Читать книгу Rich and Outrageous: His Poor Little Rich Girl / Deserving of His Diamonds? / Enemies at the Altar - Melanie Milburne, Melanie Milburne - Страница 10

RACHEL glared at him. ‘People like you think you can buy anything you want, don’t you? But I am not selling myself, and certainly not to you.’

‘Sleeping rough not your thing any more, little rich girl?’ Alessandro asked with a mocking slant to his mouth.

She ground her teeth. ‘I am offering to work as your housekeeper, nothing else.’

‘I think it will be quite diverting to have you around waiting on me hand and foot,’ he said. ‘This is quite a change in circumstances, sì? I’ll have to find something really menial for you to do. I wonder if you will be able to handle it.’

Rachel hauled herself out of the pool with a strength she had not known she possessed. She flung her wet hair back from her face and glared down at him. There was something about him just sitting there with his long tanned legs dangling in the pool that sent her anger skyrocketing. He was acting so cool and collected, so calm and clinical, so in control—of her. ‘You bastard,’ she said through lips trembling with rage. ‘I bet you planned this right from the start.’

‘I haven’t planned anything, Rachel,’ he said in the same calm even tone. ‘I have simply offered you a business proposition. That is all this is: a temporary contract between us. Once Lucia is back you are free to go.’

She put her hands on her hips and continued to glare down at him. ‘So you’re not even going to consider backing my label?’

‘One thing you need to know about me, Rachel, is I don’t rush headlong into things without serious consideration,’ he said. ‘I am not putting my name to something that is not worthy of my time and commitment and hard-earned money.’

‘Will you at least look at my designs and my business plan?’ she asked.

‘I will consider it if you behave yourself.’

‘You mean if I sleep with you,’ she said with a hardened look.

His eyes slowly moved over her, leaving a smouldering path on her flesh in their wake. ‘Is that the way you normally conduct business?’ he asked.

‘No, of course not!’ Rachel said. ‘I just assumed you would want to—’

‘You should not assume anything when it comes to me,’ he said with one of his enigmatic barely there smiles.

Rachel felt emotionally stranded. What did he want from her if not to sleep with her? Their brief affair had not been consummated five years ago. Wouldn’t forcing her to sleep with him for money be the perfect revenge? In the past he had always only ever touched her once she had given him encouragement, which was more than she could say for her ex-fiancé who had seemed to think he could do anything he wanted whenever he wanted irrespective of her wishes.

But if Alessandro were to sleep with her he would find her a very poor partner, certainly nothing like the exotic and physically confident women he was used to. It would be so humiliating to have him find out how limited she was sensually. But for all her inadequacies sexually, she still felt an electrifying energy in the air when she was with him, an undercurrent of sensual heat that was visceral. She felt the dancing nerves of her skin when his eyes rested on her. She felt the stirring of her blood, the escalation of her pulse every time he spoke in that rich, deep, well-modulated voice of his. He was having a tumultuous effect on her senses that she could not in any way control. Was he aware of it? Was that his intention in having her here like this? To show her how it felt to be the one spurned? Why hadn’t she realised one day there would be a price to pay?

‘I will give you the rest of the day to think it over,’ Alessandro said. ‘I will have an agreement drawn up legally. It will be ready by dinner for you to sign.’

Rachel frowned at him. ‘An agreement? What sort of agreement? Why does it have to be so formal?’

‘By agreeing to live here with me for even a day or two you will be required to sign a contract that forbids you to speak to the press,’ he said.

‘You don’t trust my word?’ she asked.

‘You should go and shower,’ Alessandro said, ignoring her question. ‘You will burn if you stay in the sun any longer.’

‘Are you coming in now?’ Rachel asked, not really liking the feeling of being summarily dismissed.

‘No, I want to swim some more,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you at dinner. I hope you can find your way around the kitchen. Lucia keeps it well stocked. I would like to dine at eight-thirty and I expect you to dine with me.’

