Her Sister's Baby

Dray Carlisle reached to switch on a bedside lamp.

“Yes,” she confirmed as light filled the darkness. “Me.”

“I don’t believe it. What are you doing here?”

“Right at the moment, trying to get Ellie back to sleep,” she responded as the baby’s cries escalated. “Unless you’d like to do it? In which case, could I suggest a slightly less aggressive tone?”

She offered the baby to him, but it was purely a mocking gesture.

His eyes bored into her as he responded, “Very funny…I’ll wait outside.”

“If that’s what you want.” Cass’s tone was dismissive.

“No, what I want,” he growled back, “is to go to bed.”

Cass shrugged. She wasn’t stopping him.

“Don’t worry, that wasn’t a proposition.”

“I wasn’t worried,” she returned sharply.

It backfired, however, as he paused briefly to murmur, “Now, that is interesting.”

ALISON FRASER was born and brought up in the far north of Scotland. She studied English literature at university and taught math for a while, then became a computer programmer. She took up writing as a hobby and it is still very much so, in that she doesn’t take it too seriously! Alison currently lives with her husband, children and dogs in Birmingham, England, and is in her forties—she doesn’t know what she wants to be when she grows up!

Her Sister’s Baby

Alison Fraser

Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ONE

CASS walked from the tube station with her eyes down. It was well after dark and, though the streets were lit, few people were about in the driving early summer rain. She had no umbrella, her suede jacket was becoming quickly sodden and her hair hung like rat-tails round her face.

It was times like these she wished she had a car to service instead of a student bank loan. She was just too tired to run. She’d worked the entire weekend and longed for her own bed and eight hours’ uninterrupted sleep.

When she turned into her home street, she was in no state to notice anything, even the sleek expensive car that didn’t quite belong in her neighbourhood. She sailed past it, thinking only of getting the key in her door and reaching shelter.

The driver noticed her, however. He’d been there over an hour and he wasn’t a man used to waiting. Impatience had sharpened his powers of observation and he was out of the car before she’d reached her gate. He followed quickly, having an idea she would close the door on him if she were given the chance.

Cass heard the footsteps behind her and felt the unease most women had on a dark night. She rifled in her bag as she walked and had her key ready by the time she reached her front step.

The echo of footsteps stopped at her gate and made her fingers clumsy as she tried to fit the Yale in the lock and dropped it instead. Unease became alarm as she turned, prepared to cry out at the dark-coated figure bearing down on her.

‘Don’t panic,’ a deep, dry voice told her. ‘It’s me.’

For a moment Cass didn’t recognise the voice—or him—then her nerves steadied and she realised who it was.

‘Drayton Carlisle,’ he added, as if it might be necessary.

Did he imagine she’d forgotten? That was an insult in itself.

It had only been three years and he’d changed little. His hair was still dark, the face angular, blue eyes as mocking as ever. The most beautiful man in the universe—that was what her sister Pen called him—and she wasn’t far off. It was just a pity that he was a complete bastard.

‘Yes?’ She matched his haughty tone, although hers wasn’t innate. She hadn’t been born sucking on a silver spoon.

He stooped to pick up the key she’d dropped. ‘May I come in?’

‘Do I have a choice?’ she muttered at the action.

‘Of course.’ He handed her back the Yale, then stated shortly, ‘It’s about Pen.’

She had assumed as much. His brother Tom was married to her sister Pen. She wondered if Pen had done something silly again.

His expression was closed, giving nothing away. ‘Look, can we do this inside?’

‘Can’t it keep?’ she appealed. ‘I’m tired.’

He noted the shadows under her eyes, even as he replied, ‘No, it can’t.’

‘Oh, all right.’ Reluctantly she unlocked the door and let him follow her into the hall. ‘But if we can make this brief, because I really am exhausted.’

His mouth twisted. ‘Busy weekend?’

‘Somewhat.’ She wasn’t about to go into it; let him think what he liked. He usually did.

‘I’ve been phoning you since first thing yesterday,’ he informed her in repressive tones.

‘I was out.’

‘So I gathered.’

On the town, that was what he imagined. That she had some high social life, the last of the good-time girls. She should be so lucky.

