Redeeming his reputation...

...with a diamond ring!

Louis Delaroche is world-renowned for both his surgical and seduction skills! He’s happy to let his lothario reputation precede him, until it threatens to cut him off from his family’s charity foundation. Now Louis has only one choice to redeem himself—get married! And warmhearted anesthetist Alex Vardy is the perfect bride. Until their fake kisses for the cameras start to feel sensationally real!

Born and raised on the Wirral Peninsula in England, CHARLOTTE HAWKES is mum to two intrepid boys who love her to play building block games with them and who object loudly to the amount of time she spends on the computer. When she isn’t writing—or building with blocks—she is company director for a small Anglo/French construction company. Charlotte loves to hear from readers, and you can contact her at her website: charlotte-hawkes.com.

Also by Charlotte Hawkes

The Army Doc’s Secret WifeThe Surgeon’s Baby Surprise

Hot Army Docs miniseries

Encounter with a Commanding OfficerTempted by Dr Off-Limits

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.

A Bride to Redeem Him

Charlotte Hawkes

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-07508-4

A BRIDE TO REDEEM HIM

© 2018 Charlotte Hawkes

Published in Great Britain 2018

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

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www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Derek, thanks for reading my books. Also, for telling people that you do so! x

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Extract

About the Publisher

CHAPTER ONE

SHE WAS STILL SHAKING.

Whether it was through humiliation, anger, or simply an utter sense of failure, Alexandra Vardy—Alex to only her closest friends, Dr Vardy to most of her patients—couldn’t be sure.

Whichever it was, it wasn’t now helped by the advancing form of infamous surgeon Louis Delaroche, whose smouldering, rebellious, bad-boy self had been plastered over the media for a decade. Between the tabloids, the internet and various entertainment news channels in all manner of graphic shots, the man was the hot topic of conversation at water coolers across the world on practically a weekly basis. And still nothing could have prepared her for the assault on her senses at being alone and this close to him.

Alex gripped the stone balustrade of the ornate external balcony, sucked down lungfuls of the cold night air that penetrated her one and only ballgown, and reminded herself to keep breathing.

In and out. In and out.

‘Why were you discussing Rainbow House with my father?’ His low voice carried in the darkness.

‘Discussing?’ She squeezed her eyes closed at the unpleasant memory of the run-in with Jean-Baptiste Delaroche. ‘Is that what you call that verbal mauling?’

‘Do you want to tell me what happened?’

It wasn’t so much a question as a quiet command. Typical Louis. But not sinful playboy Louis; this was all pioneering surgeon Louis. The one gift he gave the world to stop it from burying him completely. She’d seen him in action and his skill was simply breathtaking.

Still, that didn’t mean she was about to trust him now. Especially when her thoughts were such a jumbled mess.

‘Why would I want to tell you what happened? Aren’t you supposed to be the mercurial one of the Delaroche Duo, not your father? Isn’t he the good one? The one the media hails as one of the true philanthropists of a generation?’

She had truly believed in that image of Jean-Baptiste, had really thought that he would help her once he knew what was planned for Rainbow House. It had never crossed her mind that he might have actually been party to the plans.

To her horror, Alex choked back an unexpected sob. Not with Jean-Baptiste, and not now with Louis. Part of her wanted to flee this balcony, this party, this night. But she couldn’t. Not while the fate of Rainbow House still hung in the balance. The centre was the last common ground she and her father shared. If she lost that then she lost him. And they’d both lost so much already.

She might not trust Louis, but she couldn’t bring herself not to listen to him.

‘That’s my father,’ Louis concurred tightly. ‘Such a good man.’

‘You don’t agree? Of course you don’t.’ She threw up her hands in desperation. ‘The whole world knows there is bad blood between the two of you. Are you as jealous of your father’s good name as they say you are?’

Rather than replying, he lifted his shoulders casually and turned her question back on her. The cool, unflappable, playboy Louis the media loved to hate.

‘You still think he deserves his good name? After he just tried to have you thrown out of here?’

Of all the ways he might have spoken to her, Alex wasn’t prepared for the hint of warmth, of kindness.

Almost as if he actually cared.

Her head swam and suddenly it all felt too much.

‘I... I don’t know.’

Before she could catch herself, she slumped back against the stone balustrade, trying to order the thoughts racing around her head. A fraction of a second later, Louis was shrugging off his tuxedo jacket and settling it gently over her shoulders before resuming his position between her and the doors back inside the estate house. Whether he was protecting her from any security detail should they come looking or blocking her escape, Alex couldn’t quite be certain.

The only reason she’d even attended the annual Delaroche Foundation Charity Gala Ball had been in the hope that she would find a quiet moment alone to speak discreetly to the eminent surgeon Jean-Baptiste and ask him if he might possibly reconsider the foundation’s unexpected decision to take over and shut down the desperately needed Rainbow House.

She could never have predicted that the media’s beloved ‘knight in shining scrubs’ would turn on her so instantly and with such venom, even going so far as to instruct his security detail to parade her through the ballroom before throwing her out. To make an example out of her. Jean-Baptiste’s snarl still echoed in her head, causing fresh waves of nausea to swell up inside her.

It turned out that Jean-Baptiste might be a world-class surgeon but, contrary to newspaper talk he wasn’t a particularly nice man when he chose. Briefly, she imagined telling the world what the man behind the mask was really like. But no one would ever believe her. Jean-Baptiste was an institution. If she dared to openly criticise him they’d be more likely to turn on her.

