‘You lied to me?’

‘I wouldn’t exactly call it a lie …’ Naturally Lucas had expected surprise—incredulity, even—but at the end of the day a ski instructor had been swapped for a billionaire. He had taken it as a given that his newly discovered status would do its usual job and bring a smile of servile appreciation to her lips. It hadn’t.

‘Well, I would.’ Milly was struggling to contain her anger. How dared he? How dared he play her for a complete fool?

‘You made false assumptions,’ Lucas told her with barely concealed impatience. ‘I chose not to set you straight.’

She sprang to her feet and stormed over to the window, stared out for a little while, and then stormed back towards him, hands on her hips. ‘Why didn’t you just tell me who you were?’

Because I was enjoying the novelty of being with someone refreshingly honest … Because in a world where wariness and suspicion are bywords it was a holiday, not having to guard every syllable, watch every turn of phrase, accept instant adulation without being able to distinguish what was genuine and what was promoted by a healthy knowledge of how much I was worth …

‘When you’re as rich as I am, it pays to be careful.’

‘In other words, I could have been just another cheap, tacky gold-digger, after your money?’

‘If you want to put it like that …’

His dark eyes were cool, assessing, unflinching. She could have hit him.

But there was no denying that she still wanted to kiss him.

CATHY WILLIAMS can remember reading Mills and Boon® as a teenager, and now that she’s writing them she remains an avid fan. For her, there is nothing like creating romantic stories and engaging plots, and each and every book is a new adventure. Cathy lives in London, and her three daughters, Charlotte, Olivia and Emma, have always been and continue to be the greatest inspiration in her life.

The Real Romero

Cathy Williams

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To my fabulous and inspiring daughters.

Contents

Cover

Introduction

About the Author

Title Page

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

Extract

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

‘AMELIA? IS THAT Amelia Mayfield?’

Milly pressed the mobile phone against her ear, already regretting that she had been stupid enough to pick up the call. How many more instructions could Sandra King give about this job?

She was going to be a chalet girl! Two weeks of cooking and looking after a family of four! Anyone would think that she was being primed to run the country. It wasn’t even as though she hadn’t done this before. She had, two years ago, for three months before she’d started the hotel job in London.

‘Yes.’ She sighed, allowing her eyes to drift over the pure, dazzling canvas of white snow all around her. It had been a fantastic trip, just the thing to clear her head and get her mind off her miserable situation. She had travelled in style and she had enjoyed every second of it. It was almost a shame that she was now in the back seat of the chauffeur-driven SUV with her destination only half an hour away.

‘You haven’t been picking up your phone!’ The voice down the other end was sharp and accusatory. Milly could picture the other woman clearly, sitting at her desk in Mayfair, her shiny blond hair scraped back with an Alice band, her long perfectly manicured nails tapping impatiently on her desk.

Sandra King had interviewed her not once but three times for this job. It was almost as though she had resented having to give the job to someone small and round with red hair when there were so many other, more suitable candidates in the mix: girls with cut-glass accents, braying laughs and shiny blond hair scraped back with Alice bands.

But, as she had made clear with unnecessarily cruel satisfaction, this particular family wanted someone plain and down to earth, because the last thing the señora wanted was a floozy who might decide to start flirting with her rich husband.

Milly, who had looked up the family she would be working for on Google after her first interview, had only just managed not to snort with disbelief because the husband in question was definitely not the sort of man any girl in her right mind would choose to flirt with. He was portly, semi-balding and the wrong side of fifty, but he was filthy rich, and she supposed that that was as compelling an attraction as being a rock star. Not that she was in the market for flirting with anyone, anyway.

‘Sorry, Sandra...’ She grinned because she knew that Sandra didn’t like being called by her first name. It was ‘Ms King’, or ‘Skipper’ to the chosen few. The other girls in the exclusive agency that dealt specifically with part-time positions to the rich and famous called her Skipper, one of those silly nicknames that Milly guessed had been concocted in whatever posh boarding school they had all attended.

‘The service has been a bit iffy ever since I left London...and I can’t talk for long because my phone’s almost out of charge.’ Not strictly true but she didn’t need yet another check list of the various things the special family ate and didn’t eat; or the favourite things the special little kids, aged four and six, insisted on doing before they went to bed. She didn’t need to be reminded of what she could and couldn’t wear, or say or couldn’t say.

Milly had never known people to be as fussy with just about everything. The family for whom she had worked two years previously had been jolly, outdoorsy and amenable.

But she wasn’t complaining. They might be fussy but the pay was fabulous and, more importantly, the job removed her from the vicinity of Robbie, Emily and heartbreak.

She had managed to push her ex-fiancé, her best friend and her broken engagement out of her head, but she could feel them staging another takeover, and she blinked rapidly, fighting back tears of self-pity. Time healed, she had been told repeatedly by her friends, who had never liked Robbie from the start and, now that she was no longer engaged, had felt free to let loose every single pejorative thing they had thought about him from day one.

On the one hand, their negative comments had been bolstering and supportive. On the other, they had shown up her utter lack of judgement.

‘In that case,’ the well-bred, disembodied voice informed her, ‘I’m afraid I have to inform you that the job has been cancelled.’

It took a few seconds for that to sink in. Milly had been busy being distracted by the unfortunate turn of events that had catapulted her life from sorted and happy to humiliated and up in the air.

‘Did you hear what I just said, Amelia?’

‘You’re kidding, aren’t you? Please tell me that this is a joke.’ But Sandra King was not the sort who had a sense of humour. Any joke, for her, would be foreign territory.

‘I never joke,’ the other woman said, on cue. ‘The Ramos family has pulled out at the last minute. I only took their phone call a few hours ago and, if you had picked up your phone instead of letting it ring, you would not have wasted your time travelling.’

‘Why? Why is it off?’ Visions of slinking back into the flat she had shared with Emily, risking bumping into her one-time best friend clearing her stuff before she took off to America with Robbie, were so horrifying that she felt giddy.

‘One of the kids has come down with chicken pox. Simple as that.’

‘But I’m only half an hour away from the lodge!’ Milly all but wailed.

They had left the exclusive village of Courchevel behind and the car was wending its way upwards, leaving the riff-raff of the lower slopes behind as it entered the rarefied air of the seriously rich. Hidden, private lodges with majestic views; helipads; heated indoor swimming pools; saunas and steam rooms by the bucket load...

