Fire and Ice

by Nell Harding

  Fire and Ice

  by Nell Harding

  First Edition Harding World of Romance, April 2012

  Copyright©2012 by Nell Harding

  All rights reserved under International Copyright Conventions.

  Chapter One

  The late afternoon snow was falling thickly as Sebastien Pichard manoeuvred his Range Rover around the final curves on the steep climb into Verbier. A smooth blanket of white carpeted the fields and lay thickly on tree branches and chalets roofs, softening edges and making the world look fresh and new.

  It was exceptional to have this much snow in the beginning of December and he had heard rumours that the ski lifts would open early this year. Normally they weren’t scheduled to run for another two weeks, but with such amazing skiing conditions, the resort had decided to open next weekend to please the keen skiers who were impatient to start their season.

  He sighed. There would not be a lot of time for skiing for his own pleasure this year, he reminded himself. He wasn’t looking forward to this season at all. If only his brother hadn’t been involved in that scandal last winter…He gritted his teeth and tried not to think about the months ahead.

  He shifted down to first gear as he entered the lower part of the village. The flakes were getting bigger as they swirled onto his windshield, making visibility tricky. He slowed to a crawl. The village was still fairly deserted compared to how it would be once the resort opened, but there were a few people about as the winter crowd started to move back up the mountain.

  As he drove up the main street he recognised Pierre-Antoine shovelling the sidewalk in front of his bar. Sebastien rolled down the window and stuck out his head to call to him. At the same time, the bus from the valley bottom pulled away from the post office just ahead, having discharged its load of travellers. A surge of people carrying packs and skis suddenly swarmed across the road and Sebastien braked carefully to let them pass. Oblivious to the lone vehicle, they laughed and looked around them as if everything belonged to them, Verbier, the snow, the season ahead.

  Hell, it did, Sebastien thought wryly, with a slight pang of envy. He thought of the winters of his youth spent here on the mountain, the simplicity of big days of extreme skiing and cheerful après-ski hours spent rehashing the day and planning the next one. Now it seemed that business took up all his time and there were very few simple ski days any more. This year the business had even crept into his weekends in Verbier, thanks to Stefan.

  He was about to put the Rover back into gear when a final muffled figure detached itself from the shelter of the post office to hurtle across the road with a shriek of joy. Sebastien caught sight of a tangle of red hair and a flash of white teeth as a young woman launched herself into the arms of a waiting friend.

  The two women spun in a huge hug and then the redhead broke free to twirl in the falling snow, her face upturned and lit by the widest smile Sebastien had ever seen. It crinkled into green eyes that sparkled with sheer happiness. The friend, a stunning blonde in designer ski wear, shrugged her shoulders apologetically at Sebastien for the forced wait, but he couldn’t keep his eyes off the spinning woman in front of him. Even in what looked like a home-knitted wool hat and a ski jacket from the eighties, she caught his eye in a way that nobody else had in a long time.

  The woman was radiant. She didn’t have the chic elegance of her friend or of many of the women that moved in his circle, but he had spent more than enough time in that world of attitude and polished cool.

  A costly divorce and his brother’s high-maintenance girlfriends had taught him to be wary of the cold glitter and glamour of society women. But this redhead in front of him had a smile that shone at a hundred metres and a natural beauty that made him want to be on the receiving end of one of those wide smiles, to make those green eyes sparkle.

  A pair of headlights came through the snow behind him and Sebastien hastily broke out of his reverie to ease the car back into first gear. The roads were slippery enough that he didn’t want to make people stop unnecessarily, especially since the early season snow would catch some drivers unprepared. He was grateful for his winter tires as he pulled slowly ahead, glancing in his rear-view mirror just to watch the laughing woman now gesticulating enthusiastically to her friend.

