A Prize Beyond Jewels

‘You are still avoiding it, Nina,’ her father prompted gently.

She gave a rueful shake of her head. ‘That’s probably because I have no idea what prompted you to ask such a question, Papa.’

‘You are looking very beautiful this evening, maya doch.’

‘Are you saying I don’t normally?’ she teased.

Her father gave an answering smile. ‘You know you are always beautiful to me, Nina. But tonight you seem to have made a special effort to be so.’

Probably because, after seeing that photograph of Rafe D’Angelo with the actress Jennifer Nichols, that was exactly what she had done! Which was pretty silly of her; she could never hope to compete with the beauty or sophistication of the A-list actress.

Nor should she want to.

Rafe D’Angelo meant nothing to her. As she meant nothing to him.

‘And I do not believe you have made this special effort on my behalf,’ her father added softly. ‘So, do you like this Raphael D’Angelo?’ he persisted.

Nina gave an exasperated sigh. ‘I don’t know him well enough to like or dislike him, Papa.’

‘You spent some time alone with him yesterday.’

She gave a pained frown. ‘I thought we had agreed, after I left Stanford, that I would continue to have my own security detail but that they would only report to you if I was in any danger?’

‘We did,’ her father confirmed unconcernedly. ‘And that has not changed, nor will it. I did not receive this information from your own security detail, Nina. I do not need to do so, when I have my own,’ he added softly.

‘Let me guess, one of the workmen who accompanied me to the gallery yesterday was one of your men,’ she guessed impatiently. ‘Papa, you really shouldn’t have done that.’ She sighed.

He shrugged. ‘I am merely interested to know what you and D’Angelo talked about for the twenty-three minutes you were alone with him in his office,’ he prompted lightly.

‘Twenty-three minutes?’ Nina repeated, incredulous. ‘You timed how long I was in there?’

‘My man did, yes,’ her father dismissed unconcernedly. ‘Are you aware of D’Angelo’s reputation with women?’

‘Papa, I’m not going to discuss this with you any further!’ She threw her hands up in the air in disgust. ‘My meeting yesterday with Rafe D’Angelo was purely business.’

‘Rafe?’

She nodded. ‘It’s what he prefers to be called. And my meeting with him yesterday was on your behalf, I might add.’ She felt a blush warm in her cheeks as she remembered those few seconds, just prior to her leaving Rafe’s office, when it had almost felt as if he had been about to kiss her. Before, because of her own nervousness, she had put an end to that intimacy.

‘I do not want to see you hurt by this man, maya doch,’ her father said gently.

‘And I’m assuring you that isn’t going to happen,’ Nina insisted firmly. ‘I told you, I haven’t even decided yet whether or not I even like Raphael D’Angelo!’

‘That’s a pity, because I’ve decided I like you, Nina,’ drawled an infuriatingly familiar voice.

Nina felt the colour drain from her cheeks as she turned sharply to face Rafe D’Angelo as he stood in the doorway slightly behind her father’s butler, obviously having just arrived, and looking breathtakingly handsome in his black evening clothes, with that overlong ebony hair brushed back from his handsome face.

Rafe almost laughed out loud at the look of dismay on Nina Palitov’s face as she realised he had overheard her telling remark in regard to him.

But he only almost laughed...

Not only was it not particularly amusing to hear her state her uncertainty of liking him so plainly, but the way she looked this evening had totally robbed him of the breath to laugh even if he had wanted to!

Nina was wearing a gown the same moss-green as her eyes, a knee-length sheath of a gown that clung lovingly to her womanly curves, with two ribbon straps across her otherwise bare shoulders and arms, the swell of her breasts visible above the low neckline, those long legs revealed as being slender and shapely, with three-inch-heeled shoes of the same colour as her gown bringing her height up to six feet. Her fiery red hair, that crowning glory, was held back from her temples with two diamond clips, but otherwise fell in that tumbling cascade of curls down the length of her spine to rest above the shapely bottom he had so enjoyed looking at yesterday as she’d walked away from him.

‘Mr D’Angelo, sir.’ The English butler maintained a wooden expression as he belatedly announced Rafe’s arrival.

‘Do come in and join us, Mr D’Angelo,’ his host invited smoothly.

