A Bride to Redeem Him

by Charlotte Hawkes

  ‘I also considered respite holidays,’ he said, searching her expression.

  ‘Proper respite holidays?’ Alex asked slowly. ‘Where the carers also get a proper holiday, not just a bit of break?’

  ‘Why not?’ he challenged. ‘We could offer twenty-four-hour nursing care, attracting qualified, highly experienced nursing and care staff if we refurbished the west wing of the house and turned it into high-spec accommodation. Furthermore, this estate has always provided plenty of work for the surrounding communities, and the decline since my father took over has hit people around here hard. We could also run annual courses to train suitable locals or anyone else willing to come here.’

  ‘You could offer quality hospitality,’ she mused. ‘A relaxed atmosphere with plenty of excursions and lively entertainment?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Is there a lot to do around here?’

  The grin curved his lips and her eyes darkened, intensified as she watched him. It was dangerous ground. He needed to back away.

  He couldn’t.

  ‘I think you should take a tour of our little town and its environs.’

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  ‘SO THIS IS the Canal du Midi?’

  ‘This is the Canal du Midi in style,’ Louis corrected, pouring her another wine as their sleek boat cruised leisurely along.

  This day was driving him slowly mad.

  Or, more to the point, Alex was.

  Despite all his words of caution to himself, his constant reminders that their engagement was one of convenience and not choice, he found himself sucked into the charade that the press were lapping up everywhere they went. And showing Alex around his town, the place in which he had grown up, and seeing her obvious pleasure at some of the sights that had so captivated him as a child wasn’t making the task any easier. Her freely given smiles, the way she charmed everyone he introduced to her, her uninhibited laughter.

  He’d watched her. And he’d wanted her.

  The small canal boat ride had been her idea. He’d loved it as a kid but his tastes had run to more refined, elegant super-yachts in the last few decades. Sitting here with Alex, he couldn’t help but wonder why.

  They’d moored to take a stroll to a canal-side patisserie for an impromptu lunch of baguette and some local produce. Right now she was taking long gulps from a bottle of ice-cold water, the long line of her neck making him think of anything other than the history lesson about seventeenth-century canals that he was meant to be giving her.

  Worse, Alex was apparently oblivious as she screwed the top back on her water and set it down to look around them.

  ‘Why are there so many felled trees around this area?’

  ‘They’re diseased, they needed to be felled,’ he said ruefully.

  She looked aghast and it felt better than it should. Seeing her care about some of things that he cared about, as though they were in perfect sync.

  But they weren’t. It was all pretence. So why was that so hard to remember?

  ‘All of them? Why?’

  ‘They were plane trees, planted back in the early nineteenth century to strengthen the banks and to help prevent evaporation, since they grow rapidly and they furnish quick shade.’

  ‘So they’ve been here around two hundred years? Why on earth would you cut them down now?’

  ‘No choice.’ He hunched his shoulders. ‘Over the last decade or so it’s become clear that many of them were diseased, possibly from a fungus brought to France in contaminated World War II ammunition boxes used by US troops. Plus boat users often lash ropes around the trees to moor their boats and as they moved up and down the canal it no doubt helped the disease to spread.’

  ‘So they’re taking out this whole section and replanting.’ Alex pulled a face. ‘So many trees.’

  ‘More than you think, since it isn’t just this section. So far over twenty thousand trees have been felled along the two-hundred-and-fifty-kilometre canal length but there’s a real chance that all forty-two thousand of them will ultimately need to go.’

  Her cry was typically heart-on-sleeve Alex. And he loved her for her passion.

  ‘That’s awful. All of them?’

  ‘If something is diseased and corrupting, then doesn’t it make sense to eradicate it completely? Before you can start again?’

  He hadn’t intended it, yet it seemed to spill off his tongue. She peered at him tentatively.

  ‘Are we still talking about the trees here?’

  ‘What else?’ he stalled, trying to gain himself time to think.

  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.’

  And then he kissed her. Or more like possessed her, staking his claim and making her his. And she would be, she realised. In a heartbeat she would be with him. She was in love with him. Even if everything with Rainbow House fell through now, she would still marry him. If he asked. Which, of course, he wouldn’t.

