скачать книгу бесплатно
Rachel ignored the chair in order to look around. The villa was better than any of the five-star hotels she had ever stayed in and she had stayed in plenty over the years. She had thought her family mansion had been magnificent and certainly compared to many it had been. But this was on another level entirely. This place felt like a palace with its priceless art works and sophisticated decor. She went to a French table with an intricate gold inlay on the top where a vase of roses sat. She touched one of the fragrant blood-red petals and it fell to the table’s surface in a velvet silence.
Footsteps sounded behind her and the Italian woman appeared. ‘He has agreed to give you five minutes,’ she said.
Rachel let out the breath she had been holding and followed the woman up the marble staircase. It was only as she passed a mirror on the second landing that she wished she had asked for a moment or two to freshen up. Her hair was sticky about her too-pink face and the end of her nose looked as if it had caught the sun. Her sleeveless top had damp patches in between her breasts and her shoulder blades, and the crisp white linen trousers she had put on this morning now looked as if they had been worn for a week on an archaeological dig. She didn’t look anything like a fashion designer. She looked like a sunburnt, down-on-her-luck vagrant.
The housekeeper knocked on a door on the second level, and, stepping to one side, opened the door for Rachel to go through.
The door closed behind her as Rachel stepped into the room. It was a library—study with three walls of bookshelves and a huge desk set in front of long, heavily curtained windows. Compared to the brightness of the rest of the villa this room seemed dark and brooding, not unlike the man who sat behind the leather-top desk.
Rachel met his eyes across the distance of the room and her heart gave a little involuntary stumble. His eyes were as blue and as deep and as unfathomable as the ocean she had walked past this morning—a startling, incongruous blue given his olive-skinned Italian colouring and jet-black hair.
The silence was like a wall of thick glass dividing the room in two. All Rachel could hear was the sound of her thudding heartbeats. The noiseless air contained a hint of something faintly disturbing. It made her heart beat all the faster and her breathing stalled as if all the air had been sucked out of her lungs.
He had an interesting face. Not handsome in a classical sense but certainly arresting. The Roman nose gave him an aristocratic air, so too did his sharply honed uncompromising jaw.
His mouth was unsmiling.
An errant thought slipped into her head as she wondered when he had last smiled and who had been the recipient of it. A lover perhaps? She had done a little research and found out he had ended a relationship with a cosmetic model a couple of months ago. But there was nothing unusual about that. The same research had turned up that none of his relationships ever lasted more than a month or two. There was nothing else she could find out about his private life other than he was now one of Italy’s richest and most eligible men.
‘It was very good of you to agree to see me,’ she said with forced politeness.
He leaned back in his chair and quietly assessed her with his gaze. It annoyed her that he hadn’t even had the decency to rise when she entered the room. Was he doing it deliberately? Of course he was. He wanted to demonstrate his contempt of her and what she had done. But she was not going to be treated like trailer trash. She might have lost just about everything else, but she still had her pride.
‘Sit.’
One word.
A command.
An order.
An insult.
Rachel remained standing. ‘I won’t take up too much of your time,’ she said, working hard to control the thread of resentment in her voice.
A corner of his mouth went up in undisguised derision. ‘No, indeed you will not,’ he said. He flicked his gaze to his expensive-looking watch. ‘You had better say what you came here to say and say it quickly, for you have just under four minutes left. I have another commitment straight after this and it has a much higher priority.’
Rachel felt a tremor of anger rumble through her. So this was how he wanted to play it, was it? Sitting on his high horse, deigning to meet with her, only to play cat and mouse with her until he was satisfied he had got his revenge. It had to be about revenge. What else could it be? How he must be gloating about how the tables had turned. The once lowly gardener had made good while the little rich girl was now penniless. ‘I want to know if you are the one who sabotaged my attempt to raise finance for my fashion label,’ she said, eyeballing him.
His dark eyes held hers steadily. ‘I have no idea what you are talking about,’ he said.
Rachel was incensed. ‘Don’t play me for a fool. I know you did it. The executive all but gave me your name.’
He continued to look at her as if she were a small out-of-control child in the middle of a temper tantrum. ‘You have your wires crossed, Rachel,’ he said in an annoyingly calm voice. ‘I have not advised anyone in regards to your label.’
