Читать книгу One Night With The Italian Doc - Kate Hardy - Страница 18

‘WHAT HAPPENED LAST Christmas?’ Anton asked, late, late on Sunday night. They’d started on the sofa and had watched half a movie and now they lay naked on the floor bathed by the light from the television. ‘You said it was tinsel-starved.’

She really would prefer not to talk about it. They had had such a lovely weekend but there were so many parts of so many conversations that they were avoiding, like IVF and Anton’s loathing of Christmas, that when he finally broached one of them, Louise answered carefully. There was no way she could tell him all but she told him some.

‘I broke up with my boyfriend on Christmas Eve.’

‘You said it was tinsel-starved before then, that you didn’t go to many parties.’

‘It wasn’t worth it.’

‘In what way?’

‘I know you think I’m a flirt …’

‘I like that about you.’

‘But I’m only really like that with you,’ Louise said. ‘I mean that. I used to be a shocking flirt and then when I started going out with Wesley … well, I got told off a lot.’

‘For flirting with other men?’

‘No!’ Louise said, shuddering at the memory. ‘He decided that if I flirted like that with him, then what was I like when he wasn’t there? I don’t want to go into it all, but I changed and I hate myself for it. I changed into this one eighth of a person and somehow I got out—on Christmas Eve last year. It took months, just months to even start feeling like myself again.’

‘Okay.’

‘Do you know the day I did?’ Louise asked, smiling as she turned to face him.

‘No.’

‘We were going to Emily’s leaving do and I saw you in the corridor and I asked you to come along …’

‘You were wearing red,’ Anton easily recalled. ‘You were with Emily.’

‘That’s right, it was for her leaving do. Well, even when I asked if you wanted to come along, I deep down knew that you wouldn’t. I was just …’ She couldn’t really explain. ‘I was just flirting again … sort of safe in the knowledge that it wouldn’t go anywhere.’

‘But it has,’ Anton said.

‘I guess.’ Louise smiled. ‘Have you ever been married?’ Louise asked.

‘Why do you ask?’

‘I just wondered.’

‘No,’ Anton said. ‘Have you?’

‘God, no,’ Louise said.

‘Have you ever come close?’

‘No,’ Louise admitted.

‘You and Rory?’

Louise laughed and shook her head. ‘We were only together a few weeks. Just when we started going out I found that it was likely that I was going to have issues getting pregnant. It was terrible timing because it was all I could think about. Poor Rory, he started going out with a happy person and when the doctor broke the news I just plunged into despair. It wasn’t his baby I wanted, just the thought I might never have one. It was just all too much for him …’ She looked at Anton. ‘I think I was just low at that time and that’s why I must have taken my bastard alert glasses off. I’ve made a few poor choices with men since then.’ She closed her eyes. ‘None worse than Wesley, though.’

‘How bad did it get?’ Anton asked, but Louise couldn’t go there and she shook her head.

‘What about you?’ Louise asked. ‘Have you been serious with anyone?’

‘Not really, well, there was one who came close …’ It was Anton who stopped talking then.

Anton who shook his head.

He simply couldn’t go there with someone who might just want him for a matter of weeks.