It was a cruel twist that now, before she’d even had time to lick her wounds, Louis Delaroche—the one man now left who had it in his power to help her, but who never would—should have taken it on himself to deal with her. Crueller still that she couldn’t silence the little voice inside her that kept reminding her of that glimpse of a caring, driven Louis to which she’d so recently been privy.

But surely it was a false hope to think she could turn to Louis? Just because she’d recently seen just how deeply he cared for his patients didn’t mean he would care about Rainbow House. Or that he would care about anything the Delaroche Foundation did. At the end of the day, he was still a playboy.

Work hard, play harder, that was Louis’s motto. His were never mere parties but Saturnalias; he never merely drank, he caroused.

Why, face to face with him now, did it seem so difficult to remember that side of his character?

Even now, as she tilted her head to take him in, his famously solid figure now framed by the light spilling onto the balcony from the French doors behind him, she wasn’t sure what to make of him.

Louis was the man who the media simply revelled in loathing. Not least because his weekly exploits—both sexual and otherwise—sold copies by their millions the world over. Since his mid-teens, Louis had been building a reputation for being larger than life with a penchant for the kind of wild parties the average person couldn’t even imagine. The scandalous occasion he and his rich friends had stolen one of their parents’ super-yachts for a raucous party, only to subsequently sink it, was probably one of the tamer of Louis’s outings.

And he got away with it all because he was one of the most gifted young surgeons of his generation. Women wanted him and men wanted to be him. Was it any wonder his ego was as gargantuan as the rather crudely reputed size of a rather specific part of his anatomy?

Well, she wasn’t going to be yet another addition to the lusting harem that had trailed around after him all evening. Neither did she have the energy for an unwanted fight with another Delaroche male this evening.

Shock still resonated through her, but something else followed it. Something stronger. An inner core strength that had got her through losing her mother and her brother. Had got her through a lifetime of disappointing her father since birth. Got her to med school, to pass top of her year, and to the placements she’d wanted most.

She would not cry in front of Louis. She’d already been the object of one unwarranted Delaroche temper this evening, and she’d be damned if she’d let another Delaroche take his pound of flesh, too. Steeling herself, she raised her chin to look up into the dark shadow of a face she didn’t need to see to have imprinted in her mind.

‘Thank you for rescuing me from the humiliation of being thrown out in front of the press waiting outside, but you have...people to get back to. And if you don’t mind, I’ll find a back way out of here and get safely home before your father realises I didn’t get made an example of.’

‘I don’t think so.’ His voice was lethally quiet. ‘You still haven’t told me why you were discussing Rainbow House.’

Frustration lent her courage and she let out a humourless laugh.

‘The fact that you don’t even know says it all.’

He took a sudden step towards her and made a sound somewhere between a growl and...something, his lips curving upwards into a shape so razor sharp it could hardly be called a smile.

Awareness shot through her, her heart thundering almost painfully in her chest. Her senses all immediately went on high alert, the stunning crispness of the cool night fading into nothing compared to the man in front of her. A reminder of why Louis was one of the world’s most powerful eligible bachelors.

She gripped the rough stone surface of the ornate balcony tighter and it was all she could do not to back away further. To hold her ground rather than tumble over the edge. He was too distracting. A six-foot-three package of corded muscles, so lean and powerful and strong, its beauty was almost too much. No amount of scandalous headlines or scurrilous articles could have prepared her for the effect of being this close to Louis in person. And alone with him.

Not even the proximity the previous week when her mentor had granted her coveted entry into one of Louis’s surgeries.

The moment when she’d seen Louis’s incredible surgical skill for herself. The moment she’d seen a different side to the heinous media image when he’d shown such care and kindness to his patient and their family. And evidently the moment she’d begun to lose her grip on reality, for pity’s sake.

Some small sense of self-preservation pounded inside her and she let out a disdainful, if somewhat nervous huff.

‘Remind me, what is the collective noun for a group of immaculately coiffured, designer-ballgown-dressed, primly preening women who spend all evening zealously clamouring around a less-than-selfless playboy?’

‘I believe they’re called high-society contacts.’ He flashed a wolfish smile that was more bared teeth and another shard of awareness sliced straight through her. Mercifully, Louis appeared oblivious. ‘This is a charity ball, after all. I’m sure even you must understand that the aim is to raise as much money as possible.’

‘I hardly think it’s the charities they’re here for,’ Alex scoffed, recalling the covetous expressions on a sea of female faces when Louis had abandoned them in the ballroom in favour of her.

Only he could have made several hundred women look on with more envy than interest as he’d snatched her from his father’s security detail, only to frogmarch her away, back through the vast estate house and finally here outside in the relative privacy of one of the many ornate stone balconies.

No doubt he thought she should be grateful to him for that much, Alex grumbled to herself as she rubbed her elbow and told herself that it was only tingly from the pain of Louis’s grip. Certainly not the thrill of his touch.

That would be lunacy.

‘I don’t care who or what brought them here.’ Louis shrugged. ‘As long as they support the Delaroche Foundation. The sooner they part with their surplus money, the sooner I can say I’ve done my filial duty and get out of here. Which brings me right back to why you were discussing Rainbow House with my father.’

He advanced on her again, her feeling of suffocation nothing to do with the lacy choker at her throat. Because even without the name or the heritage there would never have been any denying Louis Delaroche. He carried himself in the kind of autocratic and exacting way that many men tried to emulate but few could ever master. For Louis, it seemed effortless, an intrinsic part of who he was. He only had to murmur ‘Jump’ and those around him would frantically turn themselves inside out to become metaphorical pole-vaulters.

