Free His Diamond Like No Other (Mills & Boon Medical) by Lucy Clark

to turn up and would often disappear for days or even weeks, not coming home and worrying me to the point of despair.’
    ‘Yeah.’ Her words were soft and she stopped under the shade of a nearby tree and looked up at Sean, who stood with his hands shoved into his pockets, his face drawn with remembered pain. ‘Hiding from the truth.’
    ‘A few times, though, I did manage to get her admitted to a clinic where she stayed for a few weeks, receiving medication for her condition, and it looked as though it was working.’
    ‘But the instant she was discharged, after convincing everyone that she really was fine, things would begin to change again?’
    ‘Yes.’ Sean raked one hand through his hair. ‘I tried everything I could to get her help but her problems, and she received so many diagnoses over the years, weren’t easy to overcome if she wasn’t willing to help herself.’
    ‘Instead, everyone around the person suffers.’
    Sean looked at Jane with concern as she spoke. She was looking down at the ground and when he reached out, lifting her chin so he could see her eyes, he saw pain reflected there. ‘She hurt you a lot, didn’t she?’ It was a statement more than a question but Jane shrugged one shoulder, stepping back from his touch. Sean dropped his hand back to his side and watched her for another moment, seeing the years of unhappiness Jane had probably endured at the hands of her sister.
    ‘So what finally ended it? You’ve already told me you were divorced before Daina passed away. What was it that made you end that toxic relationship?’
    ‘Toxic. That’s a good word for it.’ Sean shoved both hands into his trouser pockets again and shifted his feet. ‘She was pregnant with Spencer and at first she kept telling me how delighted she was, how this baby would change everything, make everything better between us, but it was just another one of her lies.’
    Jane remained silent, watching the different array of emotions cross his face. Confusion, hurt, dejection, anger.
    ‘I came home one day to find her gone. Usually when she left, or ran away, she’d pack a bag but this time nothing was missing. I checked the usual places, the different friends she relied on, but none of them knew where she was. Then two weeks later she came back home and seemed to be all right. She said she’d been confused, that she wanted to have the baby and that she loved me.’
    Jane sighed. ‘I know where she went during that time, Sean.’
    ‘You do?’
    She nodded. ‘Daina came to see me. I was living in Melbourne and she’d somehow found me and turned up on my doorstep, saying she needed a place to stay for the night. As usually happened when Daina was around, all she talked about was herself, that to start off with she’d thought she’d wanted a baby, that it might be fun, but that she’d been in the shopping centre where a baby had been crying. Constantly crying, not stopping, and she realised she didn’t want a baby after all. She said she’d tried to get an abortion but she was too far along with the pregnancy. The abortion clinics had turned her away.’ Jane sighed heavily. ‘That was why she’d come to see me.’
    Sean gulped. ‘She wanted you to do an abortion!’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘What did you say?’
    ‘That she was a fool. That she was too selfish to see that she had it all. She had good looks, a loving husband and was now going to have a child. I told her I was jealous of her. That seemed to feed her ego enough and she started talking about keeping the baby. It was all I could think of to ensure she didn’t do something else to try and terminate the pregnancy.’
    ‘How many weeks gestation was she?’
    ‘Thirty-one.’
    ‘What happened after that?’
    ‘She left, telling me she was going to return home to her wonderful life with her loving husband. I hoped it was the truth.’
    ‘And at thirty-three weeks I returned from a late shift at the hospital to discover her lying at the bottom of the