‘Isn’t that a bit unusual?’ she asked. ‘You don’t take any of your meals with Lucia.’

‘This is an entirely different situation,’ he said. ‘You are here as a guest as well as a temporary employee.’

‘I’m not really a guest though, am I?’ she said. ‘You never wanted me here in the first place, or so you said.’

‘If I am not the most welcoming host you have only yourself to blame,’ he said. ‘But now that you are here I am prepared to make the best of it. I suggest you do the same.’

Rachel collected her dress and sandals but decided against dressing and instead took one of the towels that was lying on the sun lounge and used it like a sarong. She glanced back at the pool but Alessandro was still sitting on the edge looking at the water, a frown pulling at his brow. Her heart gave another tiny unexpected squeeze but she quickly shook off the sensation and walked back into the villa and up the staircase to her room.

She wasn’t sure why she went to the window but she found her feet taking her there as if they had developed a mind of their own. She looked down to the terrace below but there was no sign of Alessandro in the pool. He was no longer sitting on the edge either. There was no sign of him anywhere.

She moved towards the en suite but when she came out after her shower she could hear in the background the mechanical whirr of some kind of machinery from deep within the villa. A lift perhaps? She assumed it was Lucia leaving to go to her family. Maybe the housekeeper found the four flights of stairs too much given she had to keep the massive villa in order, which she seemed to do with meticulous care, Rachel thought as she looked longingly at the pristine bed.

A short nap before she started on dinner would hopefully prepare her for another verbal fight with Alessandro. She didn’t like admitting it but she was almost looking forward to it.

After her rest Rachel changed back into her linen trousers and top. She had no jewellery other than a tiny diamond pendant that had been her mother’s. She never went anywhere without it. She had no make-up to put on. Her cosmetics bag was inside her luggage, which had still not been located. She had a tube of lip gloss in her handbag, which made her feel marginally less unsophisticated. She pulled her hair back into an elegant chignon at the back of her head. It was her power hairdo; no stray hairs to make her look like a child that had just come in from playing in the back garden.

She walked down the staircase, her hand sliding down the cool marble as she went. She had to find her way to the kitchen on her own, but then she hadn’t been given a tour. Alessandro had been adamant about the two-day limit on her stay, but now with Lucia’s family crisis working in her favour she had a window of opportunity to change his mind about backing her. How to get him to change his mind was something that was certainly going to be a challenge. The money he had given her would not last the week given the state of the company’s finances. Would she go as far as to beg for his help? Was that what he wanted her to do? He was such an intriguing man: mysterious, aloof and so disturbingly, tantalisingly male. Living with him as his housekeeper for a day or two would test her in ways she had not expected to be tested. She hadn’t expected to still feel that strange flutter of nerves every time he looked at her. His gaze was like a physical touch. She felt it following her every move. She felt the stirring of her blood, the heating of her flesh as if his gaze were a brand sealing the invisible connection she felt each time she was in his presence.

She decided she would have to be careful.

Very careful.

The kitchen was a cook’s dream and there was no shortage of fresh and store-cupboard ingredients to whip up a gourmet meal. Rachel dived into the task, determined to show Alessandro how capable she was. Long gone were the days of hiring cooks and cleaners to do the work for her. She had learned a lot over the last few years and took pride in being able to cook for a couple or a crowd.

Rachel hadn’t heard Alessandro enter the dining room. She came in to put the finishing touches to the table to find him already seated at the head of the table next to the bottle of champagne and white wine she had placed in an ice bucket earlier.

‘Dinner won’t be long,’ she said. ‘I just have to check the chicken casserole.’

‘I said dinner was to be at eight-thirty,’ he said, challenging her with his dark blue eyes.

Rachel felt her back come up. ‘My watch says it’s only eight-twenty.’

‘Then your watch must be wrong,’ he returned.

‘Are you usually so pedantic about mealtimes or is this just for my benefit?’ she asked.

