The Real Romero

‘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…

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