Alex sniffed indelicately. Well, his ubiquitous charm wasn’t going to work on her. She was determined about that. How ironic it would be if, after a life of trying to do the right thing, striving to be somebody worthy of living in this world, someone who could maybe one day make a difference, she should be toppled by something as prosaic as falling for the proverbial bad boy.

Even now Alex could imagine the sadness on her father’s face. The knowledge that he’d been right about her all along. That she was worthless. That it was laughable she should have gone into medicine, a profession in which she was supposed to save lives when she only ever destroyed lives. Their lives. Her mother’s and her brother’s.

Mum and Jack. Or them, as she’d come to think of them. Grief slid over her, as a familiar as a set of scrubs yet in many ways equally as impersonal.

Not that her father ever blamed her aloud. Never made such an accusation. Never once even breathed it. Rather, it was the fact that he’d always been careful never, ever to mention it—never, ever mention them—that screamed louder than anything he could have said.

He was always so careful, her father, to keep subject matter defined. Work was fine, personal life was a no-go. Rainbow House was the only thing the two of them shared that had any connection to Mum and Jack at all.

And so her father must feel it, deep down. That kernel of loathing that she felt for herself. Rainbow House was the one good thing they shared. She had to save it. Whatever the cost.

That last thought helped her to steel her spine again. Lifting her head, she met Louis’s stare head on, refusing to be distracted, however tempting the packaging had turned out to be.

‘Rainbow House is a place for children with life-changing illnesses and their parents,’ she informed him. ‘A place that helps as many children as possible to find a cure, and offers respite for those who can’t get the solution they need, whether it’s a transplant or an operation. It sends families on that one precious memory-making holiday together, and helps fulfil as many bucket-list wishes as possible. Just the kind of place the Delaroche Foundation is famous for supporting.’

‘I know what it is,’ Louis remarked wryly, but the edge to his voice cautioned her.

Was she missing something? What?

‘I asked why you were discussing it with Jean...my father,’ he interrupted her musing, his voice sharp.

‘I’d have thought you should be one of the first people to know what was going on at Rainbow House,’ she snapped. ‘But since you don’t, here it is. Your precious Delaroche Foundation is trying to shut it down.’

‘It is not my precious foundation. And even if it was, Rainbow House is part of the Lefebvre Group.’

‘Which was bequeathed to you,’ she announced triumphantly, ignoring the part where he’d known about the group. She wasn’t sure what to make of it. Louis was hardly renowned for being interested in anything other than surgeries and sex. Although, for all his vices, he kept his great obsessions clear and distinct from one another.

She had to give him that much.

‘It was bequeathed to me as a kid. But the group has been doing a fine job of governing itself without me stepping in and wasting my time. I operate, or I party. I don’t have time for charity as well.’

She couldn’t fathom the expression that pulled tight across his face. As though his words didn’t match his feelings on the matter. All of a sudden she remembered the Louis she’d seen in the operating room barely a month earlier.

She’d heard the stories about Louis’s skill as a surgeon ever since she’d been a medical student. Only a couple of years older than her, he was already years ahead of his peers, apparently having observed his father’s surgeries ever since he’d been old enough to stand on a box long enough in the OR. It was said that schoolboy Louis had been able to answer questions even second-year house officers had struggled with.

But last week had been the first—the only—time she had actually witnessed Louis in action for herself. It had been an incredible experience.

Louis didn’t simply measure up to the stories, he surpassed them. A surgeon of such skill and focus that he eclipsed any other surgeon she’d seen. And when she’d mentioned it to her mentor—the anaesthetist who must have promised Louis the earth in order to get him to allow her in to observe in one of Louis’s infamously closed-door surgeries—Gordon had merely rewarded her with one of his conspicuously rare smiles.

She’d finally seen what Gordon had known for years, that Louis was a pretty unique surgeon. The more she’d run back over the surgery all week, the more she’d realised that it hadn’t been luck that the entire procedure had gone so smoothly, so without complication. Louis had made so many tiny, almost imperceptible adjustments so instinctively throughout the operation that he’d headed off any little bumps before they’d even had a chance to develop.

Some surgeons reacted well to incidents in the OR, others were a couple of moves ahead. Louis, though she hadn’t realised it immediately, was akin to a chess grandmaster who could foresee multiple patterns ahead and then made the best single move, even if it wasn’t the most obvious one.

She might even go so far as to say Louis was gifted. And after years of feeling proud—perhaps maybe even a little superior—that she was immune to some of the best-looking but arrogant doctors she’d worked with throughout her career, it was galling to realise that, of all people, playboy Louis Delaroche should be the man to breach her defences.

Not that she was about to let him know it. She rolled her eyes at him and pressed on.

‘You’re wrong. The board isn’t doing a fine job at all. As I understand it, the Lefebvre Group is now almost wholly comprised of the Delaroche Foundation, ever since the death of the old chairman a few months ago. Your father’s foundation has been voting to transfer various assets from the Lefebvre Group to the Delaroche Foundation, at very advantageous prices.’

‘They can’t do that.’

‘Tell that to the board,’ she spat back. ‘Some of these assets they intend to keep and some they want to shut down or sell off. Rainbow House is located in the centre of town, it’s prime real estate. Shut it down and any developer would pay millions for the site.’

‘No.’ Louis folded his arms over his body, the move only highlighting the powerful muscles there. ‘That won’t be why he wants to shut Rainbow House down.’

‘You’re telling me he has no choice?’ She dragged her gaze back to his shadowed face. ‘Because I can’t believe that.’

