Fire and Ice (6 page)

It had only been a couple of weeks
since she left London and already she felt her old life slipping away. Here she
felt invigorated, alive again, able to forget the hurt and despair and betrayal
she had felt after the fiasco with Mickey. The simple days in the mountains,
the fresh air and the beautiful environment were washing away the sense of
being lost which had sunk into her after her relationship and her budding tea
room had abruptly ceased to be.

She still didn’t know what she
would do next. Her contract here was for the ski season, just until Easter. But
for now, that was enough while she took this pause to figure out her next step.
Surrounded by happy people simply enjoying their days, it was easy to feel
comfortable with an unplanned gap.

Her weekly column also helped,
attaching her by one small thread to her old life. Mark Haskins, the editor,
was pleased with her fresh perspective and Kate found that it helped force her
to focus on Swiss culture, which was easily overlooked in the international ski
crowd.

Last week she had written about
the truth lurking behind some of the national stereotypes. The obsession with
cheese, chocolate and cows was real, she wrote, but it masked the true Swiss
favourite, cleanliness. It was a nation obsessed with “putzing”, a term taken
over from the Swiss-Germans who apparently had perfected the art of
housekeeping. A long chat with Chantal, the French cleaning woman who came to
the chalet on Thursdays, had given her some amusing material which spanned
twenty years of working for Swiss households. She had finished by tying in a
few quotes about washing with a comment on money laundering and Swiss banks,
which was a current media topic.

This walk was supposed to help her
refine her ideas for this week’s column. She had sketched out an idea but her
attempts to polish it off had been sidetracked by daydreams involving a pair of
dark, soulful eyes.

She had also planned the walk as a
chance to reflect on what direction she wanted to take after the spring.
Instead, she let her attention be distracted by the mountain views as she
whistled “Climb Every Mountain”.  Behind her the jagged ridge of La Ruinette
cut into the skyline, while across the valley she could see over the slopes of
Bruson to the Trient glacier and the peaks above Chamonix. Higher up on her
walk she had even seen the glistening summit of Mont Blanc towering
majestically over the surrounding peaks.

In the summer, these slopes were
meadows of wildflowers, full of grazing cows and the sound of cow bells. Mimi
had gushed enthusiastically about the softer season and shown her photos. It
was hard to imagine all that green waiting underneath the thick blanket of
white but Kate hoped she could find a way to see it for herself.

For the moment she was happy to
absorb the Christmassy atmosphere of snow-laden trees and early dusks. This
would be her first white Christmas in years. Mimi had told her not to expect
too much Christmas activity, apart from lights on the chalets and shops, and
quiet family dinners. She had sounded apologetic when she described it, but
Kate was glad. Mickey had always wanted big Christmas parties and social events
in the city, whereas Kate would have preferred the simple gatherings she had
grown up with.

Her musings were cut short by the
ring of her cell phone. She pulled off her mittens to dig in her pockets,
fumbling clumsily with cold fingers. It was probably Mimi, she guessed, calling
to check on how the column was progressing. The last time they had spoken, Kate
had been in productive procrastination mode, doing everything she could think
of to avoid writing.

“Hiya,” she breathed into the
mouthpiece, cradling the phone against her shoulder as she struggled to put her
mittens back on. “No need to harangue me, I’m on top of things.”

There was silence on the other end
of the line and then the sound of a man clearing his throat. “I’m glad to hear
that, Michelle,” Sebastien said dryly. “But I thought you might like to know
details for this weekend.”

Kate flung her head back in dismay
and the phone flew off into the snow. She swore softly as she dropped to her
knees to dig for it, frantically dusting the snow off with her mitten before
she managed to reply.

“I’m so sorry, I thought you were
somebody else,” she explained, flustered.

“Sorry to disappoint you again,”
Sebastien said, sounding either unimpressed or slightly amused. “May I
continue?”

Kate was glad that he wasn’t there
to see her blush. Once again she felt awkward and clumsy around him, like a gangly
schoolgirl with a crush. “Please do,” she mumbled.