  But she could fantasise. She could press herself against him and loop her arms around his neck, every inch of her body pressed against him.

  His for the taking.

  * * *

  Louis claimed her mouth, investing every slide of his lips and every stroke of his tongue with all the promise he intended to fulfil for the rest of the night. The rest of their stay. The rest of the charade.

  He thrust any other unwanted thoughts of it ever having to come to an end from his head, cupping her face in his hands, taking his time to explore every single element of it. From the soft, plump lips to the tiny dints in her cheeks that were only visible when she really laughed.

  God, he loved to make her laugh so hard that those dimples showed.

  Just for him.

  He staunched the ferocity that consumed his insides, forcing himself to slow down. Reacquainting himself with her every curve and dip, revelling in the way her body quivered against him when he ran his hand up and down her spine, thrilling in the soft sounds that seemed to vibrate from her throat straight into his chest as he cupped her backside, knowing he was making her melt.

  He took his time, plundering her mouth, exploring her face and her neck with his kisses, not even attempting to stifle his grin as she moved against him, her body clearly urging him to do more. His hand tangled into her soft, flowing hair, twisting a lock around his fist and tugging, only gently but enough to make her gasp and press against him harder.

  He was too consumed with kissing her. He tested first one breast and then the other, before dropping feather-light kisses from her neck downwards until he was hooking a finger over the neckline of her sexy dress and taking the first straining rosy bud in his mouth. He hardened instantly at her gasps of pleasure. Need almost overtaking him for the first time in his life, he just about remembered they were still on the deck of the boat. Although the footpath was deserted for now, people could walk past at any time.

  He’d never lost himself like that before. It felt good. Still, Louis made himself scoop her into his arms, carry her into the cabin to the compact bedroom, and lower her reverently on the bed. Slowly, deliberately, he stripped her, but then she pushed herself up with a litheness he couldn’t help but admire and tugged him towards her so that she could hurry things along. Her shaking fingers fumbled with his buttons as she shed him of his clothing, too. And when she unzipped him, her hands moving greedily to his length, Louis lost all attempts at easy control.

  ‘Even more beautiful than I remembered,’ he muttered, his hands gliding over her soft skin when they were both finally naked, her body reacting to his touch.

  He pressed her back onto the bed, only too happy to follow as her hands snagged his shoulders and she pulled him down to her.

  Propping himself on one arm, his eyes skimmed over her, drinking her in, gorging themselves on her. Everything about Alex was so sweetly feminine, from her crooked, nervous smile—which only served to stoke him further—down to the perfect flare of her hips. His hands traced whorls on her body, his lips moving over hers before dropping hot kisses to her neck, her chest. Her smooth flesh was so delicate to the touch.

  Louis revelled in the way her fingers explored his body, moving over his shoulders, his arms and his chest. But what he really remembered, what he ached for was to taste her again as he had that night. Her sweet honey taste that had ensured he had been hooked from the moment he’d first licked his way into her.

  He grew harder at the memory. So hard it was almost painful. No one had ever driven him this wild before.

  He shifted, preparing to slide back down between her legs when Alex decided she had other plans and shifted herself, trying to roll him over until his chest was over hers. He could have resisted, carried on with his plan. Instead he relented and gave her what she wanted, moving over until his chest covered hers, his body between her impossibly long legs.

  And then she wriggled her hips, settling him at her apex and then wrapping her legs around his thighs as though anchoring him in place, and Louis lost the ability to think straight.

  He’d intended a slow seduction. Tasting, toying, teasing. Instead desire consumed him, a slave to his most primal instincts, and to Alex’s urgency.

  The only time any woman had come close to being the master of him.

  * * *

  If he didn’t slide inside her now, she was going to die from need.

  She was certain of it.

  The last few days since their encounter in his bedroom had been unbearable. Every fibre of her body still mourned what hadn’t quite happened between them. And now he wanted her, that much was undeniable, yet still he insisted on setting a cruelly controlled pace. The tantalising moves of a rhumba when all her entire body ached for the driven, passionate pace of a tango.

