‘You are under my employ as a fill-in housekeeper,’ he said. ‘Don’t go getting any ideas of filling in other areas of my life.’

She gave him a withering look. ‘You would have to pay me a king’s ransom to become your latest mistress,’ she said.

Alessandro felt his lower spine zap with searing heat. ‘Dangerous words, Rachel,’ he warned silkily. ‘Don’t go throwing challenges down at me like that. I might just take you up on it.’

Rachel glared at him. ‘People like you think you can buy anything you want, don’t you? But I am not selling myself—and certainly not to you.’

‘Sleeping rough not your thing any more, little rich girl?’ he asked, with a mocking slant to his mouth.

She ground her teeth. ‘I am offering to work as your housekeeper. Nothing else.’

About the Author

MELANIE MILBURNE says: ‘I am married to a surgeon, Steve, and have two gorgeous sons, Paul and Phil. I live in Hobart, Tasmania, where I enjoy an active life as a long-distance runner and a nationally ranked top ten Master’s swimmer. I also have a Master’s Degree in Education, but my children totally turned me off the idea of teaching! When not running or swimming I write, and when I’m not doing all of the above I’m reading. And if someone could invent a way for me to read during a four-kilometre swim I’d be even happier!’

Recent titles by the same author:

THE WEDDING CHARADE*

SHOCK: ONE-NIGHT HEIR*

SCANDAL: UNCLAIMED LOVE-CHILD*

THE MÉLENDEZ FORGOTTEN MARRIAGE

*The Sabbatini Brothers

Did you know that Melanie also writes for Mills & Boon® Medical ™ Romance?

His Poor Little
Rich Girl
Melanie Milburne

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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CHAPTER ONE

RACHEL had waited for over an hour to meet with the proposed financial backer of her fashion label. She still hadn’t quite got in front of the jet lag and had to fight to keep her eyes open on the magazine she was leafing through as she waited in the plush reception area.

At last she was led through to the corporate executive’s office by his receptionist on legs that felt woolly with excitement.

This is it, she thought as she walked through the door. I won’t have to lose everything I have worked so hard for.

‘I am sorry, Ms McCulloch,’ the late middle-aged corporate executive said with an apologetic smile even before Rachel could take a seat. ‘We have changed our mind. Our company is undergoing some restructuring. We are not prepared to take a risk on such a relatively unknown designer as you. You will have to go elsewhere for the financial backing you require. We are no longer interested.’

Rachel blinked at the older man in shock. ‘Not interested?’ she choked. ‘But I thought … Your letter said … But I’ve come all this way!’

He held up a hand as if directing the heavy traffic that rumbled over the cobbled streets of Milan outside. ‘We have been advised against it by a highly respected business analysis expert,’ he said. ‘The board has made its final decision. I suggest you consider other options for finance.’

Other options? What other options? Rachel thought in gut-twisting despair. She had to get her evening wear label launched in Europe. Everything she had worked for, all the sacrifices she had made, all the heartache and hard work surely couldn’t end like this. She would look a fool all over again if this failed. If she didn’t get this money the company would go into receivership. She needed money and she needed it quickly.

She could not fail.

Rachel frowned as she addressed the executive. ‘Who exactly advised against backing me?’

‘I am sorry but I am unable to divulge that information,’ he said.

She felt her spine go rigid, suspicion crawling over her skin like a long-legged insect. ‘You said it was a highly respected business analysis expert.’

‘That is correct.’

‘Would that be Alessandro Vallini by any chance?’ she asked with a pointed look.

‘I am sorry, Miss McCulloch,’ he said. ‘I am not at liberty to confirm or deny anything.’

She stood up, hoisting her handbag over her shoulder with grim determination. ‘Thank you for your time,’ she said curtly and left.

Rachel found the address of Alessandro Vallini’s Milan office on the search engine on her phone. It was a gracious-looking building, old but classy and stylish, signifying the success of the man behind the business. It was a stellar rise to the top. As self-made men went, he surely was an outstanding example of how far one could go irrespective of a disadvantageous background. Seeing him face to face was not something she had originally planned to do, but clearly he had engineered this so she would track him down.

‘I would like to see Signor Vallini,’ Rachel said without preamble to the smartly dressed receptionist behind the desk.

‘I am sorry but Signor Vallini is currently taking an extended summer break at his villa in Positano,’ the receptionist said. ‘He is conducting all his business from there.’

‘Then I would like to make an appointment to see him at the earliest opportunity,’ Rachel said.

