The #1 Bestsellers Collection 2011(148)
His oldest brother, Declan, had found him in the garden a short time later, and the look in his brother’s eyes had told him it was too late to ever say goodbye. He’d lost his chance forever. His mother was gone.
An air horn sounded a strident warning from in front, snapping him from the past with an urgency he couldn’t ignore. Connor swore and swung his car to one side, narrowly missing the container truck headed through the intersection towards the docks. Focus. He had to focus. He had to find Holly.
The entrance to the hospital had changed, and he almost overshot the driveway in his haste. As he got out of his car and walked up the path to push through the front doors, he fought down the memories that rushed back through him of that other day. He’d never dreamed he’d have to set foot in here ever again.
His unexpected presence commanded immediate attention as the two ladies at reception both approached him at the same time.
“I’m looking for Holly Christmas, I understand she’s here?”
“Oh, yes, in the Rose room, second down the hall to your right. Are you family?”
Before Connor could reply, a keening sound struck his ears—so inconsolable it cut through to his nerve endings and made the hairs on the back of his neck rise. A shiver ran the length of his spine. Holly!
He flew down the short hallway, coming to an abrupt halt at the door to a room where Holly lay, sobbing, across the inert form of a young woman. The painfully thin figure in the bed, although clearly ravaged by illness, bore a serenity on her face that gave evidence to the battle she’d borne, and finally won, with her release from life.
The room was cluttered with photo frames on every available surface, yet Connor couldn’t tear his eyes from Holly’s grief-stricken form as she wept—her sorrow a physical force in the room. Desperate helplessness slammed into him with the power of a freight train. He didn’t do emotion. Not this kind. Every muscle in his body tensed with the effort not to leave. One way or another Holly needed him right now. He had to stay. He couldn’t walk out on this—on her.
A sudden flurry of activity at the door saw the hurried entrance of two other people, a doctor and a nurse. They spared him a cursory glance, their attention on Holly and Andrea’s lifeless form. The nurse gently pulled her away, wrapping Holly in strong arms and holding her tight, while the doctor swiftly examined the dead woman.
“Holly, I’m so sorry,” the doctor said in a voice that cracked with emotion. “She’s at rest now.”
“She was all I had left. All I had.” A fresh wave of tears swamped Holly’s face as she lifted her head from the nurse’s shoulder. Suddenly she became aware of Connor standing by the bed. “You! What are you doing here?” The words shot from her mouth like gravel from beneath a spinning tyre. “Can’t you ever leave me alone? You don’t belong here. Get out. Get out!”
“Sir, if you could wait outside for a moment, and give Holly a little time to say goodbye to her sister?” The doctor guided him back out the door, closing it gently behind him, a sympathetic look on his face.
Connor stared at the closed door as helplessness seeped into every cell in his body. He should be in there, with her. Providing comfort. Yet he was the last person on earth she wanted to see.
His acknowledgement of that fact scored deeper than he wanted to admit.
Ten
Wherever Holly turned he was there. At night he held her close to him and cradled her in his arms as she cried herself to sleep, despite her every attempt to remain apart.
Through the mind-numbing fog of loss, she sensed his strong quiet presence behind her, acting as a shield, a support, whatever she needed at any given point in time. Ensuring she had everything.
Everything except Andrea.
The funeral arrangements had been taken care of with the precision of a military engagement. Even Thompson had attended the brief but poignant graveside service, his presence swelling the scant number of staff from the hospital who could make it, together with herself and Connor.
The unfairness that Andrea, who’d been so full of life as a teenager, should be so forgotten emphasised with driving, painful clarity just how alone Holly now was.
Somehow, in the past couple of days, she had learned to lock in the pain of saying goodbye to Andrea. It was better not to love. Not to need. Not to want.
She was alone. Utterly and completely alone.
She thought fleetingly of the child she now carried. Not her baby … Connor’s. Under the circumstances it was for the best. It was easier not to flay herself open again.
At the island, Holly drifted aimlessly through the house, before wandering upstairs to the bedroom. In the private sitting room off the master suite, she curled up in a deep armchair that faced the window looking back out to the sea. She’d never thought she’d ever feel so abandoned again, yet the pain and the suffering continued. Andrea’s illness had cut her to the bone, but it was nothing compared to the raw screaming pain inside her now.