Читать книгу Modern Romance March 2015 Collection 2 - Кэтти Уильямс, Jane Porter, Cathy Williams - Страница 13
ОглавлениеMILLY STARED AT Lucas in confusion. For a few seconds, she wondered whether he was joking, whether he was having a laugh at her expense, somehow getting his own back for the tantrum she had pulled earlier.
She dismissed that idea as fast as it had come. His face was impassive, deadly serious. And if her gut was telling her that he wasn’t the sort of guy who liked tantrums, it was also telling her that he wasn’t the sort of guy who would do anything to get his own back for something as silly as her snapping at him.
Whether he had deserved it or not. Which he had. More or less.
‘Tantalising new possibilities?’ she laughed a little weakly. ‘Are you feeling okay, Lucas? How are you going to open up my world to tantalising new possibilities?’ She wished he would stop looking at her like that, with such deadly calm.
‘You might be a little...surprised by what I’m about to tell you.’
‘Then don’t tell me,’ she said promptly. ‘I hate surprises. They’re never good.’
‘Well, that’s one thing we have in common,’ Lucas murmured, momentarily distracted. He stood up and she followed the easy, fluid movement of his long body with something close to compulsion. He walked across to the window and stared out and, even with his back to her, she could tell that he wasn’t really seeing what he appeared to be staring at. She could sense his distraction and that made her nervous because, and she could see this now, there was something so intensely focused about him. Distracted was not his normal frame of mind.
He spun round, caught her staring at him and allowed himself a small smile which immediately made her glower. And that was why he was just so damned arrogant, she thought. Because women followed him with their eyes, irresistibly drawn to mindless gazing.
‘I’m not quite the person you think I am.’
For a few seconds, Milly thought that perhaps she had misheard him. Who on earth ever said stuff like that? Her mouth fell open and she stared at him in silence, waiting for him to enlarge on that enigmatic statement.
Lucas was taking his time. He walked slowly back towards her, maintaining eye contact.
‘And, before your over-active imagination starts casting me in the starring role of homicidal maniac, you can rest assured that it’s nothing like that.’ He sat down and continued looking at her thoughtfully, trying on the various options at his disposal for telling her who he really was and what he wanted from her. And why. Much as he loathed justifying his decisions to anyone, he would have no choice in this circumstance.
‘The Ramos family,’ he began. ‘This house...everything in it...doesn’t belong to them.’
‘Oh, please...’ Milly raised her eyebrows in rampant disbelief. ‘I don’t know where you’re going with this but I know for a fact that it does. You forget that snooty Sandra employed me to work for them. I was given all their details. Are you going to tell me that she made the whole thing up? That there are no such people? Plus, you’re forgetting that Mr Ramos paid me for my time here!’
She shot him a look of triumph at winning this argument, mixed with pity that he had chosen to come out with such a glaring lie. The combination felt good, especially after the way he had hauled her out of the café in front of everyone. Triumph and pity...she savoured the feeling for a few seconds and threw in a kindly but condescending smile for good measure.
Lucas, she noted, didn’t come close to looking sheepish.
‘Of course he paid you,’ he said, brushing aside that detail as casually as someone brushing aside a piffling point of view that carried no weight. ‘He paid you because I told him to.’
‘Because you told him to...’ Milly burst out laughing and, when eventually her laughter had turned to broken giggles, she carried on, very gently, ‘I think you might be delusional. I know you fancy yourself as some kind of hot shot just because you happen to work for loads of rich people and you probably have them eating out of your hand...’ Especially the women. ‘But the bottom line is that you’re still just a ski instructor’
Lucas kissed sweet, rueful goodbye to his very brief window of normality.
‘Not quite...’
‘I mean,’ Milly expanded, ignoring him, ‘it’s a bit like me saying that I own five Michelin-starred restaurants when in fact I just happen to work behind the scenes for an average hotel in West London.’
