‘Did it turn out the way you hoped?’
‘No. But it turned out exactly the way you said it would.’ And somehow, with Louis, it didn’t hurt as much as it had. ‘My father was pleased, perhaps grateful, but he didn’t have some epiphany. He didn’t suddenly tell me how much he loved me, or how proud of me he was. And I realised that he never would.’
‘I’m sorry.’
She blinked back the tears that pricked her eyes.
‘I realise that he never will. He loves me in his own way, but it will never be the limitless, unconditional way he loved Jack or my mother. I’ll never know what he really feels about me, and whether deep down a part of him blames me or not, but I do know that I don’t blame myself. I live my life as well as I can and if that’s enough for him then great. If not, I refuse to twist myself inside out for him any longer. I’m me, and I’m happy with who I am.’
‘That’s good.’ Louis smiled softly and it tugged at her chest, her stomach, lower.
‘And I have you to thank for helping me to see that.’
Finally, finally, she found the strength to push off from the door, to make it halfway across the room before she stopped.
‘You gave me the strength to trust in myself. You’ve allowed me to believe in myself,’ she murmured. ‘But you were wrong about one thing.’
He was watchful, immobile.
‘And what was that?’
‘I may not have recognised my underlying intentions, but I was genuine when I told you I wanted to help you stop punishing yourself. I thought I could help you move on.’
The silence stretched out between them. For a moment she thought he wasn’t going to answer.
‘You did help me,’ he said abruptly. ‘Because of you I realised I no longer felt the isolation I’d never realised I’d been experiencing. My brain was fired up with a renewed drive. I had this...this energy effervescing in my blood. Alex, you made me feel alive.’
The hot—even savage—need in his eyes was almost her undoing.
* * *
He didn’t remember reaching into his drawer, or standing up to cross the room and stand in front of her, the pretty leather box offered to her with as much ceremony as if it were a ring.
Her arrival had been as unexpected as it had been incredible, filling him with feelings he hadn’t dared to let himself experience these last few weeks. Pouring hope and light right through him. He fought the urge to scoop her into his arms and hold her close to him to try to make her feel safe, secure, cared for—to make him feel all those things—and simply waited for her to open the box.
‘A key?’
Her surprise was evident and, despite himself, laughter spilled from his lips. His Alex. If she would let him.
‘Not just any key. It’s the key to Rainbow Court Respite Holidays in what was once the stable block of Chateau Rochepont.’
‘Rainbow Court Respite Holidays?’ She turned the words over and over on her tongue as though she couldn’t quite believe it.
‘It was what my mother had always intended to do with the place,’ he said softly. ‘It’s what you kept pushing me to do. I told you I’d consider it.’
‘I remember.’ She flushed. ‘But I was pushing for all the wrong reasons. I should never have done that to you. It doesn’t matter any more. I don’t need it. I just need you.’
‘And I didn’t do this for you.’ He pulled a wry face. ‘Well, not entirely. I did it for myself. Because seeing her legacy come to fruition was something I needed to do for me. I made it one of the first things I did as the chairman of the new board of the Lefebvre Group.’
She blinked at him, then back down to the key.
‘I thought you would sell the group after all.’
‘Someone convinced me to change my mind. Someone whose opinion I respect. Someone who...I love.’
‘Love,’ the word was echoed with such awe that it scraped and teased across every inch of his body. It felt more right than he could have ever imagined to take her hands and repeat his vow to her.
‘I love you, Alexandra. You enrich my life and make me want to be a better man than I ever dreamed I could be. Marry me. Not for Rainbow House, or for the Lefebvre Group, but simply to be my wife. To spend the rest of our lives making each other happy.’
And when she kissed him, the certainty in her eyes shining out brighter than any jewel that could ever exist, any last shadows of the demons that had lurked inside both of them were finally banished for good.
‘Say the words,’ he commanded, finding himself wanting to hear them. Needing her to voice them.
‘Which words?’ she murmured against his mouth, hot and inviting and sensual. Teasing him as though they had all the time in the world. And maybe they did. ‘Oh, you mean tell you I love you?’
‘I warn you.’ He bit gently at her lip as she squirmed in pleasure. ‘Two can play that game.’
‘I’m counting on it.’ She rocked against him, deliberately slowly, provocatively. ‘Which is exactly why I love you.’
‘Again.’
‘I love you, Louis.’
And he knew, with bone-deep conviction, that his redemption was complete. Alex was his just as he would always be hers. Not because there was a means to an end but because this was the end. And the beginning.
This time was for real.
