Warmth soon became something more complicated as she felt her body react in a far more visceral way, her breathing quickening and a pull of desire working its way from her core to her extremities.
“He’s easy on the eye, isn’t he?” Laura’s voice intruded from right next to her.
“What? Oh...um, yes.” Alexis felt her cheeks flame in embarrassment at being caught out staring at the man who was essentially her boss.
“Don’t worry,” Laura said with a gentle smile. “Your secret’s safe with me.”
“Secret?”
Alexis deliberately played dumb, only to be on the receiving end of a gentle smile and a painfully understanding look.
“How long have you felt this way about him?”
Alexis sighed, the other woman’s compassion breaking down any barrier she had thought to erect.
“A few years now,” Alexis admitted, shocked that she’d given up her secret at the first sign of empathy from another person.
For so long she’d held the truth to her chest, fearful that anyone would find out how she felt and judge her for it. You didn’t get attracted to your best friend’s partner—it just wasn’t done—and you certainly didn’t act on it. That was a no-go area in every aspect.
It was terrifying to know that her secret was now out. Not even her parents had known how she felt about Raoul Benoit and, here, a virtual stranger had plucked it from her as easily as if it was a piece of lint on her sweater.
“You...you won’t say anything, will you?” she hastened to add in an undertone.
“Of course not, Alexis. To be honest, I’m glad.”
“Glad?” Alexis was confused.
“Maybe you’re exactly what he needs now, hmm? To mourn someone is one thing, but he’s been hiding away from living for far too long,” Laura said, reaching out to give Alexis’s hand a squeeze. “We all deserve a bit of happiness, right?”
“Right,” Alexis agreed numbly.
Happiness. Could she bring that elusive ingredient back into Raoul’s life? While her aim had been to reunite father and daughter, could he find room in his broken heart to consider love again?
She pushed the thought away. If he could accept Ruby into his life, she’d be satisfied. She had no right to hope for anything more.
Five
After everyone had eaten, the group of adults sat around watching their kids at play. Alexis kept her eye on Ruby as she crawled a couple of meters across the grass toward the playground where Laura and some of the other parents had taken their babies for a turn on the swings. The grass would be hell on those pink dungarees, she thought ruefully, but it was good for Ruby to be out in the fresh air and interacting with everyone else. It wouldn’t be long before tiredness would set in—she was already overdue for her nap—but Alexis wanted to prolong the fun for as long as possible.
A cry of anguish from behind her dragged her attention off the little girl, distracting her for the moment it took to return a clearly much-loved piece of tatty muslin to its stroller-bound owner. She turned her eyes back to where Ruby had been, only to feel her stomach drop. She lurched to her feet, her eyes anxiously scanning the crowd for the little splotch of pink. Her feet were already moving, taking her over the grass and toward the playground. Ah, there she was. Relief flooded Alexis with the force of a tidal wave and she covered the short distance between them as quickly as she could.
Ruby sat on her little padded butt, chewing on something she’d picked up from the ground. A small stick by the looks of it, Alexis thought as she reached her.
“What’s that she’s got?”
Raoul appeared beside them to stand over his daughter, an expression of distaste on his face as he reached down and extricated the twig from Ruby’s fingers. The baby voiced her disagreement with his action, loudly.
“I thought you were supposed to be watching her,” he accused, holding the stick out for Alexis to see it.
“I was. I—”
“Not closely enough, it seems. God only knows what else she could have picked up and put in her mouth while you weren’t looking.”
“Raoul, you’re overreacting. It’s just a twig, and off a nontoxic plant at that. Babies learn by putting things in their mouths. Don’t worry, she’s fine.”
“And if it had been a toxic plant? Or if she’d toppled over and the stick had gone into her throat? What then? Would she learn that you can die from something like that?”
There was a note of harsh censure to his voice that made her blood run cold in her veins. She should have kept a closer eye on Ruby, she knew that. It still hurt to hear Raoul speak that way to her. She reached down and gathered the little girl close to her, taking comfort from Ruby’s closeness as she soothed the baby’s cries, rubbing her back and automatically rocking gently from one foot to the other until she settled. Raoul threw the offending twig onto the ground with a sound of disgust.
“I knew this was a mistake. We’re leaving now,” he said, and turned on his heel to stride away before Alexis could answer.
“Are you okay?” Laura said as she came up beside Alexis. “I don’t mean to pry but I couldn’t help overhearing. Protective, much?”
“Yeah, he’s right, though. I should have been keeping a closer eye on Ruby.”
“He’s paranoid about losing her, isn’t he? I mean, we’re all a bit off the scale when it comes to our own kids, but with him it’s more, isn’t it?”
Alexis sighed as she watched Raoul say goodbye to his buddies and then gather their picnic bag and Ruby’s diaper bag together. His movements were short and jerky, a clear indication of his foul temper.
“Yeah, it’s definitely more.”
“He’ll come around. Y’know, we all thought that maybe he didn’t, or couldn’t, love Ruby after Bree died. That maybe he blamed her somehow. But after seeing that, I think he possibly loves her too much—that he’s afraid he’ll lose her, too.”