There was an elaborate sigh from the end of the line. ‘Well, you’ll have to tell the driver to swing round and head back, I’m afraid. Naturally, you will be compensated for your time and trouble...’

‘Surely I can spend one night there? It’s getting dark and I’m exhausted. I have a key to the place. I can use it and make sure that I leave the lodge in pristine condition. I need to sleep, Sandra!’

She couldn’t get her head round the fact that the one thing that seemed to be working in her favour, the only thing that had worked in her favour for the past couple of horrific, nightmarish weeks, was now collapsing around her feet like a deck of cards, kicked down by one of the odious rich kids from the family who had bailed at the last minute. A wave of hopeless self-pity threatened to engulf her.

‘That would be highly irregular.’

‘So is the fact that my job here has been cancelled at the last minute, when I’m fifteen minutes away from the lodge—having spent the past eight hours travelling!’

She could see the lodge rearing up ahead of them and for a few seconds every depressing, negative thought flew from her head in sheer, wondrous appreciation of the magnificent structure ahead of her.

It dominated the skyscape, rising up against the blindingly white snow, master of all it surveyed. It was absolutely enormous, the largest and grandest ski lodge Milly had ever seen in her life. In fact, it was almost an understatement to classify it as a ‘lodge’. It was more like a mansion in the middle of its own private, snowy playground.

‘I suppose there’s little choice!’ Sandra snapped. ‘But for God’s sake, Amelia, pick up when you hear your phone! And make sure you don’t touch anything. No poking around. Just eat and sleep and make sure that when you leave the lodge no one knows you’ve been there.’

Milly grimaced as she was abruptly disconnected. She leaned forward, craning to get glimpses of the mansion as it drew closer and closer to her, until the SUV was turning left and climbing through private land to where it nestled in all its splendour.

‘Er...’ She cleared her throat and hoped that the driver, who had greeted her at Chambery airport in extremely broken English and had not said a word since, would get the gist of what she was going to say.

‘Oui, mademoiselle?’

Milly caught his eye in the rear-view mirror. ‘Yes, well, there’s been a slight change of plan...’

‘What is that?’

She sighed with relief. At least she wouldn’t have to try and explain an impossible situation using her limited French, resisting the temptation to fill in the gaps by speaking loudly. She told him as succinctly as possible. He would have to stay overnight somewhere and return her to the airport the following day... Sorry, so sorry for the inconvenience, but he could phone...

She scrambled into her capacious rucksack and extracted her wallet and from that the agency card that she had not envisaged having to use for the next couple of weeks.

She wondered whether he might stay at the lodge, it was big enough to fit a hundred drivers, but that was something he would have to work out for himself. She suspected that she had already stretched Sandra’s limited supply of the milk of human kindness by asking if she could stay overnight in the place.

It was a dog-eat-dog world, she thought. As things stood, she was rock-bottom of the pack. She had been cheated on by her fiancé, a guy she had known since childhood and, as if that wasn’t bad enough, she had been cheated on by her best friend and flatmate...

To top it off, she had been told that the reason he had become engaged to her in the first place was because his parents were fed up with his twenty-four-seven lifestyle of living it large and womanising. They had given him a deadline to find himself a decent girl and settle down or else he could forget about taking over the family business that had just opened a thriving branch in Philadelphia and was going places.

Banished from the family fortune and a ready-made job, he would have been faced, she assumed, with the terrifying prospect of actually buckling down and finding himself a job without Mummy and Daddy’s helping hand. And so he had plumped for the slightly less terrifying prospect of charming her into thinking that they really had a relationship, proposing marriage whilst playing the field with her much taller, much skinnier and much prettier flatmate.

His parents had approved of her. She had passed the litmus test with them. She was his passport to his inheritance. She was small, round and homely; when she thought of Robbie and the angular Emily, every insecurity she nursed about her looks rose to the surface at the speed of light.

The only thing worse than catching them in bed together would have been actually marrying the creep, only to discover once the ring was on her finger that he had zero interest in her.

She gazed mournfully at her finger where a giant diamond rock had nestled only a few weeks ago.

Her friends had all told her that it was a monumental mistake to have chucked it back at him, that she should have kept it and flogged it at the first available opportunity. After all, she deserved it, after what he had put her through.

And the money would have stood her in good stead, considering she had jacked in her hotel job so that she could play happy families with him in Philadelphia. It was galling to think that he had had the nerve to tell her that he hoped she understood and that she could count on him if she ever needed anything!

As things currently stood, she was out of a job, banished from her flat until Emily cleared out and with a shockingly small amount of money saved.

And she had no one to turn to. Her only living relative, her grandmother who lived in Scotland, would have sold her cottage had she known about her granddaughter’s state of near penury, but Milly had no intention of filling her in on that. It was bad enough that she had had to pick up the pieces when she had been told fifteen days ago that the fairy-tale wedding was off the cards.

As far as her grandmother was concerned, Milly was taking time off to work as a nanny for a family in Courchevel, where she would be able to do what she loved most, namely ski... She had glossed over the trauma of her breakup as just one of those things, nothing that a couple of weeks in the snow couldn’t cure.

Milly had painted a glowing picture of a cosy family, practically friends, who would be there for her on her road to recovery. It had helped her grandmother to stop fretting. Furthermore, she had embroidered the recovery theme by announcing that she had another job lined up as soon as she was back in London, far better than the one she had jettisoned.

As far as her grandmother was concerned, she was as right as rain, because the last thing Milly wanted to do was worry her.

‘Shall I call...er...the agency and see if you could stay overnight at the lodge...?’ Her better instincts grudgingly cranked into gear and she resigned herself to another awkward conversation with Sandra, who would probably spend a ridiculously long time telling her that being let down was all her fault because she should have just answered her phone, having confirmed that the driver would not, definitely not, be allowed to sully the mansion, no way.

But, no; Pierre, the driver, was a regular at one of the hotels in Courchevel, where one of his relatives worked, and he would be fine there.

Milly was tempted to ask whether being let down by the special family came with the job. Maybe he had a permanent room there for when he got messed around.

She didn’t. Instead, she allowed him to help her with her luggage, the luggage containing the clothes that would never be worn, and he only drove off when she had unlocked the imposing front door to let herself into the lodge.