“This weekend we will be three,”
he began. “We will only be coming up on the Saturday night and leaving after
the skiing on Sunday.”  He paused, then continued with a bit of a laugh. “To be
honest, they are not the easiest of guests. I wondered if I could ask you to
work your charm again.”

Kate was taken aback. “I’m not
sure what you mean,” she stuttered uncertainly, feeling a strange warmth
rushing through her.

“Just do whatever you did last
weekend,” Sebastien said impatiently. “Just be yourself.”

A pang of guilt stabbed at her.
How could she be herself when she was impersonating someone else? She hated
lying and pretending, especially to him.

Her feeling of guilt worsened as
he continued, “I can certainly see why you come so highly recommended.”

“It’s what comes of having friends
in the hiring agency,” she said inanely. Her mind felt frozen and she couldn’t
really think. She was glad to hear that she was doing a good job and that he
had noticed, but it felt wrong to take credit for somebody else’s reputation.
She also felt a small thrill that he was pulling her into another sort of team
situation, the two of them facing the difficult guests together.

Part of her wondered if this was
the moment to tell the truth. Obviously he was pleased with her work, so maybe
it really wouldn’t matter at all that she wasn’t Michelle ...

She opened her mouth to speak but
her courage failed her. She tried to justify her cowardice by telling herself
that he needed her for this weekend, for the business, and that it would be
unfair to place him in a situation where he either fired his chalet girl and
had to manage alone, or at the very least lost confidence in her.

But she hated lying to herself even
more than lying to others. The truth was that she wasn’t ready to risk being
fired. She needed this job, for one thing. And she no longer had anywhere to
return to. But she also knew that she hated the idea of Sebastien knowing that
she had lied to him, having him feel betrayed by her or thinking that she was
dishonest.

“I think it’s what comes of being
both professional and friendly,” Sebastien was saying. “Good with people. Let’s
see if you can work your magic on a tougher crowd.”

A flash of pleasure mixed with the
guilt Kate was feeling. A compliment from Sebastien meant a lot to her, more
than it should. She was glad that he couldn’t see the confusion on her face.
She had to force herself to pay attention as he gave her the details for the
weekend and then hung up, back in his usual efficiency mode.

This was all just business, she
told herself. As long as she did a good job, the little lie didn’t matter. As
long as she ignored the knee-weakening attraction she felt for him, the burning
desire to find herself alone with him, the way she had hoped that last Saturday
evening went on forever.

She breathed deeply, smelling pine
pitch and wet mittens. It was a beautiful day and she was not going to spoil it
by worrying about small details that she couldn’t control now anyway. 

Her face was set resolutely as she
headed back toward the village and she even managed a smile as a group of tiny
chickadees fluttered out of the tree at her side. Now she just wished that the
burning knot of tension in her stomach would agree.

Sebastien closed his mobile
telephone with a snap. He stared at it for a long moment before putting it away
with a sigh.  This week he had been thinking too much about Michelle. Since the
weekend he had been looking forward to the Wednesday call, just to hear her
lilting voice, her bubbly enthusiasm. He should really have waited until the
evening to call, as arranged, but the waiting left him distracted and less able
to work efficiently.

Michelle was different than the
other women he met. She was less sophisticated and more real. There was
something infectious about her positivity and warmth, a way with people that
seemed to come naturally to her. Her wide smile was disarming, twinkling up to
her eyes, putting the guests at ease.

The problem was that he found it
disarming as well, almost irresistible.

By the end of the weekend he had
felt the strong urge to pull those sensuous lips against his, to taste that
smile. To let those little sparks that had flared in every moment of complicity
burst into flame. Rather than the reserved and cautious sort of person who held
back and always kept a card in reserve, she seemed like the wild, uninhibited
sort to jump in with both feet and let go.