  The word “freshness” sprang to his mind. That was what this woman represented. His friends and associates suddenly seemed jaded compared to her, accustomed to this scene, blasé. He guessed that she was in her late twenties, but she had the uncomplicated exuberance of a child combined with the compelling presence of an attractive woman. He couldn’t help wondering if she brought that same exuberance and spontaneity to everything.

  She must be new here, up for a season to work in a bar or restaurant or ski shop, willing to work for low wages, just for the chance to spend a winter in the Swiss Alps. Maybe he would bump into her on the slopes or in a bar.

  He took a deep breath and let it out to bring himself back to reality. He didn’t have time to go chasing after barmaids and the last thing his family needed was another scandal to jeopardise their reputation. This was a season for work, not play, including the weekends. Especially the weekends now. And his mistake in trusting a beautiful woman was already costing him a small fortune every year.

  He glanced at his watch and snapped back into his usual efficiency mode. He had better hurry up if he wanted to open the chalet and warm it before the new chalet hostess arrived. Getting her set up was usually Stefan’s department and he was irritated to have to take half a day out of his busy schedule to look after something which his brother did so much more naturally. If he could combine this trip to Verbier with a quick ski hike, the trip might be worth it, but he still had a few important calls to make before business hours were over.

  He ran his fingers distractedly through his thick hair, making it stand up in dishevelled spikes. He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror and wondered if he should have shaved for this meeting. He shrugged away the thought. The agency had promised that the woman they were sending was very experienced and reliable. She probably knew her role better than he did. Maybe he could just throw the keys at her and bolt.

  He smiled wryly to himself. Like it or not, he was going to have to get used to being the public face of Pichard watches. It was time to face the limelight again, but this time he would be smarter around the models and actresses. The chalet was now part of the business. He felt a pang of regret as he pulled up the snowy driveway to the family mountain hideaway. He was really not looking forward to this winter.

  “I’m so glad you convinced me to come!” Kate Finnigan exclaimed, shaking the snow from her woolly hat and long red curls.

  They had just walked into the entry hall of the Residence Edelweiss, a chalet-shaped apartment complex in the upper village. Kate looked around her in wonder. “The change of scene will do me wonders. I can feel the mountain air working its magic already.”

  “I’m glad you finally agreed to come,” Emily Martin said warmly, kicking off her knee-length leather boots and pushing open the door to her apartment. “Bienvenue to my humble chez moi.”

  Kate stepped inside. Her appreciative gaze took in the simple but tastefully decorated flat and the snow-covered balcony beyond. “I can’t believe you actually live here!” she said, admiring the view over the wintery village. “I hope that Verbier is as good to me as it’s been to you. You look as stunning as ever.”

  Emily laughed and threw back her sleek blond locks. “It’s all about playing the image game, Katie. Note the new hair style. And I go by “Mimi” now, à la français. Makes me sound like I had some sort of glamorous past.”

  Kate smiled fondly at her old friend. Mimi suited her. “You haven’t changed a bit. But I have to say I wouldn’t have imagined tha
t you’d wind up in the Swiss Alps of all places.”

  Emily pretended to look surprised. “Where did you imagine? Some quaint town back in Connemara?”

  Her friend grinned. “I would have placed money on Hollywood or the catwalks of Milan. Wasn’t that your dream back in the drama club in college? Did you ever imagine you’d live in a ski resort?”

  Mimi shook her head vehemently. “Never! But I love it here. Besides, this isn’t any old ski resort. Verbier is one of the trendiest ski spots in Europe, young and happening, with lots of chic and glamour. ” She pretended to groom herself like a cat. “I found a niche for little old moi. You don’t have to be a die-hard skier to enjoy it here.”

  “Well that’s a relief, I can tell you,” Kate said with an exaggerated sigh. “The only two doubts I had when I read your email were about the skiing and the French. You were with me on that ill-fated ski trip to Scotland, and you know what my French grades were like back in secondary school.”

  “You’ll pick up both of them over the season,” Emily assured her. “You’ll have tonnes of free time. That’s what’s so great with this job, apart from the fact that there is almost no actual work involved. And that I’ll be living just down the road.”

