The instant she surrendered, he broke away and turned to stalk down the cracked, uneven concrete path. Away from her house and away from her. Holly could only watch, helpless yet thankful he’d done so before she threw herself back at him, plastered herself against his body and begged him to stay.
Five
At the private convalescent hospital nestled quietly in vast lawns on the northern-facing slopes of one of Auckland’s prestigious suburbs, Holly brushed her foster sister’s fine hair against her pillow. It was the only thing to soothe Andrea today.
“Sorry to have disturbed your Christmas,” the nurse at the foot of the bed remarked. “She just seemed worse today. We tried earlier to get a hold of you to let you know.”
“I know. I’m sorry,” Holly answered with a worried smile. “You did the right thing to call me in.”
“I hope we didn’t interrupt anything important.”
“No,” she managed through stiffened lips, “nothing that couldn’t be left.”
“Maybe next Christmas there’ll be someone special to sweep you off your feet,” the nurse continued with a wink. “You never know just what’s around the corner.”
Heat suffused Holly’s cheeks. No, you never did know what was around the corner and that was precisely why she was never sleeping with Connor Knight again. The nurse didn’t know quite how close she’d struck to the bone. Holly smiled a brief response and put the hairbrush down, looking at Andrea’s tragically uncommunicative twitching form in the bed. She was a far cry from the exuberant adolescent who’d egged her on to believe in herself when no one else would. Fate had finally smiled on them both when they’d been placed in a home together.
While it was highly unlikely Holly carried the juvenile Huntington’s gene that slowly and painstakingly stole her dearest and closest friend from her, who knew what time bomb she could pass onto her children? And for as long as Holly was responsible for paying for Andrea’s care, she couldn’t afford the investigators necessary to try and trace her own parents.
So it was simple. No children. Ever. Andrea was far more important than anything else right now. Including Connor Knight.
Back at work just over a month later, Holly was grateful she’d had no other demands on her time. Andrea’s deterioration over the break had been marked, and Holly had been forced to request to use up the balance of her accrued leave so she could spend every available minute with her. It had taken some juggling, but Janet had happily returned early from her holidays to fill in.
The emotional demands of remaining positive for Andrea had left Holly totally wrung out by the end of each day, and now the onset of a mild yet persistent tummy bug meant that she’d have to restrict her visits until she was better again. At first she’d panicked, terrified she was pregnant, but the light period she’d had two weeks ago made that impossible. Thank God.
Holly’s feet dragged as she stepped down the corridor to her office. The poinsettias hadn’t suffered for the lack of natural light at her workstation, she observed ruefully. Obviously, someone had kept them watered during her extended break, although they did seem a bit washed out for colour. How symbolic, she thought, cynicism twisting her lips, just like her.
She’d lost weight and her appetite had been reduced to nil. How she’d contracted this wretched stomach bug was beyond her, although she had her suspicions about the efficiency of her ancient refrigerator, with its damaged door seal, combined with Auckland’s high summer humidity. The mix was bound to have wreaked havoc on the food she’d managed to force past her lips.
In response to the thought of food, her stomach heaved slightly. Holly took a deep levelling breath and waited for the nausea to subside.
The white poinsettia was nowhere to be seen. She supposed the cleaners must have disposed of it when they’d cleaned up the mess it had left after landing ignominiously on the carpet on Christmas Eve. That night seemed so long ago.
She hadn’t heard from Connor. He’d been away at his family’s holiday home on the Coromandel Peninsula during the two weeks immediately after Christmas, and HR had handled her request for additional time off in his absence. Even if he had tried to call her once he was back in Auckland, she’d been at the hospital most of the time, only going home to sleep late at night, then racing off early to catch the succession of buses that took her back to Andrea. Besides, it was exactly what she’d wanted. No fuss, no complications and certainly no recriminations to interfere with her ability to do her job and earn her desperately needed income.