Читать книгу Rich and Outrageous: His Poor Little Rich Girl / Deserving of His Diamonds? / Enemies at the Altar - Melanie Milburne, Melanie Milburne - Страница 11

RACHEL gulped, her eyes going to the chair and then back to his unflinching gaze. ‘I … I …’

He gave her a dispassionate look. ‘I am sorry I can’t rise in your presence but I am confident that within the next few days I will be able to do so.’

Her face exploded with shame. She felt every single capillary fill with it. ‘I had no idea … I’m so sorry … I wish I had known. I would never have said the things … Oh, God, the awful things I said.’ She bit on her lip so hard she tasted blood. She mentally recalled every insult, every horrible insult she had flung at him for not standing. It had never occurred to her that he couldn’t. Oh, dear God, what must he think of her? Emotion clogged her throat, tightening it until she couldn’t speak. Every moment she had spent with him he had been sitting, apart from when he had been in the pool, but even there she could not recall him standing. He had leaned against the edge and later had pulled himself out of the water and sat with his legs in the water. Why hadn’t he said something? Why hadn’t Lucia warned her? What was going on?

Alessandro used his hands to roll the wheelchair towards her. ‘You can stand up,’ he said. ‘I don’t expect you to kneel at my feet like a servant from the Dark Ages.’

Rachel scrambled ungainly to her feet, momentarily forgetting she was dressed in nothing but a slip of satin that was probably showing every contour of her body. It was only as she felt his dark blue gaze run over her that she wished she had asked Lucia for something a little less revealing to wear. ‘You found my pendant,’ she said unnecessarily.

‘Yes.’ He handed it to her. ‘It must have fallen from your neck when you dabbed at your spilt coffee on your top. It was on the floor. I found it as I was leaving to go upstairs.’

Rachel tried to put the pendant back on but her fingers wouldn’t cooperate. She gave it another try but it slipped out of her hands and she had to kneel down again to retrieve it off the floor.

‘Here,’ he said. ‘Allow me.’

She leaned towards him but it brought her so close to his face her breath stalled in her throat. They were eye to eye.

His eyes were so very dark. His breath was minty and fresh as it caressed her face. She could see the pinpoints of stubble on his jaw, the fresh dark growth triggered by the rush of his potent male hormones. Her fingers ached to feel the rasp of his stubble under her fingertips, to trace the sensual contour of his mouth. Her lips tingled to feel the hard press of his on hers, her heart beat so hard and so fast in anticipation she was sure he could hear it. For that matter she could hear it. It was like the roar of the ocean in her ears: pounding, tumultuous, deafening.

Alessandro took the pendant from her fingers and looped it around her neck, one of his hands lifting the curtain of her hair to free it from the snare of the chain. Rachel’s skin shivered in reaction, not just her neck but her entire body, inside and out. His touch was like fire. Her skin felt as if it were going to erupt into flames; every nerve ending was fizzing like a child’s bonfire-night sparkler.

‘There,’ he said, leaning back once the catch was secure. ‘You should probably get a jeweller to look at it to make sure it doesn’t come loose again.’

Rachel fingered the pendant, her eyes still locked on his as if tethered there by some invisible energy source. ‘Thank you,’ she said in a scratchy-sounding voice. ‘I don’t know what I would have done if I had lost it.’

‘It is obviously very valuable to you.’

‘Yes, it was my mother’s,’ she said, sitting back on her heels. ‘It’s all I have of hers.’

‘Well, at least you have it back now,’ he said.

Rachel bit her lip and then dived right in. ‘How did it happen?’

He looked at her for a long pause without speaking. She waited with baited breath, wondering if he was weighing up the odds about revealing what had happened to him. Was this why she had been made to sign the confidentiality agreement? Did he think so poorly of her that he had to go to that extreme?

‘Have you heard of Guillain-Barré syndrome?’ he asked at last.

‘Yes, I think so,’ she said. ‘It’s caused by a virus, isn’t it?’

‘That’s correct,’ he said. ‘About two months ago after a trip abroad I developed a slight chest infection. It was nothing out of the ordinary, or so I thought. A few days later I developed some weakness in my legs. Again, I thought I had just overdone it. I had been training for a marathon before I got sick. But it turned out to be Guillain-Barré. The illness results in the inflammation and destruction of myelin in the peripheral nerves. Sometimes the paralysis can be far more serious when it affects the breathing or the ability to swallow. I am told I am one of the lucky ones. It is only my legs that have been affected, hopefully not permanently.’