It was blessedly warm and indescribably stunning, a testimony to the marvels of modern architecture and minimalism. The entire space was open-plan, with two sitting rooms cleverly split by a wall in which a high-tech, uber-modern fire caught the eye and held it. Beyond that, she could glimpse a vast kitchen, and beyond that yet more, although she was drawn to the floor-to-ceiling windows that captured the spectacular views of the valley.

She gazed out at the untouched, pristine snow, fast fading as night descended. It had been an excellent ski season so far—good accumulation of snow, which had collected on the roofs of the lodges lower down the mountain and lay there like banks and banks of smooth, marzipan icing.

Having no idea of the layout of the lodge, she decided to take her time exploring. She wasn’t going to be there long, so why not enjoy the adventure of discovery? Her flat was small and poky. More than four people in the sitting area constituted a traffic jam. Why not pretend that this place belonged to her?

She explored each room exhaustively, one at a time. She admired the sparse, expensive furnishings. She had never seen so much chrome, glass and leather under one roof in her life before. Much of the furniture was white, and she marvelled at a couple confident enough to let loose two small children in a space where there was so much potential for destruction.

The kitchen was a wonder to behold: black granite counters, a table fashioned from beaten metal and an array of gadgets that made her culinary fingers itch.

She decided that she was glad she no longer worked at the Rainbow Hotel. It boasted three stars, but everyone there reckoned palms must have been greased to get that rating because the rooms were basic, bordering on the criminally dull, the restaurant should have been updated half a century ago and the two bars were straight out of the seventies but without a cool, retro feel.

Not to mention the fact that she had never been allowed, not once in a year and a half, to do anything on her own, Chef Julian, whilst only dabbling in the actual cooking, had specialised in peering over her shoulder and picking fault with her cooking whenever he got the chance.

Here, she could have let her imagination go wild—within the constraints of the various faddy food groups they did and didn’t eat, of course. She trailed her hand over the gleaming, spotless counter and brushed a few of the marvellous gadgets, none of which bore the hallmarks of anyone ever having been near them. When she checked the fridge, it was to find that it was fully stocked, as were the cupboards. A horizontal metal wine rack groaned under the weight of bottles, all of which bore expensive, fancy labels.

Absorbed in her inspection of the kitchen, daydreaming about what it might feel like actually to have enough money to own a place like this as a second home, Milly was unaware of anyone approaching.

‘And you are...?’

The deep, cold voice coming from behind crashed through her pleasant, escapist fantasy with the unwelcome force of a sledgehammer and she spun round, heart pounding.

Her brain, which had been lagging behind, caught up to point out mockingly that there was a stranger in the house and she should be looking for something handy with which she could defend herself.

Because the man could be....dangerous...

Her mind went blank. She forgot that she should be scared—terrified, even. She was in a bloody great rolling mansion packed full of valuables and the owners weren’t there. The man standing in front of her, all six foot something of him, had probably broken in. She had probably disturbed him in the middle of ransacking the place, and everyone knew what happened to innocent people when they happened to interrupt a robbery.

But, God, had she ever seen someone so beautiful?

Raven-black hair, slightly longer than was conventionally permissible, framed a face that was, simply put, a thing of perfection: a wide, sensual mouth; chiselled features; eyes as dark and as fathomless as night. He was in jeans and a T-shirt and was barefoot.

It seemed unusual for a robber to take his shoes off to make off with the silver, but then it occurred to her that he had probably removed them so that he could sneak up on her unannounced.

‘I could ask you the same thing!’ She tried to keep the tenor of her voice calm and controlled—a woman in charge of the situation, someone who wasn’t going to be intimidated. ‘And don’t even think of taking a single step closer to me!’ Idiot that she was, she had left her mobile phone lying in her rucksack, which was currently reclining on the kitchen counter. It was infuriating, but how could she possibly have anticipated something like this?

In stark disobedience of her orders, the man took a couple of steps closer to her and she fell back, bumped into the counter and spun round to grab the nearest heavy thing to hand—which happened to be the kettle, a glass concoction that didn’t look as though it could stun a flea, never mind the muscled man who was now only a metre away from her and had folded his arms, cool as a cucumber.

‘Or else what? Don’t tell me you have plans for using that thing on me...?’

‘You’d better tell me what you’re doing here or else I’m going to...call the police. And I’m not kidding...’

This had not been the way Lucas had anticipated his evening going. In fact, he hadn’t actually banked on being here at all. He had lent the place to his mother’s annoying friends, only for them to cancel at the last minute, which was when he had decided to head there himself for a few days.

He would get away from his mother, who was becoming more strident in her demands for him to settle down and get married. She had suffered a minor stroke three months previously, had been pronounced fit and able, yet had decided that she had stared death in the face, had become acquainted with her own mortality—and now all she wanted was to hold a grandchild in her arms before she died. Was that asking too much of her only beloved son?

Frankly, Lucas thought that it was, but he had not been inclined to say so. Instead, he had wheeled out consultant after consultant, but no amount of reassurances from these top consultants could convince her that her fragile grasp on life wasn’t about to be snipped.

Add to that an annoying ex-girlfriend who refused to believe that she had been dumped, and a few days’ skiing had suddenly seemed like a brilliant idea.

Bracing conversations with his mother could be better faced after he had vented his frustrations in a few black runs.

Peace and quiet seemed to have nosedived, however, and he was not in the best of moods to be standing here, staring down a crazy woman brandishing his kettle and threatening to call the police.

A short, crazy woman, with red hair that was all over the place, and who thought he was looting the place. Hilarious.

‘You don’t really think you could take me on, do you?’ With lightning reflexes, he reached out and relieved her of her dangerous weapon, which he proceeded to set back down on its base. ‘Now, before I call the police and have you forcibly removed, you’re going to tell me what the hell you’re doing here.’

Deprived of the kettle, Milly stuck her chin out at a stubborn angle and stared at him defiantly. ‘You’re not scaring me, if that’s your intention.’

‘It’s never been my intention to scare a woman.’

The man oozed sex appeal through every pore. It was off-putting. How could she get her thoughts in order when he stood there, looking at her with those darker-than-night eyes that were insolent and intransigent at the same time? How was she supposed to think?

‘I’m actually employed here.’ Milly broke the silence. A thin film of perspiration had broken out over her body and, try as she might, she couldn’t seem to peel her eyes away from him.