‘At work,’ she stressed.

‘At six in the morning?’ He clearly didn’t believe her.

It was true, however. Cass had been on call and slept Friday and Saturday in a room in the hospital.

She gave up defending herself and said, ‘Is this really any of your business?’

Dark brows gathered in displeasure and his mouth thinned, but he surprised her by backing down.

‘No, possibly not,’ he agreed, before adding, ‘If we could go and sit somewhere…?’

He took off his coat, waiting for her to hang it up.

Her reluctance couldn’t have been plainer as she stood, dripping in her own wet clothes and guarding the living-room door.

‘I’m not going to leap on you, you know,’ he stated with an impatient edge.

The thought hadn’t entered her mind, but now it did, it hung between them. Not that he’d ever leapt on her. It had been more a mutual thing.

Their eyes met for a second, acknowledging, remembering, then burying the emotions that had briefly coloured their relationship.

She finally took his coat from him and put it on a hook on the wall, then led the way through to the living room.

It always looked shabby, with its odds and ends of furniture bought at junk shops, inherited from friends or simply rescued from skips. He made it look shabbier, dressed as he was in silk shirt and tailored grey suit of impeccable cut.

He was overdressed for a casual visit to her, and the niggle of a bad feeling in her stomach became worse. Was Pen in some kind of trouble?

She watched as he adjusted his long, supple frame in one of her old armchairs and waited for him to speak.

He ran a critical eye over her, too, saying, ‘If you want to change and get dry first, I’ll wait.’

‘No, I’m fine.’ She took off her jacket and threw it over the back of a chair. The blue cotton shirt underneath was damp, as were her navy trousers, but she decided to live with the discomfort. ‘Do you want a drink?’ she asked out of mere politeness.

It was a surprise when he accepted. ‘A small whisky if you have it.’

She’d meant tea, but she crouched down to what passed for a drinks-cabinet in the bottom of the sideboard. ‘I’m afraid it’s vodka and lemonade or martini.’

‘Vodka—as it comes.’ He said it like a man who needed a drink, and, when she took out only one glass, added, ‘I think you should pour yourself one, too.’

Definitely bad news, but then what other kind would this man bring her?

She did what he said, sloshing a little lemonade in her vodka to make it drinkable, and placed his glass on the coffee-table in front of him, before taking the chair opposite.

She watched him fortify himself with a mouthful of liquor, then look across at her, searching for the right words to use, and she realised this wasn’t about some stupid thing Pen had done.

Her sense of déjà vu was too strong. Just that afternoon she’d had to tell a sobbing mother her son was dead, hoping the woman would guess before she had to say the words aloud.

‘Something’s happened to Pen, hasn’t it?’ she said to Drayton Carlisle now.

He nodded his head. ‘I don’t know how to tell you this—’

‘She’s dead.’ Cass said the words quickly, then prayed for an equally quick denial.

He looked surprised and gave her brief hope that she was being overly dramatic. Then he took it away as he nodded once more.

He began to speak, to go into detail, but the blood was rushing to Cass’s head and she couldn’t hear what he was saying. She knew she was on the verge of fainting and took a deep breath to steady herself. By sheer force of will, she brought herself back from oblivion, and forced herself to concentrate on his voice.

‘The results should be known by Tuesday,’ he concluded gravely.

‘The results?’ Cass had missed most of the rest.

He frowned as he repeated, ‘Of the post mortem.’

‘They can’t do that!’ Cass was horrified for Pen. Beautiful Pen, so proud of her looks, her model-girl figure.

‘They have to,’ Drayton Carlisle told her quietly, ‘in cases of unexpected deaths.’

Cass understood that. She just wasn’t thinking on a logical level. The first shock was followed by a sense of unreality.

That sense intensified as he added, ‘Tom says you may not have known about the baby.’

‘The baby?’ she echoed warily—was Pen’s secret finally out?

Drayton Carlisle gave her a puzzled look in return. He’d just explained.

‘The baby she was carrying,’ he reminded her. ‘It’s a girl. She’s in special care.’

Cass shook her head in disbelief—Pen had been pregnant again?

