His Poor Little Rich Girl Read Free Page A

appreciate the compliment that you automatically assumed I was the highly regarded expert, but I can assure you I had nothing to do with it.’
    Rachel glared at him furiously. ‘I am about to lose everything I’ve worked so hard for. I had everything riding on that backing and I think you damn well knew it. That’s why you did what you did. No one will help me now that they’ve heard your opinion. But that was your plan, wasn’t it? To make me so desperate I would come crawling to you for help.’
    He looked at her for a long moment, his eyes quietly assessing her flustered features as he idly rolled a gold pen between his index finger and thumb. ‘This little meeting you’ve cleverly orchestrated,’ he said, ‘it’s all been a ruse to get me to agree to give you money, is it not?’
    Rachel was almost beyond rage. ‘I’ve orchestrated nothing! And as for you giving me money I wouldn’t dream of …’ Her words trailed off as her thoughts ran ahead. What if he
were
to give her the money? He was a very rich man. He had contacts and connections all over Europe that could help her like no one else. Her pride would take a beating, of course, which was probably his intention in the first place, but what was a bit of pride when she stood to lose everything if she didn’t secure finance in the next twenty-four hours?
‘Would
you agree to give me money?’ she asked in a voice that hardly sounded like her own.
    He continued to look at her with those incredible blue eyes, steady, watchful, unreadable. ‘I would have to knowmore about your business structure before I made that sort of commitment,’ he said. ‘Perhaps that is why your previous backers pulled out. Maybe they did a little digging into your background. Perhaps they were worried your fiancé might redirect their hard-earned money into his underworld drug-dealing operation.’
    Rachel felt the slap of his statement. The shame of her past rose in her cheeks like a stain that nothing would wash away. She wondered if there would ever come a time when she could put it behind her: her mistakes, her blindness, her stupidity, her stubbornness. ‘I am no longer involved with Craig Hughson and I haven’t been for over three years.’
    Alessandro kept rolling the pen between his finger and thumb. ‘So what about your father?’ he asked. ‘Surely he could spare some of the McCulloch millions to help his daughter?’
    Rachel bit her lip, annoyed at herself for not being able to stop the betraying gesture in time. ‘I haven’t asked him.’
    The dark brow lifted again and the rolling of the pen ceased. ‘Because he wouldn’t be able to help you even if you did ask him,
sì?’
he said.
    She gripped the strap of her handbag a little tighter. ‘I suppose you heard he lost everything three years ago,’ she said, hating him for reminding her of it. How he must be relishing in how dramatically the tables had turned. Her father had treated Alessandro appallingly in the time he had worked for him. Why Alessandro had stayed as long as he had had always surprised her. Surely there were other jobs he could have taken without the put-downs and cutting criticisms from her father.
    ‘He always was a gambling man,’ Alessandro said. ‘What a pity he didn’t always measure the risks.’
    ‘Yes …’ Rachel mumbled in response. She had found her father’s fall from grace extremely upsetting. Not because she was close to him, for, even though she was his only child, she had never managed to do anything to win his approval, apart from agreeing to marry Craig Hughson. But calling off the wedding so close to the day made her feel responsible for her father’s bankruptcy. All the money Craig had sunk into the business had been immediately withdrawn. The fact that it had been dirty money didn’t ease her conscience one iota. The family business had folded within days and her career as a model had come to one of the most ignominious halts in the history of Melbourne’s