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