He raised one enquiring eyebrow, and she glared at him, because she had every right to be here which he, almost certainly, did not.

What, she wondered, could possibly go wrong next? How could one person’s life get derailed in such a short space of time? She should have been here recovering, looking forward to an essential break from normality while she mentally gathered her forces and rallied her troops in preparation for returning to London. She should have been using the splendid kitchen to whip something up that was gluten-free for Mrs Ramos, meat-based for her husband and healthily braised for their children! Instead, she was having a staring match with someone who looked like Adonis but behaved like a caveman.

‘Oh, yes?’

‘Yes,’ she snapped. ‘Not that it’s any of your business! I’m the chalet girl the Ramos employed to work for them for the next two weeks. And they’ll be here any minute now...’

‘Ah...chalet girl... Now, why am I finding that hard to believe when I know for a fact that Alberto and Julia won’t be here because one of their children is ill?’ He strolled over to the fridge and helped himself to a bottle of mineral water, which he proceeded to drink while keeping his eye on her.

‘Oh.’ The annoying, arrogant man wasn’t a robber but, instead of rushing to reassure her, he had prolonged her discomfort by not deigning to tell her that he knew the family who owned the lodge. Were there any nice guys left in the world? ‘Well, if you think that I’m going to apologise for...for...’

‘Coming at me with the kettle?’

‘Then you’re mistaken. I don’t know what you’re doing here, but you shouldn’t sneak around, and you should have told me that you knew the owners...’ A thought occurred to her. ‘I suppose they’ve let you down, as well?’

‘Come again?’

‘They let me down,’ Milly expanded glumly. Now that she was no longer in danger of imminent attack, her breathing had more or less returned to normal, but she still found that she had to put a little distance between her and Adonis, who was still standing by the fridge and yet managing to have a very weird effect on her nervous system.

His legs, she noted absently as she sat down on one of the high-tech leather-and-chrome chairs by the table, were long and muscular and he had good ankles. Not many men had good ankles but he had excellent ones—brown like the rest of him...with a sprinkling of dark hair...

She surfaced to find that he had said something and she frowned.

‘Not you, as well.’ She groaned, because from the tail end of his sentence she gathered he had been pointing out the obvious—which was how it was that she had managed to make the trip without being notified that the job had been cancelled. ‘I’ve had enough lecturing from Sandra about not picking up my phone; I don’t think I have the energy to sit through you telling me the same thing. Anyway, why are you here? Didn’t your agency let you know before you made a wasted trip here?’

Lucas had the dazed feeling of someone thrown into a washing machine and the spin cycle turned to full blast. She had raked her fingers through her wild red hair, which he now appreciated was thick and very long, practically down to her waist, a tumbling riot of curls and waves.

‘Agency?’ Never lost for words in any given situation, he now found himself speechless.

‘Sandra’s the girl at the agency that employed me. In London.’ She permitted herself to look at him fully and could feel hot colour racing up to her face. He was obviously foreign, beautifully and exotically foreign, but his English was perfect, with just a trace of an accent.

‘My job was to cook for the Ramos family and babysit their children.’ It suddenly occurred to her that he had called them by their Christian names. She had been under strict instructions to use their full titles and to remember that they weren’t her friends. It just went to show how different agencies operated; just her luck to have got stuck with snooty Sandra. ‘What were you employed to do? No, you don’t have to tell me.’

‘I don’t?’ Fascinating. Like someone from another planet. Wherever Lucas went, he generated adulation and subservience from women. They tripped over themselves to please him. They said what they imagined he wanted to hear. Born into wealth, he had known from a tender age what the meaning of power was and now, at the ripe young age of thirty-four, and with several fortunes behind him—some inherited, the rest made himself. He was accustomed to being treated like a man at the top of his game. A billionaire who could have whatever he pleased at the snap of his imperious fingers.

What did this woman think he did? He was curious to hear.

‘Ski instructor.’ Milly discovered that this strange turn of events was having a very beneficial effect on her levels of depression. Robbie, Emily and the horror story that had suddenly become her life had barely crossed her mind ever since Adonis had appeared on the scene.

‘Ski instructor.’ He was parroting everything she said. He couldn’t believe it.

‘You have the look of a ski instructor,’ Milly said thoughtfully.

‘Am I to take that as a compliment?’

‘You can if you want.’ She backtracked hastily just in case he got it into his head that she was somehow trying it on with him, which she wasn’t, because aside from anything else she was far too upset even to look at another man. ‘Isn’t it amazing how rich people live?’ She swiftly changed the topic and watched, warily, as he dumped the bottled water on the counter, making no effort even to look for the bin, and sauntered towards the kitchen table so that he could sit on one of the chairs, idly pulling another towards him with his foot and using it as a foot rest.

‘Amazing,’ Lucas agreed.

‘I mean, have you had a chance to look around this place? It’s like something from one of those house magazines! It’s hard to believe that anyone actually ever uses this lodge. Everything’s just so...shiny and expensive!’

‘Money impresses you, does it?’ Lucas thought of all the other apartments and houses he owned, scattered in cities across the world from New York to Hong Kong. He even had a villa on an exclusive Caribbean island. He hadn’t been there for at least a couple of years...

Milly leaned on the table, cupped her chin in the palm of her hand and gazed at him. Amazing eyes, she thought idly, with even more amazing lashes—long, dark and thick. And there was a certain arrogance about him. She should find it a complete turn-off, especially considering that Robbie had had his fair share of arrogance, and what a creep he had turned out to be. But Adonis’s arrogance was somehow different... Just look at the way he had stuck his feet on that chair.

‘No...’ she admitted. ‘I mean, don’t get me wrong, money is great. I wish I had more of it.’ Especially considering I have no job to return to. ‘But I was brought up to believe that there were more important things in life. My parents died in a car accident when I was eight and my grandmother raised me. Well, there wasn’t an awful lot of money to go round, but that never bothered me. I think people create the lives they want to live and they do that without the help of money...’

She sighed. ‘Stop me if I’m talking too much. I do that. But, now that I know you’re not a burglar, it’s kind of nice having someone here. I mean, I’ll be gone first thing in the morning, but... Okay, enough of me... Is this the first time you’ve worked for the Ramos family? I mean, I couldn’t help noticing that you called them by their first names...’

