A Bride to Redeem Him

by Charlotte Hawkes

  He shouldn’t answer. He should shrug it off. He certainly shouldn’t indulge this fantasy of his of getting to know her as if they were in the kind of real relationship he’d always studiously avoided in the past.

  ‘What is it about the view that so enraptures you?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She frowned, taking a step away from him. ‘What is it usually about such a magnificent sight?’

  Defensive. Just the way he’d surmised.

  ‘When I was a kid my mother used to say that views like these made her feel as though the world was spread at my feet for the taking. That, standing in front of it like this, she believed I could do anything.’

  ‘You’re a Delaroche, the world is yours for the taking,’ Alex countered, but her words lacked any real heat.

  ‘I couldn’t control everything, though,’ he said quietly. ‘Any more than you could with your brother. Jack, did you call him?’

  A momentary pang of guilt made its way through Louis as he watched her turn stiffly back to the window, her fingers braced against the glass as she stared out mutely.

  ‘Do you volunteer at Rainbow House because you want to, or because you feel you somehow owe it to your father?’

  ‘Because I want to, of course,’ she snapped automatically.

  He didn’t bite, but neither was he about to let her off that easily.

  ‘Is that really all there is to it?’

  Her knuckles paled as she pressed her fingers down harder. As though some internal battle was going on in her head. Louis could imagine what it was only too easily.

  ‘Perhaps a bit of both.’ The admission came through gritted teeth.

  ‘You feel responsible for your father’s happiness? Responsible for Jack’s death?’

  ‘It’s complicated.’

  ‘It often is.’ He couldn’t explain why his heart twisted for her. ‘But it doesn’t always have to be.’

  Her head was fixed away from him, her gaze trained on the vista below. But he would lay a bet she wasn’t seeing any of it. Not a single building, or road, or tree. The haunted expression hovering over her beautiful profile betrayed her otherwise calm exterior.

  ‘You don’t understand.’

  ‘So enlighten me.’ He knew he was pushing. He couldn’t seem to help himself. ‘I can refute as many clichés as you can come up with, Alex.’

  And then she smiled. A soft half-smile that looked more sad than anything else. But she turned her head and she finally looked at him.

  ‘Jack was my older brother. He was diagnosed with diamond blackfan anaemia aged two. They tried other treatments that didn’t work. I was conceived shortly afterwards in the hope that my stem cells would save him.’

  ‘You were a saviour sibling,’ Louis realised abruptly.

  ‘Back before the time when embryos could be checked for compatibility. It was a leap of faith for my parents.’

  ‘Alex, I had no idea.’

  ‘It didn’t pay off,’ Alex continued, as though she hadn’t heard him. ‘Once I was born they carried out the tests and found I wasn’t a match. Jack died seven years later.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said simply.

  The hush in the penthouse swirled softly around them.

  ‘Your parents didn’t try again?’

  ‘My mother died when I was...a baby. They didn’t get a chance.’

  Her expression pulled tight and Louis couldn’t shake the thought that he was missing something. Before he could say anything she was already speaking.

  ‘I don’t know what they would have done otherwise. Jack and my father had always been very close.’

  He wanted to reach out and pull her into his arms. Comfort her. But he could read her well enough to know that she didn’t want that. She might at least be looking at him, but her body was still steadfastly facing the world outside.

  Strong. Resolute. Determined.

  Apple Pie Alex indeed. Anyone who called her that didn’t understand her at all. They completely missed that steel core that ran right through her from that blonde head to the soles of her feet.

  The matching pair to the one which he’d always prided himself ran through him.

  ‘So you volunteer at Rainbow House because your father does? Because you still feel responsible for not saving your brother?’

  Quietness settled around them afresh before Alex finally answered.

  ‘I suppose that’s part of why I started. But I find it fulfilling.’

  ‘And it’s just you and your father?’

  He wondered if her father had blamed her for not being able to save Jack. If the man had taken his grief out on his little daughter.

  She narrowed her eyes at Louis. Too shrewd, he realised.

  ‘Yes. It’s just been the two of us ever since I was seven. And my childhood was fine, since I know that’s what you’re asking. My father loved me, in his own way, he supported me through university and with my career. We might not be as close as some families but he did lose his wife and son after all. It’s hardly unusual that he might be a little closed off.’

  ‘And you lost your mother and brother.’

  He knew the words hit their mark. He could see her flinch. And he didn’t know if he hated himself or her father more. Whether her old man had intended to hurt her not, he’d clearly withdrawn, taking demonstrative love with him.

  She didn’t need to say the words, he could read them all over her lovely face. Her father had fallen apart. Two people he’d loved most had gone. And instead of pouring that love into the one child he had left, he’d pulled away from her.

  Her father might not have overtly said or done anything to hurt her, but clearly his absence of words had been almost as damaging. Certainly, Alex still felt she had something to prove to him. She was still the one fighting to keep their only area of communication alive. Fighting for Rainbow House.

  At least he himself had experienced the unconditional love of his mother for the first seven years of his life. If Alex had lost her mother, and her father had known her brother’s death had been inevitable once Alex wasn’t a match, then had she ever experienced even that fraction of joy he’d had?

