‘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.’