and muscular and he had good ankles. Not many men had good ankles but he had excellent ones—brown like the rest of him…with a sprinkling of dark hair…
She surfaced to find that he had said something and she frowned.
‘Not you, as well.’ She groaned, because from the tail end of his sentence she gathered he had been pointing out the obvious—which was how it was that she had managed to make the trip without being notified that the job had been cancelled. ‘I’ve had enough lecturing from Sandra about not picking up my phone; I don’t think I have the energy to sit through you telling me the same thing. Anyway, why are you here? Didn’t your agency let you know before you made a wasted trip here?’
Lucas had the dazed feeling of someone thrown into a washing machine and the spin cycle turned to full blast. She had raked her fingers through her wild red hair, which he now appreciated was thick and very long, practically down to her waist, a tumbling riot of curls and waves.
‘Agency?’ Never lost for words in any given situation, he now found himself speechless.
‘Sandra’s the girl at the agency that employed me. In London.’ She permitted herself to look at him fully and could feel hot colour racing up to her face. He was obviously foreign, beautifully and exotically foreign, but his English was perfect, with just a trace of an accent.
‘My job was to cook for the Ramos family and babysit their children.’ It suddenly occurred to her that he had called them by their Christian names. She had been under strict instructions to use their full titles and to remember that they weren’t her friends. It just went to show how different agencies operated; just her luck to have got stuck with snooty Sandra. ‘What were you employed to do? No, you don’t have to tell me.’
‘I don’t?’ Fascinating. Like someone from another planet. Wherever Lucas went, he generated adulation and subservience from women. They tripped over themselves to please him. They said what they imagined he wanted to hear. Born into wealth, he had known from a tender age what the meaning of power was and now, at the ripe young age of thirty-four, and with several fortunes behind him—some inherited, the rest made himself. He was accustomed to being treated like a man at the top of his game. A billionaire who could have whatever he pleased at the snap of his imperious fingers.
What did this woman think he did? He was curious to hear.
‘Ski instructor.’ Milly discovered that this strange turn of events was having a very beneficial effect on her levels of depression. Robbie, Emily and the horror story that had suddenly become her life had barely crossed her mind ever since Adonis had appeared on the scene.
‘Ski instructor.’ He was parroting everything she said. He couldn’t believe it.
‘You have the look of a ski instructor,’ Milly said thoughtfully.
‘Am I to take that as a compliment?’
‘You can if you want.’ She backtracked hastily just in case he got it into his head that she was somehow trying it on with him, which she wasn’t, because aside from anything else she was far too upset even to look at another man. ‘Isn’t it amazing how rich people live?’ She swiftly changed the topic and watched, warily, as he dumped the bottled water on the counter, making no effort even to look for the bin, and sauntered towards the kitchen table so that he could sit on one of the chairs, idly pulling another towards him with his foot and using it as a foot rest.
‘Amazing,’ Lucas agreed.
‘I mean, have you had a chance to look around this place? It’s like something from one of those house magazines! It’s hard to believe that anyone actually ever uses this lodge. Everything’s just so…shiny and expensive!’
‘Money impresses you, does it?’ Lucas thought of all the other apartments and houses he owned, scattered in cities across the world from New York to Hong Kong. He even had a villa on an exclusive Caribbean island. He hadn’t been there for at least a couple of years…
Milly leaned on the table, cupped her chin in the palm of her hand and gazed at him. Amazing eyes, she thought idly, with even more amazing lashes—long, dark and thick. And there was a certain arrogance about him. She should find it a complete turn-off, especially considering that Robbie had had his fair share of arrogance, and what a creep he had turned out to be. But Adonis’s arrogance was somehow different… Just look at the way he had stuck his feet on that chair.
‘No…’ she admitted. ‘I mean, don’t get me wrong, money is great. I wish I had more of it.’ Especially considering I have no job to return to. ‘But I was brought up to believe that there were more important things in life. My parents died in a car accident when I was eight and my grandmother raised me. Well, there wasn’t an awful lot of money to go round, but that never bothered me. I think people create the lives they want to live and they do that without the help of money…’
She sighed. ‘Stop me if I’m talking too much. I do that. But, now that I know you’re not a burglar, it’s kind of nice having someone here. I mean, I’ll be gone first thing in the morning, but… Okay, enough of me… Is this the first time you’ve worked for the Ramos family? I mean, I couldn’t help noticing that you called them by their first names…’
Lucas thought of Alberto and Julia Ramos and choked back a snort of derisive laughter at the thought of working for them. In actual fact, Alberto had worked for his father. Lucas had inherited him when his father had died and, because of the personal connection, had resisted sacking the man, who was borderline incompetent. He found them intensely annoying but his mother was godmother to one of their children.
‘We go back a way,’ he said, skirting round the truth.
‘Thought so.’
‘Why is that?’
Milly laughed and it felt as though this was the first time she had laughed, really laughed, for a long time. Well, at least two weeks, although there had been a moment or two with her friends post-traumatic break-up. Manic, desperate laughter, probably…
‘Because you’ve got your feet on the chair and you’ve just dumped that empty bottle on the kitchen counter! Sandra told me that under no circumstances was there to be any sign that I’d stepped foot in this lodge when I left. I might even have to wipe all the surfaces just in case they find my fingerprints somewhere.’
‘You have a wonderful laugh,’ Lucas heard himself say with some surprise. She did. A rich, full-bodied laugh that made him want to grin.
And looking at her…
That first impression of someone small and plump with crazy hair was being rapidly dispelled. She was small, yes, barely skimming five-four, but her skin was satiny smooth and her eyes were the clearest blue he had ever seen. And when she laughed she had dimples.
Milly went bright red. In the aftermath of her horrible, horrible broken engagement, her self-confidence had been severely battered, and his compliment filled her with a terrific sense of wellbeing. Even if he had only complimented her on the way she laughed, which, when you analysed it, was hardly a compliment at all. But, still, coming from Adonis…
‘Must be great being a ski instructor,’ she said, all hot and bothered now. ‘Would you like to know something? I mean, it’s no big secret or anything…’
‘I would love to know something…even if it’s no big secret or anything…’ Hell,