‘You didn’t know, did you?’ he concluded from her expression.

Disbelief gave way to anger as Cass muttered aloud, ‘The stupid, stupid girl!’

Drayton Carlisle’s mouth curved with renewed contempt. ‘Presumably she anticipated your reaction.’

‘I’m sure she did.’ Cass recalled the last conversation she’d had with Pen on the subject. She had warned her then, but of course Pen had never listened.

‘She told Tom you might have a problem with it,’ Drayton Carlisle ran on.

That was an understatement. She caught Drayton Carlisle watching her, drawing quite the wrong conclusions. The truth would have vindicated her but how could she reveal it when Pen had paid the ultimate price for her lies?

‘What’s the prognosis?’ she asked instead.

‘Prognosis?’

‘For the baby.’

He frowned at the clinical term, before relaying, ‘She’s a good size for a premature baby so they’re cautiously optimistic.’

Cass nodded but wouldn’t ask more.

‘How is Tom?’ she added instead.

Mention of his brother made Drayton Carlisle’s face grow grimmer.

‘Coping,’ he claimed briefly.

Cass doubted it. She thought of Tom Carlisle—less arrogant than big brother, slightly immature, more likeable for his insecurities.

‘I’ve arranged the funeral for Wednesday,’ Drayton Carlisle informed her, an indication, perhaps, of the true state of affairs. He had arranged, not Tom.

‘Cremation.’ Cass checked he had it right.

He raised a brow at her insistent tone. ‘No, burial… Why?’

‘That’s not what she’d want.’

‘How do you know?’

It could have been a genuine question but Cass didn’t think so. He meant: how did she know when she’d had minimal contact with her sister over the last few years?

But she did. She knew her sister better than any of them. She had lived with the real girl, not the sanitised version that had been desperate to become a member of the Carlisle clan.

‘You can’t bury her,’ Cass repeated. ‘She had this thing about it, after our mother died. About bodies rotting in the ground.’

He still looked doubtful. ‘I’ll check with Tom.’

‘Do that if you want—’ she scowled back ‘—but I’m telling you. She’d want to be cremated.’

‘If Tom agrees,’ he conceded, then went on to relay, ‘It’ll just be a small private funeral, family only.’

She shook her head again. ‘That’s not what Pen would have liked, either.’

This time his face reflected annoyance as he ceased making concessions for her possible grief. Her hard-bitten tones suggested she felt none, anyway.

‘Forgive me, but can you really be the judge of that?’ he countered. ‘It’s not as if you and Pen were very close.’

Statement or accusation? Cass returned his hard glance. She owed him no explanation of her somewhat complex relationship with Pen.

‘Possibly not,’ she conceded. ‘I just happen to know her attitude towards funerals. At our mother’s, she found it pitiful that there were only a handful of mourners and swore she’d have hundreds at her own. She was only fifteen at the time—’ Cass paused and swallowed hard, determined to hold it together in front of this man ‘—but I imagine those sentiments stand. Unless Pen suddenly became the shy retiring type?’

‘Hardly.’ Drayton Carlisle’s mouth thinned at the idea. ‘I was thinking of Tom when I arranged the funeral.’

‘And I’m thinking of my sister,’ Cass replied.

They abandoned their uneasy truce and exchanged hostile stares.

‘And I’m paying for it,’ he pointed out.

End of argument.

Cass’s lip curled. ‘You’re such a louse, Carlisle.’

He grimaced briefly, before countering, ‘And you’re the hardest woman I have ever met in my life.’

Deep down it hurt. No woman liked to be called hard. Cass, however, was a past master at hiding her feelings.

‘How kind of you to say so,’ she retaliated.

‘That wasn’t meant as a compliment.’

‘I know.’

They traded stares again. Anger was prevalent for a moment, but it gave way to intrigue as each wondered what made the other tick.

Cass was the first to look away. ‘I’ll see you out.’

She rose abruptly and he followed. In the hall, they turned at virtually the same moment to reach for his coat and collided a little. The first to recover, Drayton Carlisle put a steadying hand on Cass’s arm.

That was all. But his touch still burned and she recoiled from it as if it were an assault.