‘Are you an existing client?’ the receptionist asked.

‘No, but I—’

‘I am sorry but Signor Vallini is not taking on any new clients until after he returns from his break,’ the receptionist said. ‘I could schedule something for you in late September, perhaps?’

Rachel frowned. ‘But that’s more than a month away. I’m only here until the end of the August.’ ‘I am sorry but—’

‘Look, I’m not really a client,’ Rachel said, hoping she could pull off the little white lie. ‘I’m a … an old friend of his from Melbourne. He used to work for my father. I was hoping we could catch up while I am here. My name is Rachel McCulloch.’

There was a slight pause.

‘I will have to speak to him first,’ the receptionist said, and, picking up the receiver, added, ‘If you wouldn’t mind taking a seat over there?’

Rachel sat on one of the butter-soft leather sofas, trying not to think of the last time she had seen Alessandro. If her instincts were right and he had been the one to sabotage her attempt to gain financial backing it proved one thing clearly: he still hadn’t forgiven her.

‘I am sorry but Signor Vallini does not wish to see you,’ the receptionist said.

Rachel shot to her feet. ‘But I must see him,’ she insisted. ‘I absolutely must see him.’

‘I am under strict instructions to inform you that under no circumstances will Signor Vallini agree to see you,’ the receptionist said.

Rachel was outraged. He was obviously playing with her. Did he really think she would take no for an answer after what he had just done? As paybacks went it was certainly an effective one but she wasn’t going to allow him to get away with it. Of course he would see her.

She would make him see her.

Rachel’s stomach dipped and dived all the way down the Amalfi coast road leading towards Positano, but it had little to do with the hair-raising twists and bends the bus wove around. She had planned to hire a car but her credit card had been declined at the booking counter. It had been an embarrassing experience, one she was unlikely to forget in a hurry. The phone call to her bank back in Australia had given her little comfort. It seemed a red flag had come up on her account and it would take at least twenty-four hours to clear it given her financial history after Craig had forged her name on various loans three years ago. She needed money more than ever and she needed it now.

The bus dropped her at the foot of the road that led to the Villa Vallini set high on the cliff. But when the driver opened the luggage compartment to locate her one bag it was nowhere to be seen.

‘It must have been put on one of the other buses,’ the driver said, closing the compartment.

‘How could that have happened?’ Rachel asked, trying not to panic.

He shrugged. ‘It happens now and again. I will contact head office and make sure it is delivered to your hotel. If you give me your details I will see to it.’ He took out a pen and a clipboard.

‘I haven’t actually booked a hotel as yet,’ Rachel said, chewing at her lip as she thought of her current lack of funds.

‘Just give me your mobile phone number then and I will call you when we locate the bag,’ he said.

Rachel stood on the roadside as the bus finally pulled away, and then her eyes went to the villa above her. The magnificent private residence was set slightly apart from its neighbours. It was centuries old, built on four levels, with luxurious terraced gardens and an infinity pool that was set high above the ocean. The sun sparkled off the brilliant blue water invitingly, making each bead of perspiration rolling down between Rachel’s shoulder blades all the more unbearable. The sun pierced her eyeballs like dressmaking pins, and the vague headache she had been fighting all day now started to inflict hammer blows of pain around her temples.

She garnered her determination and trudged on up the long steep steps that led to the imposing front gates of the villa. The double gates were locked and so too was the side gate for foot traffic. There was however an intercom button that was set in the stone wall beside the ornate shiny black and gold gates.

‘Non ci sono visitatori,’ a woman said before Rachel could say a word.

Rachel leaned closer to the speaker. ‘But I—’

The intercom went dead. She looked up at the villa, wincing as the sunlight stabbed again at her eyes. She clutched at the wrought iron of the gates and took a couple of deep breaths before she pressed the buzzer again.

The woman answered again, this time in heavily accented English. ‘No visitors.’

‘I have to see Alessandro Vallini,’ Rachel said. ‘I am not leaving until I do.’

‘Please go away,’ the woman said.

‘But I have nowhere else to go,’ Rachel said, almost to the point of begging. ‘Could you please tell Signor Vallini that? I have nowhere else to go.’