  She arched her hips and rocked against him, her already molten body searing as his sex flexed against her, his sharp intake of breath like a roar inside her head. Why was he holding back, tormenting them both this way? Louis was barely in control himself—at least she could take some small comfort from that.

  ‘Please,’ she whispered, curving her body into his, the stunning beauty of his physique with the planes and ridges almost too much to process. And when he nudged at her entrance again she was sure she was going to come apart.

  His gaze snagged hers and she wasn’t prepared for the fire that raged in their smoky depths. Savage, needy and wholly, utterly male.

  ‘I can’t take any more.’ She bit out the desperate plea.

  ‘I want us to take our time,’ he rasped, reaching to retrieve a condom and sheathing himself. But she didn’t miss the slight shake to his voice. It gave her strength.

  ‘We’ve got all night, all week to take our time. I’ve been imagining you since that morning, I just need you now.’

  Her voice cracked before she could say any more but it didn’t matter. It was as if she’d uttered the magic words. Told him what he’d been waiting to hear. With a groan Louis shifted, testing himself against her, his face tightening at her slick, wet heat. It filled her with old Alex courage, a kind of mischievousness, an impulse, and she raised her legs to wrap them higher around his body, drawing him in faster than he’d intended.

  She didn’t know whether the guttural sound came from Louis or from her. In truth, it made little difference. He was thrusting into her, filling her, stretching her in every direction, but there was no discomfort. If anything, it felt as though they were made for each other.

  The perfect fit.

  He drew back and thrust in again. A deliberate, lazy rhythm that drove her half-mad with pleasure and frustration. Again and again he slid in and out of her, and just when she thought she couldn’t take any more teasing, he picked up the pace, leaving her little choice but to grip his shoulders and let him take her with him, meeting him thrust for glorious thrust and trying to remember to breathe.

  Shudders were already beginning to burst through her when he slid his hand between their bodies and down to her core, expert fingers dancing over the very centre of her desire, heightening everything and propelling her towards the edge. Then she catapulted off, bursting apart under his skilful touch and crying out his name.

  She hadn’t even come back down when she realised he hadn’t followed her. He was still inside her, still in control of himself, if only by a thread.

  ‘Louis...’

 
‘Shh,’ he growled, a dark, deeply satisfied smile lifting his mouth. ‘Hold on tightly.’

  Before she could answer, he was moving inside her again. Thrusting harder, faster, deeper, his fingers still playing with her, sending her hurtling back over the edge. And this time when her body shattered into a thousand fragments, her muscles rippling around him, he toppled with her.

  It took her long, long moments to come back to herself again, and when she did, Louis was cradling her as though she was the most precious jewel in the world.

  ‘You’re so beautiful,’ he murmured. ‘So perfect.’

  ‘So are you.’ Still in a haze of bliss, Alex barely heard the words slipping so naturally from her lips. ‘I love you.’

  Beside her, Louis froze. And then her world came tumbling down.

  * * *

  ‘You do not love me.’ Louis bundled her off him so fast that she almost fell and he nearly put a hand out to catch her, only just stopping himself in time. ‘You cannot. That isn’t what we agreed.’

  If he’d thought she was going to crumble, to fall, then he’d thought wrong. But a part of him had known that she wouldn’t. Not his Alex. He admired the way she tilted her chin, meeting his eyes even as she tugged the tangle of sheets over her chest to protect what little modesty she had left. It made his chest tighten with something that felt dangerously close to regret.

  ‘No.’ Her soft voice wrapped around him, hot and tight, just as she’d wrapped around his sex only minutes earlier. ‘it wasn’t what we agreed. And yet here we are.’

  ‘I won’t accept that.’ He tugged his jeans on furiously.

  That, surely, was the point. Sex. She was confusing sex with love. And so, to some degree, was he. Why else did he want to pull away all the barriers between them and crush her body until they were so close he didn’t know where he ended and she began?

  Alex merely shrugged lightly, her hurt evident, and yet she refused to apologise.