Lucas thought of Alberto and Julia Ramos and choked back a snort of derisive laughter at the thought of working for them. In actual fact, Alberto had worked for his father. Lucas had inherited him when his father had died and, because of the personal connection, had resisted sacking the man, who was borderline incompetent. He found them intensely annoying but his mother was godmother to one of their children.

‘We go back a way,’ he said, skirting round the truth.

‘Thought so.’

‘Why is that?’

Milly laughed and it felt as though this was the first time she had laughed, really laughed, for a long time. Well, at least two weeks, although there had been a moment or two with her friends post-traumatic break-up. Manic, desperate laughter, probably...

‘Because you’ve got your feet on the chair and you’ve just dumped that empty bottle on the kitchen counter! Sandra told me that under no circumstances was there to be any sign that I’d stepped foot in this lodge when I left. I might even have to wipe all the surfaces just in case they find my fingerprints somewhere.’

‘You have a wonderful laugh,’ Lucas heard himself say with some surprise. She did. A rich, full-bodied laugh that made him want to grin.

And looking at her...

That first impression of someone small and plump with crazy hair was being rapidly dispelled. She was small, yes, barely skimming five-four, but her skin was satiny smooth and her eyes were the clearest blue he had ever seen. And when she laughed she had dimples.

Milly went bright red. In the aftermath of her horrible, horrible broken engagement, her self-confidence had been severely battered, and his compliment filled her with a terrific sense of wellbeing. Even if he had only complimented her on the way she laughed, which, when you analysed it, was hardly a compliment at all. But, still, coming from Adonis...

‘Must be great being a ski instructor,’ she said, all hot and bothered now. ‘Would you like to know something? I mean, it’s no big secret or anything...’

‘I would love to know something...even if it’s no big secret or anything...’ Hell, this impromptu break was certainly proving to be a great distraction in ways he had never anticipated.

‘I used to ski—I mean really ski. I went on a school trip when I was ten and somehow I took to it. When I was fifteen, I even thought I might try and go pro, but you know... We didn’t have the money for that sort of thing. But it’s why I was looking forward to this job...’

Her situation hit her like a blast of cold air: no fiancé, no job, no two weeks’ chalet income with the bonus of skiing now and again. She shook away her sudden despondency, which wasn’t going to get her anywhere. ‘Frankly, it’s why Sandra employed me in the first place when there were other better looking girls lining up for the job.’ That and my low levels of physical attractiveness. ‘I thought I might be able to sneak a little skiing in, but now... Oh, well, that’s life, I guess. My luck’s been crap recently so I don’t know why I’m surprised this fell through.’

She smiled, digging deep to recover some of her sunny nature. ‘Hey, I don’t even know your name! I’m Amelia, but my friends call me Milly.’ She held out her hand, and the feel of his cool fingers as he shook it sent a wave of dizzying electric charge straight through her body, from her toes to the top of her head.

‘And I am...Lucas.’ So she thought he was a ski instructor. How frankly refreshing to be in the company of a woman who didn’t know his worth, who didn’t simper, who wasn’t out to try and trap him. ‘And I think we might just be able to solve the matter of your lost job...’

CHAPTER TWO

IT WAS A spur-of-the-moment decision for Lucas, but whoever said that he wasn’t a man who could think creatively on his feet? How many times had he won deals because he had approached them from a different angle; played with a situation, found the loopholes, cracks and crevices and exploited them to his own benefit? It was the crucial difference between moderate success and soaring the heights. He had been bred with confidence and it had never once occurred to him that he might not be able to get exactly what he wanted.

Right now, he had made the snap decision that he might enjoy the woman’s company on the slopes for a few days.

She obviously wasn’t the type he normally went for. His diet was tall, thin, leggy brunettes from social backgrounds very similar to his own—because there was nothing worse than a tawdry gold-digger—but she had a certain something...

Just at this minute she was gaping at him as though he had taken leave of his senses.

‘I beg your pardon?’ Milly could scarcely believe her ears. In fact, she was on the way to convincing herself that she was trapped with a madman. He might be well in with the Ramos family if he happened to be their personal ski instructor, but how much influence did ski instructors have anyway? It wasn’t as though they weren’t disposable.

‘But first, food.’

‘Food?’

‘I actually came to the kitchen to grab myself something to eat.’ Originally he had toyed with the idea of just importing a chef from one of the hotels, the regular chef he was accustomed to using whenever he happened to be at the lodge, but in the end it had hardly seemed worth the effort when he hadn’t planned to stay longer than a couple of nights. And when he knew for a fact that the fridge would be brimming over with food in preparation for the non-appearing Ramos family.

‘You came here to grab something to eat? Are you completely crazy? You can’t just go rummaging around in their fridge, eating their food and drinking their wine. Have you taken a look at the bottles in that wine rack? They look as though they cost the earth!’

Lucas was already heading for the fridge.

‘Bread...’ He opened the fridge door and turned to look at her. ‘Cheese... Both in plentiful supply. And I’m pretty sure there’ll be some salad stuff somewhere.’

Milly sprang to her feet. ‘I can, er, cook you something if you like...if you’re sure. After all, cooking was to be part of my duties.’

Lucas looked at her and smiled and that electric charge zipped through her again. It was like being struck by a bolt of lightning.

Had Robbie the creep ever had this effect on her? She didn’t think so, but then again disillusionment might have put a different spin on her memories of their somewhat brief courtship.

She and Robbie had attended the same small school in remote Scotland until they were fourteen, at which point grander things had beckoned and he had moved with his family down to London. At fourteen, gauche and way too sporty to appeal to teenage boys whose testosterone levels were kicking in, she had had a secret crush on him.

They had kept in touch over the years, mostly via social network with the occasional visit thrown in whenever he’d happened to be in the city, but his sudden interest in her had only really kicked off six months ago and it had been whirlwind. Milly, still finding her feet in her job, had been first pleased to see a familiar face and then flattered when that familiar face had started take an interest in her. Ha! The reason for that had become patently clear after he had dumped her for leggy Emily.

Lucas had slammed shut the fridge in favour of opening a bottle of the expensive wine from the wine rack, much to Milly’s consternation.

So, women cooking for him had never been part of the deal; tinkering in the kitchen smacked of just the sort of cosy domesticity he had never encouraged. On the other hand, this was a unique situation.

