Fire and Ice (2 page)

“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. Caused
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?”

“Only a lifetime supply of catchy
little show tunes with lyrics to fit all occasions,” Kate grumbled.

“Well, that’s always stood us in
good stead,” Mimi tried, grasping at straws. “Can be a useful life skill.”

Kate glowered in response, pulling
her hair back and twisting it to keep it out of her face. “The problem is the
lying. You know how much I hate it.  Or do lies not count if I sing them with a
catchy show tune?”

“Don’t consider it so much lying
as allowing people to think things that aren’t quite true,” Emily suggested
with her typically dodgy reasoning. “It isn’t really that different from
embellishing your experience on a resumé, which I’m sure everyone does to some
extent.”

“To the extent of stealing someone
else’s?” Kate threw up her hands in exasperation. Her mother had always accused
her of being emotionally volatile, too easily excited and too quick to let her
fiery temper rise. She had considered herself more stable in the past few
years, but maybe her emotions had simply been dulled by living with Mickey. It
was something she would have time to think about here. Or while she rotted in
prison.

Mimi was laughing at her dire
expression. “I promise you you’ll be a natural for the job. It’s just like balancing
all your brothers and sisters growing up, and you have always been responsible.
Now get into character. You are Michelle, experienced and discrete chalet hostess.
On that note, let’s find you something appropriate to wear for this
meeting. I’m thinking conservative but practical.”

“Your trousers will all be too
long for me,” Kate grumbled warningly, taking a reluctant step towards Emily’s
open wardrobe.

Emily started whistling a hopeful
“Wouldn’t It Be Loverly” but was silenced by a warning glare from Kate.

 “Oh Em, what have I let you talk
me into?”

“Only the winter of your life,
Katie,” her friend promised with certainty “ I have saved you from feeling
sorry for yourself in some dingy bedsit in gloomy old London by hauling you
back into the sun and the real world. You’ll thank me for this.”

“When you visit me in prison,”
muttered Kate, while “Look Down” from les Miserables played uninvited in her
mind. Suddenly she wasn’t looking forward to this winter after all.

Chapter Two

Early dusk was painting the snow a
soft blue when Emily left Kate in front of a juniper-lined driveway. There was
no gate, only a recent set of tire tracks in the fresh powder. Kate followed
the tracks to where the hedge ended and she caught her first view of Chalet
Gentiane.

A snowy lawn ran up to a sprawling
chalet of wood, stone and glass. The design was a perfect blend of old and new,
the traditional chalet shape lightened by huge glass, old wood set off against
a slate walkway that had just recently been shovelled. The welcoming smell of a
wood fire drifted up through the chimney.

Kate stood in front of the
imposing chalet humming “I Have Confidence” to try to bolster her spirits. But
not even Julie Andrew’s bravado could keep her courage from faltering.

She stopped to rearrange the
borrowed dress slacks which sat more snugly on her hips than on Emily’s and
crumpled over her boots. Then, taking a deep breath, she climbed three steps
onto a large patio that ran around the chalet and approached the front door.  She
rang the doorbell and was trying to gather her poise and rehearse what she was
going to say when the front door was flung open.

For a moment nobody moved.

A jolt of electricity shot through
her body and seemed to crackle in the air.

All of Kate’s composure
disintegrated in front of the most handsome man she had seen in years. Faded
jeans and a black fleece sweater failed to hide a strong, athletic build and
his square-jawed face was tanned despite the winter. Thick black hair stood up
in slightly dishevelled spikes over dark, soulful eyes. They were eyes with an
enticing depth a person could drown in.

The man seemed as taken aback as
she was. His heavy eyebrows shot up as if startled and his large eyes seemed to
grow even larger for a moment before his face became impassive again,
unreadable.

Kate hadn’t been prepared for
this. Mentally she cursed Emily for not having warned her that she would be
facing someone whose looks turned her knees to butter. Even in normal
circumstances she would have found herself self-conscious in front of this man;
trying to pretend to be some discrete and experienced woman she had never met would
be almost impossible.

There was an awkward moment of
silence as she groped for something to say. Her mind seemed to have gone blank
and she could feel her cheeks burning crimson.

Finally the man took a step back. “Madame
Clark, I presume,” he said with a hint of irony, when it became apparent that she
was not going to be the first to speak. “Welcome. Please come inside.” His
voice was deep with just a trace of a French accent.

“Excuse me, I wasn’t
expecting… ” she blurted out unthinkingly, when she managed to find her
voice, and then stopped herself in time.

Instead she pinched her lips
tightly together as she stepped inside and allowed him to take her borrowed green
duffel coat and woollen beret.  She was supposed to be discrete and
professional, she reminded herself, trying to pull herself together. She was
sure he could see her heart hammering in her chest.

The mesmerising eyes smiled wryly.
“You were expecting my brother, no doubt. Most people do.”

“Actually, I was expecting
someone… older,” she stuttered. “Your father, that is.” She bit her tongue to
keep from babbling nervously.

“So was I, for that matter,”
replied the man coldly. His eyes seemed to bore a hole in her, scrutinizing
her. “Somebody with many years of experience.”

Kate was aghast. Had Emily checked
the age of the woman she was meant to be impersonating? Was she meant to be
forty? And she had assumed that Michelle was French or English, but maybe she
was meant to be West African or Haitian. It was going to be hard to impersonate
that. She felt panic building up again, sure that those dark eyes could see
right through her.

She could always turn and run if things
got worse, she thought desperately, trying to sound cheerful and businesslike.
She had to be a professional. “Forgive my rude behaviour, Monsieur Pichard. I
am Michelle Clark, sent by the agency to be your new chalet hostess. ” She
held out her hand.

She saw a hint of cold amusement
in his eyes as he took her proffered hand. “Sebastien Pichard. Welcome to the
family chalet. We might as well use first names, since we will be sharing
a living space for much of the winter.”

His hand was strong and warm, but
his eyes remained guarded. She forced her gaze away from his face and looked
around her.

A wooden staircase led up to an
open mezzanine with rooms beyond. Behind Sebastian she could see a spacious
living room with a welcoming fireplace. Although the spaces were large with
high ceilings, the simple décor gave the chalet a warm, homey feeling.

Which made a nice contrast to the
feeling she was getting from the man in front of her. He kept looking at her
intently without smiling, which added to her growing sense of disaster. He
seemed to be studying her face, looking for something. Or maybe she was
becoming paranoid.

It was time to regain a modicum of
control over things, she decided. The shorter she made this meeting, the more
likely the odds that she would survive without giving herself away. She needed
time to prepare herself mentally before they next met.

She cleared her throat. “I’m sorry
I’m not in very good form just now,” she said with an attempt at a smile, which
died on her face when he failed to smile back. It was like trying to melt a
glacier with a candle. “I’ve just arrived and I’m quite tired, so it might take
me a day to find my feet again.”