The Real Romero

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 (#u2558206a-af2c-51b9-ac25-338e16e41107)

‘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?