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‘I can’t say any of my previous so-called dates have ever been interested in the view. Not the one out there, anyway.’
She shot him an exasperated look, and felt a little better.
If she had to work alongside Louis while such inappropriate longings poured through her then she needed to rediscover the light banter, the teasing back and forth they’d touched on earlier.
It was better than the alternative. Than the...kiss.
‘Are you ever more impressed with anything other than your own brilliance?’
‘Aren’t you impressed by my...brilliance?’ He quirked an eyebrow.
Something rolled and flipped low in her belly.
‘I’m more astounded by your indefatigable arrogance.’ She tried for loftiness but her own lips refused to do anything but curl upwards in amusement. His devilish grin of response wrecked her insides.
‘Thank you.’
‘It wasn’t a compliment.’
‘Oh, I would strongly disagree.’ His rich, amused voice reverberated around her.
Abruptly, he moved to stand beside her, his head turned to the same view she saw, as if trying to see it through her eyes. She suspected he had long become immune to its beauty. She wasn’t prepared for him to grow so quiet and serious.
‘But, to answer your original question, lots of things impress me. Even astound me. Especially the strength of some people’s human spirit inside and outside my OR. What you told me about your life back at the restaurant.’
His unexpected compliment made her yearn for more. Alex clenched her fists against the glass, silently cursing such weakness.
‘There was nothing impressive or astounding about my life. People have it far worse.’
‘And many don’t. Either way, few of them use it to drive them on to becoming the star pupil of one of the most sought-after anaesthetists in the country, let alone the hospital.’
She could barely think straight, let alone talk.
‘That was just work. And a bit of luck.’
‘That was you,’ he corrected softly. ‘You asked if anything impressed me and you’re right that few things do. But I’m telling you that you’re one of them.’
She hated herself for the way her heart suddenly soared. If she wasn’t careful, the press and the Delaroche Foundation board weren’t going to be the only fools to fall for this charade.
She really was like a bre
ath of fresh air.
He’d spent the entire drive fighting the urge to kiss her over and over again. To taste that delicious mouth from every angle. It had been like some kind of torture being so close to her and not allowing himself to indulge. And as for that interminably long ride in the lift...she could never know how close he’d come to hitting the emergency stop.
Yet now here he was, standing side by side with her and staring at the view as though seeing it properly for the first time in a long time—perhaps the first time ever—because of Alex. Because she was so genuine.
None of the women he’d ever brought up here had cared about the view. They weren’t the kind of women who would ever have been interested in such simple beauty. But Alex wasn’t similar to those women. She wasn’t swayed by the superficial, she cared about the things that mattered, about people who mattered. She made him start to care again. Not about his patients—that was a given—but about something other than medicine. About Rainbow House.
He’d never thought anyone could make him do that.
He’d been fighting an attraction to her ever since that first night on the balcony. Even now, he couldn’t stop himself from thinking how Alex could make a room light up just by walking into it, just as his mother had once done. Alex could make him light up. And he didn’t want her to stop.
The realisation slammed into him with such force he felt as though every last bit of air had been sucked from his body. As though his lungs were crumpling in his chest. He wanted Alex. Not just to finally wrest his inheritance back from the Delaroche Foundation, as had once been his mother’s intent, and not just to save Rainbow House from his father.
He wanted Alex because she made him feel. Something. Anything.
Not for ever, of course, because that would be nonsensical. He didn’t do long-term relationships. He never had.
