hands clenched in fists by her sides, the action dislodging the precarious sling of her handbag. She shoved it back over her shoulder but the hand that pushed it back was visibly shaking. ‘That’s outrageous!’ she said.
‘That’s business,’ he returned.
‘Business?’ Her soft lip curled. ‘What sort of businessman are you that you have to pay someone to go away?’
‘You are not welcome here, Rachel,’ he said. ‘You want money and appear to be very determined not to leave until you get it. This is a compromise of sorts. For each minute you overstay your welcome the figure will go down.’
She looked at him in bewilderment. Gone was her cocky I’m-a-rich-girl-better-than-you haughtiness, in its place was a shocked, out-of-her-depth ingénue. ‘So, let me get this straight …’ She ran the tip of her tongue out over her lips before she continued. ‘You want me to walk out of here with ten thousand euros of yours, as long as I promise never to return?’
Alessandro gave a single nod.
‘But I don’t understand,’ she went on. ‘Why would you want to give me that amount of money for … for essentially nothing?’
‘I am a rich man,’ Alessandro said, borrowing a bit of her father’s philosophy. ‘I can do anything I want.’
She pressed her lips together, obviously wondering if she could trust him or not. If he hadn’t been feeling so cornered it would have amused him to watch her. She was oscillating, clearly tempted to take things on face value. It wasn’t a lot of money by her standards but it was still money. But if things were as precarious as she made out it would at least get her a bed and meals for the rest of her time in Italy. Would she take it and go, or would she try and weasel some more out of him?
He glanced at his watch. ‘The figure is now nine thousand euros, Rachel,’ he said. ‘What is your decision?’
Her eyes moved away from his, the colour on her cheeks still high. ‘You have to understand if this was just about me I would have walked out of here five minutes ago,’ she said. ‘In fact I wouldn’t have come here in the first place if it hadn’t been for what you did to sabotage—’
‘You are robbing yourself of another thousand.’
She met his gaze again, her tongue sweeping over the surface of her lips again. ‘Can I have a little more time to think about this?’ she asked.
‘No.’
‘But that’s crazy!’ she said. ‘How do I know I can trust you? You might give me the money and then change the rules.’
‘I will not change the rules,’ he said. ‘I simply want you to take the money and leave.’
Her mouth flattened in anger. ‘This is payback, isn’t it? You want to make me pay for how I chose Craig instead of you.’
Alessandro kept his expression bland, uninterested, totally unmoved. ‘If you don’t want the money I am sure I can find someone else who does.’
‘But I need much more than that amount,’ she said. ‘I need to get my—’
‘That is all I am prepared to give you,’ he said. ‘Now please make up your mind before the amount left is not worth taking.’
She shifted her weight agitatedly, her mouth opening and snapping closed as if she was not quite ready to allow the words out. ‘I will accept your offer,’ she finally said.
‘Good,’ Alessandro said. ‘Give me your account details and I will transfer the funds as soon as I see you walk out of that gate.’
She wrote them on a piece of paper and passed them across. ‘So that’s it?’ she asked. ‘You don’t even want to offer me a drink or a meal or anything?’
‘No, you can get that at your hotel.’
‘I haven’t got a hotel,’ she said, ‘or at least not yet.’
‘I am sure you will find one. Positano is full of them suitable for most price brackets.’
‘But I haven’t got any luggage. It’s been misplaced. I don’t know when it’s going to turn up, if ever.’
‘Not my problem,’ he said.
‘You heartless bastard,’ she railed at him. ‘Don’t you care about anyone but yourself?’
He elevated one of his dark brows. ‘I have taken a leaf out of your book, Rachel,’ he said. ‘I no longer do anything to please anyone but myself.’
‘Do you have to pay your lovers to arrive as well as leave?’ she asked with a biting look. ‘You have a quick turnover of women in your life, or so I have heard.’
‘So you have been reading about me in the press, have you, Rachel?’ he asked, allowing himself a small smile of satisfaction.
‘The Australian press don’t have access to too many details of your life,’ she said, ‘but now and again one of the UK magazines I occasionally buy mentions you and your latest girlfriend on the society pages.’
‘Does it seem ironic to you that the man you turned down all those years ago is now richer and more powerful than both your father and your ex-fiancé combined?’ Alessandro asked.
‘How did you do it?’ she asked, but then bit down on her lip as if she had regretted the words as soon as she had said them.
‘I was prepared for success and jumped at it when the first opportunity presented itself,’ he said. ‘Leaving Australia and coming over here opened up new avenues for me that would not have occurred otherwise.’
‘It’s a shame you don’t have any family to be proud of you,’ she said.
Alessandro clenched his jaw at her little jibe. He was used to her throwing her blue-blood lines in his face in the past. She was the rich girl with the pedigree; he was the abandoned mongrel who trawled the streets for the scraps thrown to him. He hated her for tricking him into thinking he’d had a chance with her. She had lured him into her sweet honey trap before flicking him away like an annoying insect. He was not going to make that mistake again, not with her or any woman. ‘Yes, but I have many friends who more than make up for the lack of close family,’ he said. ‘Now if you will excuse me I have work to do.’
‘Aren’t you going to accompany me to the door of your fortress to make sure I don’t pinch the silver on the way out?’ she asked.
‘I will leave Lucia to escort you off the property,’ Alessandro said. ‘I have better things to do with my time.’
‘She seems very nice,’ Rachel said, deliberately stalling. ‘Your housekeeper, I mean.’
‘Lucia is a kind soul,’ he said. ‘She has worked for me ever since I came to Italy. She is like a mother to me.’
Rachel thought of her own mother, an increasingly vague, amorphous image that drifted in and out of her consciousness from time to time. She had died when Rachel was three and a half but she still missed her. There was a mother-shaped hole