‘I didn’t say that he didn’t have a choice. I said he isn’t driven by the money.’

Disappointment bubbled up inside her. She couldn’t explain why she’d imagined she’d sensed a possible ally in Louis, but watching it slip from her grasp was almost like watching her own father slip away from her. They amounted to the same thing.

‘Seriously? You, of all people, are now claiming he’s philanthropic after all?’

‘I’m not claiming anything. I’m simply telling you that selling the site for millions won’t be the reason he’s closing it down.’

‘It’s a much-needed centre. It benefits hundreds and hundreds of children and their families. We work hard to raise our own funds and we don’t ask much more of the Delaroche Foundation than lending their name to it.’

In that instant it was as though everything around them had frozen, leaving only the two of them locked together in some kind of void.

‘You work there?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’ The question came out of nowhere. Not a challenge but a soft demand. Unexpectedly astute. Unavoidable. As though he knew she had to have a personal connection.

She couldn’t explain it, she only knew—somehow—that it wouldn’t pay to lie to him.

‘I volunteer there,’ Alex began hesitantly. ‘With my father. My brother was... Years ago...we used Rainbow House.’

‘Your brother?’ Louis demanded sharply.

She flicked out a tongue over her lips, managing a stiff nod of confirmation.

‘Yes. Jack.’

‘And now?’ His voice softened a fraction, he sounded almost empathetic. A flashback to the Louis who only usually emerged for his patients.

If anything, that just made it harder for her to keep her emotions in check. Alex fought to keep her voice even, the air winding its way around her.

‘He died. Twenty-one years ago. He was eleven. I was eight.’

‘I’m sorry.’

Simple. Sincere. And all the more touching for it.

‘Thank you.’

Instantly the air finished winding its way around her and instead began slowly constricting her. Like a python immobilising its prey. And she felt she was sinking into the depths of those rich-coloured eyes.

She fought to control her heart as it hammered so loudly within her ribcage that he must surely be able to hear it. And then abruptly, rather than suffocating her, the silence seemed to cloak them, drawing them a little closer together and almost suggesting an intimacy that hadn’t been there before. She realised she was holding her breath, not wanting to break the spell.

Funny, because she was usually so quick to move conversations on from talking about her brother.

‘So that’s why Rainbow House means so much to you.’

‘Right,’ she agreed, shutting off the little voice that urged her to tell him about her father.

Where did that come from? That was no one else’s business but her and her father’s. Certainly not Louis’s. She lifted her head, determined to throw it back onto him.

‘I suppose that’s why I don’t understand why Rainbow House doesn’t mean as much to you. Given what it meant to your mother.’

The icy change was instantaneous. She might as well have struck him physically. He reacted as though she had. Reeling backwards before he could stop himself, even as he recovered his composure.

‘I don’t know what that means. So when is this closure supposed to be taking place?’

It all happened so fast that anyone else might have missed it. They probably would have. But she wasn’t anyone. It was her skill for observing the little things, picking up on the faintest of shifts, whether in patient symptoms, monitor readings or merely attitude, which made her particularly good at her job. A skill in which she had always taken such pride.

Right now, it was an unexpected glimpse of the less-than-perfect image of Louis that he carefully hid from eager media eyes. She couldn’t help pressing him.

‘It means I know your mother was Celine Lefebvre, and I know it was your maternal family who founded Rainbow House over fifty years ago when your aunt, your mother’s younger sister, was diagnosed with childhood leukaemia.’

‘How quaint that you know a little of my family history.’

His voice was as fascinating yet deadly as the ninja stars that her brother had always dreamed of one day being able to master. A dangerous cocktail of sadness, frustration and desperate hope flooded through her.

‘I also know that your mother fought hard to keep Rainbow House open over twenty-five years ago when original Lefebvre Group members who had been appointed were running it into the ground. That was around the time she convinced your father to set up the Delaroche Foundation and oversee the group until you were of an age to take control. I’m guessing that she expected to train you to run it but...she never got the opportunity.’

‘Which means it’s nothing to do with me now.’

She wished more than anything she could decipher that expression behind his concrete-coloured eyes. But the longer she stared into them, the more unreachable he seemed to be. Her voice rose in desperation.

‘She left control of Lefebvre Group to you. You could stop the foundation from doing this. Surely, for the sake of her memory, it shouldn’t be so far beneath your concern?’

‘Careful.’

It was one word of caution and it shouldn’t have sounded so menacing. So full of control. But it had, and Alex shivered, feeling the sharp edges of the stonework cutting into her fingers.

‘Rainbow House meant everything to your mother. The stories people have about her are limitless. She’s a legend with everyone I know there.’

He turned his face a fraction, inadvertently allowing the light from inside to illuminate him. But she wasn’t prepared for the expression of pain that pulled his features tight. It sliced at something raw deep inside her, something that she’d spent decades trying to bury. She slammed it away before it could get to her.

‘I have no intention of getting involved,’ Louis bit out.

‘Is that why you rescued me from your father, then?’

She could hear the quiver in her challenge, knew Louis could hear it, too. Still, she refused to back down.

‘I didn’t want to see you humiliated in front of the press. It wouldn’t have made the Delaroche Foundation look good, especially on such an important gala night.’

‘Rubbish.’

She had no idea where her courage was suddenly stemming from, but she wasn’t about to question it.

‘You wanted to know why we were talking about Rainbow House. You can tell me you don’t want to get involved all you like, but clearly you do want to. Clearly a part of you needs to.’