‘I’m actually a chef by profession.’ Milly grinned and joined him by the fridge, the contents of which she proceeded to inspect, although she made sure not to remove anything. She could practically feel Skipper Sandra peering down at her, about to ask her what the hell she thought she was doing.

‘Would-be professional skier, chef... Is there no end to your talents?’

‘You’re teasing me.’ Their eyes met and she blushed. ‘I still don’t feel entirely comfortable digging in their cupboards but I suppose we do have to eat. I mean, I’m sure Sandra wouldn’t expect me to starve...’

‘This Sandra character sounds like a despot.’ Lucas removed himself from her way as she began extracting bits and pieces. He had no idea what she intended to do with the stuff. He himself had zero interest in cooking and had never really seen fit to do much more than toast a slice of bread or, in dire circumstances, open a can of something and put it in a saucepan.

‘Like you wouldn’t believe.’ She began hunting down utensils whilst reminding him, just in case he reported back that she had made herself at home, that she still didn’t feel 100 percent good about using stuff from their fridge. ‘Want to help?’ She glanced over her shoulder to where he was lounging indolently against the kitchen counter with a glass of red wine in his hand.

Talk about making himself at home!

‘I’m more of a spectator when it comes to cooking,’ Lucas told her. And from where he was standing, the view was second to none. She had removed her thick jumper and was down to a clingy long-sleeved T-shirt that outlined every inch of a body that had been woefully kept under wraps.

‘We’ll eat quicker if you help.’

‘I’m in no hurry. You were about to tell me about Sandra the despot...’

‘I had to have three interviews for this job. Can you believe it? Three! The Ramoses are just about the fussiest people on the planet. Oh, sorry; I forgot that you’re their regular ski instructor. You probably see a different side to them.’ She sighed, her throat suddenly thick as she thought of the neatly packaged life she had been looking forward to flying through the window.

And yet, in a strange way, she was sure that she should be feeling sadder than she actually was.

Mortified, yes. She was about eleven out of ten on the mortification scale, although less so here where her well-meaning friends weren’t hovering around her, hankies at the ready, as though she was on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

But sad?

The presents had all been returned; the dress had been sold online because the shop had refused to have it back; the small church in Sunningdale where his parents had lived ever since they had moved from Scotland had been cancelled. But she didn’t get a lump in her throat when she thought about the details.

The lump came when she thought about the fairy-tale future she had had planned, when she thought about being in love and then being let down...

‘I doubt that.’ Lucas recalled the last time he had seen the couple at his mother’s house in Argentina, where Julia Ramos had spent most of the evening lording it over anyone she thought might be a lesser mortal.

Despite being wealthy beyond most people’s wildest dreams, his mother had a very solid streak of normality in her and frequently hosted parties to which all and sundry were invited, regardless of their income or status. She had never forgotten that both she and his father had come from nothing and had made their fortune through hard graft.

‘There aren’t many complex sides to Alberto and Julia Ramos. They have money and they insist on showing the world, whether the world wants to know or not.’

‘Poor you.’ Milly looked at him sympathetically. ‘I guess it must become a bit of a drag if you’re having to deal with people you don’t especially like...’ She returned to her chopping and he dragged one of the bar stools over so that he could see her as she worked. By now, she had given up on being appalled at the liberties he took. Perhaps that was the relationship he had with his employers. Less of an employee and more of an equal.

‘But,’ she continued as she tried to focus on the onions in front of her and ignore the fact that his dark eyes roving over her were making her feel a bit dizzy, ‘we all have to do stuff we don’t particularly like for the sake of earning a living. What do you do when you’re not instructing?’

‘This and that.’

Milly didn’t say anything. Maybe he was embarrassed because being a ski instructor might be glamorous but it was hardly a ladder-climbing job, and she wasn’t sure why, but Lucas struck her as the kind of guy to have ambition.

‘Why are you doing a two-week stint as a chalet girl when you’re a professional chef? You’re not drinking your wine. You should. It’s an excellent vintage.’

‘I hope you don’t get into trouble opening that bottle...’ But the cooking was now done so she wiped her hands on one of the towels by the range, took the proffered glass of wine and followed him out of the kitchen and into the sprawling sitting area, where, through the vast panes of glass, they could see the spectacular sight of night settling on the snowy mountain ranges.

‘I never get into trouble,’ Lucas assured her as he joined her on the sofa. The white sofa. The white sofa that she would probably have to pay for if she made the mistake of spilling her red wine on it.

She perched awkwardly on the edge and made very sure to keep a firm hand on the stem of her wine glass.

‘You never get into trouble...ever? That’s a very arrogant thing to say!’ But strangely thrilling.

‘I confess that I can be arrogant,’ Lucas told her truthfully, eyes steady on her face as he sipped his wine.

‘That’s an awful trait.’

‘Deplorable. Have you got any?’

‘Any what?’ Her glass appeared to be empty. How had that happened?

‘Deplorable 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 sauntered into the kitchen, snapping his phone shut just as she was dishing out two heaped bowls of pasta.

‘Done.’

Alone and away from his overpowering personality, Milly had had a little while to consider the prospect of spending two weeks with a man she didn’t know in a lodge that belonged to neither of them. The plan made no sense. Were they to deplete the contents of the fridge? Guzzle all the alcohol? Then leave with a cheery wave goodbye? Wouldn’t a bill catch up with her sooner or later? There was no such thing as a free lunch, after all, not to mention two weeks’ worth of free lunches.

And, also, what if the ski instructor with the drop-dead good looks turned out to be dodgy? He didn’t seem the violent type but who was to say he was trustworthy? He could be a gentleman by day and a sex maniac by night.

Bracketing Lucas and sex in the same thought brought hectic colour to her cheeks. Even if he was a closet sex maniac, there was no chance he would look twice in her direction. Robert, who had been nice looking but definitely not in Adonis’s league, hadn’t found her attractive. That, in a nutshell, said it all as far as Milly was concerned.

But she still found herself hesitating, clearing her throat and sitting down at the sleek kitchen table with burning, self-conscious hesitation.

Would it be inappropriate to ask him for a CV? she wondered. Maybe a few references from women he had happened to be thrown together with inadvertently who had found him to be a decent, honourable man with upstanding moral values?

