Читать книгу Modern Romance March 2015 Collection 2 - Кэтти Уильямс, Jane Porter, Cathy Williams - Страница 12
ОглавлениеTHE GOING WAS slower than it would normally have been. Lucas was familiar with the slope down to the town centre but the thickly falling snow meant that he had to take it more carefully, which went against the grain when it came to skiing.
What the hell had she been thinking, venturing out when she must have known that there was the possibility of getting lost? She had never been here before and so far had only seen the slopes in his speeding wake.
He did his utmost to cover as much ground as possible, cross-skiing, eyes peeled for anything that might be a figure in distress. Or even a figure moving at a snail’s pace, trying to get her bearings.
Nothing.
The slopes were virtually empty. The height of the tourist season was over and the falling snow would have kept most of the skiers indoors. Good food, good wine, expensive lodges—some, like his, with saunas and gyms. Being cooped up indoors would hardly be a hardship.
After twenty minutes, he saw the town approaching in the distance, a clutch of shops and restaurants, bars and cafés.
He hadn’t planned to make this trip. He had planned to stay put in the lodge, testing the less obvious ski slopes, maintaining his privacy. It was a small town and he was its wealthiest occasional visitor.
Cursing fluently under his breath, because he had no idea what ‘stuff’ she could possibly have needed to buy when the house was stocked with enough food for them to survive a sudden nuclear war, he resigned himself to a door-to-door search for her.
He hadn’t signed up for this.
He was recognised within minutes of entering the first shop. He was stopped as he tried to progress through the town. His dark, striking looks halted people in their tracks, even those who didn’t know who he was.
Somewhere, there would be someone with a camera. The place was a magnet for the paparazzi.
Hell! It made no difference to him whether some sleazeball with a camera snapped a photo of him but he would rather have avoided it. He valued his privacy, little of it as there was.
He found her in the very last café, huddled in front of a mug of hot chocolate, watching the snow storm. He had just spent the past hour trudging to find her and here she was, cool as a cucumber, sipping her drink without a care in the world!
He burst into the smart café and was, of course, immediately recognised by the owner. He might not have been a regular visitor but he was so extraordinarily high-profile that people went out of their way to garner his attention.
Even when, as now, he patently didn’t want it. Especially not when she had spotted him and was frowning as she absorbed the café owner’s deference.
The man was practically bowing as he retreated. Lucas ignored him, choosing instead to hold her gaze as he strode towards her.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’
‘Enjoying a cup of hot chocolate.’
‘Are you a complete idiot?’ He remained standing, his face dark with anger. ‘Have you noticed what’s happening with the weather outside? Or are you in a world of your own? Come on. Let’s go. Now!’
‘Don’t you dare order me around!’
Lucas leaned down, hands flat on the table, crowding her so that she automatically flinched back.
The café was half-empty but the few people there were whispering, looking covertly in their direction.
How dare he stride into this café and order her around like a schoolteacher telling a misbehaving kid what to do? How dare he? And where was the laid-guy who had listened to her rattle on about her life? The guy who had offered sparse but good advice, who had actually succeeded in helping her put her nightmare broken engagement into some kind of healthy perspective? Where had he gone? In his place, this was a dark, avenging stranger bossing her about, embarrassing her in front of other people.
Thanks to her lying, cheating ex-fiancé, she had spent the last two weeks smiling and putting on a brave face to mask her total humiliation. She wasn’t about to let any stranger drag her back to that place!
‘I am not ordering you around. I am very politely but very firmly telling you to drain the remnants of that hot chocolate and follow me out of here. Unless you want to find yourself spending the night in whatever hotel can fit you in!’
‘I didn’t ask you to come flying down here to rescue me!’ Milly snapped, digging her heels in as a matter of principle, even though he was right. She had barely noticed the worsening weather. She should have. She knew all about worsening weather from growing up in Scotland—but she had been lost in her thoughts. ‘And, for your information, it wasn’t like this when I came out this morning.’
Lucas didn’t answer. He pushed himself away from the table with the unswerving assumption that she would follow him, which she did.
‘I haven’t paid!’ she gasped, catching up with his furious stride.
‘There’s no need to pay...’ This from behind her.