Rachel didn’t know what to say. She was still reeling from the shock of it all. She was still flaying herself for everything she had said to him. Why hadn’t he said something? Surely he hadn’t hoped to keep his condition a secret from her while she was here? Or had he deliberately left it as long as he could so she could hang herself with the rope he had so very cleverly fed out to her?

‘Don’t worry, Rachel,’ he said with an embittered look. ‘It’s not catching.’

She frowned as she realised how he had interpreted her silence. ‘I’m not in the least concerned about that.’

One brow rose cynically. ‘Are you not?’

‘Of course not,’ she said.

‘So, you’re not planning on leaving at first light?’ he asked.

‘I’m not leaving.’ As soon as she said the words she realised how deeply she meant them. He thought her a woman without honour and principles but she would show him just how honourable and principled she had become. She would stand by her agreement with him. She would stay as long as he needed her.

He pushed his chair back from where she was kneeling on the floor. ‘I don’t want your pity,’ he said, biting out each word as if they were something bitter and distasteful.

‘I’m not offering you pity,’ she said. ‘I think it’s terrible that you’ve been dealt this but that’s empathy, not pity.’

‘Get up off the floor, for God’s sake,’ he said irritably.

Rachel stood up and brushed the borrowed wrap back down over her thighs. ‘Is there anything you need?’ she asked. ‘Can I help you with anything?’

His dark eyes glittered as they held hers. ‘What exactly are you offering, Rachel? Your delectable body to awaken my half-dead nerves?’

Her face suffused with colour all over again. ‘That wasn’t part of the arrangement,’ she said.

‘We could make it part.’

Her eyes rounded. ‘You can’t mean that.’

‘I can do what I want, Rachel,’ he said. ‘I am the one holding the purse strings now, remember?’

‘Am I to be punished for every horrible word I ever said to you?’ she asked. ‘Is that what this is about? You want a whipping boy and I am it?’

His eyes were dark blue chips of ice. ‘Go to bed, Rachel. I will see you in the morning.’

‘Don’t dismiss me like a child,’ she said with a late show of her wilfulness. ‘You’re always doing that. It’s so annoying.’

His hands gripped the turning mechanism on his chair. ‘Are you determined to see me lose my temper?’

‘I’m not scared of you, Alessandro,’ Rachel said.

‘Then you should be,’ he said, fixing her with a searing look. ‘I can do more harm to you than ten of your worthless, spineless fiancés. One word from me and your fashion career will be over. No one in the whole of Europe will touch you with a bargepole. Am I making myself clear?’

Rachel swallowed a walnut-sized restriction in her throat. ‘If you do that you will not just be destroying me but my business partner too.’

A pulse ticked at the side of his mouth. ‘Then you had better behave yourself, hadn’t you, cara?’ he said and, without waiting for a response from her, he turned on his wheels and left.

Rachel lay in bed much later without any hope of getting to sleep. She had watched the clock go around in fifteen-minute slots, each one seeming slower than the one before. It was now close to dawn. She could see the fingers of sunlight poking through the gap in the curtains, casting the room in an incandescent glow of pink and gold.

Alessandro’s threat was still ringing in her ears. He could destroy her with a word. She had no way of knowing whether he would do it or not. He certainly had the motivation to do so. She had no choice but to do everything his way. Failing this time would not just be devastating professionally but personally as well. It would be the confirmation of all of her worst fears that she didn’t have the talent and drive to achieve anything in life.

She had heard the whirr and grind of the lift taking Alessandro to his suite of rooms a couple of hours ago. It seemed he too was late to bed. She wondered if he had been to sleep or whether he had tossed and turned as she had done. He had said he hoped to be back on his feet within a few days, but what if it took longer? She wasn’t sure what the timeframe of the syndrome was or whether it was different for every person. All she knew was that he was one of the most physically active people she had ever met. The fact that her father had exploited Alessandro’s willingness to work so hard had not really occurred to her until later when those very standards had clashed with her own. She hadn’t spoken to her father in a couple of years, not since he had asked her to bail him out of yet another gambling disaster. The fact that he had lost everything, including the house and garden her mother had loved so much, destroyed any hope of a continuing relationship with him. He would have pawned her mother’s pendant if she hadn’t caught him just in time.

She threw back the covers and wandered over to the window, pulling back the curtains with the beaded chain hanging by the side. The pool below was sparkling invitingly. Before she could change her mind she put on her rinsed out bra and knickers, and, wrapping her body in a bath sheet as a sarong, went down the marble staircase to the door that led out to the terrace.

She slipped into the water and practised her strokes. It was a beautiful morning, warm already with a promise of later heat. The water was a perfect temperature and she turned onto her back, closing her eyes as she floated.