He exhaled deeply and shook his
head to clear his thoughts. He was unimpressed by his own traitorous feelings.
In the family, he was the one who was supposed to be responsible now, not
behaving like Stefan and chasing after pretty women every weekend.

His headlong romance with Genevieve
and the disastrous divorce which followed had caused the family enough
embarrassment, he reminded himself. The tabloids would love it if the younger
Pichard followed in his brother’s footsteps by creating a scandal and seducing
the chalet girl.

The computer screen in front of
him on his neatly organised desk went into standby mode, bringing him back to
his surroundings. Resolutely he turned back to his work.  Self-discipline and
focus on the task at hand had become his trademark way of dealing with anything
that disturbed him.

When he had first plunged into his
work seriously after Genevieve, it had been a way of rebuilding his pride and
compensating for the cost of his divorce. His family assumed that his personal
commitment now to make Pichard a leader in responsible corporate governance was
simply a business plan to make up for the market lost to Stefan’s mistakes.

But his desire to do something
positive for society was genuine. His time with Genevieve in the world of flighty
models and rich socialites had left him resolved to make the Pichard family
give something back and he felt driven to show that ethics weren’t completely
incompatible with successful business.

The thought made him furrow his
dark brows and run his hand distractedly through his hair. Today he had
received an email from Axelle duBois, a French model who was going to pose for
his advertising campaign for the Simply Elegant watch series. He had already
met her at one of Stefan’s parties and she had shown a keen interest in more
than just his ideas. She wanted to come up for a weekend to discuss the
campaign, but also wanted him to take her to the casino in Montreux. He sighed.

What he really wanted to do was to
dive back into the annual reports of several international NGOs. Instead he had
to deal with a distributor in India as they tried to regain the market that
they had lost there after the scandal with the film star.

He reread the email from New Dehli.
There were cultural norms he had to respect in his reply, forms of politeness
which took some concentration not to overlook in his efforts to be efficient.
The Pichard clan had inadvertently rubbed enough Indians the wrong way. The
social scandal had been bad enough; the last thing they needed was to be seen
as disrespectful in business as well.

After several aborted attempts to
answer the message he pushed his chair back and stood up, stretching his back.
His usually focused mind was being hijacked today by images of Michelle, some
of them not so innocent. This was ridiculous. He needed a coffee.

On his way out of his office, he
stopped to take in the magnificent view from the windows. His office was on the
top floor of the stately eighteenth century building that housed their main
watch showcase on the first floor. Large windows overlooked the promenade that
ran along Lake Leman. It was a clear, sunny day and he could see across the
lake to the French Alps, covered in snow.

He could imagine the day in
Verbier, the sun glinting on individual snow crystals, making the whole bowl
sparkle. He wished he could be there now, skiing in the afternoon sun, coming
home to curl up by the fire in the evening. Sharing a glass of wine with
Michelle. Watching those green eyes dance.

Five minutes passed as he gazed
unseeingly across the lake before he came to his senses with an unimpressed
snort. He was worse than Stefan.

This was not a winter for pleasure
or creating scandals. He had a business to run. He closed the blinds on the
Alps and continued down the hallway.

Chapter Seven

Switzerland, despite its
flourishing tourist industry, remains a country largely closed to outsiders. A
legacy of generations brought up in closed valleys, the Swiss maintain a solid
loyalty to their peers and a guarded wariness of strangers. Even people from
the next valley, with their slightly different idioms, are considered as
foreigners in the tightly-knit mountain communities.

Coming from abroad, don’t come
to Switzerland expecting to make friends with a lot of locals, unless you plan
to stay for decades. You can, however, expect to make friends within the
dynamic expatriate community, despite the ebb and flow of its members.

The Alps were originally opened
up for alpine tourism by the English, and the ski resorts remain the playground
of foreigners. Once, the British hired local guides and porters. Now the
situation has reversed and the British flock here to work for the Swiss in the
bars and ski shops. The situation pleases both parties, even if never the twain
shall meet.  Just don’t come to Verbier hoping to perfect your French.