“I was thinking the same,” Alexis agreed. “Hey, thanks for asking us along today. Sorry it kind of ended on a sour note.”
“Don’t worry about it. We’re just glad you managed to talk him into coming. Maybe we can all get together again sometime soon.”
Alexis gave her a thin smile and said her goodbyes to the others before joining Raoul over by the picnic table where he waited with ill-concealed impatience.
“We need to talk,” he said as she drew nearer.
“When we get home,” Alexis conceded.
Yes, they did need to talk, but she had the feeling that Raoul wasn’t going to listen to her opinions no matter what she said. She flicked a glance at his stony face, lingering on the pain that reflected in his eyes. Pain that made her heart twist with longing to put things right for him. But she couldn’t do it on her own. He had to meet her halfway.
As they drove back to his house she stared blindly out the side window doubting, for the first time since she’d come here, her decision to try and help out. She was in way over her head with this situation and she lacked the objectivity she needed to get through it.
How on earth could she be objective when all she wanted to do every time she saw him was to obliterate his grief with sensation, with her love?
* * *
Raoul turned the Range Rover into the driveway at home with a measure of relief. Ruby had fretted the entire journey home, making it seem a lot longer than the twenty-minute drive it really was. He was glad to have gotten her home, but the relief didn’t compare to the fury that simmered through his body. Alexis had one job to do—look after Ruby. That was it. Except it wasn’t.
Life was so much simpler before she came along. He’d relished his time alone. Life was lonely, yes, but predictable. Safe. Now, every day was a challenge and he rose each morning not knowing what he’d face. It used to be that he’d relish a challenge like that, but not anymore. Not when each challenge came with a new emotional twist that he’d thought he’d never feel again.
He pulled the SUV to a halt outside the house and got
out, going around to the rear of the vehicle to extricate the bags and the stroller while Alexis took Ruby from her car seat.
“I’ll just give her a bottle to calm her and get her settled for a sleep.”
He responded with a curt nod. “I’ll wait for you in the study.”
While he waited he paced, and then he paced some more. He didn’t know how to handle this, how to handle Alexis, but he knew he wanted her gone. Everything had blown up into larger-than-life proportions since her arrival, and he desperately wanted to fit everything back into its neat little boxes all over again—boxes he could keep closed or open at will.
It was nearly half an hour before he heard her quiet knock on his study door. She let herself in without awaiting his acknowledgment—a suitable simile to how she behaved with him on a daily basis, he realized with a rare flash of bleak humor.
“She was a bit difficult to settle, but she’s out for the count now,” Alexis said by way of explanation as she came in and crossed the room to take a seat.
As she walked, he couldn’t help but notice that her jeans stretched tight across her hips, accentuating her very female curves. Curves that he had no business looking at, he reminded himself sternly. Except he couldn’t quite bring himself to look away. Even after she sat down in the chair opposite his desk, he remained mesmerized by the fade pattern on the denim, by the all-too-perfect fit around her thighs.
Oblivious to the battle going on in his mind, Alexis blithely continued. “She was definitely overtired, after today, but I checked her gums and she’s cutting more teeth, too, so that was probably part of the problem.”
Raoul grunted something in response before taking the chair behind the desk. He needed the physical barrier between them. Scrambling to get his thoughts together, he drew in a deep breath.
“About today—” he started, only to be cut off by Alexis speaking over him, her words chasing one after the other in a rush.
“Look, I apologize. What happened was all my fault. I took my eyes off Ruby for a few seconds and she went out of my line of vision. I shouldn’t have done it and it was wrong and I’m deeply sorry.”
“Sorry isn’t enough, Alexis. I don’t think you’re the right person for the job of caring for Ruby.”
Raoul forced himself to look at a spot just past her, so he could pretend that he didn’t see the flare of distress that suddenly crossed her features. A hank of her honey-blond hair had worked its way loose from her ponytail and she absently shoved it back behind one ear.
“Don’t you think that’s a bit of an overreaction?” she said, her voice shaking just a little.
“You’re here to mind her. You didn’t.”
“Raoul, it’s not like you weren’t there along with several other adults who could see her.”
She pushed up to her feet and leaned forward on the desk, the deep V-neck of her T-shirt gaping and affording him a breathtaking view of her breasts cupped in the palest pink lace. Flames of heat seared along his veins, taking the words he was about to utter and reducing them to ash in his mouth. He rapidly lifted his gaze to her face. Bad idea.
A flush of color stained her cheeks and her eyes shimmered with moisture making them look bigger and even more vulnerable than ever.
“Look, I admit I made a mistake,” she said fervently, her voice even more wobbly now, “but no harm came of it and I promise you I will be far more vigilant from now on. She won’t move an inch without me being on her shadow.”
“I don’t know,” he said, shaking his head and fighting back the growing physical need to reach for her that rose inexorably from deep within him.
“She needs a nanny. If not me, then who else is there, Raoul? Catherine’s not even two weeks out of surgery and she won’t be home from her sister’s for a couple of weeks yet. She couldn’t possibly be capable of chasing and looking after an active child at that point—she’ll barely be able to care for herself. Ruby could very well be walking by then, if the past few days are any indication. Who else can look after her? You?”