Alessandro frowned as he read the email from Sheikh Almeed Khaled. The sheikh requested Alessandro bring his current partner to a private dinner at his luxury hotel in Paris the following week. There would be follow-up meetings during the week, but to meet privately was a good sign the sheikh was moving closer to sealing the deal. However, the invitation presented Alessandro with a problem. Turning up without a partner for the dinner, let alone the week, could make the sheikh suspicious that all was not well with him. He had seen deals brokered and lost before on the whisper of an illness. The business world he moved in was ruthless. People did not make allowances for personal issues. It was cut-throat and heartless but that was the way things worked. A deal was a deal.

He turned away from the computer to look out of the window, his brain ticking over the best way to handle the situation, when he caught sight of the miscreant mermaid floating in his pool in the early morning light. The sun had painted her slim body in an ethereal glow, her hair streaming out behind her in silken strands. He drummed his fingers on the arms of his chair as he thought of how he could work things to his advantage.

Rachel needed money.

He needed a temporary mistress.

Like all the other women in his life she would serve her purpose for the allotted time but that would be the end of it. His relationships were just like any other business transaction. Both parties teamed up for a specified time and parted with what they had agreed on at the outset. The rest of the month with Rachel would prove to him he was able to walk away without a single pang of regret.

He would feel nothing.

Zip.

Nada.

Niente.

He smiled as he made his way down to the pool. This was going to be far more entertaining that he had first thought.

Rachel turned over and saw him by the pool, her sea-glass eyes blinking the water out as she stood and shielded her lace-covered breasts with her hands. ‘I—I didn’t hear you,’ she said.

Alessandro gave her a semblance of a smile as he tapped the wheels with his hands. ‘It’s the deluxe model,’ he said, ‘streamlined and stealthy.’

She bit her lip in that childlike way of hers that undid him every time. He would have to work harder at covering it, at conquering it. She was not a guileless child. She never had been. She was a manipulating, down-on-her-luck gold-digger. She had already sold herself once. She would do it again. It would be amusing to watch her game play this time around.

‘I’ll get out to give you some more room,’ she said, and moved towards the side of the pool.

‘I am sure there is room in there for the two of us,’ Alessandro said.

She stalled with her hands on the rails that led from the steps. ‘I just thought you might like some privacy.’

He sent his eyes over her slim form, taking his time over the upthrust of her breasts before he met her gaze. He felt the stab of lust deep in his groin, his body springing to life, aching, pulsing, filling and lengthening. ‘If anyone deserves some privacy it is you,’ he said, keeping his expression deadpan. ‘Hopefully the rest of your luggage will arrive within the next twenty-four hours.’

‘I didn’t think you would be down here this early,’ she said. ‘I had a bad night. I couldn’t sleep. I thought some exercise would help.’

He moved his chair closer to the pool. ‘It’s a great panacea for many ills.’

He was conscious of her watching him as he manoeuvred himself from the chair to the railing of the pool steps. He was able to take a couple of steps, which was better than even twenty-four hours ago. It spurred him on to work harder and harder at his exercises.

He would beat this.

He refused to consider any other alternative.

He swam a couple of lengths to loosen up his muscles and came back to where she was still standing, holding the rails of the steps. ‘I haven’t contaminated the water, you know,’ he said.

She frowned at him. ‘I wish you wouldn’t immediately assume the worst of me.’

‘Swim with me, then,’ he said. ‘We can train together. I could do with the company. It gets pretty boring going up and down by oneself.’

She stepped back down into the water. ‘You’re very good at this, swimming, I mean,’ she said. ‘No one would ever think that you … I mean …’

‘Half a man?’ he said.

‘I never said that,’ she said. ‘I never even thought it.’ ‘It’s what most people think.’

‘I’m not most people,’ she said. ‘I know you think I’m spoilt and shallow and I was before. I freely admit that. But the last few years have changed me. I don’t judge people on appearances or what they lack in terms of background or breeding. We are all the same on this earth. Everyone is equal.’

He gave a snort of derision. ‘You expect me to believe you have reinvented yourself? You haven’t got a clue how the other half lives, Rachel. You have never had to beg for a meal. You have never had to sleep rough when the cold creeps into your bones until you can barely move the next morning. You have never had to fight off predators who want your soul for the price of their next fix.’

His words seemed to hit her like physical blows and he instantly regretted revealing so much of his sordid past. As soon as he had done it last night he had wished he hadn’t. She could so easily use it against him. He’d had plenty of opportunities to tell her five years ago but he’d always held back. He hadn’t wanted to sully their budding relationship with the dark shadows of his past. He realised now part of her allure back then had been that air of sassy innocence she had perfected.