  Kate eyed her sceptically. “You’re sure there’s nothing more complicated to this “chalet hostess” job than making breakfasts and serving the occasional drink ? Sounds a bit too easy to believe.”

  Emily tut-tutted condescendingly. “The usual term is “chalet girl”, un-politically correct though that may be when some of the women have been doing this for decades. But lots of wealthy families only come up on weekends and don’t want their chalets sitting cold and closed up all week. Some places expect you to cook or look after kids on the weekends. But you’ve got one of the easy ones.”

  Kate eyed her suspiciously. “And why are you such an expert about this?”

  “Because I did it myself for half a season when I first arrived,” Mimi replied smugly. “The lifestyle suited me just fine. I’d have taken this posting myself if I didn’t have my boutique to run.”

  It was easier to picture Mimi running a fashion boutique than serving hot chocolate in an alpine kitchen. “I still can’t believe I’ll be getting paid for this. Seems a bit dishonest almost.” Kate chewed on the end of her thumb distractedly.

  Emily laughed out loud. “Oh, they can afford it, trust me. The family you’ll be working for is one of the old watch-making families from Geneva. They’re famous in the understated Swiss way. ”

  Kate was surprised. “Is it the same Pichard? I’ve seen their ads.”

  “There you go, the very same. If even you’ve heard of them, you know they must be famous. ” Emily grinned teasingly. “Father Pichard is officially in charge but his sons mostly run it now, with Grandpa Pichard still making an appearance now and then. Someone will be up most weekends, probably with clients or models to entertain, and you’ll be free the rest of the week to ski, or learn French. Or pick up some hot snowboarder or ski bum.”

  Kate’s eyes clouded darkly. “I think I’ll pass on the ski bums. Look where the last bum left me, with nothing.”

  Emily threw a comforting arm around her friend. “You should have left London ages ago,” she said softly. “ It was never the right place for you. Even before Mickey the Rat.”

  Kate jutted her chin out defensively. “I had my column to write. Still do, in fact, if I manage to make the deadlines.”

  “Oh, you will, no worries about that. But the tea shop. You worked so hard for it and he threw it all away.”

  Kate brushed quickly at her eyes. “That’s the worst of it. I’m such a fool. I think I might even have forgiven him if he’d had the courage to be honest about it. I lost more respect for him because of his lying than for his gambling away all we had.”

  “You aren’t the fool, he is.” Mimi said loyally. “He’s the one who really lost out. And how could you have guessed he had a gambling problem? He hid it so well, with his charm and convincing stories. He took advantage of your open, trusting nature.”

  “My naïveté, you mean,” Kate corrected her grimly.

  Emily considered this. “No, your romanticism. You always were a hopeless believer in the old fairy tale happily ever afters.”

  “So I’m Don Quixote, am I? My judgement turned to mush by one too many musical stage plays with happy endings?” Kate considered launching into “The Impossible Dream” and then thought better of it.

  “No, but you found a man who actually sang along when you belted out your musical hit to match the moment and put up with your “I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Out Of My Hair” every morning in the shower. Many a braver man would have turned and run.”

  “He did have a good baritone voice.” Kate sighed and then squared her shoulders resolutely. “But that’s all behind me now. Goodbye London rain and hello Swiss snow. I feel more like myself already.”

  “I hope so,” said Emily, heading toward her wardrobe. “ I was worried about you for a while there. You sounded so beaten down, so unlike yourself. A new scene really is the cure you need. That and a rebound fling with some extreme skier. They can be extremely good-looking.”

  Kate shook her red mane. “The last thing I need is romance right now. I think I’ll be happy just breathing the mountain air and being myself again.”

  For the first time Emily lost a bit of her cheerful composure, biting the inside of her lip. She hesitated a moment before she spoke. “There’s just one little bit you won’t like, a detail I forgot to tell you about.”

