Chapter Two
GEORGIE SPRANG BACK on wobbly legs.
‘I wasn’t expecting anyone to be here!’
‘That doesn’t answer my question. Follow me. I’m not having this conversation here. Walls have ears.’
He spun round on his heels and began striding down the wooden-floored corridor towards the sprawling, seldom-used office at the end of the landing. Georgie knew precisely where he was going because she wafted a feather duster through the room on a weekly basis.
Massive space…the same floor-to-ceiling windows that characterised the rest of the chalet…
polished hardwood flooring and a custom-built desk made of reclaimed, burnished timber that was as big as a single bed.
There were chairs, a sofa and bookshelves with books left behind by guests and heavy, dense financial tomes.
He shut the door behind her just as soon as they had entered, at which point the nervous fluttering in her stomach ratcheted up several notches.
‘Sit!’
Georgie sat, rigid as a plank of wood as he circled her like a predator trying to make sense of some unusual prey.
‘You’re making me nervous.’
‘Good. You should be.’
‘If you give me five minutes, I can explain why I’m here. I suppose I should ask you for some sort of identification…?’
‘You really shouldn’t. You can trust me when I tell you that I own this chalet and identification isn’t something I’m obliged to provide.’
He eventually pulled up a chair and sat facing her, which didn’t do a thing to calm her racing nerves.
Even sitting, he still managed to radiate a mesmerising combination of power, threat and sinful sexiness.
‘So…’ Georgie cleared her throat. ‘As you may have noticed, I happen to have keys to…er…your chalet…’
He tilted his head to one side and didn’t say a thing.
‘I clean here once a week.’
‘You’re a cleaner.’
‘Amongst other things.’
‘Why is the cleaner roaming through my chalet in my absence? Wearing casual clothing and singing songs, for all the world as though she lives here?’
‘I don’t make a habit of roaming through your chalet in your absence. As it happens, I temporarily found myself…er…with nowhere to live for a few days so…’
‘I have an hour to spend here with you before I need to go and take care of important business downstairs. You have fifteen minutes to tell me exactly what’s going on here, after which I will present you with a number of options, all of which I intend to suggest you grab with both hands.
What I’m saying is I don’t have limitless time to listen while you stammer through whatever garbled, fantastical story you’re now trying to think up. ’
‘I don’t make things up, Mr Barbieri!’
‘Get to the point and explain yourself.’
‘I live in the ski resort.’ Georgie tried not to bristle at his imperiousness. ‘I share a tiny house with two friends, Claire and Alison. You might be wondering at my English accent and what I’m doing in this part of the world.’
‘I’m not. I have zero interest in where you come from.’
Georgie gritted her teeth and balled her hands into fists.
Naturally she could storm out in protest at the man’s high-handed behaviour.
That said, she would be walking away from, basically, the nest egg she was steadily collecting from her cleaning duties, vital money to go towards a deposit on a flat when she returned to the UK.
More worryingly, how far was his reach? An angry billionaire could end her time here and she would be heartbroken.
She wasn’t ready to return to the Home Counties with her tail between her legs and her independence compromised. Her parents were perfect until you happened to be living under their roof, at which point they reverted to treating her like the kid she no longer was.
She needed to be here, needed this time out to fully recover from the shambles at Val d’Isère.
Her heart was so nearly patched up. Would it start unravelling if she had to deal with the stress of going back to Surrey?
Back to the claustrophobia of living with her parents, which would give her too much time to start rehashing everything that had happened between her and Hans?
Start thinking how Hans had ended up being just the icing on the cake of guys who had never taken her seriously?
Never seen the hesitant, hopeful, longing girl wanting to be desired instead of the tomboy, affectionately expected to be one of the lads?
No way. She didn’t need to go down that painful road.
And then, of course, there was the jail remark.
‘One of my housemates has chickenpox.’ Georgie cut to the chase and pushed uncomfortable thoughts away.
‘She caught it on holiday and told us that she was going to return to the house to recuperate because her parents have house guests so there’s no room for her to stay with them.
Anyway, they live in Hawaii and I’m not sure she was keen on incurring the added expense of travelling there.
