Fire and Ice by Nell Harding

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