and had to wait. Funny how his watch was working on a different timescale from the clock at the station: the second hand was racing round his watch, reminding him just how late he was going to be, but the station clock still insisted the next train would be in four minutes.
It seemed like for ever before he managed to get to London City General. He didn’t bother waiting for the lifts. If they were anything like the ones at his old hospital, it’d be lunchtime before he started his shift. As it was…
He made it. Forty-five minutes late. Briefcase in locker, white coat on—hmm, he still smelled suspiciously of baby sick but never mind. Chances were, nobody would comment. Not to his face. And he could ignore anything said behind his back. He was old enough and tough enough.
He was on his way to the obstetric director’s office when he saw her. The most beautiful woman he’d ever set eyes on. She was sitting on the edge of a desk, talking to one of the midwives—she couldn’t work in the maternity unit, then, or she’d be in the middle of a round or with one of the mums. She clearly wasn’t pregnant and was wearing a white coat, so the odds were she was staff on a different ward. Paediatrics, most likely. She was tall—not far off six feet, he guessed—with legs up to her armpits. Her red hair was pinned back in a neat knot at her nape, but it would drop like silk to her shoulders if she loosened it. She had a beautiful clear, creamy complexion, blue eyes that crinkled at the corners as she smiled and a mouth that made his knees go weak.
Even weaker when she threw her head back to laugh, and he saw the line of her throat. He wanted to stride over there, grab her and kiss a necklace round it.
Oh, hell. This was a complication he didn’t need right now. Until Tess was back on an even keel, he couldn’t possibly think about a relationship. Or even lust after someone in secret. Tess needed help to sort her life out, and right now he was the only one who could give her that help.
Besides, the redhead had to be spoken for. No way could a woman that beautiful be single. And no way was he going to be responsible for breaking up a relationship. So he’d better keep his eyes to himself.
He shook himself, turned away from the redhead and knocked on the consultant’s door.
‘Ah, Mr Bailey. Come in,’ Arabella Hunter said.
‘I’m sorry I’m late, Miss Hunter,’ he said. ‘I’ll stay late to make up the time.’
‘At least you had the manners to call my secretary. I appreciate that.’ She gestured to the chair in front of her desk. ‘Sit down. And it’s Bella. We work on first-name terms on this ward.’
‘Bella,’ he repeated dutifully.
‘And you’re Kieran, yes?’
He nodded.
‘Good. I’ve rostered you with Judith Powell today—she’s one of our registrars. She’ll introduce you to everyone.’ Bella rolled her eyes. ‘I would have taken you round myself, but I’ve got a meeting with the trust directors in five minutes. Jude’ll look after you, though.’
‘Powell?’
He only realised he’d spoken aloud when Bella nodded. ‘Yes, she’s Ben’s daughter. She’s a nice girl.’
Professor Ben Powell was the obstetric director at Hampstead Free—the hospital where Kieran had worked until last Friday.
‘She didn’t want to work for her father, so he had a word with me.’
Oh, great. His first day as consultant here, and he’d be working with a makeweight, a woman who’d got the job because of who her father was. So he’d be doing double the work here as well as at home.
He forced a smile to his face. ‘I look forward to meeting her.’
‘Come along, then.’ Bella ushered him out of the office. And took him straight to the redhead, who was still chatting at the midwives’ station.
‘Jude, this is Kieran Bailey, our new consultant. Look after him for me, will you, sweetie?’
‘Course I will, Bella.’
The gorgeous redhead—the one who was chatting, not working—was the professor’s daughter?
She was going to be working with him?
She slid off the desk and Kieran discovered that she was just as tall as he’d guessed. Five feet eleven, so she barely had to tip her head back to look into his eyes. And her voice was incredibly sexy. Low, deep, a little husky. Like melted chocolate.
He definitely shouldn’t have thought of that. Because now he had another image in his mind: himself, trailing melted chocolate across her creamy skin and then licking it off.
Stop it. You’re a professional, not a sex-crazed lunatic, he reminded himself.
‘Welcome to the ward.’ Her eyelashes were long. And dark—which meant they were either dyed or mascaraed. But she didn’t wear a scrap of any other make-up. Didn’t need to.
Stop it. Focus.
‘I’m Judith Powell—Jude to my friends.’ She held her hand out.
He took it.
Hell and double hell.
Shaking hands was meant to be an ordinary, everyday occurrence. It wasn’t supposed to feel as if an earthquake had just hit him. His skin wasn’t supposed to tingle like this.
‘Kieran Bailey.’
Stupid. She knew that already—Bella had told her his name. But for the life of him, he couldn’t think of anything else to say. His mind had gone completely blank, and his mouth felt as if he’d been eating sand. Anyone would think he was a teenager, not a well-balanced thirty-two-year-old.
‘We usually do a ward round about now. So I’ll introduce you to everyone as we go round, if that’s OK?’
‘That would be fine.’
Ur-r. Now he sounded stuffy and prim. But that was marginally better than what he really wanted to say. Which was along the lines of, Linen cupboard. You. Me. Now.
He’d never, ever done the chest-beating Tarzan-type thing. What was it about this woman that made him feel like that?
‘Right. This is Louise, our senior midwife. Known to everyone as Lulu.’
The woman she’d been chatting to. In her late thirties, dark-haired, little and plump with a friendly smile. And a knowing look in her eyes. No doubt a smile from Judith Powell melted the brain of just about every male she met, and it was obvious to everyone that he was no exception. ‘Pleased to meet you,’ he said.
‘And you.’
‘Catch you later, Lulu.’ Judith took a sheaf of files from the desk. ‘Right. Our first mum is Lisa Ford.’
Not ‘patient’, he noted. Good. So Judith took the modern approach rather than seeing pregnancy as a condition that needed to be treated.
‘It’s her first baby, she’s thirty-four and the baby’s breech presentation.’
Meaning that the baby was bottom down rather than head down in the womb. ‘So she’s in for a section?’ he asked.
Judith shook her head. ‘She wants a vaginal delivery, if possible.’
‘What sort of breech?’
‘Frank,’ Judith explained. This was the most common type of breech presentation, with the baby’s hips flexed and knees extended. ‘The ultrasound didn’t show anything conclusive but I’d like her to have another ultrasound after delivery—it’s possible that she has fibroids in her uterus.’
‘How are you planning to manage the delivery?’
‘I’m going to try ECV, when we finish the ward round.’ ECV, or external cephalic version, was a way of turning the breech baby to a normal presentation, through a kind