Rachel chewed at the inside of her mouth, fighting for patience. ‘I came over to Italy specifically to sign a contract for finance for my label. But as soon as I walked into the office I was told they were no longer going to back me because of the advice they had been given by an expert in business analysis. A highly respected expert.’
He gave a semblance of a smile, a fractional movement of his lips that didn’t reveal his teeth. ‘I appreciate the compliment that you automatically assumed I was the highly regarded expert, but I can assure you I had nothing to do with it.’
Rachel glared at him furiously. ‘I am about to lose everything I’ve worked so hard for. I had everything riding on that backing and I think you damn well knew it. That’s why you did what you did. No one will help me now that they’ve heard your opinion. But that was your plan, wasn’t it? To make me so desperate I would come crawling to you for help.’
He looked at her for a long moment, his eyes quietly assessing her flustered features as he idly rolled a gold pen between his index finger and thumb. ‘This little meeting you’ve cleverly orchestrated,’ he said, ‘it’s all been a ruse to get me to agree to give you money, is it not?’
Rachel was almost beyond rage. ‘I’ve orchestrated nothing! And as for you giving me money I wouldn’t dream of …’ Her words trailed off as her thoughts ran ahead. What if he were to give her the money? He was a very rich man. He had contacts and connections all over Europe that could help her like no one else. Her pride would take a beating, of course, which was probably his intention in the first place, but what was a bit of pride when she stood to lose everything if she didn’t secure finance in the next twenty-four hours? ‘Would you agree to give me money?’ she asked in a voice that hardly sounded like her own.
He continued to look at her with those incredible blue eyes, steady, watchful, unreadable. ‘I would have to know more about your business structure before I made that sort of commitment,’ he said. ‘Perhaps that is why your previous backers pulled out. Maybe they did a little digging into your background. Perhaps they were worried your fiancé might redirect their hard-earned money into his underworld drug-dealing operation.’
Rachel felt the slap of his statement. The shame of her past rose in her cheeks like a stain that nothing would wash away. She wondered if there would ever come a time when she could put it behind her: her mistakes, her blindness, her stupidity, her stubbornness. ‘I am no longer involved with Craig Hughson and I haven’t been for over three years.’
Alessandro kept rolling the pen between his finger and thumb. ‘So what about your father?’ he asked. ‘Surely he could spare some of the McCulloch millions to help his daughter?’
Rachel bit her lip, annoyed at herself for not being able to stop the betraying gesture in time. ‘I haven’t asked him.’
The dark brow lifted again and the rolling of the pen ceased. ‘Because he wouldn’t be able to help you even if you did ask him, sì?’ he said.
She gripped the strap of her handbag a little tighter. ‘I suppose you heard he lost everything three years ago,’ she said, hating him for reminding her of it. How he must be relishing in how dramatically the tables had turned. Her father had treated Alessandro appallingly in the time he had worked for him. Why Alessandro had stayed as long as he had had always surprised her. Surely there were other jobs he could have taken without the put-downs and cutting criticisms from her father.
‘He always was a gambling man,’ Alessandro said. ‘What a pity he didn’t always measure the risks.’
‘Yes …’ Rachel mumbled in response. She had found her father’s fall from grace extremely upsetting. Not because she was close to him, for, even though she was his only child, she had never managed to do anything to win his approval, apart from agreeing to marry Craig Hughson. But calling off the wedding so close to the day made her feel responsible for her father’s bankruptcy. All the money Craig had sunk into the business had been immediately withdrawn. The fact that it had been dirty money didn’t ease her conscience one iota. The family business had folded within days and her career as a model had come to one of the most ignominious halts in the history of Melbourne’s modelling world when her name and reputation had been sullied in the very public fallout.
The leather of Alessandro’s chair squeaked as he shifted his position. ‘How much are you after?’ he asked.
Rachel’s heart gave a little stumble of surprise. ‘Y-you’ll do it?’
His eyes remained steady on hers. ‘For a price.’ She tried to read his inscrutable look. ‘Interest, do you mean?’
‘Not interest, no.’