‘I wasn’t going to hurt you,’ he ground out in a voice tight with control.

‘As if,’ Cass threw back, angry at her own lack of self-possession.

Perhaps Pen had been right. She was turning into an up-tight spinster.

‘No, of course.’ Drayton Carlisle’s thoughts were on Pen, too, as he relayed, ‘Your sister always said you were scared of nothing and cared about even less.’

Cass could just hear her sister say the words. She shut her eyes but could still hear them. Tough talk, but quite untrue. Surely Pen had known that she’d cared desperately about her?

Drayton Carlisle watched, at first a detached observer. Finally it was there. Pain etched on her beautiful, high-boned face. He’d wanted it there, to see if the girl he’d briefly known—the girl who could feel and laugh and love—had been real, yet he relented almost immediately as she lifted an anguished hand to her mouth.

‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that—’ he reached an arm out ‘—it’s not even tr—’

‘It doesn’t matter!’ Cass shook her head before he could retract it. Pointless, anyway. What he’d said was undeniably Pen, a throwaway remark that hurt less than the echoes of her sister’s voice, suddenly destroying her composure.

Tears gathered at the back of her eyes, tore at her throat, threatened to spill too soon, as it finally got through to her, past barriers of self-preservation and years of professional training. Pen was dead. Not just missing for a while. She was never going to sail back into her life, maddening one moment, charming the next, reckless and lovable and, to Cass’s eyes only, so very vulnerable.

‘I have to—’ Cass couldn’t get the words out but she made to retreat.

He caught hold of her arm again. ‘Listen to me, Cass. I was lying,’ he insisted, ‘and you’re right—I am a louse.’

Just not a total one, Cass realised, unnerved by his turnaround.

‘It d-doesn’t m-matter.’ She couldn’t explain. ‘N-none of it matters. I—I…’ She shut tight her eyes but the tears leaked from them, anyway.

A low, ‘Damn,’ came from Drayton Carlisle, but, if it was exasperation, he wouldn’t let her turn away.

She tried, only he held her too tightly. She pushed at his shoulders, then actually struck him, when she could no longer stifle her sobs. He let her, offering her something, somebody to rage against in her grief, but she didn’t seem to have the strength. She struck him once more before she suddenly turned into a sobbing pathetic mess in his arms.

She cried for what seemed like an age, her head buried in his shoulder, her hands twisted into the folds of his jacket, and he held her in his arms; for a while their closeness was as natural as breathing. But when there were no more tears left to cry and she sobered up, it was as awkward as a first clinch with a boy.

More so, perhaps, because this wasn’t her first clinch with him.

‘I’m okay now.’ She lifted her head away.

‘Good.’ He was looking down at her, but she refused to look up.

She spoke to his shoulder. ‘Please go. I have some calls to make, people to tell.’

‘I could do it,’ he offered surprisingly.

‘No! No, thank you,’ she tempered her rejection.

‘All right.’ He didn’t insist but gently pressed her arm as he said, ‘Look, I really am sorry—’

‘It’s okay, honestly,’ she stopped him before he could go on. ‘Pen says—said worse to my face. It just sounded so like her, that was all… About the funeral—’

‘If Tom agrees, we’ll make it public.’

‘You’re right, of course. It’s up to him. But what I was about to say is: I can’t go.’

‘What?’ He was clearly shocked.

‘I can’t go,’ she repeated as the hand on her arm finally dropped away.

She couldn’t stand at a graveside and bury her sister. It was too hard. No matter that things hadn’t always been right between them.

‘I’m on duty all week,’ she claimed as an excuse.

Drayton Carlisle stared at her as if she were mad. ‘The supermarket could surely spare you for a day.’

Cass stared back, questioning his sanity in turn. Then she realised. Pen hadn’t told them of her career change. Why was that?

‘All right, I won’t go,’ she said with blunt honesty. ‘Satisfied?’

Drayton Carlisle shook his head. It was hard to reconcile this Cass Barker with the one who had been crying in his arms just a few minutes ago.

‘I don’t understand you, but then I never did.’

‘Did you try?’

It slipped out before Cass could stop it. She heard her own bitterness and was scared of giving more away.

