‘Twelfth-century aristocracy, not thirteenth. And it isn’t a palace but a chateau which, quite frankly, is mostly cold and draughty despite the modern improvements. We do, however, have a moat and a drawbridge.’
‘As so many of us do.’ She affected a deep sigh but her eyes twinkled and sparkled, and made him feel so much more alive than he had felt in...a long time.
He shifted to the side slightly to allow the light from inside to fall on her face. Pretty, wholesome, yet with a mouth that he wondered if she realised was as sinful as it was. He watched in absorbed fascination as emotions danced across her features like any one of the ballets he’d accompanied his mother to on the promise of an afternoon of ice cream and activity of his choice. But it had never been a chore, for either of them.
She’d been fun like that, his mother. And they’d been close. Or at least he thought they had been. He still found it hard to accept that she’d taken her own life. Had chosen to leave him. Even now, when he thought back over his life, those first seven years with her were still in vibrant Technicolor. He could even still hear her laughter, so unrestrained, so frequent. And then she’d...gone, and everything since had just been different hues of black and grey. Only his surgeries gave him that same feeling of invincibility.
And now this woman, whose name he didn’t even know, had streaked into his life with a burst of colour and he couldn’t explain it.
‘You know, you could get married if you wanted to,’ she said, a note of desperation in her tone.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Don’t look at me like I’m mad.’ She scrunched up her face. ‘But you could. Any one of those women down there would leap at the chance to marry you.’
‘Are you suggesting I get married just to inherit control of a place I don’t even care about?’
‘You do care,’ she pointed out. ‘You wouldn’t have rescued me from your father or indeed still be here, talking to me about it, if a part of you didn’t care.’
‘You’re mistaken.’ Louis frowned. ‘And as for the idea of marriage, you really think it would be morally just to inflict playboy me on any woman?’
She actually snorted at him. No one had ever done that in his life. She was either very brave or very foolish.
He found he was intrigued to discover which it was.
‘If you put the idea out there, I can see a whole host of volunteers ready to play the part just to be married to Louis Delaroche.’
‘Is that so?’
‘That’s so.’ She nodded firmly and he tried not to let his eyes slide to the way it made her breasts jiggle in that sexy sheath of a dress.
Man, what was wrong with him? Jiggle? Really?
‘It’s honestly that simple,’ she insisted, dragging him back to the present. ‘You get married and the Lefebvre Group passes to you.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he couldn’t help but tease her, ‘you’re putting marriage and me into the same sentence and you’re calling it simple?’
She wrinkled her nose again and the guileless, girlish mannerism shot straight to his sex. So different from the manipulative females he’d been dating for too long. Who he was better off dating, because they were as jaded as he was.
Alex wasn’t jaded.
Alex was vibrant, and direct, and he felt as though she was breathing new life into him.
He should leave now. Before he sucked all the life out of her.
‘And how about you?’ He dropped his voice to a whiskey-gruff tone.
Unable to quash the urge to seduce her.
It worked, as he’d known it would. If she glowed any brighter, one of the helicopters bringing guests in to the ball might have mistaken her for a helipad beacon.
‘Sorry?’
‘How about you? Would you be prepared to play the part, just for me to save Rainbow House?’
He told himself he’d meant it as a joke, to see how far he could push her. He suspected that wasn’t the real reason.
‘Not if you were the last hope for mankind.’
She tipped her chin up with defiance, meeting his gaze as though she was completely immune to the obvious attraction that sparked and cracked between them. But he knew how to read people, how to read women, and the staining on her cheeks revealed that she wasn’t as unaffected as she pretended to be.
‘It seems you have me at a disadvantage.’ He held his hands palms up in placation. ‘Since you know who I am, while, regrettably, I don’t know who you are, shall we start over, this time with introductions?’
She narrowed her eyes, apparently searching for a catch. Her breath was still coming out a little raggedly. He took care not to focus on it. Or the way her pulse flickered at the base of her throat in a way that seemed to scrape inside him.
‘Alexandra Vardy,’ she acknowledged at length, although her tone was clearly still defensive. ‘Alex.’
‘Alex, then,’ he replied. Then frowned. ‘Alex Vardy? I know that name.’
She appeared pleasantly surprised despite herself, even if she subsequently shook her head, as though it didn’t make any difference.
‘I was in your surgery last week.’
‘I don’t think so,’ he challenged her. ‘My surgeries are strictly closed-door procedures. I attract too much press interest. The last thing my patients need are journalists sneaking in because they can watch one of my surgeries without being challenged.’
‘The cervical cerclage on the woman with the twenty-week-old foetus,’ Alex answered softly.
He raised his eyebrows, scrutinising the woman again.
‘Indeed. Well, since you were in my surgery, for the record, her name was Gigi Reed. And she’d already named her unborn baby Ruby, just in case.’
‘You remember their names?’
‘It was a difficult case.’
‘Not for you.’ She eyed him anew. As though reassessing him.
