MELANIE MILBURNE - Rich and Outrageous - His Poor Little Rich Girl / Deserving of His Diamonds? / Enemies at the Altar

‘This is your bargaining tool, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘You want more money and this is the only way you know how to get it.’

Rachel refused to look at him. ‘You think you have this all sewn up but I could still walk away. There are other people I could approach to help me.’ There was a beat of silence.

‘I have been doing a little research into your company,’ he said.

Rachel turned around to face him. ‘Don’t play games with me, Alessandro.’

‘The thing is, Rachel, I am very much afraid you will not be able to find anyone else to help you,’ he said.

She threw him a cutting glare. ‘Because you made sure of it by telling everyone I was a risk.’

‘I am not responsible for that, Rachel,’ he said. ‘You’ll have to take my word for it. I am in the process of trying to find out who is, however.’

Rachel didn’t believe him for a second. Of course he had blackened her name and reputation. It served his ends to do so.

‘The reason I want you to be my counterfeit mistress is because I think you are perfect for the role,’ he said. ‘You are unlikely to get emotionally involved during the short time of our arrangement. I don’t want any complications.’

‘Well, that is certainly one thing you’ve got right,’ Rachel said tightly. ‘I can assure you there is absolutely no danger of me developing any feelings for you.’

His lips curved upwards in a sardonic smile. ‘Still a little too rough for your tastes, little rich girl?’

She glared at him venomously. ‘You are a cold, calculating bastard.’

‘And you are a stuck-up tease who thinks your body can buy you anything you want,’ he shot back with a flash of anger in his eyes.

Rachel stood her ground. She felt strangely invigorated by their verbal battle of wills. He had always been so amenable in the past. The clash of his will against hers was a new experience, an exhilarating experience. ‘You don’t have any idea of who I am any more, Alessandro,’ she said.

‘Some leopards never change their spots,’ he said. ‘I have met your type time and time again since I left Australia. Women like you are always out for what you can get. People are nothing but instruments to get your own way.’

‘But I am not doing this just for myself!’ she protested. ‘I’m doing it for my friend.’

He gave her a cynical look. ‘You are trying to save your company, not your friend. You want to prove to your father that you can make it on your own. You want his approval. You crave it. Your company falling over terrifies you because success is your only means to show him you are not just a beautiful face.’

Rachel swallowed back her retort. She felt stung by his assessment of her motives, not because he was wrong but more because there was an element of truth about what he had observed. All her life she had tried to please her father, to be the sort of daughter he would be proud of, but she had never quite achieved it. She had worked hard at school but she had never gained the results he had in his day. He had constantly reminded her of it. He had been a scholarship student; she had not even been appointed a prefect, let alone Head Prefect or School Captain as he had been. But she resented Alessandro for thinking her support of Caitlyn wasn’t genuine. It was. Caitlyn had helped her through her nasty break up with Craig, providing a safe haven when things had got ugly. She had never forgotten the support and friendship her friend had provided.

‘What you have to realise, Rachel,’ Alessandro continued, ‘is you will never please your father. It wouldn’t matter if your label became the most successful in the world, it would not make him proud of you. He is a narcissist. He is only interested in what makes him look good. Any success or achievement of yours or anyone else makes him feel resentful, that in some way you or they are deliberately stealing the limelight from him.’

‘I don’t need my father’s approval,’ Rachel said. ‘I just want to make my own way in the world. I have talent, I know I have. I just need to get things off the ground in Europe.’

‘With my help you can take on the world,’ he said. ‘Is it a deal?’

Rachel looked at him narrowly. ‘You said a counterfeit mistress.’

‘That is correct.’

‘So I really don’t have to sleep with you?’

‘Not unless you wish to,’ he said with a glinting look.

Rachel felt a blush rise in her cheeks. ‘What exactly do you get out of this deal?’

‘I will make sure I am adequately compensated,’ he said. ‘I will take a share of the profits on a percentage that is acceptable to us both.’

‘It sounds too good to be true, which usually means it is,’ she said.

‘You’re not going to get another offer, Rachel,’ he said. ‘You’d be wise to take this and make the best of it.’

‘You must know I can’t possibly say no,’ she said.

‘You would be a fool indeed to say no,’ he said. ‘I will still need to analyse your company structure. If I want to instigate changes then you will have to agree to them.’

‘I guess I don’t have much choice.’

‘I have already set up a meeting for you with one of the top fabric suppliers in the industry,’ he said. ‘He will be here later tomorrow.’

‘Shouldn’t I be going to him?’ Rachel asked, frowning.

‘I am conducting all business from here at the moment,’ he said. ‘Now, please leave me while I finish my exercises.’

Rachel moved towards the door, but then she stopped and turned around to look at him again. ‘Doesn’t anyone other than your staff know you have been ill?’ she asked.

His sapphire-blue eyes hardened. ‘No, and that is the way I want to keep it.’

‘But it might take months to get back on your feet. You run a huge corporation. Won’t people start to wonder what’s going on if you don’t turn up to meetings and the like?’

‘The beauty of being the boss of a huge corporation is that I get to choose what meetings I go to and when,’ he said, reaching for a towel. ‘I have a very capable board of directors who run things for me in my absence. But I do not plan to be out of action too much longer. In fact, I have an important meeting next week in Paris. I would like you to accompany me as my mistress. We will be away the whole week. It will be your first major public performance.’

Rachel thought of a week in Paris, pretending to be his mistress. She would be following a long line of women who had probably done the same, although they had been for real. ‘I heard about your last mistress,’ she said, ‘the cosmetics model? She was pretty stunning. Did she know about your illness?’

He tossed the towel to one side. ‘I have to get through this programme, Rachel. Don’t you have some designs to work on or some emails to answer or whatever it is fashion designers do?’

‘Who broke it off? You or her?’ Rachel persisted.

His eyes flashed as they met hers. ‘If you don’t get out I swear to God I will change the terms of our deal right here and now.’

‘You know I can’t pay you anything substantial until the label is successfully launched,’ she said.

‘I wasn’t talking about the money,’ he said, with a dark meaningful look in his eyes.

Rachel’s skin began to tingle and her mouth went completely dry. The silence hummed with tension, a throbbing tension that threatened to snap at any second. She ran her tongue out over her lips, tasting where he had been so recently. It was so intimate, so raw and primal to taste the essence of him: minty and fresh and yet unmistakably, dangerously male. What would it feel like to taste his skin, down his sternum, over his flat abdomen and lower? What would it feel like to taste his aroused flesh, to slide her tongue over the engorged length of him, to tease her tastebuds with the musk of his maleness?