She turned from him and opened the door. She held it wide, waiting for him to leave.

He took the hint, putting on his coat and walking towards the door, but said as he drew level, ‘We haven’t resolved this yet. I’ll call tomorrow.’

Cass shrugged, as if to say, Do what you like. Tomorrow she might be up to the fight. Tonight she just wanted him to go before she broke down again.

His eyes rested on her a moment longer, intense, searing blue eyes, then he was gone. Thank God.

She closed the door and leaned heavily against it, drained of strength and anger.

Another death to face. It felt like familiar territory. Perhaps because it was. Father. Mother. Sister. Hard not to take personally. Why me? Why us? Why Pen?

She went back through to the sideboard and took out the family photograph album. It contained a record of their lives before their father’s death from cancer when Cass was fifteen and Pen nine. Here were the memories of happy holidays and birthday parties and dressing up for school plays.

These photographs had always made Cass a little mournful. Now, as she turned page after page, and saw Pen, a blonde-haired angel, smiling into cameras, sitting on knees, pulling faces, she felt utterly bereft. This time, when she cried, her grief was for all of them, for her beloved little sister and her strong, clever father and her pretty, laughing mother, and even for herself, the once carefree child she’d been.

The guilt came stealing in later, and, with it, that familiar question: what should I have done? It seemed she’d been asking it for ever. It seemed she’d always got it wrong.

She’d gone away to study medicine at university, imagining that one day she would provide her widowed mother with a better life. When her mother had died in a road accident, how she’d wished she’d never gone away!

The only thing that had kept her from folding then had been her sister. In those first hours and days she had held Pen and comforted her and they had been so close it was hard to imagine they would ever be anything else.

Reality, however, had come to call on the afternoon they had buried their mother. It had been in the shape of a boy, more Cass’s age than Pen’s. Cass had taken in the earring and tattoo and the sullen manner, and stood, aghast, while Pen had grabbed a coat and disappeared before she’d been able to do anything. It had seemed that, in Cass’s absence, Pen had grown up fast—too fast.

When Pen had finally reappeared at two in the morning, Cass’s mind had been made up. She wouldn’t abandon Pen to a life of no-hope boyfriends and, for want of any willing relatives, a year in care. Surely she could do better?

She had fully believed so and had transplanted what had been left of the family to this tiny terraced house in London. Pen had protested loudly and had managed to sulk continuously for a fortnight in between tearful phone calls to the boyfriend. Then gradually she had made friends at her new school and had stopped pining for Pontefract, and Cass had breathed a sigh of relief.

That relief had been short-lived. Within a couple of months, Pen had been going up West—to nightclubs and bars where looks had counted more than birth dates—and Cass had been left to wonder how she could possibly control her.

All those years gone by and Cass still didn’t know the right answer. She just felt if she’d done it, Pen might still be alive.

CHAPTER TWO

WORK was Cass’s salvation. Having finally fallen asleep in the small hours, she was woken at seven a.m. by her pager bleeping. It was the hospital. One of the A and E doctors was himself sick. Would Cass cover for him? She agreed readily. Anything rather than spend a day brooding on her sister’s death.

She told no one and no one would have guessed the serious-faced Dr Barker had cried herself to sleep. She stitched cuts, pumped stomachs, jump-started a heart, all with her normal cool efficiency.

Of course, grief didn’t go away. She put it on hold while she worked the accident unit and coped with other people’s pain, but it returned the moment she was home.

She managed to make phone calls to a great aunt and her mother’s cousin—the only known relatives left—before the cousin’s well-meaning words overwhelmed her. When the phone rang shortly afterwards, she didn’t pick it up. She was crying too hard to talk to anyone.

It was much later when she remembered the call and lifted the receiver to find a message had been left for her. In fact, there were three messages, timed throughout the day, each more terse than the last. They were all from Drayton Carlisle, requesting that she call him on his mobile to discuss funeral arrangements.

He had obviously lost what little sympathy he’d had for her. Cass told herself she didn’t care. She didn’t need his concern. He had never understood her or her relationship with Pen. He knew nothing of the past which had linked them inextricably before driving them apart.