‘Worked,’ Lucas swiftly reminded her and she scowled at the reminder. ‘You worked at an average hotel in West London. Don’t forget that you’re now jobless.’
‘I hadn’t forgotten,’ Milly said through gritted teeth. ‘And I still don’t know where you’re going with this.’
Lucas sighed and raked his fingers through his hair, then he reached for his computer, which was on the glass table next to him.
With a start of surprise he realised that for the first time in a very long time indeed work had not been the overriding thought in his head. In fact, he had a backlog of emails to work his way through, emails to which he had given precious little thought. Dark eyes lazily took in the diminutive girl in front of him sitting in a lotus position, her long hair flowing in rivulets over her shoulders. Self-restraint with a sexy member of the opposite sex had clearly had an effect on his ability to concentrate to his usual formidably high levels.
He kick-started the computer and when he had found what he had been looking for he swivelled the computer towards her.
Milly looked at him sceptically. Did anything faze this guy? Whatever the situation, he was the very picture of cool. Chewing her out in the middle of an expensive café in one of the most expensive ski resorts on the planet: cool. Arranging for her to stay in the ski lodge: cool. Telling her a string of real whoppers about the extent of his influence: cool.
‘You’re not meant to carry on sitting there,’ Lucas informed her gently. ‘You’re meant to get close enough to the computer so that you can actually read what I’ve flagged up.’
Accustomed to having the world jump to his commands without asking questions, Lucas had a brief moment of wondering whether she intended stubbornly to stay put until he was forced to bring the computer to her. However, after a few seconds of jaundiced hesitation, Milly stood up and then sat on the sofa, back in her cross-legged position, so that she could read his extensive bio.
Lucas watched her. She didn’t have to say anything; her face said it all: calm and superior, morphing into frowning puzzlement, then finally incredulity.
Then she did it all over again as she re-read the article, which, fawningly and in depth, traced his lineage and every single one of his achievements, from university degrees to acquisitions of companies. Much was made of his background and the limitless privileges into which he had been born.
He had been personally interviewed for this article. It had come hard on the heels of his unfortunate experience with his gold-digging almost-fiancée, and he had not been predisposed to be anything but brusque with the glamorous blonde whose job it had been to glean some scintillating ‘heard it from the horse’s mouth’ titbits.
His coolness had not bothered her. She had practically salivated in his company and had crossed and re-crossed her long legs so many times that he had asked her at one point whether she needed to use the toilet.
At any rate, the finished article had been sent to him for proofreading before it had been put online, and he had been amused to note that he had somehow achieved a god-like status, even though he knew he had been borderline rude to the woman. Money: Was there anything in the world that talked louder and more persuasively?
‘I don’t understand.’ Milly sat back, drawing her legs up and looping her arms around them.
‘Of course you do.’
‘Don’t tell me what I do or don’t understand,’ she said automatically, because there was nothing worse than an arrogant know-it-all. But he was right. She understood. ‘You’re not a ski instructor at all, are you?’
‘Correct.’
‘In other words, you lied to me.’
‘I wouldn’t exactly call it a lie...’ Naturally he had expected surprise, incredulity even, but at the end of the day the ski instructor had been swapped for a billionaire. He had taken it as a given that his new status would do its usual job and bring a smile of servile appreciation to her lips. None of it. She was scowling at him, eyes glinting with anger.
‘Well, I would.’ Milly was struggling to contain her anger. How dared he? How dared he play her for a complete fool? But then, she was just Little Miss Sunshine, wasn’t she? Some comic relief for a man marooned in a ski lodge with her!
‘You made false assumptions,’ Lucas told her with barely concealed impatience. ‘I chose not to set you straight.’
‘In your world, that might be acceptable behaviour. In my world, that’s called lying!’ 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. ‘I leave London to escape a creep who lied to me and what do I land up sharing space with? Another creep who lies to me!’
‘That’s the last time you’re going to insult me by bracketing me with your loser ex!’
‘Why? You seem to have a fair few things in common! 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 really 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. How could he just sit there and admit to lying to her without even batting an eyelid? As though it was just perfectly acceptable?
