A Bride to Redeem Him

by Charlotte Hawkes

  His lips still burned with the memory of their kiss. The ghost of it still lingered, haunting him with its feigned promise. Rattling him, when nothing ever got to him. Making him feel out of control, vulnerable.

  The thought pulled him up sharply. He wouldn’t allow himself to be vulnerable. Emotions were for those too weak to control themselves. Surgery gave him the only buzz, the only kick, the only sense of triumph and pride that he needed. Especially when he carried out intricate, hail-Mary procedures that lesser surgeons shied away from even when they had nothing left to lose.

  He might need to tame his wild, arrogant playboy reputation in order to finally start to wrest the Delaroche Foundation from the hands of the self-serving Jean-Baptiste, but that didn’t mean he had to change who he was under the surface.

  Since when had he allowed himself to become confused over just how fake his relationship with Alex really was?

  How had she slipped under his skin?

  What he felt when he was around her was lust, pure and simple. Surely he should know that better than most?

  It was merely the circumstances of their meeting, Alex’s fierce drive to save Rainbow House coupled with the fact they were both struggling with the loss of a parent who had loved them, only to be left with a parent who had never wanted them, was confusing the issue. The bond they seemed to share was an illusion, nothing more. That was all there was to it. The sooner he recovered his infamous, flirtatious side, the better.

  ‘I think maybe we should go to bed,’ she cut into his thoughts, offering him the perfect recovery.

  * * *

  Alex realised too late the suggestive nature of her comment.

  ‘Is that so?’

  His lazy drawl might have been the most sensual sound she’d ever heard in her life. It certainly shot through her to her very core.

  ‘Alone, I mean. Not to the same bed.’ She sounded ridiculously flustered. ‘That is... Oh, it sounded far less suggestive in my head.’

  But instead of teasing her a little more, as she’d expected, Louis simply placed a hand on her arm, apparently oblivious to the jolt of electricity that zipped from her shoulder to her fingertips.

  ‘Relax, Alexandra, I know what you meant. Come on, I’ll show you to your suite.’

  ‘My...suite?’

  ‘You would prefer to sleep in my suite?’

  She shook her head even though, leading the way back down the incredible staircase, he couldn’t see her.

  ‘Of course not. I just assumed...well, I thought...the couch.’

  She was sounding more and more like a stumbling, naïve fool as the moments wore on, she realised in dismay.

  ‘I suppose you could sleep on the couch if you prefer, but I can assure you that the bedroom is decidedly more comfortable.’

  ‘You know that isn’t what I meant.’

  He didn’t acknowledge that. But, then again, he didn’t refute it either. Alex wrinkled her nose as she hastily snatched up her discarded footwear, which to her eye painted an intimate, if inaccurate, scene, and followed him back into the rather grand hallway, where he was collecting her small case, and through a double archway she hadn’t spotted upon her arrival.

  ‘Your suite is this way.’ Louis headed up the corridor, stopping, in a rather gentlemanly way, at the double doors and putting her bag down, as if whatever lay beyond was to be, at least for the time being, her private sanctum in which she could feel secure. ‘Through there you have a bedroom, bathroom and sitting area. Should you want me for anything, I’ll be in the master suite down that way.’

  Alex turned obligingly as he indicated the opposite end of a corridor, which was probably the same length as her entire back garden. Possibly longer. It was difficult not to feel intimidated and only reminded her that, if this hadn’t been a charade, such a coupling could never have worked.

  ‘See you in the morning.’

  The words seemed to pulse in the air. As Louis turned and walked away, a thousand different responses flew around Alex’s head until, in the end, she plumped for one.

  ‘Yes. See you in the morning.’

  But he had already turned back into the main living area and out of sight. And even when she closed the door to her suite, she stayed against the door for a long time, remembering his touch and his taste and craving more.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  A LOW, UNFAMILIAR sound jarred Alex out of slumber the following morning. Not that she had any idea how she’d managed to fall asleep, plagued as she had been by visions of Louis, and by erotic memories of his mouth claiming hers over and over again.