The intercom went dead again and Rachel turned her back against the hot stone and slid down to sit in a patch of shade. She lowered her head to her bent knees, unable to believe this was happening to her. It was as if she had stepped into someone else’s life. She had grown up with money, lots of money, more money than most people saw in a lifetime. For so long she had taken it for granted. She had wanted for nothing and had not for a moment thought it could all be taken away. But it had been, and, although she had worked hard to rebuild her life over the last couple of years, now she was reduced to begging at the gates of the man she had walked away from five years ago. Was this karma? Was this how fate had decided to play things? She closed her eyes and prayed for the pain in her head to ease. Then she would get up and try again and again until Alessandro finally agreed to see her.

‘Is she still there?’ Alessandro asked his housekeeper Lucia.

‘Sì, signor,’ Lucia said, turning from the window. ‘It has been over an hour. It is very hot out there.’

Alessandro rubbed at the tense spot in his jaw as he fought with his conscience. He was locked away in his tower while Rachel was down there in the boiling heat but his gut clenched with the dread of her seeing him like this. He hadn’t expected her to arrive unannounced. He had already had his secretary refuse her an appointment. He had hoped that would be enough to put her off. How long until she gave up and went away? Why wasn’t she getting the message? He didn’t want to see her. He didn’t want to see anyone.

‘Mon Dio, I think she is going to faint!’ Lucia said grabbing at the window sill with both hands.

‘It is probably an act,’ Alessandro said calmly, turning back to the papers on his desk, doing his best to ignore the two flick knives of guilt and anguish inside his stomach.

Lucia frowned as she stepped away from the window. ‘Perhaps I should take her some water to see if she is all right.’

‘Do what you like,’ he said, flipping a page of the document he had lost interest in half an hour ago. ‘Just keep her away from me.’

‘Sì, signor,’

Rachel opened her eyes to see an Italian woman in her mid to late fifties holding a glass of water in one hand and a jug with ice cubes and a slice of lemon in the other.

‘Would you like a drink before you move on?’ she asked, passing the frosted glass through the bars of the gate.

‘Thank you.’ Rachel took the water and drank thirstily. ‘I have the most appalling headache.’

‘It is the heat,’ the woman said refilling the glass Rachel had passed back. ‘August is always like this. You are probably dehydrated.’

Rachel drank another glass and another before she gave the woman a grateful smile as she handed back the glass. ‘Grazie. That literally saved my life.’

‘Where are you staying?’ the woman asked. ‘In Positano or somewhere else?’

Rachel dragged herself to her feet, using the bars of the gate as leverage. ‘I haven’t got a place to stay,’ she said. ‘I’ve got no money to pay for anywhere. And now my luggage has gone missing.’

‘You can’t stay here,’ the woman said. ‘Signor Vallini insists on no—’

‘I just want five minutes with him,’ Rachel said, brushing her damp hair off her face with a weary hand. ‘Please? Can you organise that for me? I promise I won’t keep him long. Just five minutes of his time is all I’m asking of him.’

The woman set her mouth. ‘I could lose my job over this.’

‘Please?’ Rachel couldn’t keep the pleading note out of her voice.

The Italian woman let out a long-winded breath as she put the jug and glass down on the flagstones. ‘Five minutes but that is all,’ she said as she unlocked the gate.

Rachel picked up her handbag and stepped through before the woman changed her mind. The gate was closed and locked behind her with a resounding click that was strangely eerie in the hot still summer air.

The gardens on either side of the entrance to the villa were magnificent. Roses of every colour imaginable bloomed in abundance from behind neatly trimmed ankle-high hedges, their heady sweet fragrance intensified by the sun. There was a huge fountain in the middle of the driveway, the cascading water as Rachel walked past throwing off a fine mist that was deliciously cool and refreshing. She wished she could just stand there and let the soothing spray ease all the tension out of her muscles.

The housekeeper set aside the jug and glass as she opened the front door of the villa. The cooler air of indoors was like a fan as soon as Rachel stepped in. The floor of the foyer was highly polished marble, as was the grand staircase that swept upwards in a two-sided arc that met on the massive landing above. Crystal chandeliers hung above her in glittering elegance, and priceless works of art hung from the walls, the stately windows in between allowing the sunlight to come in via golden shafts that gilded everything it touched.

The villa was breathtaking and so far from the background Alessandro had come from. How had he done it? How had a man who had once been a runaway street kid from the outer suburbs of Melbourne achieved so much in so little time? After working in a variety of jobs after leaving school, at around twenty-four he had started his own one-person landscaping-gardening business while studying part time for a business degree. He had later sold his business as a franchise offering landscaping and gardening services for the top end of the market. Now at thirty-three he owned and operated a business analysis and management empire that had gone global. Had it been her rejection that had fuelled his determination to succeed or had he always been destined to achieve?