‘How interesting that you appear to know me so well.’ He flashed his teeth at her in another intimidating non-smile. ‘Let me guess, you know that Jean-Baptiste and I don’t get on so you think I’d be prepared to go up against him with the board because of some sentimentality over a place my mother once patronised.’

‘It’s more than that, and you know it.’

She valiantly ignored the way her heart somersaulted within her chest. The way his mannerisms spoke to something undefinable within her. A blasé attitude that masked a vulnerability he didn’t want anyone to see.

No doubt anyone else would have believed him. He sold smouldering disinterest all too well and even she herself couldn’t help but be drawn in. Louis was stunning, and edgy, and utterly mesmerising. But she was sure she could see past the front. That particular emotional Achilles’ heel was something she recognised only too easily.

‘It’s true that vastly exaggerated stories concerning some feud between Jean-Baptiste and me—his prodigal son—have been gleefully published by the press for almost a decade—’

‘You mean two brilliant surgeons, bonded by blood, united by mutual contempt?’ Alex cut across him. ‘Yes, I might have heard something about that. It’s a media favourite.’

‘Indeed. But that doesn’t mean I care enough to take on Rainbow House merely to thwart him. It would cut into my playboy lifestyle too much—surely you’ve read about that, too?’

‘I think it’s an act,’ she heard herself state boldly. ‘I think you and your father have been in competition for as long as you can remember. He’s one of the most image-conscious men I’ve seen, and I think your infamous playboy routine was your way of sullying the Delaroche name.’

‘Nice theory. And if it was true, I’d say it’s a resounding success, wouldn’t you?’ He quirked an eyebrow as though she amused him.

But Alex wasn’t finished yet.

‘Ah, but it hasn’t worked as well as you’d hoped, has it? Because as much as the media love to hate you, they also hate to love you. If they ever realised quite how much you care for your patients, I think they’d be having bank holidays in your honour. No wonder you keep such a close-knit team around you—can’t have people realising you’re actually a good guy underneath that bad-boy exterior.’

Something skittered over Louis’s face.

‘And that fantastical notion is what you’re basing your hopes on? You’re relying on some non-existent version of me to save Rainbow House?’

‘Why not?’ She shot him an over-bright smile. If he was her last chance then she might as well go down fighting. ‘Besides, it’s not such a fantastical notion if I’m not the only one who thinks you could save the place.’

She had him. She could see it. And it gave her a thrill to realise she had hooked him so easily. But reeling him in, that was going to be the impossible part.

‘Go on then,’ he conceded, and she had to give him credit for not trying to disguise his intrigue.

‘Half of your board.’

‘Allow me to let you onto a little secret. Even if I wanted to save the place, I couldn’t.’

‘You could. All you have to do is take over control from the Delaroche Foundation, the way your mother always intended you to do.’

‘Are you always this argumentative?’ His lips twitched and Alex wrinkled her nose.

‘I’m not arguing, I’m only pointing out—’

‘So it’s just me, then? I suppose I should take it as a compliment that I get under your skin.’

‘You do not get under my skin,’ Alex huffed, before realising that her fists were clenched into balls, hidden as they were by Louis’s jacket. ‘Well, if you do then it’s only because I find it frustrating that you could help us—that you spend your professional life saving people, even if your personal life is in the gutter—and yet you stand on the sidelines and refuse to get involved.’

‘You’ve got it all wrong,’ Louis bit out. ‘You’re looking at me like some kind of white knight, but there’s a reason Jean-Baptiste has that reputation and I don’t. Besides, as I was saying before, I couldn’t help you even if I wanted to. My mother might have left control of Rainbow House—or, more to the point, the Lefebvre Group—to me in her will, but not before my father had her insert a clause making one further stipulation.’

‘Stipulation?’

‘I have to be married.’

‘Married? You?’

He simply shrugged. ‘Quite. So you see there’s no point looking to me to rescue you. Unless you care to marry me then I’m the last person who can help you.’

CHAPTER TWO

‘YOU MUST BE DRUNK.’ The disdainful wrinkle of her nose cut him far more than it should. ‘As usual.’

‘Most probably,’ he lied smoothly, knowing he couldn’t blame her low opinion of him entirely on the media.

But the truth was that he hadn’t had a drink in months, maybe even the best part of a year. And even then it had been a rare brandy with a close friend. Ironic how easily water could be mistaken for vodka, if that was what aligned better with people’s assumptions.

Strange thing was that he hadn’t missed the alcohol or the wild parties. The latter had never made him feel any less alone, whilst the former had never even made a dent in the block of ice that had encased his heart for as long as he could remember. Or at least ever since his mother’s...death. But, then, he’d never wanted it to.

Until recently.

If he’d been able to foresee how his first few dates with the it-girls of the moment would have resulted in a sex story that would define his playboy reputation for the next decade and a half, he might have thought twice about something that had been meant to be harmless, private fun.

Now it proved impossible to change. People didn’t want to see him grow up.

Worse, he couldn’t be bothered to prove it to them.

‘Nonetheless, a marriage clause remains,’ he proclaimed. ‘And clearly I don’t intend to satisfy that particular parameter.’

‘Oh, but that’s ridiculous!’ the woman exclaimed, sotto voce, wrenching him mercifully back from the precipice of memory. ‘I know the Delaroche family can trace its ancestry back to thirteenth-century aristocracy, with a palace for a family home, but this is the twenty-first century. Why would they have put such a clause in?’

‘Perhaps for the very reason of thwarting you now.’ Louis grinned, enjoying the way she flailed her arms around in frustration.

