gritted teeth.
His frown deepened. ‘What?’
‘I don’t know what kind of women you normally associate with—’ apart from his wife ‘—but I don’t do affairs.’
‘I wasn’t asking for an affair.’ Though he was thinking about one right now, Jude was sure. Colour slashed across his cheekbones and his voice sounded slightly slurred. ‘I just thought we could have a drink together. Maybe dinner. Get to know each other a bit.’
She folded her arms. ‘And how would your wife see that? Forget it!’ She looked at him in utter disgust, then walked out of his office, not bothering to slam the door behind her. He wasn’t worth it.
Kieran stared after Judith in shock. Wife? What wife? He wasn’t married!
Then he remembered Margot’s comments. If the midwife had told Jude he’d bought two tickets, maybe Jude had jumped to the conclusion that he was married. But surely she’d seen Tess with him at the fundraiser? OK, Tess had a different father, her skin was paler than his and she’d inherited her father’s blue eyes while he’d inherited his father’s dark eyes, but surely there was enough of a family resemblance for Judith to have seen it?
Or maybe not. He was about to go after her and explain when the phone rang. By the time he’d sorted out the problem, Jude was nowhere to be seen. He finally caught up with her during her teabreak. Luck was with him, because she was on her own.
‘Jude, we need to talk,’ he said.
She shook her head. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘I’m not married. The woman you saw me with at your fundraiser—’
‘Don’t tell me—she’s your sister?’ Jude folded her arms. ‘That’s what they all say. Sister, best friend—there’s always some cover story.’
Kieran stared at her in disbelief. He was telling the truth! Tess was his sister. How could Jude possibly think he was the kind of man who’d cheat on his wife? Hell. He’d seen what it had done to his mother when his father had cheated on her. He’d barely started school and he’d had to listen to his mother crying, night after night, when his father was late home. By the time he was six, he’d learned to make scrambled eggs so he could coax some food down her. When his father had finally left her for good, a month or so later, he’d watched his mother collapse in on herself. And it had only been meeting Martyn Bailey that had changed her life. Changed his, too, because at last he’d had a proper father, one who had actually been there to encourage him and teach him things. And, when he was ten, he’d had the kid sister he’d always wanted, too.
Well, he wasn’t going to crawl. If Judith could misread him that much, a relationship with her would be a nightmare. One he could well do without. Given time and enough cold showers, he’d be able to snap the attraction between them.
Wouldn’t he?
‘Suit yourself,’ he said coolly, and left the room.
Unfortunately, they still had to work together. The following afternoon, not long after Kieran had signed Lisa Ford’s discharge form, Jude came to see him.
‘How can I help you, Dr Powell?’ He couldn’t bring himself to use her first name. And maybe keeping a professional distance would help him keep a personal distance.
Her chin rose. ‘As you’re the most senior doctor on the unit right now, Mr Bailey, I wondered if you might be able to help one of my mums.’
He inclined his head slightly and waited.
She glowered and folded her arms. ‘Rhiannon Morgan. The knee-chest exercises haven’t worked. I haven’t manipulated a retroverted uterus before.’
He knew what she wanted. And she was going to have to ask. Nicely. This time he wasn’t going to jump in and offer. ‘And?’
She swallowed. Kieran watched the movement of her throat and had to dig his nails into his palms to remind himself that he didn’t want to kiss her there. He didn’t want to loosen her hair. He didn’t want to kick his door shut and kiss her until neither of them could see straight.
‘And,’ she said softly, ‘I need help.’
‘You described the manoeuvre perfectly yesterday.’ Before she’d accused him of being a philanderer—and then of being a liar. That still rankled.
‘There’s a huge difference between reading a textbook and actually doing the procedure.’
‘True.’
‘Are you going to help me?’
‘Help Rhiannon Morgan, you mean.’
She swallowed. ‘Look, I…’
Five little letters. Two syllables. She really wasn’t going to say the ‘s’ word, was she? Stubborn as hell. And it wasn’t Rhiannon’s fault. It wasn’t fair to let one of the mums on his ward suffer, just because he was still absolutely furious with Judith Powell. ‘All right. I’ll do it, you assist. What’s her blood type?’
‘A positive.’
‘Good. So we don’t need to give her anti-D.’ The manipulation was one of the medical procedures which could cause a small exchange of maternal and foetal blood—and if the mum’s blood type was rhesus negative and the baby’s was rhesus positive, that could spell trouble for the foetus unless the mum was given special antibodies.
‘I need a long Allis clamp, and I want the portable ultrasound so I can check the positioning, the baby and the amniotic fluid before and after the procedure. Perhaps you could arrange it while I introduce myself to Rhiannon.’
‘Fine.’ She paused. ‘Thank you.’
He couldn’t bring himself to respond with ‘Pleasure’ or ‘That’s OK’. Because it wasn’t going to be a pleasure, working close to Jude. It was going to be sheer bloody torture—because although his mind knew that she was trouble, his body wasn’t listening. He could smell her perfume and it made him want to hold her closer. To bury his face in her hair, her skin. To lose himself in her incredible body.
The procedure was simple enough. Rhiannon was in the knee-chest position, and he grasped the anterior lip of her cervix with the clamp, slid a finger into her vagina and applied pressure to the top of the uterus. While Judith kept up a gentle constant traction to the cervix, following his instructions exactly, he gradually rotated the uterus, sliding the fundus on one side of the sacral promontory.
‘OK, we’re there. Dr Powell, you can stop now. Rhiannon, you can lower your legs again.’ He smiled at the young woman on the bed. ‘Well done.’
‘That wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be.’
‘Good. It really shouldn’t hurt, though you might feel a little bit sore later. Can you lift up your top for me? I just want to put some gel on your tummy and give you another scan—and I’m sure you’d feel happier if you could see your little one moving around.’
Rhiannon nodded. ‘Jude told me there was a slight risk of miscarriage. And…’
He squeezed