She bit her lip again. He saw the way her teeth pushed the blood away until her lip turned almost bone-white, and then how when she released it the blood flooded back, making her lips cherry-red. Damn it, why did she keep doing that?

‘I think I’ll go inside and shower,’ she said, moving back to the steps.

‘Rachel.’

She stopped and turned to look at him. ‘Yes?’

‘I have a proposition for you,’ Alessandro said.

She looked at him warily. ‘You do?’

‘I have decided to give you the backing you need,’ he said.

A gleam of excitement shone in her eyes. ‘You have?’

‘But I want something in return.’

The excitement faded. ‘Which is?’ she asked.

He nailed her with his eyes. ‘I want you to be my mistress for the rest of the month.’

Her eyes went wide and her cheeks flushed. ‘P-pardon?’

Alessandro smiled. Dio, she was good at playing the game. So coy, so convincing. ‘You heard.’

‘I’m sorry, but for a moment there I thought you said you want me to be your mistress.’ She gave her head a little shake. ‘I must have water in my ears.’

Alessandro waited for a beat. ‘I am willing to fully back your label as well as pay you generously for each day of our time together.’

Her expression tightened, her eyes narrowing in anger. ‘I knew you would do this. I knew you would change the rules to suit yourself.’

‘Whether you sleep with me will be entirely up to you,’ he said. ‘It is not a condition on the deal.’

She faltered for a moment, a frown pulling at her smooth brow. ‘I … I don’t understand … You just said you would pay me to be your mistress.’

‘In public, not necessarily in private,’ Alessandro said.

Her frown deepened. ‘You want me to act as if I’m your mistress?’

‘I am sure you can do it convincingly,’ he said. ‘After all, you have done it before, sì?’

Her mouth flattened in anger. ‘Do you have any idea of how much I hate you for doing this?’

‘Right back at you, little rich girl,’ he said.

She got out of the pool and snatched up her towel. ‘You expect me to say yes, don’t you?’ she said.

‘I expect you to think carefully before you throw away your only lifeline,’ he said.

She gave him a look that would have cut through a diamond. ‘Let me get back to you on that,’ she said.

‘I have so far managed to keep the news of my affliction out of the press,’ he said. ‘I realise that will be impossible if I am not able to regain my full mobility over the next few weeks, but I refuse to accept that outcome. I can now manage a few steps with support. My goal is to move to crutches in the next couple of days. That will make being seen in public a lot less complicated and no one will blink an eye about it. I will explain it as a sprain or something. You read and signed the disclosure contract. Do I have to remind you of the consequences of not playing by the rules?’

‘Do you think so badly of me that you think I would do something like that?’ she asked.

‘I will have another contract drawn up ready for you to sign this evening,’ he said.

‘And if I don’t sign it?’

Alessandro smiled an indolent smile. ‘You will sign it, Rachel.’

‘Your confidence is admirable but I am not for sale,’ she said with an icy look. ‘I will look at other options before I sink that low.’

‘You will sign it because you have no choice,’ he said. ‘Not unless you want to go begging on the streets for your next meal.’

‘Aren’t you forgetting something? I can’t go out in public with you without clothes.’

‘Do not worry, cara,’ he said. ‘I will make sure your luggage is delivered to the door today.’

‘And if it isn’t?’

‘Then I will pay for new clothes for you,’ he said.

She glowered at him resentfully. ‘I don’t want to owe you any more than I have to.’

‘You were the one who came to me, Rachel,’ he reminded her. ‘You are here now and who knows? Perhaps we might even be friends at the end of it.’

‘You have a very strange way of recruiting friends,’ she tossed back.

Alessandro watched as she wrapped the towel around her body and flounced off. The red-hot blood of desire thundered in his veins, filling him, making him ache with a need that refused to go away. He wanted her more than he had wanted any woman. He wanted her more now than he had five years ago. It was burning like an inferno inside him; day and night it was all he could think about. How much he longed to surge inside her, claiming her as his own, showing her the pleasures of the fiery chemistry that had always been there between them. If it was more money she wanted in exchange for her body, then he would give it. He would part with a fortune to have his fill of her.

But he would still let her go at the end of it.

Rachel stormed into the shower, turning the water on full, her anger at Alessandro practically bursting through the pores of her skin. Had he planned this right from the start? Of course he had. He had lured her here to play his petty little power games with her. This was a masterstroke at payback. He couldn’t have planned a better move. He knew she couldn’t say no. Not unless she was prepared to lose everything, including all that Caitlyn had put into the company. How would she be able to face her staff and tell them it was over? She couldn’t do it. And Alessandro knew it and was humiliating her with it.