So it was okay for Claire, my other housemate, to stay put because she’s immune, but I couldn’t afford to catch it. So…’
‘Are you telling me the truth?’
‘I never lie.’
‘You realise I could check this story with a single phone call and if I discover that you’re lying, you’ll not only be out of a job with me but the authorities would have to get involved.’
Georgie paled. ‘I’m telling the truth! You can make whatever phone call you want to make to the agency you use to service the chalet about my job here! And I’m happy to give you the name of the instructor I work for! He can confirm that Alison’s bedridden for the next few days.’
‘So let me get this straight. You decided to make yourself at home in my chalet, without my permission, because…’
‘Because I needed a few days somewhere till the worst was over with Alison’s chickenpox.
I mean, this place is empty most of the time and I honestly had no idea you would be returning because the agency always gives advance notice as to when it’s going to be occupied.
I didn’t think that you were going to show up out of the blue or else I would never have come here.
’ Georgie hesitated, then looked at him from under her lashes.
‘I don’t get what’s going on. Why were you pretending that you knew me? ’
Alessandro paused.
He hadn’t banked on any of this but now that the situation had presented itself, he recognised that he was in a bind.
The slip of a thing perched with barely concealed defiance opposite him was sharp, despite the tangle of long blonde hair and the big brown eyes and the heart-shaped face that emanated an air of sexy, foxy innocence.
Much as he was loath to admit it, he found himself, for the first time, on the back foot.
Unwittingly, she had become a participant in a charade and now what was he going to do about that?
How much was he willing to tell her? He was a billionaire. One phone call would confirm whether the woman genuinely cleaned for him, but, presuming that she did, then how fast was she going to recognise the weakness of his position and demand money in exchange for her complicity?
It was an unforeseen messy situation but, for the life of him, he could think of no way round it with Sophia there, ready to do her worst.
Of course, he could go downstairs and launch into the perfectly truthful explanation of why the woman was where she was, but he knew his ex-wife and knew that there was not a single thing she would believe about the story and, even if she believed all of it, there was no way she wouldn’t wilfully misinterpret the situation to her advantage.
There was nothing worse than a woman scorned and he’d been paying for that ever since their divorce.
‘I ask the questions here.’ He paused. ‘Your unauthorised presence here has complicated things.’
‘I’m really sorry.’
‘I involved you in a situation on the spur of the moment and believe me when I tell you that I am not a man who does anything on the spur of the moment.’
‘What’s the situation? The one that you involved me in? I mean, why didn’t you just say that you had no idea who I was?’
‘Like I said, it’s complicated and any information I choose to tell you will be strictly on a need-to-know basis. Right now, you have no need to know.’
‘You can’t involve me in whatever you have going on with your ex-wife and expect me to go along with it without question.’
‘You’re a trespasser on private property. Right now, your right to ask questions is limited.’
‘Technically I’m not a trespasser.’
‘Technically, if you want to push that point, we can leave it up to a judge to decide. If I were you, I wouldn’t start putting bets on you winning the case.’
He was staring at her with a thoughtful frown, leaving Georgie ample time to consider her lack of options.
‘Okay,’ he eventually said with unconcealed reluctance.
‘I suppose you might deserve some sort of explanation, which isn’t an invitation to ask questions.
My ex-wife is a suspicious woman and it would have…
complicated my life had she thought that you were…
’ He shook his head and raked his fingers through his hair.
‘Some floozy you happened to have staying in your chalet?’
‘That’s a crude way of putting it, but yes.’
‘Why would she care, if you’re divorced? Unless she wants to get back together with you?’
‘That question comes under the category of ones there’s no point asking because you won’t be getting an answer. First things first though—however foolhardy it may have been on my part to drag you into a temporary charade, I want to make it perfectly clear that this does not give you…’
He allowed the silence to thicken between them and, in that silence, Georgie could read the direction of his thoughts as clearly as if they had been written on his forehead in neon lettering.
He was rich, he was powerful and he was, at this precise moment, vulnerable because he had been forced into putting on a show in front of his ex-wife for reasons she couldn’t fathom and knew didn’t concern her.