‘You are now under my employ, Rachel,’ he said. ‘I will not tolerate sloppiness or unpunctuality in any form.’

She tried to stare him down but in the end she had to look away. Resentment burned inside her like hot coals as she flounced back to the kitchen to bring in the meal.

He was still sitting at the head of the table when she came in with their starter. She placed it before him and went to stand by her place opposite. It annoyed her again how he just sat there like a king waiting for his subjects to appear before him. He must be doing it on purpose, to make her feel she was not worth the effort of acknowledging her or by rising when she came into the room. The very least he could have done was to stand up and pull out her chair for her. ‘I’m surprised you haven’t started on your food before I’ve even sat down,’ she said.

‘It is the height of rudeness to begin eating one’s meal until every guest is seated at the table and has each been served their meal,’ Alessandro said.

‘It is also rude for a man not to rise when a lady enters the room,’ Rachel quickly shot back.

He looked past her as if looking for some other guest to appear. ‘I had not noticed any ladies enter the room,’ he said with a cool stretch of his lips that kept his teeth concealed. ‘Perhaps you will inform me if and when one does.’

Rachel clenched her hands on the back of the chair in case she was tempted to slap him for his insulting slight. ‘You’re really enjoying this, aren’t you?’ she said. ‘You’re getting a sick sense of enjoyment out of this turn of the tables. Your lord-of-the-manor routine is pathetic. No amount of wealth is going to be able to change your background. You can whitewash it all you like with your wealthy surroundings and priceless possessions but underneath it all you are still a rough kid from the suburbs who got lucky.’

‘Sit,’ he said, his eyes locked on hers, fire meeting ice.

She gripped the chair even harder, defiance pushing her chin forward. ‘I will sit when you stand.’

‘You will be waiting a long time, Rachel,’ he said. ‘Now sit before I lose my temper.’

The air began to crackle as if charged with thousands of volts of electricity as his dark sapphire eyes held hers in a powerful lockdown.

A feather of unease danced up Rachel’s spine. There was no visible sign of anger on his face, but she felt it all the same. It was invisible but very, very real. It moved around her, closing in on her like invisible coils that were tightening her chest with every beat of her heart.

The silence throbbed and throbbed but then he broke it by saying, ‘I have the papers here for you to sign.’ He passed them to her.

Rachel hesitated, but then she took them with an unsteady hand. It annoyed her how the slight rattle of the pages betrayed her state of being while he remained so cool and untouched. It seemed so unfair for her to be feeling like a chastised child while he acted the role of the reprimanding authority figure.

‘You should read them carefully before you sign them,’ he added.

She pulled out her chair and sat down before she realised what she had done. She’d had no intention of taking her seat while he was still sitting but somehow he had got his way. ‘Nice one, Vallini,’ she said, giving him a narrow-eyed glance. ‘Read the document, Rachel,’ he said expressionlessly. She read through the document carefully. It stated that she was to be temporarily employed as his housekeeper and in doing so was required to sign a confidentiality agreement. If she spoke to the press during the time of her employment or for up to six months afterwards she would have to repay all monies paid to her, including the ten thousand euros he had already given her.

‘Is there a problem?’ Alessandro asked. She looked across at him, wondering why he was being so calculated about this. It seemed a bit extreme for a two-day stay. But then he had good reason to think she would do anything to get the money she so desperately needed. A quick spill to the press had the potential to earn her thousands but there was no way she would dream of doing that to someone, not after knowing firsthand how it felt to have your private life splashed across every headline. ‘No, not really,’ she said. ‘It seems pretty straightforward. You’re paying me to keep my mouth shut.’

‘A day or two at the most is all I want from you,’ he said. ‘Once that time is up you are free to go. You will not owe me a penny unless you act with indiscretion.’

