A Bride to Redeem Him

She pursed her lips before plunging on.

‘I don’t know. You?’

She expected him to deny it, to scoff at her. He could see it in her expression. Instead, he met her intelligent gaze head on and they lapsed into silence, the ducks on the canal the only sound.

‘So...’ She broke the silence at last. ‘If they all are felled then they would need to be replaced...but what would be the cost?’

He cocked his head to one side. To anyone listening, it would sound like a dry conversation. Only he could hear the quiver in her voice, and could feel the waves of desire coursing between them. The heat, the solitude, the setting, they were all conspiring to remind them both of the attraction that had been there from the start. The one that they’d spent the last few weeks quashing but which was now, inexplicably, back and seemingly stronger than ever.

‘For the trees? Millions. It’s a huge undertaking.’

‘And for you?’

‘I’m still working that out. But I already know the gain is peace of mind. And you.’

* * *

He looked so confident, so unruffled. While for her part she seared.

She wanted to move but she couldn’t. Part of her expected him to reach for her, but he didn’t.

The moment stretched out, circling around them, encompassing only the two of them. When he spoke, his breezy tone scratching over her, it was as though they had never touched on such a topic.

‘Still, this isn’t what we’re here for. I just wanted to show you how we could offer canal cruises, either as a group or partnering some of the small boat-hire companies operating in the area.’

It amazed her the way he could switch so easily but she couldn’t shake the moment with the same ease. Louis was a different man. No longer anything like the arrogant playboy of the media and, with each passing day, it was getting harder and harder for Alex to remember that they were still supposed to be playing a game. A charade.

And, if only for one afternoon, she desperately wanted to stop fighting the attraction.

‘What if, right in this instant, I’m less interested in what the region has to offer and more interested in what you have to offer?’ she hedged, nervous exhilaration flooding through her.

He eyed her slowly.

‘And are you?’

‘Am I what?’ she mumbled, scorched by the heat of his stare.

His lips quirked upwards.

‘Interested in what I have to offer? Because if you are, there’s a bed in the cabin in there that I’ve never used before.’

Was it really that simple?

She just had to ask him? Abruptly her body felt too tight, too constricting for her bones. She wasn’t sure how she persuaded her shaking legs to stand, but suddenly she was in Louis’s arms.

The best place she’d been in a while.

‘No one else has ever got to me the way you do,’ he muttered. ‘I must be crazy.’

‘We both must be,’ she breathed, her skin scorching everywhere he touched her, even through their clothing.

‘If I’d realised taking you on a guided tour would make you want me, I’d have done it a week ago.’

‘It isn’t the guided tour,’ she squeaked. He knew exactly what he was doing, moving his mouth so cl

ose to hers without actually kissing her. Like some exquisite form of torture. ‘Talking isn’t some kind of foreplay, you know.’

‘I know exactly what foreplay is,’ he rumbled. ‘Allow me to demonstrate.’