‘The look of joy and satisfaction seems to be missing from your expression.’ Lucas tucked into the pasta, which was as good as anything he had had in any restaurant. He had wondered about the ‘professional chef’ description of herself—had thought that maybe it was a bit of self-congratulation when, in fact, she worked behind the scenes at the local fast food joint—but she was a seriously good cook.

‘Well....’ Curiosity got the better of her. ‘How did you manage to do that? I mean when you say done...’

‘You’d be surprised at the things I can accomplish when I put my mind to it. Your job here is safe, and you’ll be fully paid for the duration. Even if you decide to leave after two days.’

Milly’s mouth dropped open and Lucas grinned wryly.

‘Admit it. You’re impressed.’

‘Wow. You must have an awful lot of influence with the Ramos family.’ A thought struck her and she went bright red and took refuge in her pasta.

‘Why do I get the feeling that there’s something on your mind?’ Lucas drawled drily.

‘What makes you think that?’

‘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, because she was recovering from a broken heart! Not that he would anyway. Adonis types went for Aphrodite types—known fact.

‘I’m weak with relief.’

‘I guess we should clean here and then turn in for the night,’ she said, standing up. The rollercoaster ride loosely called ‘her life’ was still looping her around in a million different directions. So now, unbelievably, she was staying on at the lodge for the full duration of her contract. From jobless and heading back on the first flight to still in work, earning her fabulous wage for two weeks of having fun and skiing...

‘Clean?’

‘Do the dishes.’ She waved at the plates, the glasses, the saucepans. ‘You might not be able to cook, but you can certainly help tidy this kitchen. I’m not doing it on my own. We both contributed to the mess.’

Lucas stood back, arms folded, and realised that ‘do the dishes’ had never been words applied to him, but he obligingly began clearing the table while she spent a little more time expressing completely unnecessary levels of remorse for having been uncharitable towards Alberto and his family.

As consciences went, hers appeared to be extremely overactive.

‘Okay!’ He held up one hand, cutting short yet another take on how kind the Ramos man had turned out to be. ‘I get the general picture. Not,’ he added darkly, ‘that you actually know the first thing about Ramos...er...Alberto... But no point going down that road.’ He leaned against the kitchen counter and folded his arms.

His contribution to tidying the kitchen had consisted of moving two plates and a glass from the table to the sink.

Good-looking men were always spoiled, first by their adoring mothers, who ran around doing everything for them, then by adoring girlfriends who did the same, and finally by their adoring wives, who picked up where the girlfriends had left off.

‘Let’s just cut short the Ramos eulogies. Now that you’re here, I’m going to be here for a couple of days. We can talk about which runs we do.’ She was someone capable, by all accounts, of skiing to a high standard, as opposed to dressing to a high standard with lamentably average skiing skills, which had always been the case with his girlfriends in the past. The actual process of skiing had always been an interruption to the more engaging business of looking good in skiing outfits.

A quirky, amusing companion who didn’t know him from Adam. Who knew what the outcome of their brief, unexpected meeting of ways would be?

In his highly controlled and largely predictable life, the prospect of the unknown dangled in front of him like a tantalising carrot.

He smiled and closely watched the way she blushed and lowered her eyes.

Yes, coming here had definitely been the right decision...

CHAPTER THREE

‘SOMETHING’S ONLY JUST occurred to me...’

The dishes had been done, mostly by Milly, while Lucas had relaxed and fiddled with the complicated coffee-making machine, eventually succeeding in producing two small cups of espresso that she was embarrassed to tell him would probably keep her up all night. It had taken him such a long time finally to get there that it would have seemed churlish to politely refuse. She had never met anyone more clueless when it came to knowing his way around a kitchen. Or less interested, for that matter.

Now they were back on the white sofa although, with permission granted to stay in the lodge, she felt a little less uncomfortable in her surroundings.

‘And I take it that this sudden thought is one you want to share with me.’ This was a brave, new world. She had already berated him for not helping enough in the kitchen and had then proceeded to give him a mini-lecture on the wonders of ‘the modern man’. Apparently those were men who shared all the domestic chores, cooked and cleaned with the best of them and gave foot massages to their loved ones. He had told her that, quite frankly, he could think of nothing worse.

‘I should have asked you this before but with everything going on my mind was all over the place...’

Lucas grunted. The emails that he had planned to spend the evening ploughing through had quickly taken a back seat to the girl now staring off into the distance with a thoughtful frown.

‘I should have asked you whether you’re...er...involved with someone or not.’

‘Involved with someone...’

‘Are you married?’ she asked bluntly. ‘Not that it makes any difference, because we’re both just employees who happen to be stranded in the same lodge.’ The same empty lodge. ‘But I wouldn’t want your wife to be worried. You know...’

‘You mean you wouldn’t want her to be jealous.’

‘Well, anxious...’ So he was married, despite the lack of a wedding ring. Lots of men didn’t wear wedding rings. She felt a stab of disappointment. Why wouldn’t he be married? she thought, restlessly pushing aside that awkward, uninvited emotion that had no place in her life. He was sinfully sexy and oozed just the sort of self-assurance and lazy arrogance that women went wild for.

‘Interesting concept. A jealous and anxious wife worried about her beloved husband sharing a ski lodge with a total stranger...’ He tried the thought on for size and tried not to burst out laughing.

When it came to women and commitment, he was the least likely candidate. Once bitten, twice shy and he had had his brush with his one and only near-escape. It had been a decade and a half ago but as learning curves went it had been a good one. He had been a nineteen-year-old kid, already with plenty of experience but still too green to recognise when he was being played. He’d been young, cocky and arrogant enough to think that gold-diggers all came wrapped up and packaged the same way: big hair, high heels, obvious charms.

But Betina Crew, at twenty-seven nearly eight years older than him, had been just the opposite. She had been a wild flower-child who went on protest marches and waxed lyrical about saving the world. He had fallen hook, line and sinker until she’d tried to reel him in with a phoney pregnancy scare, which he had so nearly bought, and had so nearly walked down the aisle. It was pure chance that he had discovered the packet of contraceptive pills tucked away at the back of one of her drawers and, when he’d confronted her, it had all ended up turning ugly.

