His Poor Little Rich Girl Read Online Free PDF Page A

some fluids on board and rest for a day or two. She is still a little jet-lagged.’
    ‘You’re too soft, Lucia,’ Alessandro said gruffly.
    ‘Maybe, but she seems a nice young woman,’ Lucia said.
    ‘You don’t know her like I do,’ he said. ‘For all you know this could be an act.’
    ‘It’s not an act,’ Lucia said. ‘She was sick a few minutes ago. I had to half carry her back to the villa. I thought she was going to pass out.’
    Alessandro frowned. ‘Are you sure she doesn’t need a doctor?’
    ‘I will call one if she doesn’t improve after a rest,’ Lucia said. ‘I think she’ll be a lot better by tomorrow.’
    Alessandro sat back in his chair once the conversation ended. One or two days was all he was prepared to allow Rachel to stay. It was risky, but then wasn’t everything in life that was enjoyable? A slow smile tugged at his mouth as he thought of entertaining her. It would be quite diverting to see her grovel for more money. He assumed that was what she would do. She hadn’t got what she wanted from him and would surely have another go to achieve her goal. He wondered how far she would take things. What sort of artifice would she employ this time to get him to lower his guard? He would play along with it, reeling her in just as she had done him, and then he would pull the rug from under her feet.
    That would be the most entertaining part of it all.
    Rachel woke from a deep and refreshing sleep. She looked at the clock by the bed and was shocked to see she had slept the clock around. Her headache had thankfully gone and the grumbling nausea had passed. Her temperature was normal and after a shower she felt almost human again, even though she had no choice but to put the same clothes back on, although the housekeeper had very kindly laundered and pressed them for her. Rachel had yet to hear from the bus company about the whereabouts of her luggage. There were no messages on her phone and no missed calls.
    Her mobile rang from beside the bed and she reached across to answer it. ‘Hello?’
    ‘So how did it go?’ Caitlyn asked. ‘I’ve been waiting for hours and hours for you to tell me. Did you get the backing?’
    ‘No, not exactly,’ Rachel said and quickly filled in her friend and business partner on what had occurred.
    ‘Gosh, that’s disappointing,’ Caitlyn said. ‘Do you think you can have another talk to him about it?’
    ‘I’ll try but I don’t think it’s going to work,’ Rachel said. ‘He’s only allowing me to stay here now because I was ill yesterday. And that was only after the housekeeper put the hard word on him.’
    ‘He sounds very bitter.’
    ‘He is,’ Rachel said. ‘He looked at me with such loathing I found it unnerving.’
    ‘Well, you did turn down his marriage proposal in the past,’ Caitlyn said. ‘Some men find rejection really hard to take.’
    ‘But I wasn’t sure if I loved him enough to marry him,’ Rachel said in her defence.
    ‘You didn’t love Craig either,’ Caitlyn reminded her.
    ‘I know,’ Rachel said, feeling a cringe of shame at how she had handled things. In an effort to please her unpleasable father she had chosen money over a man’s love. Alessandro had told her he loved her. Even her father had never said those three little words. Craig had never said them either.
    Rachel hated thinking of the two years of hell she had lived through being engaged to Craig Hughson. Thank God she hadn’t married him. She had come close but had found out just in time about his double life. How could she have been so naive to have allowed him to control her the way he had? It had taken the last couple of years to move on but, even so, now and again something would appear in the press about his underworld connections and it would bring it all back to her. This latest red flag on her account made her worry that she might never be able to put it behind her.
    This much-anticipated trip to Italy was the first time she had felt a glimmer of