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‘Are you suggesting I get married just to inherit control of a place I don’t even care about?’
‘You do care,’ she pointed out. ‘You wouldn’t have rescued me from your father or indeed still be here, talking to me about it, if a part of you didn’t care.’
‘You’re mistaken.’ Louis frowned. ‘And as for the idea of marriage, you really think it would be morally just to inflict playboy me on any woman?’
She actually snorted at him. No one had ever done that in his life. She was either very brave or very foolish.
He found he was intrigued to discover which it was.
‘If you put the idea out there, I can see a whole host of volunteers ready to play the part just to be married to Louis Delaroche.’
‘Is that so?’
‘That’s so.’ She nodded firmly and he tried not to let his eyes slide to the way it made her breasts jiggle in that sexy sheath of a dress.
Man, what was wrong with him? Jiggle? Really?
‘It’s honestly that simple,’ she insisted, dragging him back to the present. ‘You get married and the Lefebvre Group passes to you.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he couldn’t help but tease her, ‘you’re putting marriage and me into the same sentence and you’re calling it simple?’
She wrinkled her nose again and the guileless, girlish mannerism shot straight to his sex. So different from the manipulative females he’d been dating for too long. Who he was better off dating, because they were as jaded as he was.
Alex wasn’t jaded.
Alex was vibrant, and direct, and he felt as though she was breathing new life into him.
He should leave now. Before he sucked all the life out of her.
‘And how about you?’ He dropped his voice to a whiskey-gruff tone.
Unable to quash the urge to seduce her.
It worked, as he’d known it would. If she glowed any brighter, one of the helicopters bringing guests in to the ball might have mistaken her for a helipad beacon.
‘Sorry?’
‘How about you? Would you be prepared to play the part, just for me to save Rainbow House?’
He told himself he’d meant it as a joke, to see how far he could push her. He suspected that wasn’t the real reason.
‘Not if you were the last hope for mankind.’
She tipped her chin up with defiance, meeting his gaze as though she was completely immune to the obvious attraction that sparked and cracked between them. But he knew how to read people, how to read women, and the staining on her cheeks revealed that she wasn’t as unaffected as she pretended to be.
‘It seems you have me at a disadvantage.’ He held his hands palms up in placation. ‘Since you know who I am, while, regrettably, I don’t know who you are, shall we start over, this time with introductions?’
She narrowed her eyes, apparently searching for a catch. Her breath was still coming out a little raggedly. He took care not to focus on it. Or the way her pulse flickered at the base of her throat in a way that seemed to scrape inside him.
‘Alexandra Vardy,’ she acknowledged at length, although her tone was clearly still defensive. ‘Alex.’
‘Alex, then,’ he replied. Then frowned. ‘Alex Vardy? I know that name.’
She appeared pleasantly surprised despite herself, even if she subsequently shook her head, as though it didn’t make any difference.
‘I was in your surgery last week.’
‘I don’t think so,’ he challenged her. ‘My surgeries are strictly closed-door procedures. I attract too much press interest. The last thing my patients need are journalists sneaking in because they can watch one of my surgeries without being challenged.’