Since then, he had never kidded himself that there was such a thing as disinterested true love. Not when the size of his bank balance was known. His parents might have had the perfect marriage, but they had both started off broke and had worked together to make their fortune. His mother still believed in all that clap trap about true love, and he hadn’t the heart to disillusion her, but he knew that when and if he ever decided to tie the knot it would be less Cupid’s bow and arrow than a decent arrangement overseen by a lawyer with a watertight pre-nup.

‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘No anxious, jealous or whatever-you-want-to-call-it wife keeping the home fires warm.’

‘Girlfriend?’

‘Why the interest? Are you suggesting that there might be something for a woman to be jealous about?’

‘No!’ Milly nearly choked on her espresso. ‘In case you’d forgotten,’ she added, regaining her composure, ‘I came over here to try and escape. The last thing on my mind would be involvement with anyone! I just don’t want to think that there’s anyone out there who cares about you and who might be alarmed that we happen to be stuck here together through no fault of our own.’

‘In that case, I’ll set your mind at rest, shall I? No girlfriend and, even if there was a girlfriend, I’m not a jealous guy and I don’t encourage jealousy in women I date.’

‘How can you discourage someone from being jealous?’ She hadn’t been at all jealous when it came to Robbie. Why was that? she wondered. Was it because she had known him off and on for a long time, and one was never that jealous when it came to people they were familiar with? She hadn’t even thought twice about Robbie and Emily being alone together. And yet there was something deep inside telling her that surely jealousy was something that attacked at random and couldn’t be debated or ordered out of existence?

‘I’ve never found a problem with that. The women I date know my parameters and they tend to respect them.’

‘You’re the most arrogant guy I’ve ever met in my entire life,’ Milly said with genuine wonderment.

‘I think you’ve already told me that.’ He drained his cup and dumped it on one of the coffee tables, then he stood up and flexed his muscles, watching as she uncurled herself from the sofa and automatically reached to gather his cup along with hers.

His automatic instinct was irritably to tell her to leave it, that someone would tidy it away in the morning, then he remembered that there would be no cleaner trooping along to make sure she tidied in his wake.

‘I’ll show you to your room.’

‘Feels odd to be here without the owner in residence.’

Lucas had the grace to flush but he refrained from saying anything, instead scooping up her holdall, which had seen better days, and heading out towards a spiral staircase that led up to a huge galleried landing that overlooked the ground floor.

There, as on the ground floor, soaring windows gave out to the same spectacular views of the open, snow-covered mountains. It was dark outside and the snow was a peculiar dull-blue white against the velvety darkness.

For a few seconds, Milly paused to admire the vista, which was truly breathtakingly beautiful. When she looked away it was to find his dark eyes speculatively pinned to her face.

She was here with a guy she didn’t know and yet, far from feeling threatened in any way, she felt safe. There was something silent and inherently strong about him that was deeply reassuring. She felt that if the place were to be invaded by a clutch of knife wielding bandits he would be able to dispatch them single-handedly.

‘I have no idea where Ramos was going to put you,’ Lucas told her truthfully. ‘But I expect this room will do as good as any of the others.’

He flung wide the door and she gasped. It was, simply put, the most splendid bedroom she had ever seen. She almost didn’t want to disturb its perfection by going inside. He breezed in and tossed her bag on the elegant chaise longue by the window, yet another of those massive windows designed to remind you of the still, white, glorious silence that lay outside.

‘Well?’ Lucas rarely noticed his surroundings but he did now because the expression on her face was so tellingly awestruck.

Playground for the seriously rich—this was what the lodge was. He had had zero input into its decor. He had left that to a world famous interior designer. When the job had been done, he had dispatched three of his trusted employees to give it the once over and make sure that everything had been done to the highest possible standard, no corners cut. Thereafter he had used it a handful of times when the season was at its height and only if the skiing conditions were perfect.

It was a beautiful place. He looked at the cool, white furnishings, breathed in the air of calm, noted the quality of the wood and the subtlety of the faded Persian rug on the ground. Nothing jarred. In the bowels of the lodge, there was a comprehensive spa and sauna area. He’d used that once.

Now, he had an intense urge to take her down there and show it to her just so that he could see that expression of awe again, even though, regrettably, the lodge was not his as far as she was concerned. For the first time in living memory, he had an insane desire to brag. Hell, where had that come from?

‘It’s amazing.’ Milly hovered by the door. ‘Isn’t it amazing? Well, I guess you’re used to this, but I’m not. My entire flat could fit into this bedroom. Is that an en suite bathroom?’

Amused, Lucas pushed the adjoining door and, sure enough, it opened out to a bathroom that was almost as big as the bedroom and contained its own little sitting area. He wondered what the interior designer had had in mind when she’d decided on sticking furniture in the bathroom.

‘Wow.’ Milly tiptoed her way to the bathroom and peered in. It was absolutely enormous. ‘You could have a party in here,’ she breathed in a hushed voice.

‘I doubt anyone would choose to do that.’

‘How can you be so blasé about all of this?’ She was too busy inspecting her glorious surroundings to look at him but she was acutely aware of his masculine presence next to her. ‘I mean, do you teach lots of rich people? Is that it? You’re accustomed to places like this because you’re in them all the time?’

‘I’ve been to a number of places along these lines...’

Milly laughed that infectious laugh that made him want to smile. ‘Must be a terrific anti-climax when the season’s over and you have to return to your digs.’

‘I cope.’

Suddenly exhausted after a day of travelling and the stress of finding herself out of a job, then back in one, Milly yawned behind her hand and wandered over to her holdall, which was not the quality of bag that should have adorned the chaise longue.

‘I’ve talked about myself all night,’ she said sleepily. ‘Tomorrow you can tell me all about yourself and your exciting life working for the rich and famous.’

A minute later she closed, and after a few seconds’ thought locked, the bedroom door behind him and began running the bath. The ridiculously luxurious bath that was so big and so deep that it was almost the size of a plunge pool.

She wouldn’t have believed it but she was having an impossible adventure and—okay, admit it—was so transfixed by Lucas that there had been no room in her head to feel sorry for herself.

She wondered what he did when he wasn’t playing ski instructor to rich adults and their kids. Did he while away his summers in the company of wealthy socialites? He was good-looking enough to be a gigolo but she dismissed that idea as fast as it entered her head because she couldn’t imagine that he could be that sleazy.

He’d said didn’t sleep with married women and she believed him. There had been a shadow of repugnance when that suggestion had been mooted.

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