  He doubted she’d thank him for pointing that out.

  ‘Is that what got you started in medicine?’

  ‘You mean, did the fact that I felt guilty about not being able to save Jack drive me on to try to save as many other people as I could?’

  ‘That isn’t what I was asking, no.’

  They both knew her reaction had revealed far more than she had intended. Her lips quirked up into a rueful smile.

  ‘Then clearly that’s a bit of a hot button for me.’

  Her quiet honesty tugged at something inside him. Louis lifted his shoulders, suddenly fighting to stay in control.

  ‘We all have them.’

  ‘Right.’ She turned around finally, her back leaning on the glass.

  Fearless. Proud.

  A fracture splintered through his chest.

  He told himself it was just part of the game. The better they knew each other, the closer they could appear to be for the cameras. But then her smile suddenly widened, the faintest hint of a gleam in her eye as she spoke.

  ‘I could let you into a little secret.’

  And he knew that telling himself such lies was tantamount to slapping a sticking plaster over a gaping wound and hoping it would do the job.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I wasn’t always as driven or wholesome as everyone seems to think.’

  It was impossible not to be swept along with her. How was it possible she could lift the mood with a single smile, a single look?

  ‘Let me guess, you got a B in one of your medical courses,’ he teased.

  She actually rolled her eyes at him.

  ‘You see? No one really
gets me.’

  There was no reason that should rankle as much as it did. No reason for him to take it as a challenge. To want to be the first—the only—person who she couldn’t say that to.

  ‘Go on, then.’ He arched his eyebrows. ‘Shock me.’

  She pushed off the glass abruptly, strolling across the room to the view on the other side.

  ‘I almost got expelled when I was fifteen. I nearly didn’t even get my GCSEs, let alone my A levels.’

  ‘You did?’ He snorted. ‘Sorry, no chance.’

  ‘It’s true.’ He could almost believe she was enjoying this. Shocking him. ‘I suddenly realised I was this teenage girl who had lost her mum and I fell into all the typical traps. I couldn’t see the point of school, or learning. The doctors hadn’t been able to save either her or Jack, so what was the point? I fell in with a different crowd and started ditching school, playing truant.’

  ‘What, to go and drink cider and sit around the local park?’ He was incredulous, but that only served to make her laugh all the more.

  ‘Actually, we went to the local pool hall and spent all day in there. The brother of one of the group worked there, so if anyone ever came looking he’d let us out the emergency exit. Wow, I used to love that game.’

  ‘And you did that for weeks? A month?’

  Why did this only add to the admiration he had for her? The fact that whatever demons she’d had in the past, the intelligent, quick-thinking, professional doctor she was today only proved she’d beaten them all.

  ‘Almost a year. My father eventually took me in hand. Told me some home truths, like what my mother would think of me if she saw me.’ She raised her chin and for the first time Louis realised how fine the line was that she was treading, between laughing and crying. ‘It was the first time he’d ever really talked about her to me. Before that, everything I knew, all the photos I had of her had come from my grandparents.’

  ‘Yet you turned your life around again,’ he breathed. ‘Look at you now.’

  ‘Yes, I turned it around.’ She tilted her head from one side to the other in a devilish little dance. ‘But not before I’d been put back an academic year. It was mortifying, but some of the others from that crowd hadn’t even been given that opportunity so I knew I had to swallow it. I worked. God, I worked. I worked so hard that by the time I came to sit my GCSEs I’d already been put back into my old year group. After that I never looked back.’

  ‘Never?’ he challenged softly, her slow smile burning hotly through him as she shook her head.

  ‘Never.’

  ‘Then how about we do a little fun, nostalgic looking back now?’

  He had no idea why he did it, but Louis held out his hand, waiting as she saw it, tried to resist it.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Trust me,’ he prompted quietly.

  ‘Why?’ Suspicion warred with curiosity.

  ‘Do you trust me?’

  The question was so much more important than he’d intended. And her answer suddenly carried that much more weight.

  Instead, Alex chose not to say a word. She lifted her eyes to his, scanning his face and searching for answers to questions she couldn’t bring herself to ask. And then, just as he was about to wonder at the sense of what he’d done, she crossed the floor almost as if against her own will, and fitted her hand into his as he led her to the helical staircase in the centre of the room.

  Wordlessly she kicked off her heels and jogged lightly up the stairs behind him, her fingers still laced through his and her trust in him implicit.

  Something barrelled through Louis. He needed to call a halt to everything now. It suddenly felt all too intimate.

  She felt too intimate.

  Sex was one thing, but being emotionally close to someone? That was something he didn’t want to risk.

  Instead, he pulled her next to him, his arm slipping around her waist, not sure whether he was talking about the view or what was happening between them.

  ‘Open your eyes,’ he ground out brusquely.

  CHAPTER SIX

  ALEX STARED AT the full-size snooker table, a gurgle rumbling up from somewhere deep inside her.

  ‘It isn’t quite the quality of table I learned on.’ She grinned. ‘But I appreciate the nostalgia.’