Rafe gave the butler a ruefully sympathetic smile as he stepped past him into the sitting room, that smile freezing, becoming fixed, as he looked at his host fully for the first time and realised that Dmitri Palitov was sitting in a wheelchair rather than one of the cream velvet armchairs!

‘I trust you will understand why I do not get up to greet you, Mr D’Angelo,’ Dmitri Palitov drawled dryly as he obviously saw Rafe’s look of surprise.

A surprise Rafe quickly masked beneath a politely bland smile as he strode across the room to shake the hand the older man held out to him. ‘No problem. And please call me Rafe,’ he invited lightly as he released his hand from the other man’s strong grip. ‘Despite being unsure as to whether or not she likes me, your daughter already calls me Rafe,’ he added softly before glancing challengingly across to where Nina stood silently watching the two men. His glance was slightly censorious, but not because of what Nina had said; Rafe would have appreciated a heads up in regard to knowing her father was in a wheelchair before actually meeting his host this evening.

Although he acknowledged that might have been a little difficult for her to do. Nina had done as he’d asked, and left her father’s address with his assistant earlier, but Rafe admitted to going out of his way to ensure the two of them didn’t actually meet during the hours she had been at the gallery today.

Because he was annoyed.

With himself, not Nina.

Nina could have no idea that his evening with Jennifer Nichols had gone so disastrously wrong for the simple reason he couldn’t stop thinking about Nina. Or, at least, his rebellious body had refused to stop thinking about Nina.

So much so that Rafe hadn’t felt an ounce of desire to bed the beautiful actress at the end of the evening, and had instead merely kissed Jennifer on the cheek after driving her home, before then going home alone to his own apartment and his empty bed. Not to go straight to sleep, unfortunately, as a certain part of his anatomy had refused to comply, and even when he had finally slept it had been fitfully, and filled with dreams of bedding flame-haired Nina!

Consequently Rafe hadn’t been in the best of moods all day; he’d certainly felt no inclination to actually see or talk to the woman who was causing his present lack of sexual desire to bed another woman. Something that had never happened to him before, and Rafe didn’t appreciate that it was happening to him now either.

‘Do not blame Nina for her earlier remark,’ his host advised ruefully. ‘What you overheard her say was merely as a result of my having just teased her.’

Rafe wondered exactly what Dmitri Palitov had been teasing his daughter about to have elicited such a vehement response from her, and that curiosity was added to by the sudden blush that now coloured Nina’s cheeks.

‘Would you care to join me in a glass of whisky before dinner, Rafe?’ his host offered politely.

‘Thank you, Dmitri.’ Rafe nodded, watching through narrowed lids as Nina silently crossed the room to the array of drinks on the sideboard, that red hair like a living flame as it tumbled down the length of her spine as she kept her back turned towards them while she poured his whisky.

‘I trust your previous engagement, yesterday evening, was successful, Rafe?’

Rafe turned back as his host spoke to him once again, knowing by the hardness of the older man’s expression that Dmitri Palitov had noticed his interest in his daughter, and wasn’t sure as to whether he approved or not.

As the other man was also aware of exactly what—and with whom—Rafe’s previous engagement had been last night?

The mockery in those pale green eyes looking so challengingly up into his indicated the answer to that question was a resounding yes. Dmitri Palitov knew exactly where and with whom Rafe had been the previous evening.

‘Really, Papa,’ Nina drawled mockingly as she crossed the room to hand Rafe his glass of whisky, her hand deliberately not coming into contact with his as she did so. ‘We really shouldn’t embarrass Rafe by enquiring as to whether or not he enjoyed his evening with Miss Nichols.’

Great; not only did Dmitri Palitov know who Rafe had spent the previous evening with, but it appeared Nina was aware of it too. And the mockery in her expression as she looked at him from beneath thick dark lashes indicated she had drawn her own conclusions about how that evening had ended too.

Nina felt a certain amount of satisfaction in seeing the look of discomfort on Rafe D’Angelo’s face as he realised both she and her father were aware he had considered an evening—and night?—spent with the beautiful actress to be more pressing than accepting a dinner invitation from an important client of one of the galleries he owned with his two brothers.