She had not long got out of the shower when he called her on the extension in her room. Her luggage had finally been located and was being delivered within a couple of hours. She marvelled that a single phone call from him had achieved what several from her had not. It was another reminder of the power he had at his fingertips. Power he could use to break her if he chose to.

‘I have some work to do so I would like to be left undisturbed until lunch, which I would like served at one,’ Alessandro said. ‘I hope you can find something to do to occupy your time.’

‘I’m sure I can find a doorknob or two to polish,’ Rachel said tartly.

‘Lucia is returning in the morning so your duties as a housekeeper will cease from midnight tonight,’ he said. ‘I have told her you will be staying on till the end of the month.’

‘I haven’t said I would do it yet,’ she reminded him.

He ignored her statement as he continued, ‘Lucia is also aware that our relationship is not like my usual ones.’

‘What? You mean you don’t usually blackmail your other women into doing whatever you want?’ she shot back.

‘I have not had to resort to such means in the past,’ he said. ‘Most women are perfectly happy with the fringe benefits of sharing my life for a specified time.’

‘How can you specify the duration of a relationship?’ she asked incredulously. ‘Do you have some sort of reminder in your calendar in case you accidentally run over a couple of days? Beep. Time’s up. Out you go. Next please.’

‘You need have no fear of that happening with us, Rachel,’ he said. ‘You will be back on that plane to Australia on the first of next month. I can guarantee it.’

He ended the call with an abruptness Rachel found intensely irritating. He was reminding her of her tenuous position here as little more than a servant. It was all part of his mission to extract revenge for the choice she had made, a choice that if she’d had her time over again she would have made so very differently. She put the phone extension back in its cradle and thought back to the night of her twenty-first birthday party.

The mansion was filling with guests for the black-tie affair. Rachel had taken great care over her appearance and was putting on the last touches to her make-up when her father came to see her.

‘Rachel, I need a word with you,’ he said, looking uneasy.

‘Sure,’ she said, putting down her tube of lipstick. ‘What it is, Dad?’

He pulled at the collar of his dress shirt as if it were strangling him. ‘Honey, I need to ask you for a favour, a big one,’ he said.

‘If you want me to dance with that geeky guy Albert from your firm, forget it,’ she said, picking up her lipstick again. ‘I can’t stand his fleshy hands all over me. He did that at the staff Christmas party and I—’

‘Craig has asked for your hand in marriage.’

Rachel looked at her father. ‘Shouldn’t he have asked me first?’

‘I guess he didn’t see the necessity,’ he said. ‘You’ve both always known you would eventually make a go of it. Your mother and I talked of it when you were kids. His parents Kate and Bill wanted it too. They still want it. Now seems the right time to announce it publicly.’

Rachel put a hand to the diamond pendant around her neck that her father had given her only that morning. Her mother had been given it on her twenty-first birthday. She had been wearing it the day she died. ‘Dad, there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you—’

‘Craig has invested in my business,’ her father cut her off. ‘He’s really going places, Rachel. He can set you up. He has connections in a modelling agency. They will take you on straight away with just a word from him. You’ll travel the world: Paris, London, New York. You’ll become a household name.’

‘But I’m not in love with him,’ Rachel said. ‘I thought I was once, when we were teenagers, but not now.’

‘Do you think I loved your mother?’ her father said through tight lips. ‘Don’t get me wrong. She was a nice girl but that was the point. I had to marry a nice girl. Not one from the wrong side of the tracks. There are women you sleep with and there are women you marry. It’s the same for young women like you born to wealth. You can have your flings if you must, but you have to marry well. You have to marry your own kind. It’s a fact of life.’

‘But I’m not ready to settle down just yet,’ she said. ‘I need more time to make up my mind.’

Her father frowned blackly. ‘What’s this talk of making up your mind? You’ve always known Craig was the one.’

Rachel swallowed. ‘I’ve just started seeing someone …’

‘Who?’ The word came out like a bullet.

She felt her stomach begin to churn at the dark threatening look in her father’s eyes. ‘Alessandro,’ she said.

Her father’s face turned puce. ‘The yard boy?’

‘He’s not just a yard boy,’ Rachel said. ‘He’s doing a business degree, an MBA in fact. He only continues to work here to pay his university tuition.’

‘He’s trailer trash,’ her father said, spittle forming at the side of his mouth. ‘He’s a mongrel, a crossbreed. For God’s sake, he doesn’t have a penny to his name!’