Rachel took the pen, her fingers feeling the warmth of where his had been. He hadn’t touched her, not even a brush of his fingers as he handed her the pen, but her hand felt as if it were on fire. She signed her name before handing the pen and the document back to him. ‘Do you get all your mistresses to sign confidentiality agreements before you sleep with them?’ she asked.

His eyes glinted darkly as they held hers. ‘You are not technically being employed as my mistress, Rachel.’

Rachel felt her colour rise. ‘How do I know you won’t add it to my list of duties?’

He took a long time to answer. A very long time. ‘I don’t like mixing business with pleasure,’ he said. ‘It is a dangerous combination that can leave one open to exploitation.’

Rachel knew he was having a dig at her for the way she had led him on in the past. From his point of view she had acted like a trashy little tart, offering herself to him at every opportunity. She had flirted with him and teased him and had enjoyed every moment of it. He had made her feel so feminine and gorgeous and so irresistible that it had gone completely to her head. But looking back now she wished she had been a little more mature and a little more sensible about how she had conducted herself.

Alessandro put the papers to one side and reached for the bottle of champagne. ‘Shall we celebrate our temporary arrangement?’ he said.

‘Why not?’ Rachel said, affecting a carefree tone when she felt anything but.

He handed her a glass of sparkling bubbles and then, taking his own, held it against hers in a toast. ‘To standing up for oneself,’ he said and drank a hefty mouthful.

She took a small sip and then frowned as she traced the rim of her glass with her fingertip. ‘I’m a lot better at it now than I was.’

Alessandro put his glass down. ‘I don’t know about that. I think you’ve always been good at fighting from your corner.’ There was a little silence.

‘When did you decide to end your relationship with Hughson?’ he asked.

She looked at the contents of her glass rather than meet his eyes. ‘I could see things were not working out between us,’ she said. ‘We had very little in common apart from our backgrounds. I think I always knew that but I was under pressure from my father to do the right thing.’

‘Meaning he wanted you to marry money.’

His statement sounded like a criticism. ‘Yes, but then that was the way I was brought up,’ Rachel said. ‘I was taught to mix with the right people.’

‘But you amused yourself by the occasional fraternisation with the lower classes,’ he said.

Rachel met the glacial glitter of his unwavering gaze. ‘I can’t really explain my behaviour,’ she said, looking away again. ‘I didn’t intend to hurt you. I think I just got carried away. I had spent years insulting you and then I was suddenly fighting an attraction that was beyond anything I had experienced before.’

‘So you ended your engagement,’ Alessandro said after a pause.

‘Yes. I would have broken things off a lot earlier but … but it was hard to … well, to admit I had got it so wrong about him.’

‘Pride.’

She looked up at him, her white teeth snagging at her bottom lip in that bewildered-child manner that never failed to stir something deep and primal in him. ‘Yes, pride and the fact that my father thought Craig was everything a future son-in-law should be. I called off the wedding twenty-four hours before it was scheduled to go ahead, and my father has never let me forget how it contributed to his bankruptcy. I knew Craig had poured a bit of money into the business but I hadn’t realised how much. Of course he subsequently pulled out everything once I called off the wedding. And then there was all that food, all those flowers, the dress, the cake—you can probably imagine how it went.’

‘I can.’

She bit her lip again, deeper this time, so deep Alessandro wanted to reach out and brush her soft lip with the pad of his thumb to restore its soft plumpness.

He picked up his glass instead and took another mouthful of the champagne. He didn’t want to think about her with her ex-fiancé. He hated thinking about her with that creep. Every day of that liaison had been like a lighted poker to his flesh. It had tortured him to think of her with that brute’s hands and mouth and body on hers. But it was what she had chosen. She had chosen Hughson’s money over his love. He had been totally gutted by her shallowness and greed. He had fought for years to put it behind him, to keep his emotions in check, to live life without feeling anything for anyone. But now his hatred for what she had done returned with a vengeance. For so long he had ignored it, but now it was back like a filthy choking tide clogging his blood. He hated her with the same passion as with which he had once loved her.

