traits.’ Not red, he decided; her hair was not red…more a deep, rich auburn with streaks of lighter auburn running through it.
‘I tend to fall for creeps. In fact, you could say that I specialise in that. I went out with boyfriend number one three years ago for three months. Turned out he had a girlfriend, who happened to be doing a gap year leaving him free to play the field while she was away…’
‘The world is full of creeps,’ Lucas murmured. He himself always made it very clear to the women he dated that rocks on fingers were never going be part of the game. If, at any point, they got it into their heads that they could alter that situation, then they were very sharply brought up to date with his ground rules.
‘You’re not kidding.’
‘And boyfriend number two?’
‘Boyfriend number two was actually my fiancé.’ She stared at her empty glass, wondering whether she dared risk another drink. She wouldn’t want to face the trip back to London on a hangover. She sneaked a glance at Lucas, who was reclining on the leather sofa, utterly and completely comfortable in his surroundings.
‘Fiancé?’
Milly stuck her hand out for inspection. ‘What do you see?’
Lucas shifted position, leaned forward and looked. ‘An extremely attractive hand.’ He glanced up at her and was charmed by the dainty colour in her cheeks.
‘It’s a hand without an engagement ring,’ she said mournfully. ‘Right now, at this precise moment in time, I should actually be a married woman.’
‘Ah…’
‘Instead, here I am, drinking wine that doesn’t belong to me—which the Ramos family will probably discover and report back to Sandra the despot—and pouring my heart out to a complete stranger.’
‘Sometimes complete strangers make the best listeners.’
‘You don’t strike me as the sort of guy who pours his heart out to other people.’
‘It’s not a habit I’ve ever actively encouraged. Tell me about the ex-fiancé…’
Milly thought that she had spent the past two weeks offloading about the ex-fiancé. Her friends had been fertile ground for endless meandering conversations about Robert and types like Robert. Over boxes of wine and Chinese take-out, hours had been spent discussing every aspect of Robert and men in general. Anecdotes of various Mr Wrongs had been cited like a never-ending string of rabbits being pulled from a magician’s hat.
‘You’re not really interested…’ She couldn’t see him ever going through the trauma of being dumped from a great height.
‘You fascinate me,’ Lucas murmured, reaching over to the bottle, which he had casually dumped on one of the spotless glass tables so that he could refill both their glasses. Milly noted that the bottle had left a circular stain on the table and she mentally made a note to make sure it was wiped clean before she went to bed.
‘I do?’ She decided that that rated slightly higher than the compliment he had paid her about her laugh.
‘You do,’ Lucas told her gravely. ‘I have never known anyone as…open and forthcoming as you.’
‘Oh.’ Deflated, Milly looked at him. ‘I suppose that’s just a kind way of saying that I talk too much.’
‘You also have amazing hair.’
Was he flirting with her? Milly made her mind up that there was no way that she would allow herself to be flattered, especially not by a ski instructor who probably slept with every woman he taught over the age of twenty. Weren’t they notorious for that? The last time she had worked as a chalet girl, the other two girls who had also been working with her had both had flings with ski instructors. Ski instructors were usually young, cute, unnaturally tanned and extremely confident when it came to enticing women into bed.
She shot him a jaundiced look, which was not the reaction he expected on the back of a compliment. He wondered how she would react if he told her that what he would really like to do, right here, right now, was sift his fingers through that wonderful hair of hers and watch it as it rippled over them.
‘So what was the ex called?’
‘Robert,’ Milly told him on a sigh. Determined to make this glass last as long as possible and thereby avoid any nasty early-morning consequences, she took a miniscule sip.
‘And what did Robert do?’
‘Fell into bed with my best friend. Apparently he took one look at her and realised that he couldn’t resist her. It turned out that he had proposed to me because I fitted the bill. His parents wanted him to settle down and I was settling down material. But not in a good way. More in an “if he could do as he pleased, he wouldn’t settle down with me” sort of way. He thought his parents would approve, which they did.’
She sighed and swallowed a more robust mouthful of wine. ‘He said he really liked me, which is the biggest insult a girl could have, because he obviously wasn’t actually that attracted to me. At any rate, he must really have fallen for Emily because he braved his parents’ wrath to tell them about her and now…what can I say? She’ll be having the life I had planned on having.’
‘Married to a bastard who will probably find another skirt to chase within two years of getting hitched? I wouldn’t wallow in too much self-pity if I were you…’
Milly laughed. To the point. Where her friends would spend literally hours analysing, he had cut to the chase in a few sentences.
‘And now shall we see how that food of yours is doing?’ Lucas stood up and stretched and Milly tried not to let her mouth fall open at the ripple of muscle discernible under his clothes.
‘Yes, the food; the stolen food.’
‘And I shall make a few calls; do something about this job of yours that’s disappeared under your feet.’
Milly hadn’t forgotten about that but she had decided not to mention it again. People had a way of saying stuff they seriously meant at the time but five minutes later had completely forgotten. Sometimes she had been guilty of that particular crime. A wide, sweeping invitation to friends to come round for drinks only to realise afterwards that she would actually be at work on the evening in question.
‘You’re going to make a few calls?’
‘Two, in actual fact.’ He watched her cute rear as she preceded him into the kitchen. He knew more about her life after five seconds than he had about anyone he had dated in the past, but then he didn’t naturally encourage outpourings, and the women he dated were all too conscious of the fact that they had to toe the line. No outpourings. No long life stories. No involved anecdotes.
Was it any wonder that he was frankly enjoying himself? He would never have imagined that being a ski instructor could be such a liberating experience. He wondered whether he shouldn’t become a ski instructor for a week every year just so that he could refresh his palate with a taste of normality.
He disappeared, heading back to the sitting room so that he could make his calls as he stood absently looking down at the sprawling white vista outside his lodge.
One call to his mother, to tell her that he might be staying on slightly longer than originally thought. The other to Alberto, to tell him that his chalet girl had arrived to find herself jobless and that he would be digging into his pocket to pay her what she was due, because she would be staying on, and that he should contact whatever agency he got her from and relay the message. Lucas could easily have afforded to pay her himself but on principle he saw no reason why he should pick up the tab. The man was grossly over-paid by his company for what he did, and Lucas suspected that he had told the agency that the deal was off at the last possible minute because neither he nor his wife would really have given a damn if their chalet girl’s nose was put out of joint.
He