* * * * *
If you enjoyed this story, check out these other great reads from Charlotte Hawkes
TEMPTED BY DR. OFF-LIMITS
ENCOUNTER WITH A COMMANDING OFFICER
THE SURGEON’S BABY SURPRISE
THE ARMY DOC’S SECRET WIFE
All available now!
Keep reading for an excerpt from TEMPTED BY THE BROODING SURGEON by Robin Gianna.
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Tempted by the Brooding Surgeon
by Robin Gianna
CHAPTER ONE
WHAT CAN GO wrong will go wrong.
Annabelle Richards had no idea who’d said that first but, boy, they sure were right. What should have been a ten-hour flight from Chicago to Lima, Peru, then another hour and a half travel to the mission hospital, had turned into a forty-eight-hour delay. She was finally in the back of a taxi, dead tired from lack of sleep and running late for what should have been the second day of her posting at the hospital but was now day one because of her delays. She was scheduled to start at 8:00 a.m. Just seven minutes away.
She leaned forward to ask the taxi driver the same question she’d already asked a dozen times. “Are we close?”
“Sí. Soon, señorita. Short minutes more.”
Annabelle tried to relax back into the vinyl seat of the dusty cab, but the tightness in her gut kept her sitting upright. The entire surgical team was likely already annoyed, her lateness interrupting their carefully designed schedule and putting everyone behind on attending to all the patients they’d hoped to see. She could only pray that the first surgery scheduled this morning wasn’t something life-threatening.
What if someone died because she wasn’t there in time to get them anesthetized and intubated? What if one of their small patients had gotten sicker yesterday while they’d waited for her, making today’s surgeries even more serious?
How had everything gone so wrong all at the same time?
First, the transport monitor she’d worked months to have donated for this trip had gotten locked into a storage room that no one had seemed to have the key for. A frantic hour had gone by before she’d finally retrieved it, then torn to the airport, panicking that she’d miss her flight. Which, of course, she had. Then weather delays and missed connections added to the disaster.
Looking back, it was all her own stupid fault for being so determined to bring the monitor, instead of having it shipped. Except the whole reason she’d waited around to get it was because the last time she was here, a tiny premature baby had almost died without a monitor to check his heart rate and other vital signs.
She could only hope that missing a day of surgeries because of it hadn’t resulted in a child dying anyway.
She scrubbed her hands down her cheeks, her nerves practically screaming with the need to finally get to the clinic. Being physically there and on time was more important than equipment any day.
Hadn’t she been told more than once that her dog-with-a-bone determination got her into trouble sometimes? This sure was one of those times, and the trouble just kept coming. The huge delay had meant she’d also missed her meeting at the hospital in Lima. A beyond important meeting that might have saved her old school from being shut down in a matter of months. And now her dream to turn the school into a medical training facility for impoverished youths just might be doomed to failure.
Annabelle stared out the window at the passing landscape, wanting to distract herself before she went further into a panic spiral. The gorgeous, deep blue ocean and white sand beaches on one side below the road were in starkly colorful contrast to the green and brown mountains on the other side. Beautiful cliff-side homes and rickety shanties made of whatever hodgepodge of materials folks could get their hands on dotted the lush landscape.
The poverty in her old neighborhood was more than real. But in so many ways it couldn’t compare to the tiny, leaky places so many people here in Peru called home. Whenever families heard the medical mission crews were coming to an area, they’d trek for miles, hoping their child would be chosen to receive surgery and care. They’d sleep on the ground and patiently line up for their children to be seen, and if they were told that their child couldn’t be taken care of, that there was no more room in the schedule, they’d smile and thank the doctors and nurses, saying they’d be back to try again next time.
Helping those children was beyond important. Somehow, she had to find a way to get the meeting in Lima rescheduled so she could get the partnership and funding to give underprivileged kids a dream and a goal, while still taking care of as many patients needing surgery here as possible.
The taxi driver finally turned off the main road, and she sat up straight again, relief surging through her veins as she recognized the landscape. “Is this it? Are we about there?”
“Sí. Just up the hill a couple of miles.”
Thank God.
The cab lurched to a stop where the road ended, which left another five hundred or so feet to the small hospital OR. On an uphill slope she knew wasn’t easy to navigate, especially when it rained. “Just put my suitcase and the rest of the stuff on that rock there, please,” she said, pointing. “I’ll get it later.”
He nodded and did as she asked before she stuffed a wad of money in his hand. Being in a position to give a generous tip to someone she knew needed it always awed her and thrilled her, after so many years of having nothing herself. “Thanks so much. Can you hand me the monitor so I can carry it easier?”
The sketchy Spanish she’d been painstakingly learning, along with a few gestures, seemed to get her message across and he deposited the equipment into her wide open arms with a grin and a nod. “Adios.”