Milly looked round, startled. ‘Wh-what do you mean?’ she stammered.
‘Mr Romero is a very special visitor.’ Like nearly every person working in the shops and cafés, the owner of this café was deferential to the wealthy and politely but condescendingly accommodating to everyone else. Money talked.
‘A very special visitor...?’ Milly’s mouth wobbled on the brink of laughter because she wondered what a simple ski instructor could have done to have been awarded the title of ‘very special visitor’. So he might have a handful of rich clients, but since when did their prestige rub off on him? Was he a very special visitor because of the way he looked?
‘Enough, Jacques!’ Lucas forced a smile but he could feel curiosity emanating from her in waves. ‘Naturally your bill will be paid.’ He turned to Milly. ‘Did you have anything else? No? In that case, put it on my tab, Jacques.’
‘Tab? What tab?’
She trailed out of the café behind him. The cable car was still in operation but for how long? Another hour and she might have been stranded downhill, unable to make her way back up to the lodge. ‘I apologise if you felt you had to rush down to find me,’ she offered grudgingly as they began the trip back up the hill. ‘Like I said, conditions were a lot better when I started out.’
‘And when they worsened, you intended to stay put, drinking hot chocolate and waiting for things to blow over?’ Lucas turned to her, jaw clenched. ‘I don’t do rescue missions, so if you want to risk life and limb do me a favour and wait until I’ve vacated the lodge. Then you’re more than welcome to take your life in your hands.’ Not a very fair remark, but damn if he was going to retract it. When you went out to ski, you had to have your wits about you. One false move and you could end up endangering not just your own life but someone else’s life, as well.
‘I’m not responsible for you while you’re out here,’ he continued coldly.
‘And I never asked you to be!’ Her eyes flashed but he was right. She should have known better. That said, she had apologised, and he hadn’t been big enough to accept it.
She turned away and stared off into the distance. What was it about her that was so poor when it came to reading men? Lucas had shown her a funny, charming side to him and she had been instantly captivated and disarmed. She’d have thought that experience, very recent experience, might have toughened her up a bit, made her just a little more jaundiced when it came to believing people and their motivations, but not so.
Apparently, he was fine when it came to her cooking for him and tidying up behind him like a skivvy. And if she wanted to chatter on inanely about herself, then he was happy enough to listen, because really, what choice did he have when he happened to be in the same room as her? But woe betide if she was stupid enough to think that any of those things amounted to him actually liking her.
She took people at face value. She always had. Growing up in a small town in remote Scotland where everyone knew everyone else had not prepared her for a world where it paid to be on guard. How many learning curves did one person need before they realised that having a trusting nature was a sure-fire guarantee of being let down? Especially when it came to the opposite sex?
Once back in the lodge, Milly stalked off to have a shower and get changed. The relaxed atmosphere between them had changed just like that after a silent trip back. She took her time having a very long bath and then changing into a pair of jeans and a comfortable cotton jumper. Her hair had gone wild in the snow and she did her best to tame it with the blow drier in the bathroom but in the end she resorted to tying it back in a loose braid down her back. Wisps and curly tendrils escaped around her face, but too bad.
For a few seconds, she looked at the reflection staring back at her in the mirror.
She couldn’t remember ever having been envious of any of her friends when she had been growing up. They had been interested in cultivating their feminine wiles and getting with boys, and she hadn’t. Not really. She hadn’t been interested in make-up or skimpy clothes and she had been amused at how much time and effort some of her friends had devoted to their looks and to attracting boys. It had all seemed a bit of a waste of time, because they had all been in and out of relationships, spending half their time hanging around waiting for a text to come or else putting everything on hold because they were ‘going steady’ with a boy and somehow that left no time for anything else.
She was pretty sure that those girls would have matured into women who would be savvy enough to spot someone like Robbie for the fraud that he was—and would certainly have spotted Lucas for the arrogant kind of guy who thought he could say what he wanted and do as he pleased with the opposite sex.
He didn’t do jealousy and he didn’t do rescue missions and there were probably a million other things he didn’t do. What it came down to was that he was someone who just did whatever he wanted to do and he didn’t really care if he trampled on someone’s feelings in the process.
