Yet he could not.
Anton turned to the sight of Louise on the stepladder, tongue out, fingers up and well and truly caught!
Louise actually froze for a second, which was very unfortunate, given the gesture she was making, but then she unfroze as Anton turned and walked back towards her. A shriek of nervous laughter started to pour from Louise because, from the way that Anton was walking, it felt as if he might be about to haul her from the ladder and over his shoulder. Wouldn’t that be nice? both simultaneously thought, but instead he came right up to her, his face level with her groin, and looked up into china-blue eyes as she looked down at the sexiest, most aloof, impossibly arrogant man to have ever graced The Royal.
‘I got you your tinsel.’ Anton pointed at her and his voice was stern but, Louise noted, that sulky mouth of his was doing its level best not to smile.
‘Yes, Anton, you did,’ Louise said, wondering if he could feel the blast of heat coming from her loins. God knew, he was miserable and moody but her body responded to him as if someone had just thrown another log on the fire whenever he was around.
On many levels he annoyed her—Anton checked and re-checked everything that she did, as if she was someone who had just wandered in from the street and offered to help out for the day, rather than a qualified midwife. Yet, aside from their professional differences, he was as sexy as hell and the sparks just flew off the two of them, no matter how Anton might deny that they did.
‘So why this?’ Anton asked, and pulled a face and poked his tongue out at her, and Louise smiled at the sight of his tongue and screwed-up features as he mimicked her gestures. He was still gorgeous—olive-skinned, his black hair was glossy and straight and so well cut that Louise constantly had to resist running her hands through it just to see it messed up. His eyes were a very dark blue and she ached to see them smile, yet, possibly for the first time, while aimed at her, now they were.
Oh, his expression was cross but, Louise could just see, those eyes were finally smiling and so she took the opportunity to let him know a few home truths.
‘It’s the way that you do things, Anton.’ Louise attempted to explain. ‘Why couldn’t you just say, “Sure, Louise,” and go and get the tinsel?’
‘Because, as I’ve told you, I am on my way to see a patient.’
‘Okay, why didn’t you smile when you walked into the unit and saw the decorations that I’ve spent the last two hours putting up and say, “Ooh, that looks nice”?’
‘Truth?’ Anton said.
‘Truth.’ Louise nodded.
‘I happen to think that you have too many decorations …’ He watched her eyes narrow at his criticism. ‘You asked why I didn’t tell you how nice they looked.’
‘I did,’ Louise responded. ‘Okay, then, third question, why didn’t you say hello to me when you walked past?’
For Anton, that was the trickiest to answer. ‘Because I didn’t see you.’
‘Please!’ Louise rolled her eyes. ‘You saw me—you just chose to ignore me, as I’m going to choose to ignore your slight about my decorations. You can never have too much tinsel.’
‘Oh, believe me Louise, you can,’ Anton said, looking around. The corridor was a riot of red, gold and green tinsel stars. He looked up to where silver foil balloons hung from the ceilings. Then he looked down to plastic snowmen dancing along the bottom of the walls. Half of the windows to the patients’ rooms had been sprayed with fake snow. Louise had clearly been busy. ‘Nothing matches.’ Anton couldn’t help but smile and he really tried to help but smile! ‘You don’t have a theme.’
‘The theme is Christmas, Anton,’ Louise said in response. ‘I had a very tinsel-starved Christmas last year and I intend to make up for it this one. I’m doing the nativity scene this afternoon.’
‘Good for you,’ Anton said, and walked off.
Louise didn’t poke out her tongue again and even if she had Anton wouldn’t have seen it because this time he very deliberately didn’t turn around.
He didn’t want to engage in conversation with Louise. He didn’t want to find out why she’d had a tinsel-starved Christmas the previous year.
Or rather he did want to find out.
Louise was flaky, funny, sexy and everything Anton did not need to distract him at work. He wasn’t here to make friends—his social life was conducted well away from the hospital walls. Anton did his level best to keep his distance from everyone at work except his patients.
‘Hannah.’ He smiled as he stepped into the four-bedded ward but Hannah didn’t smile back and Anton pulled the curtains around her bed before asking his patient any questions. ‘Are you okay?’ Anton checked.
‘I’m so worried.’
‘Tell me,’ Anton offered.
‘I’m probably being stupid, I know, but Brenda came in this morning and I said the baby had moved and I’m sure that it did, but it hasn’t since then.’
‘So you’re lying here, imagining the worst?’
‘Yes,’ Hannah admitted. ‘It’s taken so long to get here that I’m scared something’s going to go wrong now.’
‘I know how hard your journey has been,’ Anton said. Hannah had conceived by IVF and near the end of a tricky pregnancy she had been brought in for bed rest as her blood pressure was high and the baby’s amniotic fluid was a little on the low side. Anton specialised in high-risk pregnancies and so he was very comfortable listening to Hannah’s concerns.
‘Let me have a feel,’ Anton said. ‘It is probably asleep.’
For all he was miserable with the staff and kept himself to himself, Anton was completely lovely and open with his patients. He had a feel of Hannah’s stomach and then took out a Doppler machine and had a listen, locating the heartbeat straight away. ‘Beautiful,’ Anton said, and they listened for a moment. ‘Have you had breakfast?’ Anton asked, because if Hannah had low blood sugar, that could slow movements down.
‘I have.’
‘How many movements are you getting?’
‘I felt one now,’ Hanna said.
‘That’s because I just nudged your baby awake when I was feeling your stomach.’
He sat going through her charts. Hannah’s blood pressure was at the higher limits of normal and Anton wondered for a long moment how best to proceed. While the uterus was usually the best incubator, there were times when the baby was safest out. He had more than a vested interested in this pregnancy and he told Hannah that. ‘Do you know you will be the first patient that I have ever helped both to conceive through IVF and deliver their baby?’
‘No.’ Hannah frowned. ‘I thought in your line of work that that would happen to you all the time.’
‘No.’ Anton shook his head. ‘Remember how upset you were when I first saw you because the doctor you had been expecting was sick on the day of your egg retrieval?’
Hannah nodded and actually blushed. ‘I was very rude to you.’
‘Because you didn’t want a locum to be taking over your care.’ Anton smiled. ‘And that is fair enough. In Italy I used to do obstetrics but then I moved into reproductive endocrinology and specialised there. In my opinion you can’t do both simultaneously, they are completely different specialties—you have to always be available for either. I only helped out that week because Richard was sick. I still cover very occasionally to help out and also because I like to keep up to date but in truth I cannot do both.’
‘So how come you moved back to obstetrics?’
‘I