Page 26 of A Billionaire for Christmas
Molly felt her cheeks blaze.
‘No, of course not. No! Never. Absolutely preposterous. How very dare you!’Stop now, for the love of everything good, stop now.
‘Fine. Whatever.’
Molly studied him. He didn’t have the air of a man who had been wracked with guilt over facing the woman he’d so rudely rejected the previous evening. He had the face of a man irritated by the loss of Wi-Fi.
‘Since I can’t get any work done, I might as well have breakfast,’ he continued. ‘I’ll have the eggs Florentine.’
‘Pardon me?’ she asked.
‘With steamed spinach and toasted flax seeds. It’s on the menu.’
Molly stared at him, her mouth agape.
‘You know. The menu? I assume you wrote it. This shouldn’t be breaking news.’
Rude. Arrogant. Annoyingly correct.
‘You treat me like… like… well, erm… and then you expect me tocookfor you?’
Levi arched an eyebrow.
‘Well, if you think for a second that you can just… just… and then…’ Molly was becoming increasingly flustered.
‘Fine,’ he said, rolling his eyes. ‘This is exactly what I was talking about. If you’re not going to do the job I’m paying you to do, I’ll just make them myself.’
Molly followed him across the kitchen to the pantry. Her meticulously ordered pantry. He swung open the door and marched in, with her following too closely behind.
‘I think you’ll find the Val D’Amore resortownerspay my wages, thank you very much. And for your information, they don’t pay me enough to put up with rude, arrogant, hot-blooded holidaymakers who feel they can lead a poor innocent woman on and then dispense with her at their convenience, without so much as a reasonable apology!’
Molly’s lungs were billowing in her chest, indignation seething out of her. Levi towered over her. His close proximity, in the now not so spacious cupboard, was immediately unnerving.
‘I’m the boss,’ he said coolly, as though she must already know.
Molly let this piece of information land.
‘You can’t possibly be.’
‘On what basis?’
This was a very reasonable question. It deserved a reasonable answer.
‘On the basis of…’ Molly racked her brains before giving in to defeat. Lack of sleep was playing havoc with her judgement. Petra could have warned her that the woman on the board was also the mother of the man in charge. ‘On the basis of you should have mentioned it when we first met…’ She trailed off.
‘Okay, well, I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but I own the whole Val D’Amore resort, this lodge, everything in it, all the land around it, the mountains you see outside, the roads you drove in on. The ski lifts, the runs, the clubs and restaurants, all mine.’
‘Everything?’ she gasped. How was that even possible?
Levi sighed impatiently. ‘Everything. Although, if we’re going to split hairs then I own everythingexceptone last tiny little food hut in the corner of the square that will soon be added to the portfolio. Happy now? No need to google me. I’m telling you, I pay you. And now apparently, I am also paying you to watch me cook for myself.’
Molly’s jaw dropped open. He might be rich, but he was still very rude. She returned his cold stare.
‘How was I supposed to know you owned everything? Correction. Nearly everything.’
How dare he refer to her restaurant as a tiny little food hut?
Levi frowned quizzically. ‘Didn’t you find out before your interview? Did you do any due diligence before you decided to leave your homeland and trek all the way across Europe to work as a chalet chef?’