Louis gave himself a metaphorical kick. He shouldn’t have let her know he knew his patients’ names. Gifted but arrogant, that was his reputation and he was fine with that. He didn’t need anyone outside his trusted team to realise that he could probably name every patient he’d ever operated on, as well as linking them to their procedure.
What was it about this woman that fired him up the way she did?
People mattered to him. His patients mattered. They always had.
‘The additional complications in this case and the fact that the woman turned out to be such a high-profile businessman’s daughter have made it a high-interest story.’ He went for one of his famous shrugs. ‘Hard to forget her name.’
‘Except that Ruby’s name has never been mentioned.’
She didn’t let up, this woman. He shouldn’t find her tenacity so appealing.
‘Fine, you’ve got me. I remember my patients’ names. They matter to me. Their procedures matter to me. And Gigi’s was a good operation. She’d suffered three miscarriages in the past, probably what had weakened her cervix. Stitching it closed might help prevent premature labour.’
He didn’t add that the procedure carried significant risks, or that every minute, hour, day was crucial. He didn’t need to. Alex clearly understood that or she wouldn’t have been in his OR. The question was, who had let her in, and did some heads need to roll?
‘It’s a hail-Mary procedure that very few surgeons could have even attempted. Fewer still could have actually pulled it off.’
She bit her tongue before she could add whatever else it was she had been about to say. He found himself strangely curious. About what this woman...what Alex thought of him? He eyed her thoughtfully. Finally breaking free of her spell, falling back on what he knew best.
He advanced on her, watching with grim satisfaction as she braced herself, her eyes darkening with the mutual attraction she clearly didn’t want to acknowledge.
‘So you’re Gordon’
s protégé.’
Another humble blush.
‘I wouldn’t put it quite that way.’
‘I would.’ His eyes never left her. He took another step towards her, watching her every reaction. ‘He speaks exceptionally highly of you. He really fought your case for you to be in that surgery. I don’t just let anyone in, you know.’
Was he still talking about his surgeries, he wondered, or had the conversation suddenly split off into a second, less overt direction? When had he let that happen? He deliberately advanced again.
‘You should.’ She almost covered the slight quake in her voice and he flashed another wolfish grin. ‘You’re an exceptional surgeon—any doctor would be inspired by watching you.’
The unexpected compliment caught him off guard. Why did it mean more when it came from this stranger’s lips?
‘Should I be offended that you sound so surprised?’ he drawled in an effort to conceal his rare unsettled state. ‘I understood my reputation as far as my career went was exemplary.’
The hollow, unimpressed laugh unbalanced him even further and Louis didn’t know what to think. He was always in control, always so assured that he found this current state of flux anathema.
‘True, but with your hand-picked teams and closed surgeries, which most of us mere mortals have never actually witnessed in person, you’ll forgive us for considering that your shining reputation could have been coloured by the simple fact that you’re a Delaroche.’
‘Is that so?’
‘It is.’ She affected a shrug. ‘There’s only one thing I don’t understand.’
‘Oh, and what’s that?’
‘The Delaroche Foundation has been given credit for the entire Gigi Reed procedure in the press. His name might not have been mentioned outright but the leaked article in the paper certainly made it appear that Jean-Baptiste was the surgeon, not you. Yet neither you nor any of your close-knit team has bothered to set the record straight.’
Why was it suddenly so hard to shrug it off as he would have had no trouble doing had anyone else been asking him?
‘It’s good for the Delaroche brand.’
The line his father had fed him since he’d performed his first exciting surgery. Jean-Baptiste’s successes were his own. Louis’s successes were those of the foundation.
And he didn’t care. Because, really, what else could his father take from him that he hadn’t already taken? Plus more accolades meant more expectation, which in turn meant more responsibility. And up until recently he’d been content with just his surgeries and his hedonistic lifestyle, as the media seemed so fond of calling it.
‘I’ve heard you say that before.’ She glanced at him astutely. ‘To the press. How many times have you passed up taking credit for something that would have improved your godawful reputation with the media?’
‘What if I don’t want to improve my reputation? What if my playboy label gets me more...benefits than getting the credit for weird surgeries ever would? Besides, despite everything, I already have a good reputation with the media as a surgeon, so why worry about more?’
‘Given how well documented your sexual exploits have been in the media over the past decade, it’s a miracle you even know what day it is half of the time. Shame. I heard from Gordon that you were a decent enough lad in your late teens. A bit arrogant, conceding that you were in med school while other kids your age were still doing their A Levels. Then suddenly you turned into the player of the century.’
He arched one eyebrow in quasi-amusement and watched her swallow once, twice. The sexual tension between them was unrelenting.
‘And you wonder why my father reacted as he did. Are you always this combative?’
‘I wasn’t at all combative with your father,’ Alex retorted hotly. ‘I’m not a confrontational person.’
‘I find that hard to believe.’ Although, as it happened, he didn’t find it hard to believe at all.
The mutual attraction was messing with his head almost as much.