It was not yet lunch time and the snow had already picked up a pace. Lucas was in the kitchen when she finally went downstairs, sitting at the table with a pot of coffee in front of him. Cut off from the outside world thanks to the snow storm, he had given up on trying to sift through paperwork he had brought with him.
She had sat in stony silence on their trip back, head averted, back rigid as a plank of wood as the cable car had carried them back up the slopes. There had been no pleading for him to listen to her and no trying to tempt him out of his foul mood. He had been spoiled by women who tiptoed around him. Despite her open, chatty nature, she was as stubborn as a mule.
‘Perhaps I should have been a little less...insistent,’ Lucas drawled, pushing aside the file he had given up on and watching the way she was deliberately avoiding eye contact with him. ‘But you don’t know this area and you don’t know how fast and how severe these snow storms can be.’ This was the closest he was going to get to an apology and it was a damn sight more than he would have offered anyone else.
‘Is that your idea of an apology?’ Milly asked, finally turning to look at him.
He must have showered during the time she had been upstairs, taking as long as she could in the bath without shrivelling to the size of a prune. His dark hair was slicked back and still damp, curling at the nape of his neck, and he was in loose grey jogging bottoms and a sweatshirt that managed to achieve the impossible—it was baggy and yet announced the hard muscularity of the body beneath it. He hadn’t shaved and his jaw was shadowed with stubble.
He looked insanely gorgeous, which made her feel even more of a fool for having been sucked into thinking that he was Mr Nice. Since when were insanely gorgeous guys ever nice?
‘Because if it is,’ she continued, folding her arms, ‘Then it’s pretty pathetic. I told you that I was sorry for not having paid sufficient attention to the weather, but I left very early this morning so that I could do a little skiing before I went into town and, yes, it was snowing, but nothing like it’s snowing now...’
Had she just told him that his apology was pathetic?
‘I’m not going to waste time discussing whether you should or shouldn’t have been on the slopes in bad weather.’
‘And...’ she carried on, because she wasn’t ready to pack in the conversation just yet. They were going to be spending at least another night under the same roof and she might as well clear the air or else they would be circling one another like opponents in a boxing ring, waiting to see who landed the first blow.
‘There’s more?’
‘You had no right to storm into that café and start laying down laws as though you’re my lord and master. You’re not.’
‘I never said I was.’
‘I’ve been taken for a mug by my ex and I haven’t come over here for a complete stranger to pick up where he left off!’ Okay, so some exaggeration here but, the more Milly thought about her idiocy in actually thinking that Lucas was a nice guy, the angrier she became. She thought of the high-handed, autocratic way he had delivered his command for her to follow him or else find herself stuck trying to get into a hotel—because she wouldn’t be able to make it back to the lodge, presumably because he would have had no qualms about leaving her to her own devices, having made sure grudgingly that she hadn’t died on the slopes...
Lucas was outraged at that suggestion. She had somehow managed to swat aside the small technicality of her rashly having ventured out without due care and attention because she had wanted to have a little ‘early-morning ski’ before ‘dashing to the shops for something and nothing and a cup of hot chocolate’. While he had been worried, imagining her skiing round and round in ever decreasing circles in a wilderness of unfamiliar white, she had been gaily sightseeing! And, when he’d run her to ground, not only had she expected an apology but she had the barefaced nerve to compare him to an ex-fiancé who had made off with her best friend!
Was there a crazier way to join dots?
‘So now I’m on a par with a guy who strung you along before he got caught in bed with your best friend?’
‘I’m drawing a comparison.’ Milly pushed herself away from the counter and turned her back on him so that she could make herself a cup of coffee. She could feel his eyes boring into her back. Typical! He was charm personified when she was obeying his rules but the second she so much as expressed an opinion that didn’t happen to tally with his, the second she stood up to him and refused to let him treat her like a kid, he suddenly couldn’t see her point of view!
‘It’s a ridiculous comparison and I’m not having this conversation. The phone lines are temporarily dead, and it looks as though I’m going to be staying on here a little longer than I originally anticipated, so you might want to rethink your sulkiness—because it’s going to be a little charged if you’re either jumping down my throat or stalking around in surly silence.’