‘If you will wait here while I speak to Signor Vallini,’ the woman said, indicating an antique chair next to a table in the foyer.

Rachel ignored the chair in order to look around. The villa was better than any of the five-star hotels she had ever stayed in and she had stayed in plenty over the years. She had thought her family mansion had been magnificent and certainly compared to many it had been. But this was on another level entirely. This place felt like a palace with its priceless art works and sophisticated decor. She went to a French table with an intricate gold inlay on the top where a vase of roses sat. She touched one of the fragrant blood-red petals and it fell to the table’s surface in a velvet silence.

Footsteps sounded behind her and the Italian woman appeared. ‘He has agreed to give you five minutes,’ she said.

Rachel let out the breath she had been holding and followed the woman up the marble staircase. It was only as she passed a mirror on the second landing that she wished she had asked for a moment or two to freshen up. Her hair was sticky about her too-pink face and the end of her nose looked as if it had caught the sun. Her sleeveless top had damp patches in between her breasts and her shoulder blades, and the crisp white linen trousers she had put on this morning now looked as if they had been worn for a week on an archaeological dig. She didn’t look anything like a fashion designer. She looked like a sunburnt, down-on-her-luck vagrant.

The housekeeper knocked on a door on the second level, and, stepping to one side, opened the door for Rachel to go through.

The door closed behind her as Rachel stepped into the room. It was a library—study with three walls of bookshelves and a huge desk set in front of long, heavily curtained windows. Compared to the brightness of the rest of the villa this room seemed dark and brooding, not unlike the man who sat behind the leather-top desk.

Rachel met his eyes across the distance of the room and her heart gave a little involuntary stumble. His eyes were as blue and as deep and as unfathomable as the ocean she had walked past this morning—a startling, incongruous blue given his olive-skinned Italian colouring and jet-black hair.

The silence was like a wall of thick glass dividing the room in two. All Rachel could hear was the sound of her thudding heartbeats. The noiseless air contained a hint of something faintly disturbing. It made her heart beat all the faster and her breathing stalled as if all the air had been sucked out of her lungs.

He had an interesting face. Not handsome in a classical sense but certainly arresting. The Roman nose gave him an aristocratic air, so too did his sharply honed uncompromising jaw.

His mouth was unsmiling.

An errant thought slipped into her head as she wondered when he had last smiled and who had been the recipient of it. A lover perhaps? She had done a little research and found out he had ended a relationship with a cosmetic model a couple of months ago. But there was nothing unusual about that. The same research had turned up that none of his relationships ever lasted more than a month or two. There was nothing else she could find out about his private life other than he was now one of Italy’s richest and most eligible men.

‘It was very good of you to agree to see me,’ she said with forced politeness.

He leaned back in his chair and quietly assessed her with his gaze. It annoyed her that he hadn’t even had the decency to rise when she entered the room. Was he doing it deliberately? Of course he was. He wanted to demonstrate his contempt of her and what she had done. But she was not going to be treated like trailer trash. She might have lost just about everything else, but she still had her pride.

‘Sit.’

One word.

A command.

An order.

An insult.

Rachel remained standing. ‘I won’t take up too much of your time,’ she said, working hard to control the thread of resentment in her voice.

A corner of his mouth went up in undisguised derision. ‘No, indeed you will not,’ he said. He flicked his gaze to his expensive-looking watch. ‘You had better say what you came here to say and say it quickly, for you have just under four minutes left. I have another commitment straight after this and it has a much higher priority.’

Rachel felt a tremor of anger rumble through her. So this was how he wanted to play it, was it? Sitting on his high horse, deigning to meet with her, only to play cat and mouse with her until he was satisfied he had got his revenge. It had to be about revenge. What else could it be? How he must be gloating about how the tables had turned. The once lowly gardener had made good while the little rich girl was now penniless. ‘I want to know if you are the one who sabotaged my attempt to raise finance for my fashion label,’ she said, eyeballing him.

His dark eyes held hers steadily. ‘I have no idea what you are talking about,’ he said.

Rachel was incensed. ‘Don’t play me for a fool. I know you did it. The executive all but gave me your name.’

He continued to look at her as if she were a small out-of-control child in the middle of a temper tantrum. ‘You have your wires crossed, Rachel,’ he said in an annoyingly calm voice. ‘I have not advised anyone in regards to your label.’

