stages, barely beyond the point where she and Dan had admitted that they enjoyed each other’s company outside work, too, and wanted to see whether it could develop into something lasting.

       Well, that had been as much as Dan had been willing to admit, so far. On her part, she’d known from their first meeting that he was special; that he could very well be the man she’d been waiting for her whole life. There had been something about the gentleness and compassion with which he treated his patients allied with the aura of strength and dependability that surrounded him … to say nothing of the fact that he was probably the sexiest man she’d ever met …

       Those weeks of tentatively getting to know each other might just as well not have existed the day Zara walked into the department wafting her signature perfume and demanding to be introduced to all her sister’s dedicated colleagues.

       ‘Of course, the whole family is so proud of Sara for taking all those exams,’ she gushed with a wide smile. ‘I certainly couldn’t do her job … all that blood and pus and …’ She shook her head so that her artfully dishevelled locks tumbled over one shoulder and shuddered delicately.

       Sara could have predicted exactly how the ensuing scene would play. From the day that puberty had given her sister that spectacular set of curves, she’d seen it so often before. She didn’t need to watch to know that every male in the vicinity was about to make a complete fool of himself as they all vied for one of Zara’s smiles, or, better yet, one of the sultry come-hither looks she sent them from under impossibly long dark lashes.

       ‘You didn’t tell me you were a twin,’ Dan complained as he distractedly delivered the mug of coffee he’d been making for her before Zara’s arrival. His eyes were flicking from one to the other and Sara suppressed a wince, knowing just how badly she would come out in the comparison. There was no way that she could compare with such a polished image of perfection while she stood there in crumpled scrubs without a scrap of make-up on her face, especially with her hair dragged back into an elastic band with only a few straggly tendrils to camouflage the worst of the puckered scar that drew her eyebrow into a permanently quizzical arch.

       ‘Hard to believe, isn’t it?’ she said with a tired smile. ‘Have you met her yet?’

       She needn’t have bothered offering, knowing deep inside that this introduction was the sole reason why her sister was here. In fact, Zara was already undulating her way across the room towards them in her best catwalk strut, her slender legs seeming endless atop heels high enough to induce vertigo. Sara felt sick when she saw the intense way her sister’s eyes focused on Dan as she drew nearer, almost devouring him piece by piece from his slightly tousled dark hair and broad shoulders to his lithe hips and long powerful legs.

       ‘So, this is the handsomest man in the department, is it?’ she purred, all but rubbing herself against him and blinking coquettishly as she gazed up into his amazing green eyes. ‘Sara was telling me I just had to come and meet you.’

       It was far too late to wish that she’d kept her mouth shut.

       What can’t be cured must be endured, her grandmother’s voice said inside her head, and Sara felt an almost physical wrench as any lasting relationship she might have had with Dan was torn out of her reach for ever. She shut the pain away with all the rest she kept in the box in a dark corner of her soul, and summoned up the appropriate words.

       ‘Daniel, this is my sister, Zara,’ she said formally, unable to conjure up even a pretence of a smile. ‘Zara, this is Daniel Lomax. He’s one of the senior …’ She fell silent, realising that she may as well have saved her breath because neither of them was listening to her.

       ‘Hi, Danny,’ Zara breathed, and Sara winced, knowing that he hated that diminutive … only this time there was no automatic correction. Well, why would he object now that her sister had both hands wrapped around his arm, blatantly testing his muscles?

       She knew how those muscles felt, the taut resilience overlaid with warm skin and silky dark hair. She’d been holding that arm on the way out of the hospital just last night at the end of their shift, delighting in the way his free hand had covered hers to reinforce the fact that he had been enjoying the contact, too.