LITMIR.BIZ

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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

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