‘He treats me like a princess,’ Rachel said. ‘He treats me with respect even though I’ve been awful to him in the past. I’m just starting to get to know him and I think he’s one of the nicest—’

‘Are you a complete fool?’ he said, his eyes bulging with disgust and scorn. ‘You’re being used, Rachel, and you’re too stupid to see it. He’s using you to get ahead. By hooking up with you he gets access to the high-flyers. If you were a poor girl from the suburbs he wouldn’t look twice at you.’

Rachel stared at her father open-mouthed. Was it true? Had Alessandro targeted her as his ticket to the big time? They had only been dating a few weeks. She had insisted on keeping their relationship private but he hadn’t had the same misgivings. He had wanted to make it public right from the start, he had said he had nothing to be ashamed of in seeing her, but then why would he if what her father had said was true?

‘He’ll drag you down to the gutter where he came from,’ her father continued. ‘I’m warning you, Rachel. If you don’t accept Craig’s offer of marriage then you will be cut out of my life. I will never speak to you again. Do you hear me?’

Rachel looked at her father in wounded shock. Did he mean it? Did he love her so little that he could cast her from his life without a single slice of regret? Could she risk it? She had already lost her mother. She would have no one if her father cut her off.

‘I am sending Craig upstairs as soon as he arrives,’ her father went on. ‘I want you to come downstairs together as an engaged couple. This is your chance to do something for me, to make me proud. God knows you’ve given me little to be proud of so far. But this will change everything. I will be the proudest father alive to see you settled with Craig Hughson.’

Rachel’s heart sank as her father left the room. The knock on her door a few minutes later made her heart sink even further but, when she opened it, it wasn’t Craig standing there, but Alessandro.

She said the first thing that came into her head. ‘How did you get in? My father has a security team down there to keep out gatecrashers.’

‘I know one of the security guards,’ Alessandro said with a flash of his heart-stopping smile.

She closed the door of her bedroom and leaned back against it for support, her eyes avoiding his. ‘You can’t be here, Alessandro,’ she said. ‘Not tonight.’

‘I wanted to see you on your birthday,’ he said. ‘I have something I want to ask you.’

She looked at the small velvet package he was holding in one hand. ‘I can’t take that.’ She moved past him to stand in front of the dressing table. She gripped the back of the chair until her knuckles looked as if they would break through her skin.

He came over and, turning her gently, took one of her hands and closed her fingers over the package. ‘Rachel,’ he said. ‘I know we’ve only been officially dating a few weeks but we’ve known each other for much longer than that.’

Rachel swallowed as she saw the sincerity in his dark blue gaze as it caught and held hers. ‘Don’t,’ she choked. Please don’t.

His hands squeezed hers gently. ‘I love you,’ he said, smiling down at her. ‘I think I fell in love with you the first day I came to work here and you insulted me about my manners or my hair, or was it my clothes? It doesn’t matter. I love you and I want to marry you. Will you do me the honour of being my wife?’

She tried to get her voice to work but her lips felt as if they were starched. ‘Alessandro … I …’

There was a loud knock on Rachel’s bedroom door and before she could open her mouth Craig Hughson came in as if he had every right to.

He took in the little tableau with a sneering look. ‘What’s he doing here?’ he asked Rachel.

She couldn’t look at Alessandro but she could feel the pressing weight of his gaze. ‘He’s just leaving,’ she said. ‘He just wanted to wish me a happy birthday.’

‘Well, you can congratulate us while you’re at it, Vallini,’ Craig said, slinging an arm around Rachel’s shoulders.

Alessandro’s expression turned to stone. ‘Congratulate you on what?’

‘Rachel and I are engaged,’ Craig said with a smug smile. ‘We’re just going downstairs to announce it now. Aren’t we, babe?’

‘Is that true?’ Alessandro asked, firing the question at Rachel, his eyes like laser beams.

Rachel wanted to deny it. She ached to deny it. She thought of her father waiting downstairs with all the guests, all the celebrities and high-flyers of Melbourne society, all the well-to-do family friends. They were all assembled waiting for her and Craig to appear. Her father had probably primed them all. They probably had champagne glasses filled and ready for the first congratulatory toast. Could she go down there and say she wouldn’t do it, that she wouldn’t accept Craig’s offer of marriage? She had no home but this one. No other relative but her father. How could she cut herself off from all that was familiar to take a chance on a relationship that was only in its infancy? She wasn’t sure if what she felt for Alessandro was love. It felt like it but how could she know for sure? What if he was asking her to marry him to get ahead in life as her father had implied? She would be better marrying the devil she knew than the one she didn’t.

‘Is it true?’ Alessandro repeated his question, each word enunciated with lethal precision.

Rachel schooled her features into the haughty mask she had used so many times to disguise her true feelings. ‘Yes, it’s true,’ she said. She gave Craig a tight smile and linked her arm through his. ‘We’re getting married.’