Had he actually considered the challenge of bedding the woman? Was there a less appropriate candidate? He shot her a glance of pure exasperation. How much more illogical could one human being be? And how much more temperamental? One minute, she was as chirpy as a cricket, pouring out her life story with gay abandon. The next minute, she was a raging inferno, behaving as though his act of kindness in putting himself out to find her had been offensive somehow.
‘I just bet you’re like that with all those women who fling themselves at your feet,’ Milly snapped, turning back to face him and plonking herself at the kitchen table with her mug of coffee in front of her.
‘Are we still embroiled in this pointless argument?’ Lucas flung his hands in the air and then raked his fingers through his dark hair and folded his arms. ‘Like what?’ He wondered why he was being drawn into this when there was nothing to stop him getting up and walking out of the kitchen, leaving her to stew. ‘What am I like with all those women who fling themselves at my feet?’
Histrionic scenes annoyed him. In fact, he could think of nothing more unacceptable than a woman having a hissy fit. Women should be obliging, soothing, a source of undemanding pleasure to interrupt the ferocity and stress of his working life.
He assumed that the only reason he was putting up with the red-faced, throbbing little ruffled angel in front of him was because she wasn’t his woman.
More to the point, he wasn’t exactly awash with choices, considering she was in his lodge, sharing his space.
But you could always walk away, a little voice in his head pointed out, and Lucas brushed it aside. This was not an occasion for walking away.
‘High-handed and annoying!’
‘You’re telling me that you find me annoying?’
‘You think you can do whatever you like because of the way you look.’
Lucas smiled, a slow, devastating smile that made her pulses jump. ‘Is there a backhanded compliment in there somewhere?’
‘No. I bet you play the field and lead women on because you can...’
Lucas stifled a groan. ‘You’re like a dog with a bone.’
‘I take it there’s a backhanded compliment in there somewhere?’ Milly parroted tartly and his smile broadened. How was she supposed to get on with the business of being angry with him when he smiled like that? How was she supposed to remember what an arrogant jerk he could be?
Lucas tilted his head to one side, as though seriously considering her rhetorical question.
‘Possibly,’ he said slowly, his dark eyes roving over her flushed face. ‘I’m surprised you stuck it out in a job where you were forced to take orders.’
Milly glared. It had taken a lot of tongue biting to work in a hot, understaffed kitchen where she had never been given the opportunity actually to produce anything of her own...but she still didn’t care for him pointing that out to her.
‘There are always up sides to any situation,’ he told her, accurately reading the expression on her face and following her thoughts as seamlessly as if they were written in big, bold letters across her forehead. ‘You can waste time feeling sorry about yourself and moaning about the job you’ve lost...’
‘I wasn’t moaning!’
‘Of course you were. Or, you can see it as a good thing. So you no longer have to run around taking orders from someone you don’t particularly like in a job that was going nowhere anyway. And, getting back to your sweeping generalisation that I lead women on because I can, I think it’s wise for me to dispel that myth before it has time to blossom into another full-blown argument.’
His dark eyes were cool and Milly stiffened.
‘I’m not interested in—’
‘Well you’d better start working up an interest because, frankly, I wasn’t interested in hearing you compare me to the bum who let you down.’
Milly reddened because she knew that she had been unfair.
‘You were high-handed,’ she began weakly in her defence and the temperature in his eyes dropped a few notches from cool to glacial.
‘I’ve already told you that I would never sleep with any woman who was involved with someone else. Likewise, I would never sleep with any woman if I was involved with someone else. The thought of that disgusts me, so I couldn’t be further from the unprincipled bastard you got yourself involved with.’ He didn’t take his eyes off her face. ‘When I go out with a woman, she is safe in the knowledge that I’m not going anywhere else and I’m not looking anywhere else either.’
Milly shivered at the rampant possessiveness in his voice. She wondered what it would be like to have that possessiveness directed on her, to have this big, powerful man focus all his attention on her, to the exclusion of anybody else.
‘And yet you’re not a jealous guy.’ She moved on the conversation to dispel the alluring thought of him wanting her so badly that he literally didn’t have eyes for any other woman. Her skin tingled, as though he had brushed it with his fingers, and her whole body shrieked into heated response.
‘I’ve never had cause to be.’
