Charlotte Hawkes – A Bride To Redeem Him (страница 3)

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.’