‘You never liked him, did you?’ she said, looking at him again.

Alessandro put his glass down. ‘Are we talking about your father or your fiancé?’ he asked.

Twin flags of colour rose in her cheeks. ‘Both really …’

‘I realise it is never comfortable hearing someone criticise someone you love,’ he said. ‘But then that is what is so endearing about young children. They only see the good in their parents.’

‘I was hardly an infant when you came to work for my father,’ she said. ‘I was eighteen years old, legally an adult.’

Alessandro pictured her back then, all rich-kid attitude with no idea how the real world worked—the world he had been dragged through for as long as he could remember. Her silver-spoon lifestyle made her feel superior. She had looked down that up-tilted nose of hers and sneered at anyone who wasn’t dressed in the latest designer wear or driving the fastest sports car. He had taken it on the chin for the first couple of years, putting up with her catty remarks about his background or his clothes or the second-hand car he drove. But then she had started flirting with him. He had ignored it at first but after a time she had been impossible to resist. The first time he had kissed her his senses had imploded. His body had throbbed and ached for her but he had never pushed her to sleep with him. He hadn’t felt comfortable concealing their relationship. He had wanted to go public with it but she had always insisted no one must know. Little had he realised it had all been a game to her; leading him on for weeks on end, only to reject him like a stray mongrel dog that had the audacity to have turned up at a pedigree show. For the last few years he had felt glad she had got her comeuppance. He had watched from a distance as she had lost her modelling contract, and then how the slurs on her reputation were played out in the press, which left her with no one willing to take her on, and he had felt nothing but satisfaction.

She deserved it for how she had treated him. He had been blinded by lust. He felt foolish for having thought he had ever loved her. But then he had loved a fantasy, not a real person. He had fooled himself she was not the selfish, pouting little spitfire she presented to the world, but instead a soft and caring young woman who hadn’t felt safe enough in her relationships to reveal her vulnerabilities. But he had got it wrong. She was every bit as selfish and spiteful on the inside as she was on the outside. The fact that she had sought him out for money after all this time and in spite of their history was proof of it.

She had no shame.

Looking at her now, with her beautiful face without its armour of make-up and those incredible eyes shadowed and downcast, he knew he would have to guard against her wiles. She hadn’t suddenly morphed into a demure little lady and he wasn’t going to treat her like one until she learned how to behave.

Her beautifully manicured hand was toying with the stem of her champagne flute. Alessandro felt a stirring in his groin as he thought of how it would feel to have those soft fingers trace over him, to encircle him, to milk him of his essence. He forced the image out of his head. The doctors kept assuring him it would just take a little more time, but how much time? It had been close to two months now. Two months of doing everything he could to regain what he had lost, to allow his body to heal. But no one had given him any guarantees. No one had said for certain he would regain full mobility and function. Yes, there were positive signs of improvement but what if that was as far as his body would ever go? He was luckier than most. He knew that and was grateful for it but he wanted his life back.

He wanted it more than anything.

Rachel put her fork down when she was finished and noticed Alessandro watching her. ‘Is something wrong?’ she asked.

His expression was unfathomable. ‘No, I was just checking to see if you used the right cutlery.’

Hot colour flooded her cheeks. ‘You’re never going to forgive me for those little digs about your background, are you?’ she said, glaring at him.

He picked up his champagne glass and drained it. The sound of it coming back to the table’s starched linen surface was like a thump in the silence. ‘You are very prickly, aren’t you, card?’

Rachel’s heart gave a little squeeze at his casually delivered endearment. Even the way he said her name had a similar effect on her. His accent had deepened over the time he had spent in Italy. His voice was smooth and mellifluous. It was another devastatingly attractive feature of him that unsettled her deeply. How could a man’s voice make a woman’s spine soften like warmed honey? The deep timbre of Alessandro’s voice was like a sensual stroke of a lover’s hand. If that was just what his voice could do to her what would happen if he decided to change the rules of their arrangement? ‘Why did you call me that?’ she asked.