‘Because all those women who come running when you snap your fingers wouldn’t dream of ever giving you anything to be jealous about?’ She thought of the way everyone had looked at him in that expensive café, on the street as they’d been leaving...
Something stirred at the back of her mind but she shoved it aside because she wanted to hear what he had to say.
‘Because I have yet to meet anyone I’m interested enough in,’ Lucas answered bluntly. He picked up his phone, searching for the signal that might or might not appear at any given moment. The lines were down but hopefully not for long. Like anywhere else where the weather could become suddenly and wildly unpredictable, there was no telling when normality would be restored.
The endless cry of the commitment-phobe, Milly thought. Men who could have whoever they wanted never had an interest in settling for one because why opt for one type of candy when there were so many jars and bottles to choose from? He could barely be bothered to have this conversation with her. He was searching his phone for a signal. She knew that. He was desperate for an outside line and connection with the real world. He’d already gone beyond the line of duty in putting himself out to stage a rescue mission for someone he happened to be stuck with.
‘Am I boring you?’ she asked and Lucas looked at her.
‘You’re the most demanding woman I have ever met in my entire life.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Milly bristled.
‘You’re still annoyed because I rescued you?’ Lucas had never done so much delving into any woman’s psyche in his life before. Even in his wild and misspent youth, when he had been gunning for the wrong woman, he had let sex do the talking.
‘Don’t start thinking of yourself as a knight in shining armour,’ Milly jumped in to correct him and he raised his eyebrows in an expression that was lazy and amused.
‘Ah. Still annoyed. Where has Little Miss Sunshine gone?’
In a flash, Milly had insight into what he thought of her. While she had been shooting her mouth off, confiding, losing herself in the thrill of being in the company of a guy who was actually listening to her...not to mention thrilling her with those dark, saturnine good looks...he had not been similarly entranced. The opposite. She had been a spot of comic relief with her ‘Little Miss Sunshine’ personality.
She turned away, hurt.
‘I apologise if you were embarrassed,’ he said gruffly. ‘I realise that, along with arrogant, I can be prone to occasionally lapsing into caveman tactics.’ When she didn’t say anything, he reached forward and, finger on her chin, turned her gently to face him.
Milly’s eyes widened and her body was suddenly, horrifyingly, excitingly, in meltdown. She could barely breathe. Her mouth parted. Her nipples stiffened, poking against her bra, sensitive as they scraped against the cotton. Between her legs, she was dampening.
‘Hell, you should be careful when you look at a man like that,’ Lucas said roughly. But he didn’t remove his finger. His libido had been in retreat for a while. Dealing with his ex had left a sour taste in his mouth and he had submerged himself in work because it was, frankly, blessed relief from the whining demands of a woman who didn’t want to go away.
Milly, with her disingenuous ignorance of who he really was, with her open, confiding nature and her easy laughter—despite having come through circumstances that would have knocked back anyone else—had stirred his interest.
‘Forget it. Not interested.’ She pulled away and stood up. ‘Just out of curiosity, when were you thinking of leaving?’
Lucas felt the reassuring buzz of his mobile as the outside world was once more connected. Normality could be restored within twenty-four hours. This unusual interlude could be left where it was and he could return to his formidably controlled and predictable life. Since when had he ever been a fan of surprises anyway? Since when had he ever been interested in exploring anything that came in an unpredictable package? Hadn’t he already been there? Done that? Got burned?
‘I’m considering my options.’
‘That being the case, I suggest we do our own thing. If I decide to go out skiing, then I don’t expect you to instigate a search party if I happen to be a couple of hours late.’
Lucas shook his head and briefly closed his eyes. ‘Demanding,’ he drawled. ‘And bloody stubborn.’
‘Would that be because I disapproved of you making an idiot out of me in a public place?’ She opened her mouth to fume a little bit more but his phone beeped with a series of incoming text messages, voicemails and emails.
Exasperated, she walked off towards the window where the furious snowfall was already showing signs of abating. Blue sky was doing its best to break through. By tomorrow, if not later in the day, the skiing would be good.
And who knew? Lucas might be gone.