She frowned. ‘I’m not sure I’m following you,’ she said. ‘It’s financial support I’m after at this point to carry me through to a successful launch in Europe. It will have to be drawn up legally, of course. I’m prepared to pay interest but not if it’s unreasonable. I can’t stretch myself too far. I have other commitments and—’
‘I am not talking about a loan,’ he said. ‘Consider it a gift.’
Rachel’s insides gave a flip flop movement. ‘A … a gift?’
His sapphire-blue eyes held hers. ‘With conditions.’
‘I can’t possibly accept a gift of money from you,’ she said. ‘I insist on paying it back as soon as I can. It might take a while depending on how successful the launch is but—’
‘You misunderstand me, Rachel,’ he said. ‘I am not going to back your label.’
She looked at him in confusion. ‘But I thought you said you were going to give me a gift of money?’
‘I am.’
Rachel’s heart began to beat overtime. ‘But I don’t understand why you would want to do that,’ she said. ‘The last time we spoke …’ She cleared her throat, not really wanting to recall that dreadful scene on the night of her twenty-first birthday party.
‘Aren’t you going to ask me what the conditions are?’ he asked.
Rachel chewed at her lip. ‘If you want me to apologise for how things turned out … urn … between us, then I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I wanted to tell you about Craig and the expectation that one day we would marry. I should have told you. But as soon as you and I started dating I just couldn’t seem to do it. I didn’t want anything to spoil what we had …’
He remained silent, his face now set in stone.
She took a breath and continued, ‘I’ve had to work so hard to get this far, to be taken seriously after my modelling fiasco. I have people depending on me to make this work. I have staff with mortgages to pay and children to educate and feed. This isn’t just about me wanting to prove I can do it. It’s not just my money that will be lost if this falls over. My business partner has put everything she has into the company as well. I can’t let her down. She’s been a good friend to me.’
Alessandro slowly drummed his fingers on the desk as he sat watching her shift from foot to foot. He had waited a long time to hear her apologise for choosing another man’s money over his love. But was she apologising out of desperation or real regret?
He studied her features, drinking them in even though he had not for a moment forgotten how she looked. Her grey-green eyes were indelibly imprinted in his brain, so too was her shoulder-length glossy brown hair, the way it caught the sunlight at certain angles bringing out its natural highlights. She had aristocratic cheekbones, and a retroussé nose that gave her heart-shaped face an innocent, childlike air that was at odds with her true personality. She was all innocence on the outside but on the inside she had turned out to be a hard, conniving, conscienceless little opportunist just like every other gold-digger he had known.
Her mouth was something else he had never quite forgotten, but, instead of it being imprinted on his brain, it was for ever imprinted on his lips. He could still feel that pillowy softness beneath his mouth, the way she had opened to him like an exotic flower to the sun. He could still taste the sensual heat of her, the heady temptation she had dangled before him until she had got tired of playing with the hired help and moved on to more affluent pastures.
‘I will give you ten thousand euros,’ he said into the loaded silence.
‘But I need much more than that,’ she said, biting at her lower lip.
‘Ten thousand and that is all,’ he said.
Her grey-green eyes narrowed slightly. ‘But why would you do that? If you don’t want to back my label then why give me anything at all?’
He gave her a sardonic half-smile. ‘Because it will be worth it if you accept my conditions.’
Her eyes flared a little more and the column of her slim elegant throat slid up and down as she swallowed. ‘Wh-what are the conditions?’ she asked in a hoarse-sounding voice.
Alessandro held her trapped-in-the-headlights gaze for a pulsing moment.
How ironic she thought he was after revenge when that was the very last thing on his mind right now. ‘You can have the money in your bank account within the next half-hour,’ he said in a cool and controlled tone, ‘but only if you agree to walk out of here and never come back.’
CHAPTER TWO
HER mouth opened and closed and her throat rose and fell again. Her face paled and then flooded with colour. She glared at him, her eyes like flashes of green-tinged lightning, her slim body tight with tension, every muscle contracted in fury. ‘You’re paying me to … to leave?’ she asked.
Alessandro leaned back in his chair again. ‘Take it or leave it, Rachel. You have one minute to decide before I take the offer off the table. And I won’t be making another.’