‘Very amusing.’ She glowered at him.

‘Thank you.’ He tried for modesty, but not very hard. ‘And it’s twelfth century.’

‘Pardon?’

‘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.’

‘I’m shocked that you would cast such aspersions, Dr Vardy. Nonetheless, I have the distinct suspicion that it was matter of charming half of their daughters into bed out of wedlock that must have turned them against me in the first instance.’

‘Only half?’ she quipped tartly. Too tartly.

‘No, well, one can’t be too greedy.’ He shrugged dismissively, neatly changing the subject. ‘Of course, you appreciate that the more you lean back from me the more you angle your hips towards me? One might even say invitingly.’

Her eyes widened, her scowl deepening, and she faltered backwards just as he’d known she would, giving him the perfect opportunity to reach forward and halt her fall, hauling her body closer to his as he did so.

‘You did that deliberately,’ she said irritably, though he noticed that for all her objection she remained in the light circle of his arm, though she could have pushed him away if she’d really wanted to.

It only served to fuel Louis’s desire. He could tell himself that this was all part of his plan and that he was still in control, but he knew that somewhere along the line, that had ceased to be entirely true. He could no more explain this attraction as he could fight it. He’d been attracted to women—plenty of women, though nowhere near in the disgusting numbers that the papers so deliriously hypothesised—but never like this. Never on a level that he knew wasn’t merely about the physical.

‘I can’t seem to help myself,’ he drawled, his tone intended to conceal just how unexpectedly close to the truth that statement was.

Even now, as his eyes took in the rapid pulse at her neck, the stain of lust spreading over her skin, the sudden huskiness in her voice, doing something as simple as drawing a breath suddenly became an arduous hindrance.

He leaned forward and she stepped back. Right up against the stone balustrade, allowing him to place an arm on each side and effectively cage her.

‘What are you doing?’ she whispered. Hardly a protestation of his position. Still, he needed to be sure.

‘Making sure you don’t run away.’

‘I’m not running away.’ He recognised that hoarse desire in her voice. He’d heard it plenty of times before. But never with anyone who made him as hard as she did.

Like he was some hormone-charged teenager.

‘You know my reputation,’ he ground out. ‘You should be running.’

‘I know your reputation,’ she concurred. ‘But right now I don’t know anyone else who can help me stop your father.’

It was hardly the rebuttal he realised a part of him had been hoping for. As if he hoped she might see past the bad-boy exterior to the honourable man he knew had probably died a long time ago.

Pathetic really.

Louis had never wanted, never sought anyone else’s approval. He would leave that to his father. Though how he was the only person to see through his old man’s veneer to see that he’d only set up the Delaroche Foundation as a way to earn himself a knighthood, he would never understand. Let Jean-Baptiste revel in his unearned glories as much as the vainglorious old man wanted.

His mother would surely laugh out loud to know that Rainbow House was still a thorn in her husband’s side. Even now.

It was only when he caught Alex watching him curiously, his arms still trapping her in place, that he remembered himself, and banished the unwelcome thoughts from his head.

He pushed backwards, releasing her with a theatrical flourish, exultant when she didn’t go anywhere.

‘So, Dr Alexandra Vardy, how about it?’ He flashed her a wolfish smile, playing the habitually drunk playboy role for all he was worth. After all, why else would a bad boy like him make such a ridiculous suggestion? ‘Want to marry me and stop my father from committing any more of his dastardly deeds?’

CHAPTER THREE

‘SOMEONE PAGED ME?’ Louis burst through the doors of the pre-op room, taking in the unfolding events in one careful sweep.

‘I did. I suspect an anaphylactic reaction in your patient,’ Alex answered quickly but calmly, her attention going straight back to the patient in front of her even as she addressed the anaesthetic technician. ‘Freddie, let’s set up an IV. Start with eight milligrams of dexamethasone and point one milligrams of adrenalin.’

‘What happened?’ Louis stepped over quickly without, she just had time to notice, getting in the way of her staff.

Surprisingly he didn’t wade in, but waited silently for her to finish issuing her brief, perfunctory instructions to her team.

It could be no coincidence that she had suddenly been assigned as part of Louis’s on-call team tonight. She’d been avoiding him for two days since she’d walked—though she still had no idea how her legs had kept her upright after his audacious marriage suggestion—away from away him.

Clearly, this was his way of flexing his authoritative muscle. An irrefutable demonstration of the power he wielded in this hospital. She’d spent the last few hours enacting scenarios in her head in which she had confronted him about it. But right now it definitely wasn’t the time.

‘The patient was clearly hypovolaemic when she was brought in,’ Alex informed him. ‘She was clammy in appearance and tachycardic.’

‘She presented in the emergency department a couple of hours ago following a salpingo-oophorectomy three days ago,’ confirmed Louis. ‘All signs led the resus team to suspect intra-abdominal bleeding, which was when they referred her to us.’

Cool, professional, approachable. No hint that he even remembered what had happened between them on that balcony. How she had been within a hair’s breadth of kissing him, of letting him kiss her. If he’d pushed it that tiny bit further, she knew she would have.

Every spare moment since, she’d wondered why he hadn’t.

Was it insane that every time she’d thought of him, a gurgle of laughter had rumbled within her?

The thing about arrogant men was that they had altogether too high an opinion of themselves to be likeable.

Yet Louis was wholly unaffected by his stark male beauty, and he didn’t take himself too seriously. He made her laugh.

It didn’t fit.

