Redeemed by Contract

CHAPTER ONE

ISABELLA

Alexander Thorne does not smile for photographs.

I know this because there are thousands of them scattered across business magazines, society columns, and newspaper pages that follow every movement of the Thorne family as though the stability of the British economy might somehow depend on the expressions on their faces.

There are photographs of Alexander stepping out of black cars, entering glass-fronted buildings, and striding through airports with a phone pressed to his ear while three men struggle to keep pace behind him.

In some, he stands beside politicians; in others, he shakes hands with businessmen old enough to be his father, although every one of them looks at least slightly intimidated by him.

Magazine covers use words like ruthless, incisive, and relentless, usually printed in enormous type, as if they were describing a particularly efficient machine rather than a man.

In none of those photographs is Alexander smiling, which is why I remain in the kitchen doorway for several seconds, leaning against the frame and simply watching him before he notices that I am there.

Clear morning light pours through the windows overlooking the garden and spreads across the marble island, catching on utensils Alexander probably could not name if his life depended on it.

His back is to me, the sleeves of his white shirt rolled to his forearms, and he is holding a knife far too small for his hand.

The concentration with which he is attempting to slice strawberries would be more appropriate to a negotiation involving several billion pounds, although the results do not remotely justify the effort.

Some pieces are thick, others almost transparent, and at least one appears to have been mutilated during some kind of nervous breakdown.

Alexander studies his handiwork for a moment, drops another victim into the bowl, and then smiles to himself over a collection of badly butchered fruit.

The expression changes his entire face. It softens the line of his usually tense mouth and reveals a faint indentation beside his left cheek, so subtle that anyone who knows him only through photographs would never realize it exists.

I know it does. I know that little mark and the handful of things capable of making it appear.

Alexander smiles when he thinks he has solved a problem before I have, when he hears me singing the wrong lyrics to a song, and when he believes I am asleep while he runs his fingers through my hair.

Even so, seeing him like this, unguarded and absurdly pleased with himself over a bowl of massacred strawberries, sends a familiar warmth through the center of my chest.

“You do realize we have people who can do that for us, don’t you?”

The knife stops in midair.

Alexander turns his head and, for the briefest instant, I see the man from the magazine covers: alert, controlled, already assessing the possibility of a threat. Then his eyes find mine. The smile disappears, only to return almost immediately, smaller this time and far more intimate.

Mine.

“You should still be asleep,” he says.

“It’s half past nine.”

“Exactly.”

I uncross my arms and walk toward the island. The floor is cold beneath my bare feet, but the kitchen is warm with the smell of freshly brewed coffee and pastry.

“Normal people have been awake for hours.”

“Normal people don’t stay up until two in the morning deciding between two identical shades of white for table linens.”

“Ivory and alabaster are not identical.”

“Of course not. One is white, whereas the other is…” He looks at me, waiting for assistance.

“Alabaster.”

“An essential distinction.”

Ignoring the sarcasm, I inspect the island.

A breakfast tray has been arranged with the excessive care Alexander brings to everything he decides to do.

Alongside the coffee and mutilated fruit are still-warm croissants, butter, honey, and the raspberry preserves I like from a delicatessen on the other side of the city.

I touch the small glass jar. “What’s all this?”

“I believe it’s called breakfast.”

“I’m familiar with the concept. I’m asking why you made it.”

He sets the knife down on the chopping board and wipes his hands on a tea towel. “Because yesterday you complained that I never do anything romantic.”

“I said having your assistant book an entire restaurant in Paris doesn’t count as spontaneity.”

“The reservation was my idea.”

“The execution involved your assistant, the pilot, the driver, and at least four members of the restaurant staff.”

Alexander glances at the bowl as though the strawberries might testify in his defense. “So I cut those myself.”

I pick up one especially misshapen piece and hold it between two fingers. “We’re making progress. Give it another few years and you might be able to manage a salad.”