Although...
The man was a billionaire. He owned a million companies. He had a hand in pretty much every pie and he had come from money. There were no limits to his wealth, his power, his influence, it would seem. She could reluctantly understand that suspicion would be his constant companion.
That thought instantly deflated her and she had to summon up some of the old anger she had felt at the thought that he had cheerfully lied to her.
‘I feel sorry for you,’ she told him scornfully and he stiffened.
‘Do I really want to hear you explain that remark?’ No one, but no one, had ever felt sorry for him or, if anyone had, they had been at pains to conceal it. Money engendered quite the opposite response. Money combined with good looks—which was something about himself he accepted without any vanity whatsoever—was even more persuasive a tool in affording him the sort of slavish responses he got from other people. Particularly from women.
He looked at her carefully. She was as volatile and as unpredictable as a volcano on the point of eruption. It should have been a turn off and it was mildly surprising that it wasn’t.
‘How can you trust that anyone likes you for you?’
‘My point exactly. But, before we deviate down some amateur psychobabble road, there’s a reason I have brought this up.’
Milly stilled. There would be a reason, of course there would, or else he would have stayed a couple of nights and pushed on leaving her none the wiser. Certainly he would have spared himself the sort of awkward conversation he clearly wasn’t relishing.
But before he got to that... She finally grasped the thought that had been niggling away at the back of her mind.
‘At that café,’ she said slowly, ‘The owner... I wondered why he was so eager to please...why he said that I didn’t have to pay the bill.’
‘I’m known here.’ He offered an elegant shrug. ‘I don’t come often but when I do I’m high-profile.’
High-profile and made of money. What had he thought of her? Babbling on and taking him for being a ski instructor? He must have thought that she was crazy. A crazy woman who chattered non-stop and had ruined his seclusion by landing on his doorstep.
‘Why did you decide to come over?’ she asked, feverishly pursuing her train of thought so that she could join the pieces of the puzzle together and get the complete picture.
Lucas hesitated. It was for the very reason that he had decided to descend on his ski lodge that he was now having this conversation. ‘Everyone needs a break,’ he informed her silkily. ‘Alberto and his annoying family had pulled out and I decided that a bit of skiing would be just the thing. And, in case you’re wondering, the Ramos family were over here as a favour to my mother. Alberto works for me.’
‘Which was why you could engineer to have me paid for this this two-week holiday. You just had to pick the phone up and tell him and he had to obey. Is that what happens in your life, Lucas? You snap your fingers and people jump to attention and obey you?’
‘In a nutshell.’
Milly wondered how she hadn’t noticed before the way that he was sheathed in an invisible aura of power, the sort of power that only the super-rich had. Or maybe she had noticed but, in her usual trusting way, had shoved that to the back of her mind and chosen to take him at his word: Mr Ski Instructor who did a bit of this and that when he wasn’t teaching people like the Ramos family to ski.
Maybe, just maybe, she would wake up one day and realise that people were rarely who they said they were.
‘Sit down, Milly.’ He waited until she was back on the sofa. Her eyes were guarded, the cheerful smile wiped off her face. He had done that. Whatever he told her, he would be just someone else who had lied to her. His mouth tightened; for once, he was finding it hard casually to dismiss someone else’s emotions. Habits of lifetime, however, came to his rescue and he swept past his temporary discomfort. So he had punctured some of that bubbly sparkle. Cynicism was healthy. It prepared you for life’s adversities. She would return to this very point in time and, in the years to come, she would thank him for bursting her bubble.
‘I told you that I came here because I needed a break. Partially true. I’m responsible for the running of...countless companies that stretch across countless countries. I employ thousands...and I’m responsible for them, as well.’
So many revelations were piling up that she felt faint. He was a one-man employment agency. He was a guy who ruled the world, someone who dropped in now and again for a bit of skiing when he needed to unwind, someone who had the most amazing ski lodge on the planet, which he used for a few days in the year. She would stake her life on him having a house in every country, places like the ski lodge that he could use when and if it suited him.
