Page 128 of The Chalet Girl

‘What?’

Tristan looked totally bewildered, as if that were a past life.

Cat shook her head.

‘Please, she’s not answering my calls, and I can’t go to her place of work.’

‘No, funny that…’ Cat said with a raised eyebrow. ‘Look, I gotta cook. Nice talking to you,’ she said sarcastically, as she pressed the button on the Chalet Edelweiss elevator.

Tristan picked up his bag in defeat and went to leave.

‘Look, I didn’t know about you and Anastasia,’ he said apologetically. ‘Not until Emme told me.’

Cat looked back at him.

‘Would it have made any difference if you did?’

He didn’t answer.

‘I thought not.’

Cat was small, but she made Tristan feel minuscule.

‘Really, I’m sorry.’

They stared at each other in a standoff as the lift arrived.

‘Please, can you get a message to her?’ Tristan begged.

The lift doors opened, and something in Tristan’s desolate face made Cat think Emme might want to hear him out.

‘She’s staying at the Steinherrhof.’

Tristan looked puzzled. Whathadhappened? How had she found out? But he was also relieved. If he could just see her, he could explain.

‘Room 319. But you have to get past Tiago first.’

Chapter Seventy-Six

Emme sat cross-legged on her hotel bed and read a message from Tiago checking in on her.

I’ll be on shift tonight, he said, although she had remembered.See you soon.

Thanks Tiago xEmme replied.

Emme looked at the calendar and pondered the mess she had got herself into in six short weeks. She wondered why the hell she had agreed to take a job that would pull her away from her family for Christmas. Two days off wasn’t enough time to go home, and she had been so naïve to think she would have a lost Christmas of passion in Tristan’s penthouse.

There was a knock on the door as she considered whether she really could fly back to London for forty-eight hours. She missed her mum, dad and Lucille terribly.

The knock rasped on the door again, this time more frantically.

‘Shit,’ Emme muttered.

She half hoped it would be Bill so she could show him the footage of Lexy and Tristan, but wondered what good that would serve. What about poor Harry and Bella? Emme climbed off the bed, checked her appearance in the vast mirror by the door and put her phone in her jeans pocket.As she opened the door, all the feelings of lust, obsession and treachery came flooding back like a wrecking ball to the third floor of the Steinherrhof.

Chapter Seventy-Seven

Walter Steinherr walked into the lobby of the Anna Maria, ignoring his doctor’s orders about avoiding crowds.