  Even now her body burned with all the things she’d wanted him to do. Although the ridiculous winceyette nightgown she’d chosen to wear—the one she’d been sent as a Christmas gift years ago and had never once even considered wearing—wasn’t helping. She almost hadn’t packed it, hadn’t lifted it out of the dusty package from the top corner of her wardrobe when she’d been racing around her home the previous night. But then she’d thought of Louis, and how weak her resolve seemed around him, and she’d decided to make a point to herself by bringing it along.

  Was she really being foolish, denying herself the night with Louis that she so obviously wanted, simply because of fear? Or was her refusal to indulge such a base urge a logical, well-considered matter of self-preservation?

  Alex couldn’t be sure. All she knew was that she’d wrestled with the dilemma until the small hours, and now she was exhausted with her brain apparently unable to process what had woken her. She squeezed her eyes shut, her ears straining that little bit harder.

  Wait? A vacuum cleaner?

  She swivelled her head, which felt as though someone had exchanged it for a wrecking ball, and peered at the clock. What confused her most? The early hour or the notion of Louis vacuuming?

  Common sense finally made an appearance. Scurrying out of bed and through her suite, she opened the door the tiniest crack and peered out. Of course it wouldn’t be him out there.

  Louis was the kind of man to employ a cleaner. And someone to do his dry-cleaning. And someone to take his dry-cleaning away in the first instance. Basically, Louis had people. But people could not catch her sleeping in the guest suite at least fifteen metres down the hall from Louis’s suite. Alex squinted, praying for someone to step into view yet dreading the idea that they would. The sound appeared to be coming from the hallway off the corridor, but she couldn’t see anything. She leaned back on the wall, her mind racing as she tried to figure out what to do next.

  Why wasn’t Louis out there, stopping them? Funny, but she wouldn’t have taken him for a heavy sleeper.

  Reaching into the closet, her hand only hovering for a moment, Alex slipped the previously unused dressing gown off the hanger she’d placed it on the previous night, slipped her phone into her pocket, and prised the door open again.

  There was still no sign of movement, but she would have to pass the archway to get from her suite to Louis’s master suite. It was, as they said, now or never.

  Scuttling down the hallway as quietly as she could—it only occurred to Alex that the sound of the vacuum would have masked her footsteps by the time she reached the archway—she paused to peek around the corner. The unmistakeable figure of a woman clad in a tunic, black trousers and sensible shoes vigorously working a machine confirmed Alex’s fears and sent her heart bouncing violently up into the region of her oesophagus.

  With a final dash across the door opening, Alex hurried to the end of corridor, and after her first tentative knock went unanswered, she let herself in before the cleaner rounded the corner and spotted her. With relief, she noted the suite was a mirror image of hers, although the décor was a little more masculine, the sofas more Louis-style, the elegant, darker wood of the furniture giving the impression that the room was naturally Louis’s, rather than having been carefully selected by some de
signer with a brief. Her eyes were drawn involuntarily to a broad antique-looking desk. Beautiful, unmistakable workmanship, a piece of furniture that she might have even chosen for herself.

  Her stomach twisted and flopped. It was getting harder and harder to reconcile the fast lifestyle, typical bad-boy Louis with the sophisticated, complex man she was getting to know. But she shouldn’t be here, it was very much Louis’s personal space. And she was invading it.

  In two minds, Alex hovered where she was. Then she edged back to the door that led back into the hallway and nervously wrapped her fingers around the door handle, wondering if she should leave. She inched the door open, only for the sound of the vacuum to assail her again.

  No, leaving was definitely not an option.

  Alex scrambled back across the room and pressed her hands to the set of doors on the other side, which could only lead through to the bedroom, and rapped softly, her voice little more than a whisper.

