‘Wonderful.’
Her husband looked stunned. ‘We never thought we’d make it,’ he said, still choked. ‘But she’s here, alive and well—thanks to you.’
William grinned self-consciously. ‘We aim to please,’ he told them.
After a few more moments of admiration and praise, he opened the door for Charlotte and followed her out into the corridor.
‘Don’t say a thing,’ she warned, scrubbing the tears from her cheeks, and he laughed, his breath soft and warm against her neck.
‘Would I?’
‘I don’t know. Very probably.’
He chuckled. ‘Rumbled. Oh, well. How about some lunch and then we’ve got this clinic to do?’
They had just settled down to their lunch when his bleep squawked.
‘Oh, hell,’ he muttered, and, cramming a mouthful in, he stood up and crossed the room in a few quick strides. There was a phone on the wall and he picked it up, dialled the switchboard and spoke.
Charlotte watched him, fascinated by the play of emotions across his face, the way the light from the window highlighted the breadth of his shoulders and the straight, square set of his legs, feet planted firmly on the floor.
He was a very attractive man, and by his own admission seeing no one at the moment. A few years ago, Charlotte would have picked up on his interest, the mild flirting, the odd teasing remark, and she might have seen where it would lead them.
Now she felt oddly threatened by his attraction to her, and even more so by her attraction to him. That was much more dangerous.
Still, it was only a matter of degree and there was nothing that could persuade her to get involved with him, no matter how attractive.
Once bitten, and all that.
He was coming back towards her now, waving at someone and greeting them with a laughing remark.
Her heart twisted. What would it be like, she wondered, to be so universally popular? Everyone she had seen that morning had seemed to like him, from the ward sister through the theatre staff to every patient they had come across.
Now she saw him with his colleagues, pausing to exchange a quick word with Alex Carter, head of another obs and gynae firm. Charlotte had seen Alex about the hospital and always thought he looked rather severe, but he didn’t look severe now, laughing at something William had said.
He rejoined her then, sliding into his seat and tossing her a grin. ‘Patient we started inducing last night with a prostaglandin pessary is getting close. When we’ve eaten we’ll go and have a quick gander at her, and then we can go and start the gynae clinic. OK?’
She hoped so. Surely he wouldn’t leave her either with the delivery or the gynae clinic—not on her first day in the department?
‘Do you expect any problems?’ she asked.
‘No. Straightforward delivery, hopefully, but she’s had a few problems in her pregnancy and we’ve been watching her closely.’
Charlotte’s heart sank. ‘Problems?’
He waved a fork. ‘Nothing drastic, just a bit of a blood-pressure hike. She’ll be fine.’
Charlotte hoped so. She didn’t fancy doing her first delivery on a patient with pre-eclamptic toxaemia!
She finished her modest meal and watched as William hastily swallowed the last of his huge portion of chicken tikka, gulped down a cup of coffee and picked up the sticky bun off the tray.
‘I’ll eat this as we walk,’ he told her, and tore a chunk off it with large, even teeth.
Good grief, he was so physical, she thought helplessly as she followed him back, struggling to keep up with his long, easy stride. His feet ate up the corridors as surely as those gleaming white teeth disposed of the bun, and almost as rapidly.
By the time they arrived at the lift that would take them to the ward, he had finished the bun and she was breathing hard.
‘Are you unfit?’ he asked her, watching her chest rise and fall with interest.
‘No—my legs are shorter than yours,’ she retorted, and he tipped his head on one side and pretended to study them.
‘So they are—but somewhat more elegant. Pretty ankles.’
She blushed, and he grinned and ushered her into the open lift. The doors slid shut, and she was suddenly aware of the close confines and the overwhelming presence of this big and very attractive man.
She turned away, making a pretence of looking in the mirror and tucking an escaping strand of glossy brown hair back behind her ear. She would have to take it down and put it all up again before the clinic.
She felt him watching her, and as she glanced up in the mirror her violet-blue eyes met his bright cornflower gaze and locked; for a long moment he said nothing, then the lift slowed and the doors opened to admit a gaggle of laughing nurses.
‘Hello, William,’ they chorused, and he grinned at them.
‘Hello, ladies. All well?’
He chatted easily to them as they went up to the ward, and Charlotte felt the tension in her ease. Then the doors swished open and with an impersonal hand that felt like a branding iron he ushered her out of the lift.
His hand fell away naturally as they cleared the door, but Charlotte could feel its imprint in the small of her back for what seemed like hours. Her heart sinking, she realised that he was a toucher, one of those people who didn’t shy away from physical contact but touched and patted and hugged as easily as most people breathed.
For Charlotte, who found all but the most necessary physical contact almost threatening, working with him would be difficult in the extreme. Once again she wondered how on earth she was going to cope.
The woman didn’t require any assistance from them for her delivery, but William was called to repair the tear in her perineum after the gynae clinic, and he turned it into a lesson for Charlotte.
Somewhat shy herself, she wondered how the woman would cope with having two of them discussing such an intimate area of her body, but William laughed and chatted and smiled at her over the drapes, and talked constantly about the baby while he worked, so there was no possibility of any shyness or inhibition.
He was so natural, such an easy communicator, and Charlotte found herself relaxing as she watched over his shoulder.
‘Can you see the different muscle layers underneath?’ he asked her at one point, and she had to steady herself against his shoulders as she leaned forward. She could feel the bones of his shoulder beneath her hand, and the solid column of his spine against her body.
‘I think so. Which groups are they?’ she asked him, and was annoyed that her voice was a trifle breathless.
He pointed out the various muscles by name, and then showed her where the muscle fibres had separated. ‘See—there’s a little tear here. You have to be careful not to miss that sort of thing or you can leave the patient susceptible to a prolapse of the posterior wall of the vagina—and we don’t want that, do we, Karen?’
‘Certainly not,’ the patient replied with a laugh, and Charlotte watched as he drew the torn muscle layers together with soluble sutures.
‘There. The skin is the easy bit, but because the area is so well-supplied with nerves you don’t want too many knots, and you have to be careful not to put them in too tight or when the tissues swell they hurt like the dickens, don’t they?’
‘I couldn’t sit down for weeks with the first,’ Karen agreed.
‘Ah, well, you had a large episiotomy, if I remember rightly from our previous conversation.’
That’s