The meeting broke up then, with her parents hurrying off to spend time with Zara while Sara was left trying to manoeuvre wheelchair and crutches out of the office without taking a chunk out of the door.
‘Let me,’ Dan said, and took over the propulsion again. And even though being this close to him caused every nerve in her body to tense up, she wasn’t about to refuse the loan of some muscle power to get her to the lift.
‘Thank you,’ she murmured, careful not to look in his direction while they waited for the lift to arrive. She was grateful they weren’t the only ones in it this time—the more people sharing the space the better if she wasn’t to risk making a complete fool of herself. How long would it take before he realised that she’d never got over him, even though he’d abandoned her in favour of marrying her sister?
She could have groaned when he insisted on pushing her across the expanse of the main reception hall and out of the electronically controlled doors.
‘Where do you want to go?’ he asked, absent-mindedly flicking the keys in his hand against his leg.
‘I can get a taxi,’ she pointed out with a glance towards the couple already waiting outside the front of the hospital, their drivers chatting to each other with the ease of long acquaintance.
‘Ah, but will it be driven by someone willing to stay long enough to make sure you get up your stairs safely? Are you willing to risk falling down and breaking something else—or injuring the babies?’
He didn’t play fair, Sara grumbled silently as she tried to make herself comfortable on the plush grey upholstery. If he hadn’t mentioned the babies, she would have stuck to her guns, she told herself as she tried to get her cast into the footwell, grateful that he’d thought to slide the passenger seat back as far as possible to accommodate her lack of mobility.
She breathed a sigh of relief when she was finally able to click the seat belt into position then regretted it when she drew in that tantalising mixture of soap and man that would forever signify Dan.
Think of something to talk about, she told herself sternly as he pulled out of the car park, but the only topic that came to mind was Zara. Still, it did prompt an idea.
‘Nice car,’ she commented blandly. ‘What sort is Zara driving these days?’
‘I didn’t think you were into cars.’ There was a hint of laughter in his voice, the laughter that she’d loved to share with him when she’d believed they’d had a future together. ‘You don’t even own one, do you?’
‘I didn’t see the point of buying one for the sake of it,’ she said stiffly, fighting off the memories. ‘I live within walking distance of the hospital and the shops, and if I need to go further afield, there’s always a taxi or the train.’
‘So, why the interest in Zara’s vehicle?’
‘Just wondering if you ever let her drive yours.’ That was bound to get her the information she wanted. She knew how much he loved his bad-boy black BMW with its pale grey interior, had been with him the day he’d taken delivery of it, the first new car he’d ever owned.
‘No way!’ he exclaimed fervently. ‘But she insisted that she needed to be able to get about and wanted something equally sporty, so …’
‘His and hers? Matching cars?’ she teased and held her breath.
‘Well, yes,’ he admitted uncomfortably, then added, ‘Except hers is metallic silver with black upholstery.’
‘Big difference!’ she teased again, although how she found the words she didn’t know. A silver car with dark upholstery. That was an image that would be imprinted in her memory for the rest of her life.
But there must be thousands of silver BMWs. It could have been any one of them, said the corner of her brain that didn’t want to believe that her sister could have done that to her. Except, she argued with herself as her fingers crept up to trace the scar on her forehead, you know what she was capable of when she was just a little girl. She’s grown up now, but has she grown out of such tendencies or has the scale of them grown with her?
‘I hope you won’t mind if I stop off at my flat first,’ he said, and she was so relieved that he was interrupting the darkening spiral of her thoughts that she would have agreed to almost anything. ‘It shouldn’t take me long, but you can come up and wait for me if you like.’
‘And have to go through all that effort of posting myself back into the car? No, thank you,’ she said. ‘If you park in the underground car park, I’ll be quite safe while I wait for you.’
He tried to change her mind but she was adamant, a new plan already fully formed in her head.
As soon as he disappeared from view she opened the passenger door and began the time-consuming struggle to extricate herself from the car. All the while her pulse was racing, afraid that she wouldn’t have time to achieve what she wanted to before he came back.
‘A silver BMW with a black interior,’ she muttered aloud, having had to admit defeat with the crutches when her recently dislocated shoulder refused to take the pressure. Anyway the pain was too great and she didn’t dare to do it any more damage or it could be a problem for the rest of her life.
So it was her eyes rather than her feet that set off along the row of cars while she leant against Dan’s, her eyebrows lifting a little more with each expensive model she recognised, but in spite of the fact that there were two other BMWs, neither was silver with a black interior.
‘So much for my idea of seeing whether there was any damage on her car,’ she grumbled as she made her halting way back to Dan’s vehicle. But if it wasn’t here, where could it be? Zara certainly hadn’t driven herself to the hospital in it.
‘Sara, what’s the matter? Why did you get out of the car?’ She hadn’t even heard the lift coming down but there was Dan hurrying towards her across the oil-stained concrete.
‘Um … I had a touch of cramp and needed to get out to move about a bit,’ she invented clumsily, hating not to tell the truth, but how could she make such an accusation without a single shred of proof?
‘Are you ready to get back in or would you rather change your mind?’ he offered. ‘It wouldn’t take me five minutes to put clean sheets on the bed.’
Dan and bed in the same sentence weren’t the ideal combination to ensure she had a good sleep. ‘I’d rather go where I’m surrounded by my own things,’ she said, while her brain was trying to find a way to get the answers she needed.
Finally, there was only one way.
‘I couldn’t see Zara’s car in the garage,’ she said, hoping it sounded like idle conversation while he steered them out of the garage and back onto the street.
‘You wouldn’t. It’s usually parked in the slot next to mine, but apparently she had an argument with a bollard the other day and dropped it off at the garage to have some scratches repaired … not for the first time, I might tell you,’ he added with a chuckle.
‘So, when did she take it to the garage?’ Sara asked, and the frowning glance he threw her way told her that she’d pushed too far.
‘Sara, what’s all this about?’ he asked as he drew up in front of the converted Victorian house she lived in. He turned to face her. ‘Why so many questions about Zara’s car? What do you really want to know?’
Sara swallowed hard when she met his gaze, knowing the frightening level of intelligence contained behind those green eyes. There would be no point insulting that intelligence with a half-baked invention.
‘I wanted to know because …’ She swallowed again, afraid that this was going to be the moment when she lost all semblance of friendship with the man she’d never stopped loving. ‘Because the car that ran me down was a silver BMW with dark-coloured upholstery and I’m almost certain that it was