“Don’t push your luck.”

I laugh, but Alexander is already in front of me. His hands settle around my waist and he draws me close, fitting my body against his with the ease of someone who does this every day and yet has never once made it feel automatic.

The difference between the man the world knows and the one who exists when no one is watching still catches me off guard.

Outside this house, Alexander can silence an entire boardroom merely by lifting his eyes.

Executives rehearse presentations for days before bringing proposals to him, and journalists dissect his rare public statements in search of hidden meanings.

With me, he buries his face against my neck because he knows my loose curls tickle his nose.

I feel his breath against my skin. “Are you smelling my hair?”

“I’m checking something.”

“What?”

Alexander inhales again without the slightest embarrassment. “You changed your shampoo.”

I tilt my head so I can look at him. “You’re terrifying.”

“It’s the one you liked at the hotel in Rome.”

“The fact that you know exactly which one does not make this less disturbing.”

“You liked it,” he repeats, as though that settles the matter.

His hand moves slowly over my back, leaving warmth in its wake, and for several seconds I forget about the breakfast tray, the wedding preparations, and the decorator who intends to show me another twelve variations of white before lunch.

There are twenty-three days left until our wedding, and the thought still feels faintly absurd, not because I have doubts but because it is difficult to imagine Alexander Thorne married, sharing a life that for so many years appeared deliberately constructed to leave room for no one else.

He belongs to that particular category of men who own properties in countries they visit for two weeks a year, fly to another continent because a meeting apparently cannot wait until morning, and know the exact valuation of an entire company without having the slightest idea what a litre of milk costs.

Men with drivers, private jets, personal solicitors, and almost no interest in anything that cannot be measured in terms of return on investment.

At least, that was what I thought when I first met him.

Two years ago, I was part of the team hired to overhaul the visual identity of one of the companies within the Thorne Group.

During the final presentation, I stood up too quickly, knocked into the table, and poured an entire cappuccino over Alexander’s suit.

Not metaphorically, and not a few discreet drops that could be dabbed away with a napkin, but an entire cappuccino.

Coffee ran down his shirt, soaked his tie, and spread across a jacket that, as I later discovered, cost more than I earned in three months. It happened in front of eleven executives, two lawyers, and the director of my agency, whose face immediately assumed a deeply concerning shade.

The room fell into the kind of silence usually reserved for funerals.

I apologized, searched frantically for something to clean up the disaster, and somehow made matters worse by yanking half a dozen tissues from the box at once. Alexander remained completely still, looking first at the stain and then at me, before asking my name.

Still panicking, I told him it was written on my badge.

To this day, I have no idea where that courage came from. Perhaps it was simply the survival instinct of a woman convinced she had just lost her job and therefore had nothing left to preserve.

Three days later, flowers arrived at my office. They were not a tasteful arrangement but so many flowers that they blocked half the reception area and triggered an allergy attack in one of the accountants. Hidden among them was an invitation to dinner, which I declined.

The following week, a second invitation arrived, this time accompanied only by a box of chocolates. I declined that one too, although I kept the chocolates.

The third time, there was nothing but a card.

I’m running out of dignified ways to be rejected.

I accepted because it made me laugh. At least, that was what I told myself as I chose a dress and pretended I was not curious to discover whether the most intimidating man I had ever met was capable of sustaining a conversation that did not involve acquisitions or financial projections.

He took me to a small restaurant with no photographers outside and no dining room emptied by his staff.

He asked about my work, my mother, the books I loved, and where I would go if I could leave that very night.

When I answered, Alexander did not try to impress me by pointing out that he could take me there.

He simply listened, and that was how everything began.

Now, two years later, we are standing in an oversized kitchen in a house I am still learning to call ours, arguing about strawberries and table linens while my engagement ring catches the morning light.

Alexander presses his lips to my forehead. “You’re thinking too much.”

“You say that as though thinking were a character flaw.”

“When you make that line, it is.”