stood on the roadside as the bus finally pulled away, and then her eyes went to the villa above her. The magnificent private residence was set slightly apart from its neighbours. It was centuries old, built on four levels, with luxurious terraced gardens and an infinity pool that was set high above the ocean. The sun sparkled off the brilliant blue water invitingly, making each bead of perspiration rolling down between Rachel’s shoulder blades all the more unbearable. The sun pierced her eyeballs like dressmaking pins, and the vague headache she had been fighting all day now started to inflict hammer blows of pain around her temples.
She garnered her determination and trudged on up the long steep steps that led to the imposing front gates of the villa. The double gates were locked and so too was the side gate for foot traffic. There was however an intercom button that was set in the stone wall beside the ornate shiny black and gold gates.
‘Non ci sono visitatori,’ a woman said before Rachel could say a word.
Rachel leaned closer to the speaker. ‘But I—’
The intercom went dead. She looked up at the villa, wincing as the sunlight stabbed again at her eyes. She clutched at the wrought iron of the gates and took a couple of deep breaths before she pressed the buzzer again.
The woman answered again, this time in heavily accented English. ‘No visitors.’
‘I have to see Alessandro Vallini,’ Rachel said. ‘I am not leaving until I do.’
‘Please go away,’ the woman said.
‘But I have nowhere else to go,’ Rachel said, almost to the point of begging. ‘Could you please tell Signor Vallini that? I have nowhere else to go.’
The intercom went dead again and Rachel turned her back against the hot stone and slid down to sit in a patch of shade. She lowered her head to her bent knees, unable to believe this was happening to her. It was as if she had stepped into someone else’s life. She had grown up with money, lots of money, more money than most people saw in a lifetime. For so long she had taken it for granted. She had wanted for nothing and had not for a moment thought it could all be taken away. But it had been, and, although she had worked hard to rebuild her life over the last couple of years, now she was reduced to begging at the gates of the man she had walked away from five years ago. Was this karma? Was this how fate had decided to play things? She closed her eyes and prayed for the pain in her head to ease. Then she would get up and try again and again until Alessandro finally agreed to see her.
‘Is she still there?’ Alessandro asked his housekeeper Lucia.
‘Sì, signor,’ Lucia said, turning from the window. ‘It has been over an hour. It is very hot out there.’
Alessandro rubbed at the tense spot in his jaw as he fought with his conscience. He was locked away in his tower while Rachel was down there in the boiling heat but his gut clenched with the dread of her seeing him like this. He hadn’t expected her to arrive unannounced. He had already had his secretary refuse her an appointment. He had hoped that would be enough to put her off. How long until she gave up and went away? Why wasn’t she getting the message? He didn’t want to see her. He didn’t want to see anyone.
‘Mon Dio, I think she is going to faint!’ Lucia said grabbing at the window sill with both hands.
‘It is probably an act,’ Alessandro said calmly, turning back to the papers on his desk, doing his best to ignore the two flick knives of guilt and anguish inside his stomach.
Lucia frowned as she stepped away from the window. ‘Perhaps I should take her some water to see if she is all right.’
‘Do what you like,’ he said, flipping a page of the document he had lost interest in half an hour ago. ‘Just keep her away from me.’
‘Sì, signor,’
Rachel opened her eyes to see an Italian woman in her mid to late fifties holding a glass of water in one hand and a jug with ice cubes and a slice of lemon in the other.
‘Would you like a drink before you move on?’ she asked, passing the frosted glass through the bars of the gate.
‘Thank you.’ Rachel took the water and drank thirstily. ‘I have the most appalling headache.’
‘It is the heat,’ the woman said refilling the glass Rachel had passed back. ‘August is always like this. You are probably dehydrated.’
Rachel drank another glass and another before she gave the woman a grateful smile as she handed back the glass. ‘Grazie. That literally saved my life.’
‘Where are you staying?’ the woman asked. ‘In Positano or somewhere else?’
Rachel dragged herself to her feet, using the bars of the gate as leverage. ‘I haven’t got a place to stay,’ she said. ‘I’ve got no money to pay for anywhere. And now my luggage has gone missing.’
‘You can’t stay here,’ the woman said. ‘Signor Vallini insists on no—’
‘I just want five minutes with him,’ Rachel said, brushing her damp hair off her face with a weary hand. ‘Please? Can you organise that for me? I promise I won’t keep him long. Just five minutes of his time is all I’m asking of him.’
The woman set her mouth. ‘I could lose my job over this.’
‘Please?’ Rachel couldn’t keep the pleading note out of her voice.
The Italian woman let out a long-winded breath as she put the jug and glass down on the flagstones. ‘Five minutes but that is all,’ she said as she unlocked the gate.
Rachel picked up her handbag and stepped through before the woman changed her mind. The gate was closed and locked behind her with a resounding click that was strangely eerie in the hot still summer air.
The gardens on either side of the entrance to the villa were magnificent. Roses of every colour imaginable bloomed in abundance from behind neatly trimmed ankle-high hedges, their heady sweet fragrance intensified by the sun. There was a huge fountain in the middle of the driveway, the cascading water as Rachel walked past throwing off a fine mist that was deliciously cool and refreshing. She wished she could just stand there and let the soothing spray ease all the tension out of her muscles.
The housekeeper set aside the jug and glass as she opened the front door of the villa. The cooler air of indoors was like a fan as soon as Rachel stepped in. The floor of the foyer was highly polished marble, as was the grand staircase that swept upwards in a two-sided arc that met on the massive landing above. Crystal chandeliers hung above her in glittering elegance, and priceless works of art hung from the walls, the stately windows in between allowing the sunlight to come in via golden shafts that gilded everything it touched.
The villa was breathtaking and so far from the background Alessandro had come from. How had he done it? How had a man who had once been a runaway street kid from the outer suburbs of Melbourne achieved so much in so little time? After working in a variety of jobs after leaving school, at around twenty-four he had started his own one-person landscaping-gardening business while studying part time for a business degree. He had later sold his business as a franchise offering landscaping and gardening services for the top end of the market. Now at thirty-three he owned and operated a business analysis and management empire that had gone global. Had it been her rejection that had fuelled