Alessandro didn’t say a word. He didn’t need to. His anger was a palpable force. It was like a vibration in the room, invisible sound waves of fury. He gave Rachel a look of savage contempt before he moved past, closing the bedroom door with a snap that was as final as a punctuation mark.

Rachel blinked herself out of the past. She didn’t want to think about her shameful, cowardly behaviour. She didn’t want to think of the two years of hell with Craig, how he had cheated on her the whole time they had been together, how he had borrowed money in her name, falsifying her signature, leaving her up to the eyeballs in debt and her reputation in ruins. She didn’t want to think about the life she could have had with Alessandro. She might not have been in love with him at the time but she hadn’t been far off it. Now he hated her and he had every right to.

The villa was blissfully quiet. Rachel was used to a busy crowded workspace, people bustling about as she tried to get everything done that needed to be done. It was amazingly liberating to be left alone with just her thoughts for company, and not just her thoughts, but her creative energy. She found her mind suddenly buzzing with new designs, elegant, sophisticated and inspired by her exotic surroundings. She took out her sketchbook and drew some outlines, using quick fluid strokes that captured the essence of what she wanted to produce for her next collection, barely stopping until thirst and an aching gnaw in her stomach reminded her it was time to prepare lunch.

Once the meal was set up, this time on a shady part of the terrace, she went in search of Alessandro. He wasn’t in his study or in any of the sitting rooms. The pool was empty, for she had checked it as she had laid the outdoor setting on the terrace.

She walked past a room on the lower level that she hadn’t seen before. She opened the door without knocking. In one quick glance she could see the room was a gym. And then her eyes went to Alessandro, who was on some type of rehabilitation walking frame, beads of sweat on his brow as he forced one leg in front of the other. It looked as if every step were a marathon. His mouth was set in a grimly determined line, every muscle in his arms bunched and quivering as they tried to hold his weight as he moved along the short distance across the floor.

Rachel hadn’t been aware of making a sound but she must have because he suddenly looked her way and growled at her, his expression savage, like a snarling dog. ‘Get out. Get the hell out of here!’

Her hand fell to her side, her chest feeling tight and restricted. ‘I’m sorry … I thought you wanted lunch at one …’

He gave her a cutting look. ‘I’m not hungry. Now leave.’

She swallowed convulsively as she took in the equipment surrounding him. Weight machines and bench presses, a treadmill that she suspected he hadn’t used in a while. All of it a reminder of what he had once been and might never be again. She had secretly admired the sculptured perfection of his muscles all those years ago. She had secretly admired him and compared him to the other men in her life: Craig, who was handsome but lacked definition, her father, who after years of excessive drinking and lack of exercise had become a bloated effigy of the striking-looking man he had once been. Alessandro had surpassed them easily; he always had. His touch had lingered like a memory in her flesh, catching her off guard, taking her by surprise, alerting her to the chemistry that simmered underneath the history of their tricky relationship.

‘I told you to get out, Rachel,’ he said, his mouth still flat and tight.

‘That looks like hard work,’ she said, refusing to be daunted, even though her legs were feeling as trembling and unsteady as his seemed to be.

His eyes darkened to midnight blue. ‘It is and I would rather not have an audience.’

She moved across to where a pulley with weights attached was hanging from a machine. ‘What’s this for?’ she asked, touching it experimentally.

She heard him draw in a harsh breath behind her. ‘It’s to maintain my upper body strength,’ he said.

She moved to the leg press machine, running a finger over the smooth shiny metal. ‘And this?’ she asked.

She heard him swear in Italian, a short sharp expletive that for some reason sent a trickling feeling to the base of her spine. Her mind exploded with erotic images of him making love to her, his body strong and in control, pumping, thrusting, filling her with his male presence, stretching her, taking her to the heights of human pleasure. Her face coloured as she realised where her thoughts were taking her.

‘I’ve never seen anyone get hot and sweaty before from just looking at gym equipment,’ Alessandro said drily.

Rachel turned away to inspect the hand weights, desperately hoping her colour would subside. She picked up the lightest pair of weights and did a couple of bicep curls. ‘I’ve never really got into the gym thing,’ she said. ‘I have friends who do several sessions a week. They get antsy if they don’t go. It’s like an addiction.’

‘There are worse things to be addicted to.’

She put the weights down and turned and looked at him again. ‘Yes, I suppose so …’

He was studying her, the hard angry look replaced now with a guarded one. ‘So what do you do to keep so trim and slim?’ he asked. ‘Hot and sweaty sessions with your latest lover?’

