‘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