A cold dash of terror quelled the heat of his desire. There was no way he was assuming sole responsibility for Ruby. He simply couldn’t. If Alexis, a trained nanny, could make a mistake like today, what hope did he have?
Alexis continued with her tirade. “I suppose you could always put her into day care but is that really what Bree would have wanted? Wasn’t it always her wish to have her children raised at home? Can’t you at least respect her wishes in that? You lock yourself up in this house as if you want to bury yourself in her memory, but don’t you know how furious she’d be with you for pushing everyone away?”
“Enough!” he all but shouted back. “You’ve made your point. You have one more chance. But that’s it, Alexis.”
“What’s the matter, Raoul?” she goaded. “You don’t like to hear the truth?”
“Don’t,” he warned. “Don’t mess with what you know nothing about.”
“I know Bree would have hated to see you like this. So cold and closed down that you can’t even show love or care to your own daughter!” Alexis persisted.
Raoul flew out of his chair and around the desk, grabbing her by her upper arms and swinging her around to face him.
“You think I don’t feel? That I’m cold and don’t care? Let me show you just how wrong you are.”
Without thinking, he lowered his mouth to hers, his lips laying claim to hers with a sense of purpose that drove him to take and to plunder with little care for the consequences. She uttered a tiny moan, her arms coming up around his shoulders, her fingers pushing into his hair and holding him. Even now she sought to comfort him, it seemed.
But comfort was the last thing on his mind.
He softened his onslaught as he took the time to luxuriate in the soft plumpness of her lips, to taste the sweetly intoxicating flavor of her mouth and to—just for this moment—lose himself in sensation.
A shudder racked his body and he pulled her in closer to him, molding her body along the length of his own. Her hips tilted gently against the growing ridge of his erection, sending a spear of want through him that threatened to make his legs weaken beneath him.
His hands reached for her waist, for the hem of her shirt. He lifted the thin fabric, groaning against her as he felt the soft delicate heat of her skin. He stroked his hands upward until they came into contact with the rasp of her lacy bra. Beneath the lace her nipples jutted out, tight beads of flesh. He brushed his thumbs over them, once, twice. Oh, what he wouldn’t give to take them, one by one, into his mouth right now. To tease her and taste her. To discover every last secret of this woman who’d remained a shadow in the back of his mind from the day he’d first met her.
The thought was as sobering now as it had been back then. Reluctantly Raoul dragged his hands out from beneath her top and reached up to disengage her arms from around his neck. As he gently pushed her back his eyes met hers.
Desire reflected back at him, magnifying the demand that still surged and swelled inside him. Her lips were slightly swollen, glistening with temptation.
Raoul let her go and took a step back.
“Trust me, I feel,” he said, his breath coming in heavy puffs. “Too damn much.”
Six
Alexis stood in the study, watching Raoul’s retreating form with a stunned expression on her face. What the hell had just happened? Well, okay, realistically she knew exactly what had just happened—but why?
One second they’d been arguing, the next... She raised a shaking hand to her lips, lips that still felt the searing heat of his possession. Her entire body pulsated with energy. Energy that begged for release. She slowly shook her head in disbelief. She’d always been attracted to him, she’d known that, but this...this reaction went way further than simple attraction. This went bone deep, soul deep. And it left her wanting so much more.
Physically, she’d always been incredibly drawn to Raoul—not only to his body and his mind, but to his heart. He’d been a fabulous husband
to Bree and it was his devotion to her friend and their obvious love for one another that had made their happiness together all the more bittersweet for her to witness. Seeing how they’d felt about one another was a reminder to herself that she never wanted to settle for anything less. She wanted the kind of love that Raoul and Bree had had—the same kind of enduring love that her parents had enjoyed through multiple trials and tribulations in their marriage.
Most recently, all through her mother’s rapidly advancing early-onset dementia, Alexis’s dad had stuck by her—caring for her at home by himself, since Alexis had been overseas, until he was forced to see her admitted to hospital. Even then, he’d barely moved from her side until her death almost four months ago.
Alexis wanted that kind of devotion in a relationship. She was prepared to give it and she believed she deserved it in return. But none of the men she’d dated had ever shown that capacity for love. Then she’d met Raoul, the handsomest man she’d ever met and someone who loved so fully and deeply that it took her breath away. Was it any wonder she’d fallen for him in a matter of moments?
But what were his feelings toward her? After the blisteringly hot kiss, she knew attraction was part of it...but was that the extent of it for him? Was he capable of feeling anything more for her? She knew it was still early days for Raoul, that the pain of Bree’s death was still a simmering thing lying on the surface of his every day.
She was caught between a rock and a hard place. Did she keep gently pushing him to expose the attraction she knew he felt for her any further? Or did she wait and see what happened next after today’s kiss?
Bree would forever be a part of their lives. Ruby was full testimony to that, not to mention the fact that true love, like energy, could never be destroyed. But she also knew that love, if it existed between two people, could grow and become enriched in even the worst of situations. Her parents were the perfect example of that.
The question was, however, could Raoul Benoit give that to her? Would he ever take down the barriers he kept so firmly erected between them again?
Wanting What She Can't Have Page 5