‘What do you mean when you say partially? You said that it was partially true that you came here to unwind. What other reason would you have for coming here?’
‘I have been experiencing a few problems with an ex,’ Lucas said heavily. Unaccustomed as he was to accounting for his actions, he was decidedly ill at ease with explaining himself to the woman sitting opposite him, but explain himself he had to.
‘No, let me guess.’ Milly’s voice was a shade higher than normal. The whole situation felt surreal. In fact, the past few weeks had felt surreal. You’d think I’d be used to dealing with surreal by now, she thought with an edge of bitterness that was alien to her. ‘The ex wasn’t ready to be an ex. Did the poor woman start getting ideas about settling down with you?’
Lucas found it difficult to think of Isobel in terms of ‘the poor woman’. She was anything but a helpless, deluded damsel with a broken heart. She was a sophisticated, hard-as-nails, six-foot model who had capitalised on the fact that, very slightly, she was acquainted with his mother. She had mistakenly figured that the connection carried weight. His parents had known her parents, both wealthy families living in Madrid, both mixing in the same social circles. The relationship had fizzled out when his father had died but she had done her utmost to resuscitate it during their six-month fling in the hope that familiarity would somehow guide him to a flashbulb moment of thinking that what they had was more than what it actually was. It hadn’t but she still refused to let go.
‘My relationship with Isobel was not of the enduring kind.’
‘Don’t you ever want to settle down? What was she like? Why wasn’t it of the enduring kind?’ Curiosity dug into her. ‘Was she a gold-digger?’ She pictured a kid who was too naive to comprehend all the things Lucas did and didn’t do.
‘I am a meal ticket for most women,’ Lucas responded drily, not flinching from the absolute truth. ‘Even for rich women who can manage quite happily on their trust funds. I have a lot of pull, a lot of connections. I offer a lifestyle that most women would find irresistible.’
‘What sort of lifestyle is that?’
‘What can I say, Milly? I have a passport to places only available to the rich and famous. It’s not just about the limitless spending and the shopping sprees, it’s also about the mixing and mingling with famous faces and people who appear in magazines.’
‘It sounds hideous.’
‘You don’t mean that.’
‘Being on show every minute of the day and living your life in a glass house with everybody looking in? Having to dress up for social affairs every night? Wear war-paint and make sure you’re shopping in all the right places and mixing with all the right people, even if they’re dull and shallow and boring? I’d hate it.’
Which was why she had been such a breath of fresh air—enough of a breath of fresh air to make him alter his plans for leaving. Anonymity had brought him a glimpse of being the sort of man who could dump his cynicism for a minute...except cynicism was just much too ingrained in him for him ever really to do that. And besides, that glimpse of freedom was now gone.
Lucas gazed at her open, honest face and wondered whether she would be singing the same song if she were to be introduced to that life of glamour and wealth that she claimed she would hate. It was very easy to dismiss the things you’ve never personally experienced.
‘All this is by the by,’ he said with a shrug. ‘The fact is that Isobel has been annoyingly persistent in thinking that we can salvage something and carry on. She’s refused to fade away and, having finally reconciled herself to the end of our relationship, she’s decided that a little healthy revenge might be called for. When I went looking for you in the town, I was snapped.’
‘Snapped?’
‘Surely you can’t be that naive, Milly. The paparazzi are always on the lookout for candid shots of high-profile people. In fairness, I don’t know whether I was snapped by the paparazzi or by some interested visitor who recognised me. Or maybe Alberto’s wife just happened to let slip to someone who let slip to someone else that I was staying at the lodge with you... Whatever picture happened to be taken of us together consolidated the story. I would think that someone who knows Isobel posted it to her on a social network and it went from there...’
‘Sorry, but you’re losing me. What story? There is no story. Not unless it’s the story of the ski instructor who wasn’t a ski instructor.’