He gave her a brief flash of a smile that didn’t involve his eyes. ‘Are you still worried I might try and seduce you now I have you within my clutches?’

Rachel had difficulty disguising her reaction to his unnerving mind-reading ability. She quickly got her shocked expression under control, however, and resorted to sarcasm. ‘You can try but whether or not you will succeed is another matter entirely.’

This time his smile lasted longer and made the whole distance to his dark blue eyes, the teasing glint making her toes curl inside her shoes. ‘Are you laying down a challenge for me, tesoro mio?’ he asked.

Her fingers fumbled on her glass, almost knocking it over. ‘No, of course not,’ she said. ‘I-I’m not interested in anything like that.’

‘You have been single now for how long?’ he asked as he refilled her glass.

She hesitated before she answered. She was twenty-six years old and had only had a couple of lovers. Her first experience had been a teenage fumble that had seriously dented her confidence, but sex with Craig had confirmed every fear she’d held about herself. In hindsight she could see she had been too young and inexperienced and too stubborn to accept she had made a mistake in becoming engaged to him. Instead of extricating herself from the relationship she had clung to it all the harder, pretending it was something it was not and never could be.

‘Rachel?’ Alessandro prompted.

She met his dark eyes. ‘I have been pretty busy just lately trying to save my label,’ she said. ‘There hasn’t been a lot of time for socialising.’

‘Tell me about your friend,’ he said. ‘You are business partners, yes?’

‘Yes,’ Rachel said. ‘Caitlyn and I met at design school. We got on well and had similar goals. She was a great support to me when I ended things with Craig. I don’t know what I would have done without her. She once had a violent controlling partner so she knew what it was like to …’

Alessandro was very quiet and Rachel looked up to see him studying her with a frowning expression on his face. ‘Sorry … I’m rambling,’ she said.

‘Did Hughson hurt you physically?’ he asked, still frowning heavily.

‘No, but he made threats,’ Rachel said. ‘I guess that’s how he controlled me for so long. I was never sure what he was capable of. I wasn’t game to risk it. I finally got the courage to end things but only because of Caitlyn’s help. She showed me how I was being manipulated.’ She lowered her gaze from his. ‘I was too stupid to see it for myself.’

Alessandro reached across the table and put his hand on her arm. ‘Don’t blame yourself.’

Rachel felt the slow spreading warmth of his flesh on hers. His skin was so tanned compared to hers. His fingers so long and dusted with masculine hair, the nails clean and short, strong hands, capable hands, hands that could stroke and caress and light fires underneath her skin. She swallowed as a wing-like flutter erupted in her belly. She slowly brought her gaze up to his. It felt as if he had summoned it with the sheer power of his magnetic presence. His pupils were black holes in a dark blue unfathomable sea. It occurred to her then she could drown in that sea if she wasn’t careful. ‘I guess you must be really pleased I had to lie down on the bed of my own making,’ she said.

Alessandro removed his hand from her arm and sat back in his chair. ‘I am not sure it is a worthwhile exercise relishing in someone else’s misfortune,’ he said. ‘No one gets it right all the time. I have made decisions I have come to regret in hindsight.’

Rachel could just imagine what he most regretted. Asking her to marry him and then only minutes later to have her introduce another man as her fiancé would surely be up there with the most regrettable of actions. If only he knew how much she wished she had said yes to him instead. Her life would have been so very different.

‘I’ll get the next course,’ she said to break the awkward silence.

While she was in the kitchen she looked down at her arm where his hand had lain and fully expected it to show some mark, so heightened were her senses. Her skin tingled, each nerve prickling beneath the surface of her skin.

She rubbed at her arm, annoyed with herself for reacting like an infatuated schoolgirl instead of a mature and sensible adult. She could not afford to be distracted by his potent allure. She was on a mission to save her label and that had to remain her top and only priority.