Still, she couldn’t afford to dwell on it. Forget her illicit fantasies about him, he was standing right in front of her, right now, and he was all professional. The way she always prided herself on being.

She pulled her head back in the game, relieved to realise that she hadn’t missed a beat.

‘Yes, I completed the handover twenty minutes ago. She appeared calm despite the circumstances. Blood pressure was one-twenty over seventy and heart rate was eighty-four beats per minute. Intravenous access was difficult, probably as a result of the hypovolaemia and the suspected internal bleeding, but she did have a cannula in situ, which we used.’

‘You used it for general anaesthetic induction?’

‘Right, then we intubated.’ Alex nodded. ‘There was an initial delay of results for the carbon dioxide output but the tubes were in correctly, there was misting and the chest was rising symmetrically. I began manual ventilation, which I thought felt restricted, and when I listened to her chest I heard wheezing. I had already started to suspect anaesthesia-related anaphylaxis, which was when I told them to alert you to the situation.’

There had been no need for Louis to come in. As the anaesthetist, this was within her remit rather than his, but she could understand why he wanted to see for himself. In many respects she was still an unknown quantity to his team. Typically Louis.

‘You’re using her foot—?’

‘To gain additional venous access? Yes,’ Alex cut in, straightening up with a satisfied nod and taking the bag of colloid fluid from her team. ‘Good. Right, let’s start infusing and get her blood pressure back up and her cardiovascular volume. Freddie, start drawing up another point one milligrams of adrenalin.’

But before she could get much further the patient went into cardiac arrest.

‘I’ll start compressions.’ Louis moved instinctively to the table, allowing her to continue administering the adrenalin.

They both knew that while in ordinary circumstances the surgical procedure would be called to a halt, due to the acute nature of the internal bleeding, it wasn’t an option in this situation. She had no choice but to get it under control.

Good thing she’d never been one to crumble under pressure.

Still, it was a relief when Louis confirmed cardiac output had been regained and Alex was able to insert both a central and femoral line, even as she issued further instructions to her team to treat the anaphylaxis before continuing their pre-op procedures.

‘You’re re-administering anaesthesia?’ He frowned, still watching her closely.

Her pride kicked in. She couldn’t help it.

‘I thought I might.’ The tongue-in-cheek tone was clear but now the patient was stable, and after the tension the team had been under a little dark humour always worked to buoy morale. It was just the way hospitals seemed to work, in her opinion.

It wouldn’t make the team work any better to keep stress levels high. Still, she kept her eyes on the monitoring equipment as she spoke.

‘If it’s internal bleeding then I can’t imagine you could afford to postpone the operation, and with all the excitement the last thing the patient needs is to come out of the anaesthetic in mid-operation, wouldn’t you agree?’

‘Never preferable,’ he agreed, as she concluded her tasks and gave him a slight nod. ‘We’re ready?’

‘Ready,’ she confirmed, knowing that, even if the surgery was carried out quickly and without incident, the post-operative management was going to be crucial.

It was going to be a long night. And yet, when the patient came out of it treated and cared for, it made it feel like the best job in the world.

If only she didn’t have Louis to deal with at the end of it.

* * *

‘Good call on the anaphylaxis case.’

Alex visibly stiffened as he called to her from across the atrium. It was a deliberate ploy on his part so she couldn’t continue to duck out, having pretended not to see him, as she had been doing for the last nine hours.

And the atrium was the perfect trap. During the day it was a bustling hub of staff, visitors and mobile patients. Right now, it was relatively deserted, save for the trio around Alex’s small table. It was one of the reasons he’d chosen this moment to corner her, when the fewest people were gawking. But she didn’t need to know that.

Let her think he hadn’t considered her at all.

He couldn’t disappoint that way.

He sipped his coffee and sauntered deliberately over to where they sat, pulling out a chair and sliding down easily into it. Alex barely glanced up as the over-eager pair began falling over each other to introduce themselves to him, and he politely acknowledged them then affected insouciance, all the while taking in every possible detail.

By the expressions and body language of the group he’d lay a bet that the two women had barely socialised with Alex before yesterday’s papers had come out, and more specifically the grainy, pixelated image of him escorting her out of the kitchen entrance of the gala event the other night—clearly taken by one of the kitchen staff on their mobile phone, he was already dealing with them—and suddenly Alex had become everyone’s new best friend.

Another thing he was guilty of.

Louis managed to smooth out the grim expression before it could settle on his lips. He refused to apologise or feel remorse. It had been him or being publicly ejected through the main doors by the security team. Though she’d probably have been the first woman to choose the security team after his outlandish proposal to her.

There was no reason for him to still be grinning about it.

‘Ladies, it’s a pleasure to meet you but I wonder if Alex and I could have moment?’

She sucked in her breath audibly and he knew what was coming the moment the women left the room. Sure enough, as soon as the doors slammed Alex practically exploded.

‘Oh, why don’t you just drive a tanker of fuel into the damned fire?’ she seethed. ‘They’ll be gossiping all over the hospital as we speak.’

‘Isn’t that the idea?’ He grinned. ‘Generate publicity and all that.’

Her eyes narrowed.

‘The papers are already speculating, thanks to that photo,’ she hissed. ‘Grubby little rumours about how I’m the latest notch on your bedpost.’

‘Ah, well, the quicker you agree to marry me, the less grubby they can make it. The story will go international and you’ll be the woman who tamed me.’

‘No woman will ever tame you,’ she snorted. From anyone else he would have taken it to be a compliment, but for some reason her contempt needled at him.

He pointedly ramped up his grin.

