Free His Poor Little Rich Girl by Melanie Milburne

came to that she wasn’t sure how
she
would react. Would her touch turn into a caress or a plea for forgiveness or both? Would she slide her hand up and down his hair-roughened arm, maybe even entwine her slim, small fingers with his long, strong ones? Her belly gave another little two-step shuffle and she gripped her coffee cup a little harder, but the cup was hot and somehow she lost her hold, the liquid spilling on the stark whiteness of the tablecloth, some of it splashing against her chest.
    ‘Are you all right?’ Alessandro asked. ‘You didn’t burn yourself, did you?’
    ‘No, I’m fine,’ she said, using the napkin he had rapidly handed her to mop up the spillage. ‘I’m sorry. I’m not normally so clumsy.’
    He remained seated while she cleared the table, which shetried not to be annoyed about. He was paying her and generously to wait on him. She had no right to feel resentful. If anything she should be bending over backwards to get him to consider backing her label. It was demeaning to be in such a position but she really had no choice. ‘Alessandro …’ she began, ‘I just want to say how much I—’
    ‘Go to bed, Rachel,’ he said as if dismissing an overtired child from the adults’ dinner table. ‘Your work here is finished for the day. We will speak again in the morning.’ ‘But I—’
    ‘Don’t argue with me, Rachel,’ he said. ‘You are obviously exhausted. I should not have kept you up so late. I’m sorry. I lost track of the time.’
    Rachel turned and left, not happy about being dismissed but she realised by the way the shutters came down on his face that he was probably regretting revealing so much about his background. She felt ashamed that she hadn’t probed him about it five years ago. Why had she just assumed he was a bad boy? Why hadn’t she looked a little closer and understood why he was so driven and determined? He was a man on a mission to succeed and she had been a part of that plan but had defaulted. No wonder he was enjoying watching her taking orders from him.
    Success, after all, was the ultimate revenge.
    It was only as she was washing her face in preparation for bed that she realised her mother’s pendant was missing from around her neck. A tight band of panic wrapped around her insides as she shook out her clothes to see if it had caught on them as she had undressed but there was no sign of it. She then retraced her steps, all over the large bedroom and then back to the en suite, her eyes scouring the floor as she wentfor the glint of a diamond and the silver of the fine chain, but there was nothing. She spread out the contents of her handbag on the bed, going through everything meticulously but still not able to see the pendant anywhere. She checked the sink of the basin she had used, but without the services of a plumber to undo the S-bend she was unable to know for sure if it had slipped down there or not. She bit her lip and thought hard about when she had last felt it around her neck. But because she wore it most of the time she was so used to feeling it there that she
didn’t
feel it. It was a part of her that just was … well, a part of her. And now it was gone.
    A choked sob rose in her throat. She couldn’t lose it. It was all she had of her mother. She just couldn’t possibly lose it. She would tear this wretched villa asunder to find it even if it took her the whole night to do it.
    There was a satin robe that Lucia had given her earlier and she wrapped it around herself quickly to continue the search.
    She went down the stairs, turning on lights as she went, her eyes on the floor the whole time. She went across the foyer and then down to the dining room and opened the door. The table was as she had left it, shiny and cleared with a vase of roses in the centre filling the room with their scent.
    She got on her hands and knees and went over the thick carpet with her hands and strained eyes. She was close to tears by now, her heart sinking at