She told herself that that would be the best possible outcome. She needed her time out, undiluted time to mourn the passing of a significant relationship. Under normal circumstances, if the Ramos family had showed up, she would have been busy but her busyness would not have distracted her from her thoughts. Lucas distracted her from her thoughts. Robbie had barely registered on her radar! In fact, when she tried to think of him, a darker, leaner image instantly superimposed itself.
Behind her, she was aware of Lucas talking rapidly on his phone. He seemed to be very well known in these parts. A man with connections. He was probably doing all sorts of networking right now, getting things lined up now that his stint here had fallen through.
‘You were asking me,’ a dark, sexy drawl said from behind her, ‘how long I intended staying here and I told you that I was keeping my options open...’
Milly spun around, tensing up. ‘I’m fine to stay here by myself,’ she told him without hesitation.
‘But would that require you to curb your keen sense of adventure?’ Lucas couldn’t help asking. He thought of her here, on her own, deciding to explore the slopes at midnight just for the fun of it. ‘Tell me what your plans are when you leave this place. Do you intend to stay here for the full fortnight? Or will you return to London and start looking for another flatmate? What happens if you don’t find one? ‘
Milly frowned, taken aback at his change of subject. ‘I’m keeping my options open,’ she mimicked, and Lucas smiled.
‘Come and sit down. I want to have a talk with you.’
‘What about?’
Lucas didn’t answer. Instead, he strolled towards the sofa, his face revealing nothing of what was going through his head.
Was there anything more annoying than an actively functioning grapevine? He had been in the town no longer than an hour and the world at large seemed to know.
His window of freedom appeared to have shut and now he had a problem on his hands.
Of course, there was no problem that did not carry a solution, but he could definitely have done without this particular thorn in his side. His mouth tightened as he thought of the series of texts he had received, texts that had been in a toxic holding bay until service resumed and he could pick them up.
‘What are the chances of you finding a job the second you return to London?’ he asked, relaxing back on the sofa, his face revealing nothing of what was going through his head or of the vague plan slowly beginning to cohere into shape. ‘In the catering arena? I’m guessing that there are a lot of jobs to work at burger joints but I’m also guessing that those jobs won’t be top of your list.’
‘I honestly don’t see what my future job hunting has to do with you!’
‘And then there’s the little technicality of paying rent when you don’t have a job. Difficult. Unless you have a stash of money saved...’ He steamrollered over her interruption as though she hadn’t spoken. ‘Have you a stash of money saved?’
‘That’s none of your—’
‘Business. Is that what you’re about to say?’
‘Where are you going with this, Lucas? Okay, so I may not have much money saved, but...I’ll have what I’ve earned for this fortnight.’ She frowned and wondered how long that would last. Why did he have to throw reality in her face? Had he no heart at all?
‘“Water through fingers” is the thought that springs to mind,’ Lucas said with what she thought was a callous lack of empathy. ‘The cost of living is astronomical in London.’
‘How would you know?’ Milly muttered and again Lucas opted to ignore her interruption.
‘I guess, in all events, you could always return to your grandmother’s place in Scotland. Ah. I can see from the you way you blanched just then that that option lacks appeal.’
‘Why are you doing this?’
‘Doing what?’ Lucas asked with a show of innocence that set her teeth on edge because it was so clearly false.
‘Ramming all my problems down my throat. I wish I’d never confided in you.’
‘I wasn’t ramming your problems down your throat.’
‘I didn’t come here to...to...’
‘Confront that awkward little thing known as reality?’
‘You can be really horrible.’ Okay, so obviously she would have to address the pressing issue of how she was going to survive without a job and, hard on the heels of that, probably nowhere to live either. But she had been quite happy to put that on hold, at least for a few days. Once she had sorted out the emotional mess she was in which, thinking about it, she realised she seemed to be sorting out rather nicely, all things taken into account.
‘There’s a point to my timely reminder of the problems you’re facing,.’ Lucas leaned forward, resting his forearms on his thighs. He wondered where he should start. Her mouth was pursed into a sulky downturn, her eternally upbeat personality dampened by the way he had forced unpleasant reality upon her.
‘And that point being...?’
‘Point being that I’m about to come to your rescue. In fact, I’m about to open up your world to tantalising new possibilities, and in return all you have to do for me is one small favour.’