He folded his arms across his chest, as if entertained. A move that he knew from experience only enhanced the strong muscles in his chest, his biceps, even his forearms. Muscles he had acquired through serious hours pounding the streets or in his home gym in a futile effort to exhaust himself into sleep pretty much whenever he had time on his hands and no stupid party to distract his racing thoughts.
Despite her obvious inner fight, Louis watched as Alex tracked his every movement with her eyes, lingering longer than he knew she wanted to.
‘So you’re Apple Pie Alex.’
‘I’ve never liked that nickname,’ she bit out.
He ignored her, knowing his amusement only riled her up even more and wondering why he felt so compelled to keep pushing her as he was.
‘Why do you suppose your colleagues call you that? Because you’re wholesome and sweet, or because you’re boring?’
For some reason, it cut right through her even though she tried not to let him see it. Instead, she rolled her eyes with a hefty dose of melodrama to distract him.
‘Because apparently I’m comforting. Just like my grandmother’s recipe for apple pie, which I foolishly brought in one day.’
‘Comforting?’ His chuckle rumbled out of nowhere. When was the last time he’d wanted to tease in this way? ‘What? In the same way that a tankful of piranhas is comforting?’
‘I’m very even tempered,’ she snapped.
‘I can see that. And for your next trick...?’
It was intended as a gentle ribbing, but by the expression on Alex’s face she was genuinely struggling with her supposedly out-of-character attitude. He felt chastened, and yet he got a thrill out of this verbal sparring with her.
‘I was polite and respectful with your father,’ Alex said firmly.
‘So, like I pointed out earlier, it’s just me.’
‘Yes.’ She nodded, making him grin again, much to her chagrin. ‘No. Oh, you’re impossible. I just meant that I’m more on edge now, after...your father.’
‘You’re even cuter when your temper flares.’
‘And you’re condescending.’
‘So I’ve been told,’ he replied, unfazed. ‘Many, many times before.’
‘We’re just going around in circles here, aren’t we?’ she said through gritted teeth. Then abruptly pushed off the balcony and sashayed past him, apparently tired of the conversation.
He wasn’t sure that anyone had ever tired of a conversation with him before. Certainly they’d never walked away from him. He felt something like admiration surge inside him. As well as something more recognisable. Like lust.
‘Come, now,’ he admonished. ‘You can’t really be leaving. You haven’t even heard how I plan to help.’
She didn’t even turn around, merely slowed her walk and cast her head over one delectably bare shoulder.
‘So you finally do plan to help? That’s a start, I suppose. All you need now is to return to your harem and decide which one of them you’d prefer to join you in no doubt unholy matrimony.’
‘Oh, I’ve already decided that.’
‘Really?’ She spun around in surprise. ‘You really are going to do this, then?’
It was just that Alex was a challenge, Louis told himself. And normally he would relish the challenge. All too often he would have beautiful women falling over each other to throw themselves at him. He wasn’t proud of the fact that he indulged, frequently and indiscriminately, but it had suited his bad-boy reputation and he’d often told himself that he was just a red-blooded male like any other. But sometimes a challenge was fun. Especially if it came in the kind of package standing in front of him and pretending she wasn’t fighting the chemistry sizzling between them.
But right now wasn’t normal.
It all came back to the name he hadn’t heard in years. Decades even.
>
Rainbow House.
He’d thought about it more tonight than he had in all the last years combined, banishing it from his head to the pitch-black depths of nothing, with all the other painful memories of the happy life before his mother had gone from it. But what had pretending it didn’t exist accomplished? His mother was still gone and Rainbow House had been one of her legacies. Even decades on it shouldn’t amaze him that his old man was still trying to erase every last one of them.
For the first time Louis had a compulsion to stop him. To save at least one good thing his mother had achieved. He told himself it had nothing to do with the captivating woman currently gliding away from him. He couldn’t explain why Alex talking about the place should reinvigorate it with such colour, such life. He only knew he wasn’t ready to relinquish it—relinquish her—just yet.
‘I’ve made my choice, but I might need your help,’ he announced gravely, watching her take a single step back to him almost against her will.
‘My help?’
‘Sure.’ He strode towards her, supressing a grin at the way she flicked a tongue out so deliciously over her lips. ‘You don’t think it’s going to be easy for me to get any potential father-in-law to agree to giving me their daughter’s hand in marriage?’
The closer he got, the more she leaned the top half of her body away from him. But her feet remained planted in place, almost as if her head was telling her to back away but her body was telling her something quite different.
He knew the feeling.
‘Oh, come on.’ She gave a bark of laughter. ‘You can’t really expect me to believe you’d do something so chivalrous?’
‘Why not?’
‘Because...well, because...you’re you.’
‘Nice that you noticed.’ He really shouldn’t be enjoying himself this much. ‘But as it happens, I do like the odd tradition now and then. My family is, as you say, traceable back to the twelfth century.’
‘You don’t say?’ She widened her eyes in mock surprise. ‘Then surely any potential father-in-law would be falling over themselves to literally throw their daughters into your arms. Particularly the classy women you date.’
A Bride to Redeem Him Page 3
