out the emotional mess she was in which, thinking about it, she realised she seemed to be sorting out rather nicely, all things taken into account.
‘There’s a point to my timely reminder of the problems you’re facing,.’ Lucas leaned forward, resting his forearms on his thighs. He wondered where he should start. Her mouth was pursed into a sulky downturn, her eternally upbeat personality dampened by the way he had forced unpleasant reality upon her.
‘And that point being...?’
‘Point being that I’m about to come to your rescue. In fact, I’m about to open up your world to tantalising new possibilities, and in return all you have to do for me is one small favour.’
MILLY STARED AT Lucas in confusion. For a few seconds, she wondered whether he was joking, whether he was having a laugh at her expense, somehow getting his own back for the tantrum she had pulled earlier.
She dismissed that idea as fast as it had come. His face was impassive, deadly serious. And if her gut was telling her that he wasn’t the sort of guy who liked tantrums, it was also telling her that he wasn’t the sort of guy who would do anything to get his own back for something as silly as her snapping at him.
Whether he had deserved it or not. Which he had. More or less.
‘Tantalising new possibilities?’ she laughed a little weakly. ‘Are you feeling okay, Lucas? How are you going to open up my world to tantalising new possibilities?’ She wished he would stop looking at her like that, with such deadly calm.
‘You might be a little...surprised by what I’m about to tell you.’
‘Then don’t tell me,’ she said promptly. ‘I hate surprises. They’re never good.’
‘Well, that’s one thing we have in common,’ Lucas murmured, momentarily distracted. He stood up and she followed the easy, fluid movement of his long body with something close to compulsion. He walked across to the window and stared out and, even with his back to her, she could tell that he wasn’t really seeing what he appeared to be staring at. She could sense his distraction and that made her nervous because, and she could see this now, there was something so intensely focused about him. Distracted was not his normal frame of mind.
He spun round, caught her staring at him and allowed himself a small smile which immediately made her glower. And that was why he was just so damned arrogant, she thought. Because women followed him with their eyes, irresistibly drawn to mindless gazing.
‘I’m not quite the person you think I am.’
For a few seconds, Milly thought that perhaps she had misheard him. Who on earth ever said stuff like that? Her mouth fell open and she stared at him in silence, waiting for him to enlarge on that enigmatic statement.
Lucas was taking his time. He walked slowly back towards her, maintaining eye contact.
‘And, before your over-active imagination starts casting me in the starring role of homicidal maniac, you can rest assured that it’s nothing like that.’ He sat down and continued looking at her thoughtfully, trying on the various options at his disposal for telling her who he really was and what he wanted from her. And why. Much as he loathed justifying his decisions to anyone, he would have no choice in this circumstance.
‘The Ramos family,’ he began. ‘This house...everything in it...doesn’t belong to them.’
‘Oh, please...’ Milly raised her eyebrows in rampant disbelief. ‘I don’t know where you’re going with this but I know for a fact that it does. You forget that snooty Sandra employed me to work for them. I was given all their details. Are you going to tell me that she made the whole thing up? That there are no such people? Plus, you’re forgetting that Mr Ramos paid me for my time here!’
She shot him a look of triumph at winning this argument, mixed with pity that he had chosen to come out with such a glaring lie. The combination felt good, especially after the way he had hauled her out of the café in front of everyone. Triumph and pity...she savoured the feeling for a few seconds and threw in a kindly but condescending smile for good measure.
Lucas, she noted, didn’t come close to looking sheepish.
‘Of course he paid you,’ he said, brushing aside that detail as casually as someone brushing aside a piffling point of view that carried no weight. ‘He paid you because I told him to.’
‘Because you told him to...’ Milly burst out laughing and, when eventually her laughter had turned to broken giggles, she carried on, very gently, ‘I think you might be delusional. I know you fancy yourself as some kind of hot shot just because you happen to work for loads of rich people and you probably have them eating out of your hand...’ Especially the women. ‘But the bottom line is that you’re still just a ski instructor’
Lucas kissed sweet, rueful goodbye to his very brief window of normality.
‘Not quite...’
‘I mean,’ Milly expanded, ignoring him, ‘it’s a bit like me saying that I own five Michelin-starred restaurants when in fact I just happen to work behind the scenes for an average hotel in West London.’
‘Worked,’ Lucas swiftly reminded her and she scowled at the reminder. ‘You worked at an average hotel in West London. Don’t forget that you’re now jobless.’
‘I hadn’t forgotten,’ Milly said through gritted teeth. ‘And I still don’t know where you’re going with this.’
Lucas sighed and raked his fingers through his hair, then he reached for his computer, which was on the glass table next to him.
With a start of surprise he realised that for the first time in a very long time indeed work had not been the overriding thought in his head. In fact, he had a backlog of emails to work his way through, emails to which he had given precious little thought. Dark eyes lazily took in the diminutive girl in front of him sitting in a lotus position, her long hair flowing in rivulets over her shoulders. Self-restraint with a sexy member of the opposite sex had clearly had an effect on his ability to concentrate to his usual formidably high levels.
He kick-started the computer and when he had found what he had been looking for he swivelled the computer towards her.
Milly looked at him sceptically. Did anything faze this guy? Whatever the situation, he was the very picture of cool. Chewing her out in the middle of an expensive café in one of the most expensive ski resorts on the planet: cool. Arranging for her to stay in the ski lodge: cool. Telling her a string of real whoppers about the extent of his influence: cool.
‘You’re not meant to carry on sitting there,’ Lucas informed her gently. ‘You’re meant to get close enough to the computer so that you can actually read what I’ve flagged up.’
Accustomed to having the world jump to his commands without asking questions, Lucas had a brief moment of wondering whether she intended stubbornly to stay put until he was forced to bring the computer to her. However, after a few seconds of jaundiced hesitation, Milly stood up and then sat on the sofa, back in her cross-legged position, so that she could read his extensive bio.
Lucas watched her. She didn’t have to say anything; her face said it all: calm and superior, morphing into frowning puzzlement, then finally incredulity.
Then she did it all over again as she re-read the article, which, fawningly and in depth, traced his lineage and every single one of his achievements, from university degrees to acquisitions of companies. Much was made of his background and the limitless privileges into which he had been born.
He had been personally interviewed for this article. It had come hard on the heels of his unfortunate experience with his gold-digging almost-fiancée, and he had not been predisposed to be anything but brusque with the glamorous blonde whose job it had been to glean some scintillating ‘heard it from