Free The Marry-Me Wish by Alison Roberts Page A

heartfelt. ‘Not that they’d do one immediately anyway, with the uterus being so friable, but Emily thinks that bleed I had when I fainted must have cleared the last of it. Going by the ultrasound, it’s all good.’
    â€˜Infection? You looked a bit feverish.’
    â€˜Yeah, I’ve been cooking a few bugs. Nothing that the antibiotics I’m on now won’t fix.’
    â€˜And your haemoglobin?’
    â€˜Down a bit but not enough to warrant a transfusion, thank heavens. I’ll be a bit wobbly for a day or two, that’s all.’
    â€˜So you’ll go and stay with your sister?’
    Anne shook her head slowly. ‘I’d prefer not to.’
    â€˜Why?’ The word was crisp. Cool, even. ‘Because you’d rather not see the babies?’
    Anne bit her lip to stop the prickle of tears. Shecouldn’t expect him to understand, so why did it hurt so much? She might have won the battle with the tears but she couldn’t help the tremor in her voice.
    â€˜It’s more that I want to see them too much.’
    David’s face went very still. It was impossible not to let her gaze rest on him. Tracing lines she knew so well while she tried to gauge whether he was prepared to try and understand. Those tiny crinkles at the corners of his eyes. The deep furrows that joined his nose to the corners of his mouth that would deepen when he smiled. Not that he was smiling right now. He seemed to be returning her gaze with equal intensity.
    â€˜They’re not my babies,’ she explained softly. ‘Not even part of them. Jules had her eggs collected and Mac’s sperm fertilised them. I had the embryos implanted. My head knows perfectly well that they’re not my babies but…but my body’s not quite singing from the same hymn book yet.’ Her smile was even more precarious than her voice. ‘I’m a bit of a mess emotionally, to tell you the truth.’
    An eyebrow quirked on David’s forehead. ‘Really? Can’t say I noticed.’
    His smile was as gentle as his humour. It was the kind of smile that Anne hadn’t seen since way back…way before things had begun to fall apart. It touched something deep inside her. Something that brought tears to her eyes that were even harder to control this time.
    She blinked. Hard. ‘I’ll be fine,’ she said with a good attempt at bravado. ‘In fact, I think the worst is over now. I probably didn’t realise how much it was all dueto this complication. Being sick on top of everything else. I’ll bounce back in no time now.’
    â€˜But you can’t go home by yourself.’
    Â 
    â€˜No. She can’t.’ Mac, with a sleeping infant in his arms, had come quietly into the room.
    David saw something like fear flare in Anne’s eyes. Did she think that Mac might have overheard what she’d been saying? It was obvious she didn’t want her sister or Mac to know how difficult she was finding this situation. She was still protecting her baby sister, wasn’t she? Prepared to go through hell herself. By herself.
    He almost groaned aloud as he felt himself getting entangled a little further in that complicated web of emotion, past and present. There was respect. And caring. And…a moral duty, perhaps.
    â€˜I could stay here overnight, I suppose,’ Anne said. ‘If things don’t get too busy. I’ll have to go home in the morning anyway and sort out what needs to be done to sort out the mess.’
    â€˜I’ll take care of that,’ Mac said. ‘I’ll get hold of your insurance company. They can send their assessors and they’ll know what needs to be done to dry things out and what will have to be replaced.’
    Anne looked like she was trying hard not to cry. Seeing the damage to her home and belongings was the last thing she needed when she was, by her own admission, an emotional basket case.
    Julia had come