‘You’re such a barbarian,’ Lizzie murmured with satisfaction, snuggling close.
‘Yes, I am,’ Chico agreed. ‘Aren’t you glad?’
* * * * *
Keep reading for an excerpt from THE REAL ROMERO by Cathy Williams.
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CHAPTER ONE
‘AMELIA? IS THAT Amelia Mayfield?’
Milly pressed the mobile phone against her ear, already regretting that she had been stupid enough to pick up the call. How many more instructions could Sandra King give about this job?
She was going to be a chalet girl! Two weeks of cooking and looking after a family of four! Anyone would think that she was being primed to run the country. It wasn’t even as though she hadn’t done this before. She had, two years ago, for three months before she’d started the hotel job in London.
‘Yes.’ She sighed, allowing her eyes to drift over the pure, dazzling canvas of white snow all around her. It had been a fantastic trip, just the thing to clear her head and get her mind off her miserable situation. She had travelled in style and she had enjoyed every second of it. It was almost a shame that she was now in the back seat of the chauffeur-driven SUV with her destination only half an hour away.
‘You haven’t been picking up your phone!’ The voice down the other end was sharp and accusatory. Milly could picture the other woman clearly, sitting at her desk in Mayfair, her shiny blond hair scraped back with an Alice band, her long perfectly manicured nails tapping impatiently on her desk.
Sandra King had interviewed her not once but three times for this job. It was almost as though she had resented having to give the job to someone small and round with red hair when there were so many other, more suitable candidates in the mix: girls with cut-glass accents, braying laughs and shiny blond hair scraped back with Alice bands.
But, as she had made clear with unnecessarily cruel satisfaction, this particular family wanted someone plain and down to earth, because the last thing the señora wanted was a floozy who might decide to start flirting with her rich husband.
Milly, who had looked up the family she would be working for on Google after her first interview, had only just managed not to snort with disbelief because the husband in question was definitely not the sort of man any girl in her right mind would choose to flirt with. He was portly, semi-balding and the wrong side of fifty, but he was filthy rich, and she supposed that that was as compelling an attraction as being a rock star. Not that she was in the market for flirting with anyone, anyway.
‘Sorry, Sandra...’ She grinned because she knew that Sandra didn’t like being called by her first name. It was ‘Ms King’, or ‘Skipper’ to the chosen few. The other girls in the exclusive agency that dealt specifically with part-time positions to the rich and famous called her Skipper, one of those silly nicknames that Milly guessed had been concocted in whatever posh boarding school they had all attended.
‘The service has been a bit iffy ever since I left London...and I can’t talk for long because my phone’s almost out of charge.’ Not strictly true but she didn’t need yet another check list of the various things the special family ate and didn’t eat; or the favourite things the special little kids, aged four and six, insisted on doing before they went to bed. She didn’t need to be reminded of what she could and couldn’t wear, or say or couldn’t say.
Milly had never known people to be as fussy with just about everything. The family for whom she had worked two years previously had been jolly, outdoorsy and amenable.
But she wasn’t complaining. They might be fussy but the pay was fabulous and, more importantly, the job removed her from the vicinity of Robbie, Emily and heartbreak.
She had managed to push her ex-fiancé, her best friend and her broken engagement out of her head, but she could feel them staging another takeover, and she blinked rapidly, fighting back tears of self-pity. Time healed, she had been told repeatedly by her friends, who had never liked Robbie from the start and, now that she was no longer engaged, had felt free to let loose every single pejorative thing they had thought about him from day one.
On the one hand, their negative comments had been bolstering and supportive. On the other, they had shown up her utter lack of judgement.
‘In that case,’ the well-bred, disembodied voice informed her, ‘I’m afraid I have to inform you that the job has been cancelled.’
It took a few seconds for that to sink in. Milly had been busy being distracted by the unfortunate turn of events that had catapulted her life from sorted and happy to humiliated and up in the air.
‘Did you hear what I just said, Amelia?’
‘You’re kidding, aren’t you? Please tell me that this is a joke.’ But Sandra King was not the sort who had a sense of humour. Any joke, for her, would be foreign territory.
‘I never joke,’ the other woman said, on cue. ‘The Ramos family has pulled out at the last minute. I only took their phone call a few hours ago and, if you had picked up your phone instead of letting it ring, you would not have wasted your time travelling.’
‘Why? Why is it off?’ Visions of slinking back into the flat she had shared with Emily, risking bumping into her one-time best friend clearing her stuff before she took off to America with Robbie, were so horrifying that she felt giddy.
‘One of the kids has come down with chicken pox. Simple as that.’
‘But I’m only half an hour away from the lodge!’ Milly all but wailed.
They had left the exclusive village of Courchevel behind and the car was wending its way upwards, leaving the riff-raff of the lower slopes behind as it entered the rarefied air of the seriously rich. Hidden, private lodges with majestic views; helipads; heated indoor swimming pools; saunas and steam rooms by the bucket load...
There was an elaborate sigh from the end of the line. ‘Well, you’ll have to tell the driver to swing round and head back, I’m afraid. Naturally, you will be compensated for your time and trouble...’
‘Surely I can spend one night there? It’s getting dark and I’m exhausted. I have a key to the place. I can use it and make sure that I leave the lodge in pristine condition. I need to sleep, Sandra!’
She couldn’t get her head round the fact that the one thing that seemed to be working in her favour, the only thing that had worked in her favour for the past couple of horrific, nightmar
ish weeks, was now collapsing around her feet like a deck of cards, kicked down by one of the odious rich kids from the family who had bailed at the last minute. A wave of hopeless self-pity threatened to engulf her.
‘That would be highly irregular.’
‘So is the fact that my job here has been cancelled at the last minute, when I’m fifteen minutes away from the lodge—having spent the past eight hours travelling!’
She could see the lodge rearing up ahead of them and for a few seconds every depressing, negative thought flew from her head in sheer, wondrous appreciation of the magnificent structure ahead of her.
It dominated the skyscape, rising up against the blindingly white snow, master of all it surveyed. It was absolutely enormous, the largest and grandest ski lodge Milly had ever seen in her life. In fact, it was almost an understatement to classify it as a ‘lodge’. It was more like a mansion in the middle of its own private, snowy playground.
‘I suppose there’s little choice!’ Sandra snapped. ‘But for God’s sake, Amelia, pick up when you hear your phone! And make sure you don’t touch anything. No poking around. Just eat and sleep and make sure that when you leave the lodge no one knows you’ve been there.’
Milly grimaced as she was abruptly disconnected. She leaned forward, craning to get glimpses of the mansion as it drew closer and closer to her, until the SUV was turning left and climbing through private land to where it nestled in all its splendour.
‘Er...’ She cleared her throat and hoped that the driver, who had greeted her at Chambery airport in extremely broken English and had not said a word since, would get the gist of what she was going to say.
‘Oui, mademoiselle?’
Milly caught his eye in the rear-view mirror. ‘Yes, well, there’s been a slight change of plan...’
‘What is that?’
She sighed with relief. At least she wouldn’t have to try and explain an impossible situation using her limited French, resisting the temptation to fill in the gaps by speaking loudly. She told him as succinctly as possible. He would have to stay overnight somewhere and return her to the airport the following day... Sorry, so sorry for the inconvenience, but he could phone...