‘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.