  Kate stiffened. “And what little detail would that be?” she asked warily, feeling her recent elation start to slip away.

  “It’s really no big deal,” Emily said with an airiness that put up Kate’s guard. “Administrative details really. It’s just that your name for this job has to be Michelle.”

  The first grips of panic began to constrict Kate’s chest. “What are you trying to say? Is this another one of your hare-brained schemes?” An angry glint started to show in her eyes, which had grown to saucer-size. “ I thought this was serious, Emily. I’ve sublet my bedsit and kicked in my part-time job for this. Why are you telling me this two hours before I meet my boss?”

  “Stay calm, tiger,” Emily murmured as if soothing a spooked horse. “ Listen to me. This job came up at the last minute because the woman who was supposed to do it, Michelle, broke her leg. The agency needed someone in a hurry and I thought of you.”

  “What agency?” Kate demanded crossly. “You told me that this was arranged by a friend. Oh, I should have known that this sounded too good to be true.”

  “It is through a friend,” Emily reassured her. “She works at the agency and was in a bind because the Pichard clan specifically wanted somebody with references who was discrete and reliable. They had a spot of trouble with their chalet girl last year. I knew you’d be perfect and my friend trusts my judgement. It really is no big deal.”

  “For you!” exclaimed her friend hotly. “ You’re not the one headed to jail for taking a job on false pretences and stealing somebody’s identity. How am I supposed to impersonate a woman I’ve never even met?”

  Emily smiled sweetly. “Neither have the Pichards. Just be discrete and reliable and you’ll be fine. Don’t let a little administration get in the way of what you need.”

  “Well, I don’t have much choice now, do I?” Kate flung her arms up in a helpless gesture. “I need the job and have nowhere to go. But they’ll figure it out soon enough and deport me or whatever it is they do here. They obviously want someone with experience.”

  Emily tried a reassuring smile. “It isn’t experience they’re worried about, it’s discretion. They have this gig going where celebrities advertise their watches for some sort of charitable cause, and they often come up for a weekend with one of the sons. The chalet girl last year blabbed to the paparazzi and broke a scandal about an affair with a famous Bollywood star who was married or engaged or something. Cause
d them all sorts of bad publicity and lost them a lot of clients in India. You must have heard about it.”

  “So they’ll be thrilled to get somebody who works for a newspaper. What were you thinking, Emily?” Kate sounded close to hysterics. “And what are you laughing about?”

  “Just realising how much I’ve missed you and your excitable temperament, all that emotion and bluntness,” Emily said with a fond look at her old friend. “You’ll find the Swiss a bit more reserved. Now we just need to find your old spontaneous sense of fun again, which Mickey seems to have temporarily squashed - ”

  “Squashed?” Kate interrupted incredulously. “I just chucked in my life in London and sublet my flat because of one email from you and moved to Switzerland for a dodgy-sounding job on the strength of your reassurance that it was all fine. What part of that is not spontaneous? It’s just that you know how much I hate lying.”

  “I know. But just remember drama club and consider it acting, role playing.”

  “Playing Annie every year in high school musicals doesn’t exactly prepare me for a life of fraud,” Kate retorted impatiently. “Or any of the college musicals, if that’s what you’re smirking at. You know I never really liked the acting, I just liked the singing.”

  “And I liked the attention and glamour,” Mimi laughed reminiscently. “You had the voice, I had the legs.”

  “And the face and the talent,” Kate finished with a sigh. “Together we were really the phantom of the opera.”

  “Is my voice really that bad?” Mimi asked indignantly.

  “Is my face that bad?” Kate retorted, contorting her features into a hideous expression before tossing back her hair with irritation. “Look Mimi, I can’t act all season. If they aren’t accompanied by some dramatic melody, I trip up and forget all my lines.”

  “Rubbish,” Emily said dismissively, obviously not listening to any of her friend’s objections. “Whatever did you learn in all those years on the stage?”