‘Maybe it’s because you’ve suddenly turned the colour of puce. Or maybe it’s because you have a face that’s as transparent as a pane of glass. Pick either option. The food’s delicious, by the way. Were it not for the red hair, I would be tempted to think that you have a streak of Italian running through you.’
‘Auburn, not red. I don’t like the word “red”,’ Milly automatically asserted, still staring down at her plate.
‘Spit it out, Milly of the “auburn not red” hair...’
‘Well, you probably wouldn’t like it.’
Lucas helped himself to more pasta, poured himself another glass of wine and allowed the silence to stretch between them. Eventually, he rescued her from her agonising indecision.
‘Trust me, I’m built like a brick wall when it comes to being offended.’ Not that he could think, offhand, of anyone who would dare say something offensive to him. The joys of wealth and power.
‘You really are arrogant, aren’t you?’ Milly said distractedly and he delivered her a slashing smile that temporarily knocked her for six. ‘Well, if you must know, I just wondered whether you managed to pull strings because you’re sleeping with Mrs Ramos...’ She said it in one rushed sentence and then held her breath and waited for a reply.
For a few seconds, Lucas didn’t actually believe what he had just heard and then, when it had sunk in, he wasn’t sure whether to be outraged, amused or incredulous.
‘Well...’ She dragged that one syllable out, licking her lips nervously. ‘It makes a weird kind of sense.’
‘In what world does it make a weird kind of sense?’
‘How else would you be able to get me my job and ensure that I get paid for it?’
‘Ski instructors can have a lot of influence, as it happens.’ Lucas skirted over that sweeping and vague statement because it was one thing to delicately economise on the truth and another to lie outright, especially to someone who, he suspected, had probably never told so much as a white lie in her entire life. ‘I’ve helped Alberto out on a number of occasions and, put it this way, he was more than happy to do as I asked. Furthermore, I would never go near a married woman.’
‘You wouldn’t?’
‘Don’t tell me—all the ski instructors you’ve met have been more than obliging with women whether they were wearing wedding rings on their fingers or not?’
‘Their reputations can be a little racy.’ But she breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Just one other small thing...’
‘You do take testing conversations to the outer limits, don’t you?’
‘I wouldn’t normally...er...choose to be alone in a ski lodge with someone I actually don’t know.’
This time Lucas was outraged. He flung his hands in the air in a gesture that was mesmerising and typically foreign and leaned back into his chair. ‘So, not only do you clock me for a womaniser who doesn’t bother to discriminate between single and married women, but now I’m a pervert!’
‘No!’ Milly squeaked, on the verge of telling him to keep his voice down because, with all the food and wine they had consumed, guilt was making its presence felt in a very intrusive way. It would be just her luck to find out that he hadn’t made any phone calls at all, that he was in fact a burglar who had decided to make himself at home before getting down to the serious business of nicking the silver, and to top it off somewhere lurking behind a wall was Sandra and her band of blond-haired guard dogs.
‘How do I know that you’ve actually spoken to Mr Ramos?’
‘Because I just told you that I had.’ Unaccustomed to having his word doubted, Lucas was finding the conversation more and more surreal. ‘I can prove it.’
‘You can? How?’ She cast him a dubious look. What was it about the guy? Her instinct was just to believe everything he told her, zombie-style. She was pretty sure that if he pointed to the sky and told her that there were spaceships hovering she would be more than half-inclined to wonder if they contained little green men.
Lucas dialled a number on his cell phone and, when it connected, spoke rapidly in Spanish and then placed the mobile on the table and put it on speakerphone.
Then he sat back, a picture of relaxation, and spoke. Very slowly and very clearly. Without taking his eyes off her face. Which, when inspected in-depth, as he was now doing, was really an extraordinarily attractive face. Why was that? She didn’t have the sharp, high cheekbones of a model, nor did she have the haughty, self-confident air of a trust-fund chick, but there was just something soft yet stubborn about her, sympathetic yet outspoken...
She was the sort of person who would never give in without a fight and for a few seconds he felt impossibly enraged at the unseen but much discussed ex-fiancé who had dumped her. He almost lost track of the conversation he was in the middle of having with Alberto, who, naturally, had adopted the usual tone of subservience the second he knew who was on the line.
Like someone pulling off a magic trick, Lucas waved to the phone and folded his hands behind his head as he listened to Alberto do exactly what he had been told to do, which, in actual fact, was simply to tell the truth.
Yes, of course she could stay on! On full pay. No hay problema. Furthermore, there was no need for her to replace any of the food eaten or wine drunk, nor was there any need to run herself ragged trying to keep the lodge clean. All that would be sorted at a later date. Meanwhile, he would be transferring her pay directly into her account, if she would just text him the details of her bank account, and furthermore there would be a bonus in view of the inconvenience she had suffered.
‘I feel just terrible,’ was the first thing Milly said as soon as Alberto had signed off, having wished her a very pleasant stay and apologised for any inconvenience caused.
‘You feel terrible. You give new meaning to the word “unpredictable”. What’s that supposed to mean? Why do you feel terrible? I thought you would be leaping around this kitchen with joy! Face it, you don’t have to return to London and risk bumping into your charming “best friend” and the loser ex...nor do you have to worry about money for the time being because you’ll be paid for your stay here. You can take the time out you wanted and oh, what joy, you won’t even have to slave over a hot stove catering to the Ramos family. In other words, you won’t have to sing for your supper. From where I’m standing, you couldn’t have wished for a better deal...yet you look as though someone’s cancelled your birthday.’
‘I haven’t exactly been nice to poor Mr Ramos, have I?’ She flung the rhetorical question at him in a voice laden with accusation.
‘Have I encouraged that?’
‘I made assumptions. I just thought that—because I had a list of a hundred different things I had to prepare for them individually to eat, and because I had so many strict instructions on what I could wear and what I couldn’t wear, and what I could say and couldn’t say—they were a pretty demanding, diva family. And yet...’ She dug into her rucksack, grabbed her phone and texted the relevant information to Alberto.
‘He couldn’t have been more decent about the whole thing.’ In record time she heard the ping of her phone as he confirmed that the money had been deposited into her account. ‘After Robbie, it’s nice to see that there are some decent people left in the world.’
Lucas was fighting down annoyance over Alberto and his ridiculous demands. He could kiss sweet goodbye to any further freebies at the lodge, whatever the family connection.
‘So is the Dance of Joy and Happiness about to take place? Oh, no, I forgot, you still think that I’m a pervert you can’t trust...’
‘No.’ Milly sighed. And anyway, had she really been conceited enough to imagine that he would make some kind of pass at her? Which was something she would obviously reject out of hand,