Rachel chewed at the inside of her mouth, fighting for patience. ‘I came over to Italy specifically to sign a contract for finance for my label. But as soon as I walked into the office I was told they were no longer going to back me because of the advice they had been given by an expert in business analysis. A highly respected expert.’

He gave a semblance of a smile, a fractional movement of his lips that didn’t reveal his teeth. ‘I 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 know more 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 modelling world when her name and reputation had been sullied in the very public fallout.

The leather of Alessandro’s chair squeaked as he shifted his position. ‘How much are you after?’ he asked.

Rachel’s heart gave a little stumble of surprise. ‘Y-you’ll do it?’

His eyes remained steady on hers. ‘For a price.’ She tried to read his inscrutable look. ‘Interest, do you mean?’

‘Not interest, no.’

She frowned. ‘I’m not sure I’m following you,’ she said. ‘It’s financial support I’m after at this point to carry me through to a successful launch in Europe. It will have to be drawn up legally, of course. I’m prepared to pay interest but not if it’s unreasonable. I can’t stretch myself too far. I have other commitments and—’

‘I am not talking about a loan,’ he said. ‘Consider it a gift.’

Rachel’s insides gave a flip flop movement. ‘A … a gift?’

His sapphire-blue eyes held hers. ‘With conditions.’

‘I can’t possibly accept a gift of money from you,’ she said. ‘I insist on paying it back as soon as I can. It might take a while depending on how successful the launch is but—’

‘You misunderstand me, Rachel,’ he said. ‘I am not going to back your label.’

She looked at him in confusion. ‘But I thought you said you were going to give me a gift of money?’

‘I am.’

Rachel’s heart began to beat overtime. ‘But I don’t understand why you would want to do that,’ she said. ‘The last time we spoke …’ She cleared her throat, not really wanting to recall that dreadful scene on the night of her twenty-first birthday party.

‘Aren’t you going to ask me what the conditions are?’ he asked.

Rachel chewed at her lip. ‘If you want me to apologise for how things turned out … urn … between us, then I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I wanted to tell you about Craig and the expectation that one day we would marry. I should have told you. But as soon as you and I started dating I just couldn’t seem to do it. I didn’t want anything to spoil what we had …’

He remained silent, his face now set in stone.

She took a breath and continued, ‘I’ve had to work so hard to get this far, to be taken seriously after my modelling fiasco. I have people depending on me to make this work. I have staff with mortgages to pay and children to educate and feed. This isn’t just about me wanting to prove I can do it. It’s not just my money that will be lost if this falls over. My business partner has put everything she has into the company as well. I can’t let her down. She’s been a good friend to me.’

Alessandro slowly drummed his fingers on the desk as he sat watching her shift from foot to foot. He had waited a long time to hear her apologise for choosing another man’s money over his love. But was she apologising out of desperation or real regret?

He studied her features, drinking them in even though he had not for a moment forgotten how she looked. Her grey-green eyes were indelibly imprinted in his brain, so too was her shoulder-length glossy brown hair, the way it caught the sunlight at certain angles bringing out its natural highlights. She had aristocratic cheekbones, and a retroussé nose that gave her heart-shaped face an innocent, childlike air that was at odds with her true personality. She was all innocence on the outside but on the inside she had turned out to be a hard, conniving, conscienceless little opportunist just like every other gold-digger he had known.

Her mouth was something else he had never quite forgotten, but, instead of it being imprinted on his brain, it was for ever imprinted on his lips. He could still feel that pillowy softness beneath his mouth, the way she had opened to him like an exotic flower to the sun. He could still taste the sensual heat of her, the heady temptation she had dangled before him until she had got tired of playing with the hired help and moved on to more affluent pastures.

‘I will give you ten thousand euros,’ he said into the loaded silence.

‘But I need much more than that,’ she said, biting at her lower lip.

‘Ten thousand and that is all,’ he said.

Her grey-green eyes narrowed slightly. ‘But why would you do that? If you don’t want to back my label then why give me anything at all?’

He gave her a sardonic half-smile. ‘Because it will be worth it if you accept my conditions.’

Her eyes flared a little more and the column of her slim elegant throat slid up and down as she swallowed. ‘Wh-what are the conditions?’ she asked in a hoarse-sounding voice.

Alessandro held her trapped-in-the-headlights gaze for a pulsing moment.

How ironic she thought he was after revenge when that was the very last thing on his mind right now. ‘You can have the money in your bank account within the next half-hour,’ he said in a cool and controlled tone, ‘but only if you agree to walk out of here and never come back.’

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