  Louis laughed. ‘It isn’t quite the quality I learned on either. I was taught by Arnaud, our estate hand—though he’s now the estate manager. They had a beat-up pool table in one of the old stable blocks. My grandfather used to sneak in there a few times and he and I would have a game. When he died, Arnaud was the closest thing to a father figure I had left.’

  ‘Is the table still there?’

  ‘I doubt it. But the stable blocks are mine, maybe I’ll renovate them one of these days. There’s a covenant to say I can use them for any activity, providing it’s legal and doesn’t damage the estate.’

  ‘You want a game?’ she asked quickly.

  ‘Why not? Snooker, billiards or pool?’

  ‘You choose.’

  It was daft and fun and none of the ways she would ever have imagined her evening with Louis ending up. No doubt he would say the same thing.

  It was amazing how the time disappeared after that. Lost in a haze of happier childhood memories—at least, comparatively—and the unexpected discoveries that they loved many of the same books and bands, shared some similar interests and wanted to travel to similar destinations. Even politics wasn’t off limits and they marvelled at their similar opinions and indulged in a couple of lively debates where they did differ. They laughed, drank wine and talked, even finding an old action film they both remembered, which spawned yet more nostalgic memories.

  Her only real moment of envy came when he told her he’d visited Machu Picchu on a trek with his grandfather, while she knew she would probably never get that opportunity. When she remembered how their lives had differed. Still differed now.

  It was the kind of first date she could only have dreamed of in the real world. The fact that it had happened so organically, so unexpectedly, with Louis—on a first date that hadn’t even been real—made it both inspiring and aggravating at the same time.

  ‘You’re a revelation,’ he told her abruptly, stopping as they passed one another around the table, allowing his hand to cup her cheek.

  And all she could do was stand still and let him, afraid to move lest she break the spell. Her insides turned molten, not least when he dragged his thumb across her lower lip.

  ‘Why don’t you act like this in public, Louis?’ The question slipped out before she could stop it. ‘Why always the playboy act?’

  ‘Who says it’s an act?’

  She might have thought regret shadowed his eyes, but that couldn’t be right.

  ‘I do. I don’t think you enjoy it any more, if you ever really did. But I can’t help but wonder if it’s how you protect yourself from forming relationships. Because you’re afraid you’ll lose someone else the way you did your mother.’

  * * *

  Louis hadn’t banked on the way she seemed to creep into his head without him even noticing her advance. The way that when she looked at him, the expression in her ice-blue eyes was hot enough to melt entire glaciers, speaking to his very sex.

  He should shut her down, but he couldn’t quite manage it. Time to turn the tables instead.

  ‘I can think of a lot more interesting pastimes than a sixty-second pop psychology session,’ he countered suggestively.

  ‘You do see that you use sex as a distraction when the conversation heads off into waters you don’t like?’ she demanded.

  Her voice was a little too husky. Still, it hadn’t escaped him that she had a point.

  ‘You credit me with too much guile.’ He summoned a practised grin and stepped closer to her. ‘Maybe I just enjoy sex. Pure, unadulterated, anim
al sex.’

  She held her ground but he didn’t miss the way her pulse jumped at her throat. Did that pretty flush currently sweeping over her pretty face also extend to that indecently sexy body of hers? How he’d love to find out.

  ‘Stop it.’

  A half-hearted mutter at best. He let his hand skim over her jawline and her breathing grew shallower, the swell of her soft breasts visible with each inhalation. His palms actually ached to touch her, to discover whether her nipples were as taut, as perfect as they’d felt against his chest a few hours before.

  ‘Why? You can’t deny there’s an attraction between us. We both felt it even at the gala, and if there was any doubt then that kiss back at the restaurant dispelled it.’

  He took another step, his hands restrained in his pockets, letting her be the one to reach out and make contact, palms flat against his chest but by no means pushing him away.

  ‘Fine.’ A gurgle of triumph rumbled in his body at the vaguely strangled sound. ‘There’s an attraction there, I can’t deny it. But, apparently unlike you, I can control myself without having to pursue every desire that takes hold of me.’

  ‘Do you pursue any?’ he demanded, and she gave a quiet gasp.

  ‘Are you calling me frigid?’

  ‘I wasn’t.’ His tone was even, unconcerned. ‘But I find it interesting that you should choose the term. Is it something you’ve been accused of in the past?’

  She lifted her head defiantly.

  ‘No. It is not.’

  ‘Ah.’ Louis nodded gently. ‘Then it’s merely your own hang-up.’

  ‘You...don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  The moment of hesitation said it all. A heavy silence swirled around them for a moment until Louis chose to take pity on her.

  Or himself.

  There was no room for the sentimental side of Louis Delaroche. It wasn’t what people wanted to see. It wasn’t what he wanted to see. And he didn’t appreciate the way Alex kept excavating little memories that he’d long-since buried.

  He’d rather go back to the arrogant playboy Louis than be the man who still wondered at what might have been.

  As if sensing him closing off to her, Alex tugged herself free and backed away. This time he didn’t try to stop her. She seemed to get under his skin both mentally and physically.