Page 35 of The Chalet Girl

‘And here’s one for you…’ she said, as she magicked a third one from her trouser pocket. ‘It’s in the name of Jennifer Jones but no one will check. No one will remember her anyway.’ Lexy raised an eyebrow as if she hoped it wasn’t a name people would remember. Not after what she’d done.

‘Guard it with your life,’ she said with a crocodilian smile. ‘They cost a fortune.’

Noted.

Emme smiled as Lexy bellowed out a harangued and hurried goodbye to her kids and left, not a second too soon. Emme stood for a moment, taking in the calm after the tornado, staring at the front door, utterly perplexed. The woman hadn’t kissed her kids goodbye, she was in such a flap. What was this crazy bubble she had moved to? What had Jennifer Jones done to leave so suddenly and be replaced so swiftly?

Emme spun on her heel. Get the kids to school. With fifteen minutes to spare as per the rules. Then perhaps she could sit down and take the madness of this crazy beautiful place in.

‘Come on kids!’ she called keenly. ‘Coats on! You need to show me your school!’

Harry and Bella came out of their rooms, and opened the hidden cupboard door to get their coats, scarves and mittens. They were young but seemed surprisingly independent.

‘Ready to give me the tour?’ Emme asked eagerly.

‘Yes!’ Bella replied. ‘Jenny loved taking us to school!’

‘I bet she did.’

Chapter Twenty-Four

‘Kristaps, will you call the helipad and charter a chopper to Geneva?’

‘Of course, sir.’

‘And have Timo waiting with a yumbo in ten minutes,’ Walter Steinherr instructed as he ate a bowl of natural yogurt and berries. Kiki had got him on a health kick soon after they married, and he just about tolerated the stuff. Fat lot of good it was to him now, he thought. He should go out on a high, eating all the foods he loved. Be with the woman he loved.

The butler nodded and walked out reverently.

‘Want to accompany me to Geneva, Dad?’ Lysander asked. ‘Do a nice circuit in the chopper?’

Walter shook his head.

‘Erm, no thank you, I have a meeting this morning,’ he replied somewhat sheepishly.

Lysander drank orange juice and looked very smart for a man who was about to take a helicopter over the valley and a flight across the Atlantic. Dimitri was already in his office in the Alpenrose hotel across town and Anastasia was out getting an early-morning massage.

‘Ooh, I miss New York,’ Kiki oozed, longingly, wrapping her tongue around a melon ball as she lingered on herstepson. Lysander looked away sharply as he drained his glass, and Kiki turned to her husband. ‘Darling, it’s been too long. We haven’t been to New York for what, three years?’

Lysander remembered the visit. Kiki had flirted with him then, too.

‘We should take a trip to visit Zand, Meg and Blake!’ Kiki thought she might be able to tag one of her trips to the West Coast onto it, after Walter had returned home. She liked LA. She imagined being there with Lysander, not Walter, and introducing him to her Bel Air friends, as she sized him up again across the table.

Lysander felt his stepmother’s gaze.

No thank you,he thought.

‘Yeah, Meg and Blakey would love to see you Stateside, Dad?’

Walter frowned, as if his mind was elsewhere, but he was very much thinking there would benotrip to New York with Kiki. Which reminded him. Business.

‘That bit of American law you were going to look into…’ Walter said, not all that cryptically. ‘I would like you to check the ramifications please.’

Lysander nodded cautiously. His father and Kiki had married in Las Vegas five years ago, when Walter was on a high from high rolling. They’d only been dating for three months and he was completely smitten. They’d met when Walter, single for years after his disastrous divorce from Susan, was playing blackjack in Monte Carlo with a group of associates, and Kiki was the croupier. He’d never seen a croupier look so polished and powerful. Her white-blonde hair was slicked back in a short bob, her blue eyes and pretty nose gave her a prudent wisdom. She was statuesqueand muscular. Walter was surprised to learn Kiki was from the United States. Even more fascinated to know she had worked in Las Vegas. Walter Steinherr had never been to Las Vegas– there had never seemed much point when he had Monte Carlo, Malta, Baden-Baden and Venice on his doorstep, but it was an itch that had always tickled him.

Over three months Walter wooed Kiki with dinners on the French Riviera; or he’d fly her to one of his hotels in Kristalldorf where they’d have dinner and take a room. When they had sex it was unlike anything Walter had known before. Kiki’s blowjobs were dynamite.

People raised eyebrows in Kristalldorf to see a pneumatic croupier on the arm of Walter Steinherr, but she wasn’t with him for his money, not that they knew that. Kiki had business plans of her own, and leaving the casino would free up her time to develop them. Plus she wasn’t immune to Walter’s chivalrous reverence.