CHAPTER ONE

      SHE WAS STILL SHAKING.

      Whether it was through humiliation, anger, or simply an utter sense of failure, Alexandra Vardy—Alex to only her closest friends, Dr Vardy to most of her patients—couldn’t be sure.

      Whichever it was, it wasn’t now helped by the advancing form of infamous surgeon Louis Delaroche, whose smouldering, rebellious, bad-boy self had been plastered over the media for a decade. Between the tabloids, the internet and various entertainment news channels in all manner of graphic shots, the man was the hot topic of conversation at water coolers across the world on practically a weekly basis. And still nothing could have prepared her for the assault on her senses at being alone and this close to him.

      Alex gripped the stone balustrade of the ornate external balcony, sucked down lungfuls of the cold night air that penetrated her one and only ballgown, and reminded herself to keep breathing.

      In and out. In and out.

      ‘Why were you discussing Rainbow House with my father?’ His low voice carried in the darkness.

      ‘Discussing?’ She squeezed her eyes closed at the unpleasant memory of the run-in with Jean-Baptiste Delaroche. ‘Is that what you call that verbal mauling?’

      ‘Do you want to tell me what happened?’

      It wasn’t so much a question as a quiet command. Typical Louis. But not sinful playboy Louis; this was all pioneering surgeon Louis. The one gift he gave the world to stop it from burying him completely. She’d seen him in action and his skill was simply breathtaking.

      Still, that didn’t mean she was about to trust him now. Especially when her thoughts were such a jumbled mess.

      ‘Why would I want to tell you what happened? Aren’t you supposed to be the mercurial one of the Delaroche Duo, not your father? Isn’t he the good one? The one the media hails as one of the true philanthropists of a generation?’

      She had truly believed in that image of Jean-Baptiste, had really thought that he would help her once he knew what was planned for Rainbow House. It had never crossed her mind that he might have actually been party to the plans.

      To her horror, Alex choked back an unexpected sob. Not with Jean-Baptiste, and not now with Louis. Part of her wanted to flee this balcony, this party, this night. But she couldn’t. Not while the fate of Rainbow House still hung in the balance. The centre was the last common ground she and her father shared. If she lost that then she lost him. And they’d both lost so much already.

      She might not trust Louis, but she couldn’t bring herself not to listen to him.

      ‘That’s my father,’ Louis concurred tightly. ‘Such a good man.’

      ‘You don’t agree? Of course you don’t.’ She threw up her hands in desperation. ‘The whole world knows there is bad blood between the two of you. Are you as jealous of your father’s good name as they say you are?’

      Rather than replying, he lifted his shoulders casually and turned her question back on her. The cool, unflappable, playboy Louis the media loved to hate.

      ‘You still think he deserves his good name? After he just tried to have you thrown out of here?’

      Of all the ways he might have spoken to her, Alex wasn’t prepared for the hint of warmth, of kindness.

      Almost as if he actually cared.

      Her head swam and suddenly it all felt too much.

      ‘I... I don’t know.’

      Before she could catch herself, she slumped back against the stone balustrade, trying to order the thoughts racing around her head. A fraction of a second later, Louis was shrugging off his tuxedo jacket and settling it gently over her shoulders before resuming his position between her and the doors back inside the estate house. Whether he was protecting her from any security detail should they come looking or blocking her escape, Alex couldn’t quite be certain.

      The only reason she’d even attended the annual Delaroche Foundation Charity Gala Ball had been in the hope that she would find a quiet moment alone to speak discreetly to the eminent surgeon Jean-Baptiste and ask him if he might possibly reconsider the foundation’s unexpected decision to take over and shut down the desperately needed Rainbow House.

      She could never have predicted that the media’s beloved ‘knight in shining scrubs’ would turn on her so instantly and with such venom, even going so far as to instruct his security detail to parade her through the ballroom before throwing her out. To make an example out of her. Jean-Baptiste’s snarl still echoed in her head, causing fresh waves of nausea to swell up inside her.

      It turned out that Jean-Baptiste might be a world-class surgeon but, contrary to newspaper talk he wasn’t a particularly nice man when he chose. Briefly, she imagined telling the world what the man behind the mask was really like. But no one would ever believe her. Jean-Baptiste was an institution. If she dared to openly criticise him they’d be more likely to turn on her.

      It was a cruel twist that now, before she’d even had time to lick her wounds, Louis Delaroche—the one man now left who had it in his power to help her, but who never would—should have taken it on himself to deal with her. Crueller still that she couldn’t silence the little voice inside her that kept reminding her of that glimpse of a caring, driven Louis to which she’d so recently been privy.

      But surely it was a false hope to think she could turn to Louis? Just because she’d recently seen just how deeply he cared for his patients didn’t mean he would care about Rainbow House. Or that he would care about anything the Delaroche Foundation did. At the end of the day, he was still a playboy.

      Work hard, play harder, that was Louis’s motto. His were never mere parties but Saturnalias; he never merely drank, he caroused.

      Why, face to face with him now, did it seem so difficult to remember that side of his character?

      Even now, as she tilted her head to take him in, his famously solid figure now framed by the light spilling onto the balcony from the French doors behind him, she wasn’t sure what to make of him.

      Louis was the man who the media simply revelled in loathing. Not least because his weekly exploits—both sexual and otherwise—sold copies by their millions the world over. Since his mid-teens, Louis had been building a reputation for being larger than life with a penchant for the kind of wild parties the average person couldn’t even imagine. The scandalous occasion he and his rich friends had stolen one of their parents’ super-yachts for a raucous party, only to subsequently sink it, was probably one of the tamer of Louis’s outings.

      And he got away with it all because he was one of the most gifted young surgeons of his generation. Women wanted him and men wanted to be him. Was it any wonder his ego was as gargantuan as the rather crudely reputed size of a rather specific part of his anatomy?

      Well, she wasn’t going to be yet another addition to the lusting harem that had trailed around after him all evening. Neither did she have the energy for an unwanted fight with another Delaroche male this evening.

      Shock still resonated through her, but something else followed it. Something stronger. An inner core strength that had got her through losing her mother and her brother. Had got her through a lifetime of disappointing her father since birth. Got her to med school, to pass top of her year, and to the placements she’d wanted most.

      She would not cry in front of Louis. She’d already been the object of one unwarranted Delaroche temper this evening, and she’d be damned if she’d let another Delaroche take his pound of flesh, too.