LITMIR.BIZ

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over her; the extent of the destruction was too much for her to take in...too much... It was like the set of a disaster movie’s big scene only it wasn’t a movie—it was real.

      On her knees she moved towards where her sister lay a few feet away, her eyes closed. Nobody had heard her cry for help, they were busy crying, wailing, bleeding or dying, but she tried again.

      ‘Help!’

      Her throat was raw by the time someone heeded her cry.

      A man with a torn shirt, his face smoke-blackened, appeared.

      He dropped down beside Sabrina and felt her pulse. She shook away his hand—couldn’t he see she was fine?

      ‘You’re going to be OK.’

      ‘My sister... Sebastian...’ She touched her sister’s hair and nodded to where Sebastian lay close by.

      She watched, her fingers on Chloe’s comfortingly strong pulse, as the Good Samaritan began to turn Sebastian over. He was halfway through the procedure before she realised what even someone with a scrap of first aid knew—and she was a doctor.

      She was a doctor!

      She left Chloe and grabbed the man’s arm. ‘No, don’t! He might have a spinal injury. He needs to be—’

      The man stopped, not in response to Sabrina’s urgent plea but at the terrible groan that issued from Sebastian.

      The sound cut through Sabrina like glass. ‘You’re hurting him!’ she wailed.

      His hand fell away. ‘Sorry. I was only trying to help.’

      They both turned as Sebastian completed the manoeuvre himself before sliding back into unconsciousness.

      The man beside her swore as he stared at Sebastian’s face. ‘That’s a mess.’

      Sabrina clenched her fists and hissed a fiercely protective denial. ‘He’s fine...oh, your poor face.’ She lifted a shaking hand and, on her knees in the dirt, touched the side of his face that wasn’t shredded and bleeding and stroked the dark hair back from his brow.

      The man moved away.

      ‘Hey, he’s the guy who got the girl from the cliff.’

      Two men walking past supporting a staggering woman between them stopped and looked down at Sabrina and Sebastian.

      ‘Hold on, they’ll be with you soon...’

      ‘I’m fine, but they—’ She stopped, her voice cracking with fear.

      The man nearest nodded and raised his voice and yelled, ‘One over here, one for triage, severe facial lacs, blood loss, head injury!’

      ‘Brina!’

      ‘Chloe.’ Before Sabrina could react to her sister’s hoarse whisper two jumpsuit-clad figures reached them. She shuffled out of the way, watching as they examined her sister, inserted a venous line before lifting her onto a stretcher.

      When Chloe saw Sabrina she struggled to pull the oxygen mask off her face.

      Sabrina covered her sister’s hand with her own. ‘No, leave it.’ Chloe’s eyes closed. ‘She’s my sister,’ she explained to the two paramedics as she ran along beside them.

      ‘We’ll look after her,’ one said. ‘She’s being airlifted.’

      She walked back to where Sebastian lay and stood there watching as her sister was stretchered away to the waiting helicopter. The explosion was deafening.

      Sabrina reacted on instinct, throwing herself over Sebastian. She had no idea how long she lay there; her ears were still ringing when two paramedics pulled her off.

      One began to examine Sebastian, the other shone a torch in Sabrina’s eyes. She pushed his hand away. ‘Can you walk?’ She nodded.

      ‘Great.’ He draped a foil blanket over her shoulders and shouted out, ‘A walking wounded over here, guys.’

      She lifted her chin. ‘No, I’m not leaving him.’ She’d let them take Chloe away but enough, she decided, was enough. ‘I’m staying with him.’

      The tired-looking paramedic sounded irritated by her attitude. ‘Look, there are people here who actually do need my help and—’

      The young woman crouched beside Sebastian, adjusting the line she had just put in his arm, looked up. ‘Have a heart, man, can’t you see that they just got married?’ She indicated Sabrina’s torn and dirty wedding dress.

      ‘This is your wedding day?’

      ‘It was meant to be,’ she answered truthfully, thinking that it seemed like a lifetime ago since she had put on her wedding dress.

      He swore in sympathy and looked down at his colleague, who was still kneeling beside Sebastian. ‘That one ready to move?’

      She nodded. ‘He’s stable, and sats are up to ninety-five...tough guy.’

      The man with Sabrina took her arm. ‘You can go with him.’

      ‘Thank you,’ Sabrina said. Her gratitude even greater when, on the way to the hospital in the back of the ambulance, Sebastian regained consciousness twice and each time it was the sound of her voice that stopped him fighting to free himself from the safety restraints before they had a chance to administer sedation.

      Sabrina had not expected their anonymity to last. Admittedly her face, even without the walking-wounded look, was less well known but it seemed inevitable that someone would at some point make the connection between the anonymous injured figure who lay, his famous features swathed in bandages, on the stretcher and their Prince.

      But so far no one had and, as it was hard to imagine that their treatment could have been better if the hospital staff had realised they were treating their Prince, it hadn’t seemed a priority to explain or correct the myth that they were a newly married couple, which had obviously followed them to the casualty department. While she waited to be seen herself, she was kept up to date with Sebastian’s progress. Sabrina knew she would not have been told the results of his CT or any of the other tests if they had known the truth.

      As someone who was not his wife or family she would have been told nothing, so she silenced the twangs of conscience, and took comfort from the technicality that she hadn’t lied—yet. Unless staying silent could be counted as lying. Should she reveal that under the dirt, blood and injuries the man they were treating was their Prince?

      People were kind even rushed off their feet. The staff she asked took time to try and find details about Chloe for her, though on each occasion they had not been able to locate her sister in the system, but then the system had to be at breaking point.

      The island boasted some pretty impressive medical facilities, but a major disaster had stretched their resources to the limit.

      It remained frustrating that nobody seemed to be able to tell her where her sister was, but her own injuries were minor. She hadn’t even known she had any, but the blood seeping from the head wound had caught the attention of a passing nurse. It needed stitching and they insisted on keeping her in overnight.

      ‘I hope you don’t mind sharing,’ the nurse said as she manoeuvred Sabrina’s bed into place beside the occupied one in the room obviously only ever intended to hold one bed.

      ‘Of course not.’

      The nurse smiled. ‘Not really the way you intended to spend your honeymoon, but we thought...’

      Sabrina’s eyes flew to the person lying in the bed next to hers.

      It was Sebastian, looking much better than when she had last seen him despite the livid bruises visible around the dressing that covered the wound on his face. His hands above the sheet were swathed in bandages too.

      ‘Is he in pain?’ she whispered, knowing full well they would have pumped him up with painkillers but needing the

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