  ‘Louis?’

  Silence.

  She rapped again, sharper this time, but there was still no response.

  Her pulse beat wildly at her wrists, making her arms almost tingle with anticipation. As if she’d run a marathon when all she’d done was manage a brief hallway sprint. But it wasn’t about the distance, it was about her proximity to Louis’s bedroom right this moment; the fact that entering the room where he slept, where his bed was, seemed so utterly personal.

  For the first time in years, Alex dithered. Then the sound of the vacuum grew suddenly louder and she knew the cleaner must have rounded the corner into the corridor. Time was running out.

  Pulling her lips into a grim line, Alex sucked in a deep breath, placed her palm on the door handle and pushed. The door offered no resistance at all, swinging easily despite its obvious solid weight, and silently inviting her into the room beyond. It took her everything she had to step through.

  Light danced playfully off every surface, startling and disorientating her, but there was no mistaking the source. A bank of glass lined one side of the bedroom, but rather than giving out to the city view, as in the other rooms of the apartment, inviting blue waters lay on the other side of this windowed wall. For a moment she thought she was peering into an aquarium with no sea life in sight, although something had to have been in there recently as it was these agitated waters that were catching the light and bouncing the reflections back into the bedroom.

  Louis’s bedroom.

  For a moment she’d almost forgotten. Yet now she looked around it was hard to believe she’d missed the oversized bed on the other side of the room, which looked as though it had been hewn from the oldest, strongest, most striking of English oaks.

  It was also unmade.

  Alex swallowed. Hard.

  Crisp, white sheets had been thrown off and there was a single dent on a plump Oxford-pillowcased pillow. Her mind accelerated away from her, dragging her along as though she were tied to them with ropes. Louis, naked, in those sheets. Had his mind tossed and turned last night with images of her, the way hers had of him?

  Probably not. That shame was no doubt hers alone. At least he wasn’t here to witness her bursting in on him. But where was he?

  Abruptly a movement at around ceiling level snagged her attention and she whirled round to catch a figure diving into the water that she now realised was a swimming pool. Louis was cutting through the water, fast and skilful, his front crawl one of which even a world-class athlete would be proud.

  Did the man have to excel at everything?

  He was spellbinding. Hard, unyielding lines, breathtakingly masculine.

  A low ache made itself felt between her legs. The same low ache she’d been pretending she didn’t feel all night. The same way she’d pretended she didn’t recall exactly how his hypnotising physique felt against her body.

  But she’d only been fooling herself. She remembered it all. How he’d felt. How he’d tasted. How he hadn’t simply kissed her but had claimed her. Somehow branded her. Here, now, in his bedroom and looking at him through the glass wall, she couldn’t fool herself any longer. It was time to abandon the notion that she could somehow control the spark that darted and sizzled between them. Somehow master it. She could no more command the attraction they shared than she could save a terminally ill patient, although her analogy felt just as deadly.

  It was as if the more she tried to deny her attraction to Louis, the greater his hold over her became. He demonstrated a determination, a drive, a competitive edge in every facet of his life, even right here in the privacy of his own pool. Characteristics Alex had always found to be utterly compelling, but never more so than in the utterly focussed Louis.

  And more and more she was moving away from the idea this mad scheme with Louis was a hail Mary to save Rainbow House for now, and towards the consideration that Louis might be her best chance ever for securing the future of the place for a very long time in the future.

  Somewhere along the line she’d gone from suspecting his motives to trusting more than she’d trusted anyone in a very, very long while.

  When had that happened?

  As if sensing her thoughts, Louis turned his head, his gaze slamming without warning into hers, and she felt pinned to the spot with the intensity of it. Her whole body came alive when he stared at her that way. As though he saw nothing else but her.

  She had no idea how long they stayed that way. It could have been seconds, or even a minute—she had no doubts that Louis was some kind of Poseidon, able to hold his breath for just as long as he desired under that water. She watched, riveted, as he kicked out, propelling himself up to the surface and to the edge, where he pulled himself out of the water with apparent ease.

