The Real Romero(39)

                ‘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.