Wanting What She Can't Have Read Online Free PDF

keep as much distance between himself and them as possible.
    * * *
    Alexis watched him go, unable to stop herself from enjoying the view, finally letting out a sigh and turning away when he hitched up his pajama bottoms before they dipped any lower. He’d always been a beautiful man and it had almost hurt her eyes to see him nearly naked like that. His weight loss had only given his muscled strength more definition, particularly the long lean line that ran from his hip down under the waistband of his pants. Oh, yes, he still pinged every single one of her feminine receptors—big time.
    She’d been glad for the distraction of settling Ruby or she might have done something stupid—like reach out and touch him. She might have followed that line to see what lay beneath it. To see whether she’d imagined his reaction to her own body before he’d so valiantly controlled it back into submission. Her mouth dried and her fingertips tingled at the thought. She closed her eyes briefly in an attempt to force the visual memory of him from her mind but it only served to imprint him even deeper.
    No, acting on her ridiculous impulses would only complicate things beyond control. Her attraction to him was just as pointless as it had always been, and dwelling on it wouldn’t do either one of them any good. She was here to do a job and she was doing it well—no matter how often he’d already managed to suggest otherwise in the short time she’d been here.
    She’d taken a risk making him hold Ruby like that but it had given her the answer to a question she’d been asking herself all week. And just as she’d suspected, big, strong, successful Raoul Benoit was scared. Terrified, to be exact. Not so much of his own daughter—although, there was something of that, too—but for her.
    Alexis hummed as she collected a few toys for Ruby to play with while she took the baby to her room so she could get dressed for the day. As she did so, her mind turned over her discovery. It all began to make sense. His reluctance to be in the same room as Ruby, to hold her or to interact with her in any way. His near obsession with her safety. Obviously he’d felt she was secure in her grandmother’s care, somewhere where he could ensure she was out of sight and out of mind. Someone else’s problem.
    But when she was close enough for him to hear her cries, all his fears took over. His instincts as a father had clearly propelled him into Ruby’s room when she had woken this morning, but once there he had hardly any idea of what to do with them. She could help with that, could teach him—if he’d let her.
    “Bree, it’s going to be a hard road getting him back but I think we’ve made the first step,” she said out loud to the photo of her friend that she’d put on the bedside table in her room.
    Warmth bloomed in her chest and it was almost as if she felt her friend’s approval slide through her before disappearing again. Dismissing the thought as being fanciful, Alexis quickly dressed for the day and scooped Ruby back up off the floor.
    “C’mon, munchkin. Let’s go find us some breakfast!”
    She spun around, the movement making Ruby chuckle in delight. Yes, everything was going to be all right. She just had to keep believing it was possible.
    * * *
    Over the next few days Raoul remained pretty scarce, which served as a source of major frustration. Alexis wanted to gently include him in more of Ruby’s routine here and there, but he always managed to duck away before she had a chance. On the bright side, the brief interaction Ruby had shared with her father seemed to have piqued her curiosity about the stern-faced man who hung around the fringes of her little world. Instead of crying every time she saw him she was more inclined to drop everything and barrel forward on all fours toward him if he so much as made a step into her periphery.
    It was both highly amusing to see him realize that Ruby had fixated on him, and a bit sad, as well,