‘Are we back to that?’
‘Tell me what you’re talking about,’ Milly said because he was right. What was there to gain from going over trodden ground? So he had lied because he was suspicious of the human race and in particular of women. She could tell him a thousand times that she found it insulting and offensive but he would just look at her blandly, shrug and imply that her point of view was inferior to his.
‘Isobel has somehow managed to get hold of the fact that I’m here with you.’
‘You’re not here with me.’ She flushed hotly at the unspoken implication buzzing in the air between them like a live, dangerous electric current.
‘And I’m perfectly sure,’ Lucas intoned in a voice that was suddenly hard and devoid of emotion, ‘that she is all too aware of that. But she’s a woman scorned and she’s decided that a little malicious mischief is just what I deserve. She can’t have me so why not make life as hellish for me as she can, to teach me the valuable lesson that, when it comes to dumping, she’s the one who decides to do it?’
Milly frowned in confusion. For someone who had an exceptional grasp of the English language and how to use it to maximum benefit, he seemed to be struggling with his words. ‘Okay...’ She dragged out that one word while trying to grapple with whatever he was attempting to say to her.
‘There’s something else I should mention,’ Lucas admitted. ‘Another reason I came here was to have a break from my mother. She’s been ill and, ever since her extremely successful operation, she’s managed to convince herself that time is no longer on her side...’
‘I’m sorry. Happens with older people sometimes,’ Milly murmured. ‘My granny had an operation on her hip two years ago and, even though she can run up a mountain faster than a goat, she still thinks that she’ll wake up one morning and she won’t be able to stand. Sorry. I interrupted you. What does your mother have to do with this? Lucas, I haven’t got the foggiest what you’re talking about.’
‘Isobel,’ he said heavily, striving to stem the anger in his voice when he thought of where his ex had landed him, ‘has presented my mother with whatever picture was snapped of us in town and has intimated that...’ he shook his head and cursed fluently under his breath ‘...we are somehow involved in some kind of romantic situation.’
He flushed darkly, remembering the way his libido had gone into orbit when he had looked at her. Yes, he had toyed with the tantalising thought of taking her to his bed. Had that thought somehow manifested itself in whatever expression he had been snapped wearing? Had he been looking at her with some kind of sexual intent? Had some idiot’s camera caught him off-guard with a look in his eye that had lent itself to some kind of misinterpretation?
Milly’s mouth fell open. She didn’t know whether to be horrified, incredulous or just downright amused. No. Not amused. His expression was grim. If she laughed, then he wouldn’t be laughing along with her.
‘But that’s ridiculous.’ Who in their right mind would link the two of us together romantically? ‘I’ve been here for a couple of days. How on earth would anyone suppose that we’re somehow romantically linked?’ She tried a laugh of sorts and, as expected, he saw nothing funny in the situation. ‘Besides, I’m here recovering from a broken heart. Don’t forget I was due to be married less than a month ago...’
‘She’s implied to my mother that we may have known one another longer than a mere couple of days. She knows how I feel about involvement and permanence because I told her, and she knows that the last thing I would want is to find myself trapped in a situation where my mother thinks that I may have ditched my bachelor ways...’
‘How do you feel about involvement and permanence?’
‘Another time, Milly. For now, you just need to know that they don’t form part of my lifestyle choices.’
Milly burst out laughing. ‘I just can’t picture it!’ She gasped. ‘I just can’t imagine you sneaking around my miniscule two-bed house, comforting me after my break-up. Somehow I don’t think you’re the kind of guy to go unnoticed! And then what? We planned a secret rendezvous here via snooty Sandra and her band of clones? It doesn’t add up. Any fool would be able to see through that in seconds!’ She sobered up. ‘But that was a mean trick. I guess she fell in love with you. Poor woman.’