Rachel felt her face flame again. ‘I told you I’ve been too busy working on my label. I haven’t dated in a while. Actually, not since I broke off my engagement.’

His eyes registered her statement with a tiny flicker of surprise but then he covered it quickly. His voice when he spoke was cynical. ‘I somehow can’t picture you as a born-again virgin, Rachel. You were always starving for male attention. It didn’t matter who they were as long as you could get their notice. I fell for it and I can imagine many have done so since, more fool them.’

‘You’re never going to let it go, are you?’ she said.

His expression remained coolly calm, detached. ‘I suppose you are referring to my rather clumsy marriage proposal.’

Rachel’s heart was thudding as if she had just done a triple circuit of the equipment in the room with a half marathon thrown in as well. ‘I wasn’t expecting you to … to—’

‘To what?’ He cut her off almost savagely, his eyes blazing again. ‘To admit I loved you?’

She tugged at her bottom lip with her teeth. ‘I was surprised, that’s all. I didn’t think people fell in love that quickly, or at least not men.’

He gave a grunt of derision. ‘I didn’t love you, Rachel,’ he said. ‘I was in lust with you, just like every other man who came within a bull’s roar of you. Didn’t your father tell you that about men? There are woman you love and there are women you lust after. You are the latter. You will always be the latter.’

Rachel knew her eyes, not to mention her expression, were probably showing much more than she would have liked. Had anyone ever truly loved her? Was it really true that Alessandro had only lusted after her and never seen her for the person she really was? It felt as if a wound inside her had been roughly opened up, exposed and seeping and bleeding all over again. Her father’s words about not loving her mother had haunted her for years. How could men be so cold and calculated about relationships?

‘Then why did you want to marry me?’ she asked after a short tense silence.

He gave her a look that more or less said it all. ‘You were my ticket to success,’ he said. ‘Marriage to you would have instantly elevated me to the higher echelons of society that had previously been denied me because of my less than desirable background.’

She fought hard to cover her hurt, her devastation, her disappointment that yet again some ruthless, unprincipled man had decided she was to be used as a means to an end. ‘But you made it without me,’ she said, thinking out loud. ‘You didn’t need me to achieve what you’ve achieved.’

He gave her a grim smile of satisfaction. ‘I did indeed make it without you, Rachel. I did indeed.’

She moistened her lips again, the cotton wool dryness making her feel slightly ill. ‘So why am I here now?’

‘Why do you think you are here now?’

She took an unsteady breath, not sure how to respond. She felt as if her world had tipped upside down and she had no way of righting it. ‘This is all about revenge, isn’t it?’ she said.

He gave her a veiled smile. ‘What possible way could I have revenge on you?’ he asked. ‘You are beautiful, you are talented, and you are on the pathway to the pinnacle of brilliant success.’

‘As long as I do what you say,’ she put in resentfully.

‘That is entirely up to you,’ he said, and turned back to the equipment. ‘I am not forcing you to do anything. I am prepared to back you but only as long as you play the role of my current mistress.’

‘What do you want me to do?’ she said.

‘Just be yourself,’ he said, and, clutching the rails, began forcing his legs into action.

She frowned as he moved along the short distance, each leg looking as if it were dragging a road train behind it. The beads of sweat broke out above his top lip and across his brow, and the muscles of his arms bulged with the effort of keeping himself upright. His legs moved inch by inch but it looked as if it took an enormous effort. He gritted his teeth and soldiered on, his eyes narrowed in determination.

‘Are you sure you should be trying so hard so soon?’ Rachel said. ‘Shouldn’t you be taking smaller steps or something?’

He looked up at her at that point, his expression caustic. ‘I don’t need your advice, Rachel. I have a team of physical therapists who help me with this. I have a programme I work through each day. Please leave me to get on with this. I don’t want you here.’

She took a step backwards and somehow lost her footing, tumbling over the bench press behind her, landing in a crumpled heap, arms and legs akimbo.

Alessandro swore again, in English this time, and limped over to help her, using the cable skier nearby for support. ‘Are you all right?’ he said, hauling her to her feet with one of his strongly muscled arms.

It was a precarious rescue. Rachel was not quite upright and nor was Alessandro. His arms were strong but his legs were not. Her arms and legs were rendered useless as soon as he touched her. She turned to jelly, none of her ligaments and muscles seemed to be responding to the messages firing from her brain. She brought him back down with her, the hard weight of his body pinning her to the floor, from thigh to thigh, from pelvis to pelvis.

There was an infinitesimal moment when his eyes locked on hers, their bodies still in an erotic embrace that should have felt awkward and compromising but somehow didn’t …