Once Rachel had served the meal Alessandro turned the conversation to more neutral topics. It was as if he was making a concerted effort to steer away from any mention of the past. Rachel found him to be a convivial host when he put his mind to it. He asked her what books she had read lately, what movies she had enjoyed and where she had last holidayed. He even laughed at one of her anecdotes about a visit to a celebrity client for a private fitting. Rachel suddenly realised she had never heard him laugh before. It was a deep rich sound that trickled down her spine like a flow of champagne. It was a magical moment, connecting them in a way that she had not experienced with him before. She caught a glimpse of the man he was and had always been in spite of his difficult background: respectful, disciplined, driven but decent. Why had it taken her this long to realise it?

Before she knew it the time had come for coffee.

‘Have you been back to Australia since you left?’ she asked as she poured them each a cup of the rich fragrant brew.

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

He stirred his black coffee even though she hadn’t seen him put in any sugar. ‘It is a good country—a great country,’ he said. ‘I have never said it wasn’t, but my heart is in Italy. As soon as I got off the plane I felt as if I had come home.’

‘Your father was Italian, wasn’t he?’

‘Yes.’ He picked up his cup and took a sip. ‘He travelled to Australia on a working holiday but ended up staying after he met my mother.’

Rachel had never heard him speak of his parents before. ‘So why did you end up in foster homes?’ she asked.

His expression was remote. ‘My father died in a workplace accident when I was a small child. Things came unstuck after that.’

‘Do you remember him?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘He was tall like me and had the same colouring. He worked hard trying to get ahead but he never quite made it. Everything seemed to work against him, including my mother.’

‘Is she still alive?’ Rachel asked.

‘She died a few years ago,’ he said. ‘I didn’t hear about it until the funeral was over.’

‘You mean you didn’t try to keep in touch with her?’ His eyes met hers, dark, veiled and deep. ‘I tried but it didn’t always help matters. In the end I thought it best to keep out of her life.’

‘Why was that?’ Rachel asked.

‘She was totally unreliable,’ he said ‘She was always changing addresses and or partners, most of whom were her dealers. She was the reason my father had to work three jobs to keep food on the table. She shot most of what he earned up her arms. It was a problem she couldn’t fight alone. Once he died she spiralled out of control without him there to support her.’

Rachel’s throat constricted. She had always known he had come from a difficult background but she had never bothered to ask how difficult. She had heard rumours that he had been kicked out of numerous foster homes and thus assumed he had always been a rebel of some sort, that he was the problem. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said, her voice coming out as soft as a whisper. ‘I had no idea things had been that bad for you. I thought you were just one of those hard-to-manage kids. You never said anything.’

‘My father was a fool for falling in love with my mother,’ he said. ‘Her first love wasn’t him, it was her next high. He should have realised there are some people who are beyond help. He got caught in the addiction web and it cost him his life.’

‘It must have been so awful for you having no one to rely on after your father was killed,’ Rachel said. ‘How did you manage?’

‘How does any kid manage?’ he said. ‘The survival instinct kicks in. I was a bit wild for a time until I made a decision to follow my father’s dream of a better life. I got off the streets and got an education.’

‘I am sure he would be very proud of you,’ Rachel said.

Alessandro gave an indifferent shrug. ‘I am not proud of my background but it has made me the man I am today. I suppose I should be grateful, sì? I could have followed my mother’s example. So many people do. It is all they know. It’s as if it is somehow programmed into their genes. Generational dysfunction or some such thing it is called.’

‘How did you change the cycle when so many can’t or won’t?’

‘I wanted to win, Rachel,’ he said with a determined set to his features. ‘I have always wanted to win because my father’s chance was thrown away.’

‘So winning at any cost is important to you?’

His eyes burned a pathway to her soul. ‘Very important,’ he said. ‘I will not stop until I get what I want.’