Lucas raised his eyebrows, momentarily disconcerted. If he hadn’t had proof positive that Milly wasn’t interested in what he brought to the table, he would have put her down as just another gold-digger with a slightly different approach. ‘I’ll cut to the chase,’ he said tightly. ‘She’s told my mother that we’re slightly more than an item. My mother is now under the impression that we’re going to be married. Isobel showed her whatever candid snapshot got taken and presented her case as the utter truth because would I have gone for someone so...different from what I usually go for if it weren’t for the fact that we were serious about one another?’
‘What do you usually go for?’ She mentally answered that question for herself before she had finished asking it. The guy was drop-dead gorgeous and rolling in money as an added bonus. Guys like that only went for a certain type and that type wasn’t her. ‘No, don’t answer that,’ she told him quietly. ‘I’m thinking you like lots of supermodel types, stunning arm-candy. I’ll bet your jilted Isobel was tall and skinny and looked like a model.’
‘She was a model.’
‘So she’s pulled a pretty clever trick in showing your mum a picture of dumpy little me, because why else would you be in the same room as me unless it was serious. Am I right?’
‘That’s more or less the size of it. She must have glossed over the holes in the story and ran amok with the rest because my mother’s fallen for whatever she’s been told hook, line and unfortunate sinker.’
‘Do you know what, Lucas?’ She breathed in deeply and marvelled at how complicated her life had become ever since Robbie had entered it—lying, cheating Robbie who had come along and wreaked havoc with her perfectly enjoyable, uneventful, contented life. And, not satisfied with that, fate had decided to carry on where Robbie had left off and had thrown her a blinder in the form of the man now looking at her with dark, lazy intent.
‘I think I need a break from the male species. In fact, I might take a permanent break from them. Anyway, I don’t know why you’ve told me all this. I’m sorry your mother now thinks that you’ve found the love of your life but you’ll just have to tell her the truth.’
‘There is an alternative...’ He stood and flexed his arms, stretching out from having sat in one spot for too long when he had wanted to move around, walk some of his restlessness away.
‘Which is what, exactly...?’ Milly looked at him cautiously as he prowled through the vast open space. His vast open space. She still found it hard to grapple with the reality that all of this belonged to him. That said, she had recognised a certain something the very first time she had met him: a certain air that spoke of power; a certain arrogant self-assurance that made a nonsense of him being someone as relatively unimportant as a ski instructor. Even a drop-dead, improbably gorgeous ski instructor.
Another telling example of her stupid ability to trust even when she was staring evidence to the contrary in the face.
‘You’re broke, you’re out of work and you’ll probably return to London to find all your possessions tossed onto the pavement, awaiting your urgent collection.’
‘My landlord wouldn’t do that,’ Milly said coldly. ‘Tenants do have rights, you know.’
‘Not as many as a landlord whose primary right is the one to have his rent paid.’ He paused to stare down at her and Milly grudgingly gazed back up at him. ‘Here’s the deal. I employ you for a couple of weeks—three, max—to play the role of loved-up wife-to-be. We will stay with my mother in her house in the outskirts of Madrid, a beautiful city by the way, and we can break up over there. My mother will be saddened but she will recover. Normally, I wouldn’t go to this much trouble but, like I said, she’s been ill and she’s mentally not quite there yet. I don’t want to present her with a litany of low tricks and lies. She will be upset and confused, especially coming hard on the heels of wanting me to settle down. I will give her what she wants and, when she sees how impossible I am, she will understand why marriage is off the cards for me for the foreseeable future.
‘And here’s what you get out of this: a fat pay cheque, a five-star, all expenses paid holiday in Spain and, afterwards, I will ensure that you’re set up with a damn good job in one of the three restaurants I own in London, with full use of one of my company apartments for six months until you can find alternative accommodation to rent. Whatever you were earning in your last job... Put it this way, I’ll quadruple the package.’
‘And in return I lie to your mother.’
‘That’s not how I see it.’
‘Plus I lie to my grandmother as well, I suppose? Because what am I supposed to tell her when I don’t return to London? Plus I lie to my friends, as well? Thanks, Lucas, but no thanks...’