“Adios! Thanks again.”
Annabel turned to trudge up the hill, slipping a little on small stones as she went. Had the path always been this long? Huffing and puffing and only about halfway there, it felt very possible that her arms might crack off from the heavy weight of the patient monitor before she even got to the operating room. If she’d had any brains, she should have paid the man extra money to carry it for her. But since she knew everyone was waiting for her to finally show up, pausing to put down the awkward thing and catch her breath wasn’t an option.
Thrashing herself all over again for not thinking this through, Annabelle heaved the transport monitor higher against her chest, praying she didn’t drop it before it could even be used. Wouldn’t that just be the icing on the disaster cake?
Sweat rolled down her back, morphing from a trickle to a waterfall despite it being only about seventy degrees on an early March morning, and every hurried step seemed to add another pound to the weight in her arms. A few more lurching steps, and she topped the rise. Seeing the cement block building that made do as an operating room in this part of Peru would have her whooping if she’d had any breath left, but instead she sagged in relief.
She’d made it.
Trying hard to ignore the way the monitor jabbed her breasts and the sharply painful muscle twisting in her shoulder, she bit her lip to keep from cursing. Finally, she got the doorknob turned and the door shoved open with her shoulder.
“So sorry I’m late,” she said breathlessly to anyone listening as she stumbled into the sparse room. “And that I missed yesterday, too. I hope you were able to take care of nonsurgical stuff since I wasn’t here but, still, I know it wasn’t good that I missed my flight. Really sorry about that.”
Quickly scanning the space to take in the small assembly of medical professionals near the surgical bed, she saw the familiar face of a Peruvian nurse named Karina whom she’d worked with here before, and her friend, Jen, who worked in a different hospital in Chicago.
“Hi!” Annabelle said with a smile and an accompanying wave of her few free fingers. The lack of return smiles, along with the worry on their faces, briefly registered before she looked down at the small patient they were crowded around, who was lying on the bed and staring up at her somberly.
“Hello, buddy!”
She sent him a reassuring grin before looking for a table close enough to the patient to set the monitor down, her arms beyond desperate to be relieved of the heavy machine.
“Oh, my gosh, this thing weighs a ton! Where can I put it? I hope you all haven’t been waiting for me too long. Getting here has been one problem after another! First there was a delay getting the monitor at the hospital, which made me miss my stupid flight. Then I hit bad weather and missed my connection, which was even worse. Plus, I had no idea airport security would take such a crazy long time examining the monitor this morning, and I—”
“Most of our surgeries have been done without a monitor in the past. If security had a problem with it, you should have left it at the airport. Or shipped it to begin with, which would have prevented all your problems so you could be here on time.”
Annabelle froze, her heart knocked hard against her ribs, and suddenly she couldn’t breathe at all.
That voice. The cold tone. The stinging criticism. All were too horrifyingly familiar. Forcing herself to slowly turn toward the tall, gowned man standing with his arms folded across his ch
est next to the patient, her worst fears were confirmed.
She may not have seen him for five years, but she’d recognize those hard brown eyes anywhere. The cut cheekbones. The bronzed skin. The displeasure and disdain on his face. The lips that were inexplicably sensuously shaped, even when pressed together in clear annoyance.
Dr. Daniel Ferrera in the flesh.
The man who had sabotaged her first career goals.
Gulping, she tried to pull air into her lungs. How could this be? How was it possible that of all the cardiac surgeons in the whole world, he was the one here on this mission trip in Peru?
“Making us miss an entire day of surgeries yesterday was unfair to everyone else, both the patients and the surgical team who took valuable vacation time to be here, Dr. Richards. And this morning you’ve kept the patient waiting for his surgery, making it so fewer patients will get seen today and all week, disappointing the families hoping their child will be taken care of since we won’t be able to fit in nearly as many because of your actions.”
Condemnation filled his dark eyes as they seared into hers. “I could have sent someone to get the monitor from the airport later, while you were here doing your job, but apparently some things never change.”
“I... The monitor was donated by a benefactor.”
“And the benefactor is more important than our patients here?”
“No. No, of course not. But I had to make sure the monitor arrived safely. When I was here last, we almost lost a patient because there was no monitor. A premature infant, and that’s just not acceptable if there’s any way to avoid it. So I decided to bring one here this time.” Icy shock numbed her brain, making it hard to speak coherently, and her insides seemed to squeeze and sag along with her arms under the heavy weight of the monitor as she stared at him.
Daniel must have seen her struggling to hold the machine, as a disgusted sound left his lips before he strode to take it from her, sliding it onto a nearby metal table.
A Bride to Redeem Him Page 18