‘I’ve been to a number of places along these lines...’
Milly laughed that infectious laugh that made him want to smile. ‘Must be a terrific anti-climax when the season’s over and you have to return to your digs.’
‘I cope.’
Suddenly exhausted after a day of travelling and the stress of finding herself out of a job, then back in one, Milly yawned behind her hand and wandered over to her holdall, which was not the quality of bag that should have adorned the chaise longue.
‘I’ve talked about myself all night,’ she said sleepily. ‘Tomorrow you can tell me all about yourself and your exciting life working for the rich and famous.’
A minute later she closed, and after a few seconds’ thought locked, the bedroom door behind him and began running the bath. The ridiculously luxurious bath that was so big and so deep that it was almost the size of a plunge pool.
She wouldn’t have believed it but she was having an impossible adventure and—okay, admit it—was so transfixed by Lucas that there had been no room in her head to feel sorry for herself.
She wondered what he did when he wasn’t playing ski instructor to rich adults and their kids. Did he while away his summers in the company of wealthy socialites? He was good-looking enough to be a gigolo but she dismissed that idea as fast as it entered her head because she couldn’t imagine that he could be that sleazy.
He’d said didn’t sleep with married women and she believed him. There had been a shadow of repugnance when that suggestion had been mooted.
But he was a man of experience, from the way he had talked about the women he dated, in the casual voice of someone who was accustomed to getting a lot of attention and to dating a lot of women.
She thought about her own circumstances. When it came to experience with the opposite sex, she was wet behind the ears. She had never really been the kind of teenager who had become swept up in boys, in make-up, in short skirts and mini bottles of vodka at house parties. Maybe if she had had a mum; maybe if she hadn’t been raised by her grandmother. She adored her grandmother, but she could reflect back and see that the generation gap had not been conducive to giggly conversations and experiments with make-up.
Nana Mayfield was a brisk, no-nonsense woman with a great love of the outdoors. Widowed at the age of forty-five, she had had to survive the harsh Scottish winters in unforgiving terrain and she had thrived. That love of the great outdoors was what she had brought to the relationship with her granddaughter and Milly had grown up loving all things to do with sport. She had followed sport on TV and had played as many sports as she could possibly fit into her school timetable.
Of course, she had been to parties, but hockey, tennis, rounders, even football, and later as much skiing as she could possibly do, had always come first.
And so the stages of infatuation, the teenage angst and disappointment, the adolescent broken hearts and the comparing of notes about boys with her friends, had largely passed her by.
Was that why she had fallen for Robbie in the first place? Because her lack of experience had allowed flattery and compliments to blind her to the reality of a relationship that was built on sand? Had a crush at fourteen predisposed her to become the vulnerable idiot she had been when he had swanned back into her life ten years later? And then, had she held on to him because she had wanted someone to call her own?
He hadn’t even shown much interest in getting physical with her. How did that fit into the equation of two love birds on the brink of a happy-ever-after life? And she hadn’t pushed him. That should have sounded the alarm bells, but nope, she had merrily continued sleep walking her way to the inevitable.