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 All the money Craig had sunk into the business had been immediately withdrawn.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