Rich and Outrageous: His Poor Little Rich Girl / Deserving of His Diamonds? / Enemies at the Altar. Melanie Milburne

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      ‘I haven’t said I would do it yet,’ she reminded him.

      He ignored her statement as he continued, ‘Lucia is also aware that our relationship is not like my usual ones.’

      ‘What? You mean you don’t usually blackmail your other women into doing whatever you want?’ she shot back.

      ‘I have not had to resort to such means in the past,’ he said. ‘Most women are perfectly happy with the fringe benefits of sharing my life for a specified time.’

      ‘How can you specify the duration of a relationship?’ she asked incredulously. ‘Do you have some sort of reminder in your calendar in case you accidentally run over a couple of days? Beep. Time’s up. Out you go. Next please.’

      ‘You need have no fear of that happening with us, Rachel,’ he said. ‘You will be back on that plane to Australia on the first of next month. I can guarantee it.’

      He ended the call with an abruptness Rachel found intensely irritating. He was reminding her of her tenuous position here as little more than a servant. It was all part of his mission to extract revenge for the choice she had made, a choice that if she’d had her time over again she would have made so very differently. She put the phone extension back in its cradle and thought back to the night of her twenty-first birthday party.

      The mansion was filling with guests for the black-tie affair. Rachel had taken great care over her appearance and was putting on the last touches to her make-up when her father came to see her.

      ‘Rachel, I need a word with you,’ he said, looking uneasy.

      ‘Sure,’ she said, putting down her tube of lipstick. ‘What it is, Dad?’

      He pulled at the collar of his dress shirt as if it were strangling him. ‘Honey, I need to ask you for a favour, a big one,’ he said.

      ‘If you want me to dance with that geeky guy Albert from your firm, forget it,’ she said, picking up her lipstick again. ‘I can’t stand his fleshy hands all over me. He did that at the staff Christmas party and I—’

      ‘Craig has asked for your hand in marriage.’

      Rachel looked at her father. ‘Shouldn’t he have asked me first?’

      ‘I guess he didn’t see the necessity,’ he said. ‘You’ve both always known you would eventually make a go of it. Your mother and I talked of it when you were kids. His parents Kate and Bill wanted it too. They still want it. Now seems the right time to announce it publicly.’

      Rachel put a hand to the diamond pendant around her neck that her father had given her only that morning. Her mother had been given it on her twenty-first birthday. She had been wearing it the day she died. ‘Dad, there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you—’

      ‘Craig has invested in my business,’ her father cut her off. ‘He’s really going places, Rachel. He can set you up. He has connections in a modelling agency. They will take you on straight away with just a word from him. You’ll travel the world: Paris, London, New York. You’ll become a household name.’

      ‘But I’m not in love with him,’ Rachel said. ‘I thought I was once, when we were teenagers, but not now.’

      ‘Do you think I loved your mother?’ her father said through tight lips. ‘Don’t get me wrong. She was a nice girl but that was the point. I had to marry a nice girl. Not one from the wrong side of the tracks. There are women you sleep with and there are women you marry. It’s the same for young women like you born to wealth. You can have your flings if you must, but you have to marry well. You have to marry your own kind. It’s a fact of life.’

      ‘But I’m not ready to settle down just yet,’ she said. ‘I need more time to make up my mind.’

      Her father frowned blackly. ‘What’s this talk of making up your mind? You’ve always known Craig was the one.’

      Rachel swallowed. ‘I’ve just started seeing someone …’

      ‘Who?’ The word came out like a bullet.

      She felt her stomach begin to churn at the dark threatening look in her father’s eyes. ‘Alessandro,’ she said.

      Her father’s face turned puce. ‘The yard boy?’

      ‘He’s not just a yard boy,’ Rachel said. ‘He’s doing a business degree, an MBA in fact. He only continues to work here to pay his university tuition.’

      ‘He’s trailer trash,’ her father said, spittle forming at the side of his mouth. ‘He’s a mongrel, a crossbreed. For God’s sake, he doesn’t have a penny to his name!’

      ‘He treats me like a princess,’ Rachel said. ‘He treats me with respect even though I’ve been awful to him in the past. I’m just starting to get to know him and I think he’s one of the nicest—’

      ‘Are you a complete fool?’ he said, his eyes bulging with disgust and scorn. ‘You’re being used, Rachel, and you’re too stupid to see it. He’s using you to get ahead. By hooking up with you he gets access to the high-flyers. If you were a poor girl from the suburbs he wouldn’t look twice at you.’

      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.’

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