A Bride To Redeem Him

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?’