  And then he was gone and still she stood there, staring into the roughly churning water and wondering why she suddenly felt so lost. She started towards the glass wall, her nose almost pressed to it as she looked up to the water’s surface.

  ‘Something wrong?’

  Alex spun around, her tongue apparently glued to the roof of her mouth.

  ‘Alex, is everything all right?’ Louis demanded, descending a set of stairs in the bedroom that had been concealed like an illusion against the panelled wall behind it. Just as the layout of the room had concealed the fact that there was a mezzanine level at all.

  But it wasn’t the clever architecture that had humiliatingly stolen her voice. Bare chested and glistening with beaded water, a towel now wrapped around his waist, Louis’s presence filled the space, making it feel too small to contain him, pressing in on her and leaving her unable to even draw a breath.

  She opened her mouth to speak but nothing came out. Louis’s mouth curled up in almost grim triumph.

  ‘Or perhaps you were just missing me after all?’

  The wryness in his tone licked through her like flames racing over a wood-dust floor, and in its potency it created a smoke fog in her head, smothering all but the most inappropriate, indecent thoughts. She tried to snag her eyes from the tiniest of rivers making their way down the contours of the muscular V of his body but found that she couldn’t. Her fingers itched to follow the path of the water, to trace their route, to smooth their flow, to actually lick them away.

  Ludicrous.

  And still she couldn’t shake the image. Couldn’t seem to regain control of her senses. She went first hot, then cold, and then impossibly hot again. And all the while Louis kept on approaching her, closing the space between them tantalisingly slowly. She needed to move, back away, turn to the side, do anything to halt his advance. It took her all her time to swallow. Hard.

  ‘Though if it were the latter I’d have expected something a little...less than whatever it is you’re wearing right now.’

  That damned winceyette nightie. His grin was as wicked as if he could read her mind. It shouldn’t have been possible to make the situation any worse and yet as Alex flushed an
d her hands clutched at her chest to pull the material together—unnecessary since it already might as well have been a tent over her entire body—she realised she couldn’t have done a better job of broadcasting her lust if she’d hired a big screen in the car park of the hospital itself.

  ‘Where did you get it from?’ he continued, his rakish grin scraping through her, raw and exhilarating. ‘Your ninety-year-old grandmother’s wardrobe?’

  ‘Very funny.’

  To her chagrin she could hear the huskiness in her voice. Louis’s eyes glinted but, try as she may, she couldn’t seem to loosen her grip. If anything, she found herself gripping the fabric even tighter. Still he didn’t slow his advance and Alex was forced to crane her neck up to watch him.

  They both knew it was a deliberate ploy on his part.

  ‘Is this your idea of seductive nightwear?’

  ‘This is my idea of never becoming another notch on Louis Delaroche’s bedpost nightwear,’ she muttered, wishing her traitorous body had also bought into such a notion.

  ‘Ah, I see.’ Reaching her, he stepped right into her personal space and placed his hands on her shoulders, as if testing her.

  Pull away, her head screamed. Her body—with the mental equivalent of sticking its fingers in its ears—refused to move a millimetre.

  ‘Is it working?’ he enquired over-politely, as if he was unaware of the current flowing between them, his touch like an flash on her skin.

  Alex wavered. There was something she had to tell him. A reason she was here. For a brief second it was there, on the periphery of her mind, and she mentally lunged for it, but then Louis let one hand slide off her shoulder, his fingers brushing over the cotton, his touch scorching her flesh underneath, and for the life of her she couldn’t remember anything any more.

  ‘Is this really what you slept in?’

  Her cheeks flushed, she could feel the heat. As if he knew she’d hated every second of the unfamiliar, rough material when she could have been wearing a lot less and revelling in the high thread count of Louis’s luxurious sheets.