‘Of course not. But the story is bigger if they think you have. And the more publicity the more chance we can help Rainbow House before my father gets his way.’

She frowned.

‘I thought that if you got married, you got control of the Lefebvre Group and then Rainbow House and others like it would be safe anyway.’

‘You might think that,’ he agreed, carefully concealing his amusement that she’d just revealed she had actually been considering it, despite her rather vocal rejection of the idea last night. ‘But I’ve been looking into the specific clauses ever since the gala. It seems that unless we get married before the official vote on any transfers then any such decisions will still carry through.’

‘For pity’s sake.’ A torn expression contorted her face.

So this was what it felt like to be such a heel, putting more pressure on her than she already had. But, then, she was the one asking for his help. She just needed to set her prejudice against him aside for long enough to agree this was the only way given the short timeframe she’d given him.

Not that he really blamed her for her vacillation. He’d hardly set himself up to be keen to help.

The sound of her fingers drumming on the plastic table echoed in the vaulted space.

‘Why?’ she demanded abruptly.

‘Why what?’ It was a feeble attempt to stall but her question had caught him off guard.

‘Why do you want to help Rainbow House at all?’ She eyed him shrewdly. ‘You didn’t when I first asked you. And then said you did but really it was all a joke to you. Yet suddenly you’re getting me onto your surgical team and trying to collar me in public places. So, what’s going on?’

Louis arched one brow.

‘You know what they say. It’s a surgeon’s prerogative to change his mind.’

‘No one says that, Louis.’

‘I do.’

‘Yeah, well, as far as I’m concerned, you don’t count.’

He feigned a hurt expression.

‘You cut me to the quick.’

‘I highly doubt it. But if I did, I suspect that with the number of women literally falling over themselves to bag you, I’m sure you’ll get over it remarkably quickly.’ She crossed her arms over her chest and he resisted the impulse to tell her that the action only thrust those pert breasts of hers to the fore.

He could save winding her up with that one for another day. Right now he was enjoying the show too much. Namely the Feisty Alex routine; so far removed from the wholesome Apple Pie Alex but which, now he’d done a little digging, he’d discovered was a closely guarded fact amongst a select handful of her closest friends, Gordon being one of them.

What did it say about him that he actually wished to be part of Alex’s select circle?

‘So, should I take that as your answer then?’

He snapped back to the present.

‘Say again?’

‘I asked why you really wanted to help me suddenly. You chose to deflect in your usual manner.’

‘You don’t pull any punches, do you?’ His grin widened.

‘With you? No. I don’t think I can afford to.’

‘I like that,’ he mused, taking another long swig of his coffee. She might want something from him but she wasn’t about to pander to him. He was all too accustomed to people pandering to his wishes. Not least in the bedroom. ‘That why I think you’d be the perfect marriage choice.’

‘I’m flattered,’ she drawled. ‘So why not tell me why you’re so fixated on your marriage idea all of a sudden.’

‘It wasn’t my plan,’ he reminded her smoothly. ‘It was your plan. You’re the one who asked me to help. And you’re the one who suggested I get married simply to satisfy the clause in my mother’s will.’

‘Well...yes,’ Alex faltered. ‘But...but not to me.’

‘You really want me to inflict this charade on some other woman?’

Why was he enjoying this quite so much?

‘I doubt they’d feel remotely inflicted on,’ she sniffed. ‘While for my part, my picture is in the paper as your latest lover. One of hundreds if the papers are to be believed. My reputation is, for want of a better word, tarnished.’

‘All the more reason for you to agree to marry me.’ He shrugged.

‘I don’t know.’ She toyed with the paper cup, long fingers playing with the corner of card, unpeeling it carefully, meticulously. ‘You’re right, I wanted your help but I was desperate. I suppose a part of me never thought you’d agree to it. And now you have... I can’t help but wonder why.’

‘Does it matter?’ he wondered aloud.

‘Yes. Are you motivated by getting one up on your father in this ridiculous game the two of you seem to be permanently playing?’

‘Does that matter?’

‘Yes, Louis, it does. Because you’re infamous for being a loose cannon and if I have any hope of controlling you then I need to know what sets you off.’

‘Now I can definitely tell you that,’ he countered suggestively.

‘Louis...’ Alex sighed, a soft sound as though he actually exasperated her.

And suddenly he didn’t want to play the charade with her any longer. He was exhausted with playing up to perceptions of how he should be. All he wanted to do was kick back and let the mask slip.

‘Louis,’ she bit out abruptly. ‘Is this about getting your own back on your father?’

He should lie. Come up with another typical quip. Instead, he heard himself respond.

‘Maybe. A little. You know, before last night I hadn’t thought about Rainbow House in years. Did you know I usually travelled with her? Backwards and forwards between Chateau Rochepont and the UK? Did you also know that Rainbow House is where my mother died?’

Died; suicide. Pot-ay-to; pot-ah-to.

He tried to stuff back the pain he’d thought long since buried. Play it down as he had in the past. But, for once, it didn’t seem to fit back in its dark, wretched cage. Instead, he plastered a smile on his mouth and pretended he didn’t hear the way Alex had sucked in a breath and shot him a look of pure horror.

‘I didn’t know that.’ Somehow that made him feel better. ‘Is that why you haven’t taken on her legacy all these years?’

‘Partly.’

He hadn’t been able to bear it. Taking on the legacy of a woman who could have achieved so much more. Who had chosen to take her own life when she could have followed her passion for the Lefebvre Trust; who had chosen to leave her desperate, seven-year-old son behind.

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