A Bride to Redeem Him

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.