Rachel picked up her coffee cup for something to do with her hands. She wanted to reach out and lay her hand on his arm as he had done to her earlier but she wasn’t sure how it would be interpreted. When it came to that she wasn’t sure how she would react. Would her touch turn into a caress or a plea for forgiveness or both? Would she slide her hand up and down his hair-roughened arm, maybe even entwine her slim, small fingers with his long, strong ones? Her belly gave another little two-step shuffle and she gripped her coffee cup a little harder, but the cup was hot and somehow she lost her hold, the liquid spilling on the stark whiteness of the tablecloth, some of it splashing against her chest.

‘Are you all right?’ Alessandro asked. ‘You didn’t burn yourself, did you?’

‘No, I’m fine,’ she said, using the napkin he had rapidly handed her to mop up the spillage. ‘I’m sorry. I’m not normally so clumsy.’

He remained seated while she cleared the table, which she tried not to be annoyed about. He was paying her and generously to wait on him. She had no right to feel resentful. If anything she should be bending over backwards to get him to consider backing her label. It was demeaning to be in such a position but she really had no choice. ‘Alessandro …’ she began, ‘I just want to say how much I—’

‘Go to bed, Rachel,’ he said as if dismissing an overtired child from the adults’ dinner table. ‘Your work here is finished for the day. We will speak again in the morning.’ ‘But I—’

‘Don’t argue with me, Rachel,’ he said. ‘You are obviously exhausted. I should not have kept you up so late. I’m sorry. I lost track of the time.’

Rachel turned and left, not happy about being dismissed but she realised by the way the shutters came down on his face that he was probably regretting revealing so much about his background. She felt ashamed that she hadn’t probed him about it five years ago. Why had she just assumed he was a bad boy? Why hadn’t she looked a little closer and understood why he was so driven and determined? He was a man on a mission to succeed and she had been a part of that plan but had defaulted. No wonder he was enjoying watching her taking orders from him.

Success, after all, was the ultimate revenge.

It was only as she was washing her face in preparation for bed that she realised her mother’s pendant was missing from around her neck. A tight band of panic wrapped around her insides as she shook out her clothes to see if it had caught on them as she had undressed but there was no sign of it. She then retraced her steps, all over the large bedroom and then back to the en suite, her eyes scouring the floor as she went for the glint of a diamond and the silver of the fine chain, but there was nothing. She spread out the contents of her handbag on the bed, going through everything meticulously but still not able to see the pendant anywhere. She checked the sink of the basin she had used, but without the services of a plumber to undo the S-bend she was unable to know for sure if it had slipped down there or not. She bit her lip and thought hard about when she had last felt it around her neck. But because she wore it most of the time she was so used to feeling it there that she didn’t feel it. It was a part of her that just was … well, a part of her. And now it was gone.

A choked sob rose in her throat. She couldn’t lose it. It was all she had of her mother. She just couldn’t possibly lose it. She would tear this wretched villa asunder to find it even if it took her the whole night to do it.

There was a satin robe that Lucia had given her earlier and she wrapped it around herself quickly to continue the search.

She went down the stairs, turning on lights as she went, her eyes on the floor the whole time. She went across the foyer and then down to the dining room and opened the door. The table was as she had left it, shiny and cleared with a vase of roses in the centre filling the room with their scent.

She got on her hands and knees and went over the thick carpet with her hands and strained eyes. She was close to tears by now, her heart sinking at the thought of losing that final link with her mother.

‘Oh, dear God, where are you?’ she said out loud as she sat back on her heels and pushed the hair out of her face.

Rachel had her back to the door and it took her a moment to shuffle around on her knees in order to identify the sound that had whispered over the thick carpet like a fox on velvet paws.

Her heart swung like a wildly flung anvil in her chest when she saw Alessandro sitting in a wheelchair, his blue-black eyes meeting hers. ‘Is this what you are looking for?’ he asked, her mother’s pendant dangling from his long tanned fingers.