The Real Romero. Cathy Williams
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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