‘Your brother?’ Louis demanded sharply.
She flicked out a tongue over her lips, managing a stiff nod of confirmation.
‘Yes. Jack.’
‘And now?’ His voice softened a fraction, he sounded almost empathetic. A flashback to the Louis who only usually emerged for his patients.
If anything, that just made it harder for her to keep her emotions in check. Alex fought to keep her voice even, the air winding its way around her.
‘He died. Twenty-one years ago. He was eleven. I was eight.’
‘I’m sorry.’
Simple. Sincere. And all the more touching for it.
‘Thank you.’
Instantly the air finished winding its way around her and instead began slowly constricting her. Like a python immobilising its prey. And she felt she was sinking into the depths of those rich-coloured eyes.
She fought to control her heart as it hammered so loudly within her ribcage that he must surely be able to hear it. And then abruptly, rather than suffocating her, the silence seemed to cloak them, drawing them a little closer together and almost suggesting an intimacy that hadn’t been there before. She realised she was holding her breath, not wanting to break the spell.
Funny, because she was usually so quick to move conversations on from talking about her brother.
‘So that’s why Rainbow House means so much to you.’
‘Right,’ she agreed, shutting off the little voice that urged her to tell him about her father.
Where did that come from? That was no one else’s business but her and her father’s. Certainly not Louis’s. She lifted her head, determined to throw it back onto him.
‘I suppose that’s why I don’t understand why Rainbow House doesn’t mean as much to you. Given what it meant to your mother.’
The icy change was instantaneous. She might as well have struck him physically. He reacted as though she had. Reeling backwards before he could stop himself, even as he recovered his composure.
‘I don’t know what that means. So when is this closure supposed to be taking place
?’
It all happened so fast that anyone else might have missed it. They probably would have. But she wasn’t anyone. It was her skill for observing the little things, picking up on the faintest of shifts, whether in patient symptoms, monitor readings or merely attitude, which made her particularly good at her job. A skill in which she had always taken such pride.
Right now, it was an unexpected glimpse of the less-than-perfect image of Louis that he carefully hid from eager media eyes. She couldn’t help pressing him.
‘It means I know your mother was Celine Lefebvre, and I know it was your maternal family who founded Rainbow House over fifty years ago when your aunt, your mother’s younger sister, was diagnosed with childhood leukaemia.’
‘How quaint that you know a little of my family history.’
His voice was as fascinating yet deadly as the ninja stars that her brother had always dreamed of one day being able to master. A dangerous cocktail of sadness, frustration and desperate hope flooded through her.
‘I also know that your mother fought hard to keep Rainbow House open over twenty-five years ago when original Lefebvre Group members who had been appointed were running it into the ground. That was around the time she convinced your father to set up the Delaroche Foundation and oversee the group until you were of an age to take control. I’m guessing that she expected to train you to run it but...she never got the opportunity.’
‘Which means it’s nothing to do with me now.’
She wished more than anything she could decipher that expression behind his concrete-coloured eyes. But the longer she stared into them, the more unreachable he seemed to be. Her voice rose in desperation.
‘She left control of Lefebvre Group to you. You could stop the foundation from doing this. Surely, for the sake of her memory, it shouldn’t be so far beneath your concern?’
‘Careful.’
It was one word of caution and it shouldn’t have sounded so menacing. So full of control. But it had, and Alex shivered, feeling the sharp edges of the stonework cutting into her fingers.