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But that wasn’t even the half of it.
‘Alexandra Vardy...’ The words certainly weren’t any he had composed in his head beforehand. They would be relayed from the diners, to the press and around the world within minutes. He told himself that was the point of saying them, but he knew that wasn’t entirely true.
‘You make me want to be a better man. A better human being.’ His voice dipped then, huskier than he might have intended. ‘Marry me.’
Her fingers had shot to her mouth, her wide-eyed expression relaxing into one of tentative hope. An unexpected fierceness shot through him; the sense that such open innocence should be cherished. Protected. She gave a halting nod and then she dropped her hands to cup his face. Something shot through him that he couldn’t put a name to.
Didn’t want to.
And still he couldn’t break the moment.
‘Say the words, Alex.’
She knitted her eyebrows at him, but he found he couldn’t let her off with it; couldn’t explain why he needed to hear her say the words.
‘Say it,’ he murmured.
She opened her mouth, closed it again, and then took a deep breath.
‘Yes. Yes, Louis, I’ll marry you.’
The fire that burst within him made no sense. Still, he stood up, gathering her into his arms and kissing her as though they were the only two people in the room. In the universe.
A blazing, hot, white light in the middle of darkness.
He might have known it couldn’t last.
They were still caught up in his thoughts when the maître d’ hurried over, his usual elegant, practised glide all but abandoned, not even attempting to speak in English for Alex, even though he’d been doing so all night.
‘I apologise for the interruption but there is an urgent call for you, Monsieur Delaroche. A serious Motocross accident involving young Florien. They think he might die.’
Everything receded from Louis’s head. Florien, the grandson of Arnaud. This was what he, Louis, excelled at—surgery, helping people medically. If there was an accident, Louis intended to be there.
* * *
Alex watched Louis, wondering what was going on. His grim expression was one she didn’t recognise and his gabbled French was too fast for her to even attempt to understand.
She knew there had been an accident...someone’s leg...a fracture maybe. Or a break.
The call he made was brief, factual. Louis was already standing and pulling a wad of notes out of his wallet, his apology curt.
‘There’s been an accident?’ she prompted as he snatched up his jacket.
‘I’m sorry, yes. A Motocross accident,’ For the first time Louis looked at her. ‘Florien, Arnaud’s grandson.’
‘A crash?’
‘He was making a jump when he realised he wasn’t going to make it and so he threw himself off the bike. But he didn’t throw himself far enough.’
That suggested impact. And if it was the top of his leg, Alex knew it didn’t sound good.
‘Femur fracture?’
‘Could be.’ Louis shrugged as they exchanged a grim look. ‘It’s too dark for them to see if there’s any shortening of the leg but I know Florien, he’s quite a tough kid. Still, it sounds like he’s in incredible pain.’
They both knew that with a femoral break the surrounding muscles would spasm, pulling one end of the broken bone past the other. It would be painful but more significantly it could cause bleeding as well as muscle and nerve damage.
The stress of the afternoon, and the euphoria of the proposal, fell away in an instant. Because of the femur’s proximity to the femoral artery, it was possible that a patient could haemorrhage to death from an isolated femur fracture. Until they got to Florien they wouldn’t have any idea how serious it was.