Her hands clenched in fists by her sides, the action dislodging the precarious sling of her handbag. She shoved it back over her shoulder but the hand that pushed it back was visibly shaking. ‘That’s outrageous!’ she said.
‘That’s business,’ he returned.
‘Business?’ Her soft lip curled. ‘What sort of businessman are you that you have to pay someone to go away?’
‘You are not welcome here, Rachel,’ he said. ‘You want money and appear to be very determined not to leave until you get it. This is a compromise of sorts. For each minute you overstay your welcome the figure will go down.’
She looked at him in bewilderment. Gone was her cocky I’m-a-rich-girl-better-than-you haughtiness, in its place was a shocked, out-of-her-depth ingénue. ‘So, let me get this straight …’ She ran the tip of her tongue out over her lips before she continued. ‘You want me to walk out of here with ten thousand euros of yours, as long as I promise never to return?’
Alessandro gave a single nod.
‘But I don’t understand,’ she went on. ‘Why would you want to give me that amount of money for … for essentially nothing?’
‘I am a rich man,’ Alessandro said, borrowing a bit of her father’s philosophy. ‘I can do anything I want.’
She pressed her lips together, obviously wondering if she could trust him or not. If he hadn’t been feeling so cornered it would have amused him to watch her. She was oscillating, clearly tempted to take things on face value. It wasn’t a lot of money by her standards but it was still money. But if things were as precarious as she made out it would at least get her a bed and meals for the rest of her time in Italy. Would she take it and go, or would she try and weasel some more out of him?
He glanced at his watch. ‘The figure is now nine thousand euros, Rachel,’ he said. ‘What is your decision?’
Her eyes moved away from his, the colour on her cheeks still high. ‘You have to understand if this was just about me I would have walked out of here five minutes ago,’ she said. ‘In fact I wouldn’t have come here in the first place if it hadn’t been for what you did to sabotage—’
‘You are robbing yourself of another thousand.’
She met his gaze again, her tongue sweeping over the surface of her lips again. ‘Can I have a little more time to think about this?’ she asked.
‘No.’
‘But that’s crazy!’ she said. ‘How do I know I can trust you? You might give me the money and then change the rules.’
‘I will not change the rules,’ he said. ‘I simply want you to take the money and leave.’
Her mouth flattened in anger. ‘This is payback, isn’t it? You want to make me pay for how I chose Craig instead of you.’
Alessandro kept his expression bland, uninterested, totally unmoved. ‘If you don’t want the money I am sure I can find someone else who does.’
‘But I need much more than that amount,’ she said. ‘I need to get my—’
‘That is all I am prepared to give you,’ he said. ‘Now please make up your mind before the amount left is not worth taking.’
She shifted her weight agitatedly, her mouth opening and snapping closed as if she was not quite ready to allow the words out. ‘I will accept your offer,’ she finally said.
‘Good,’ Alessandro said. ‘Give me your account details and I will transfer the funds as soon as I see you walk out of that gate.’
She wrote them on a piece of paper and passed them across. ‘So that’s it?’ she asked. ‘You don’t even want to offer me a drink or a meal or anything?’
‘No, you can get that at your hotel.’
‘I haven’t got a hotel,’ she said, ‘or at least not yet.’
‘I am sure you will find one. Positano is full of them suitable for most price brackets.’
‘But I haven’t got any luggage. It’s been misplaced. I don’t know when it’s going to turn up, if ever.’
‘Not my problem,’ he said.
‘You heartless bastard,’ she railed at him. ‘Don’t you care about anyone but yourself?’
He elevated one of his dark brows. ‘I have taken a leaf out of your book, Rachel,’ he said. ‘I no longer do anything to please anyone but myself.’
‘Do you have to pay your lovers to arrive as well as leave?’ she asked with a biting look. ‘You have a quick turnover of women in your life, or so I have heard.’
‘So you have been reading about me in the press, have you, Rachel?’ he asked, allowing himself a small smile of satisfaction.
‘The Australian press don’t have access to too many details of your life,’ she said, ‘but now and again one of the UK magazines I occasionally buy mentions you and your latest girlfriend on the society pages.’
