A Prize Beyond Jewels

‘The two of us have a business relationship, and I think it’s more important we continue to maintain that than pursuing any fleeting pleasure we might find in going to bed together for a few days or weeks.’

‘A business relationship,’ he echoed softly.

She nodded. ‘There’s my father’s exhibition, and you asked me to consider designing some display cabinets for the Archangel galleries,’ she reminded him.

‘An offer I seem to remember you refused.’

Nina avoided meeting his piercing gaze. ‘And which I’m now reconsidering. Unless you’ve changed your mind?’

‘I haven’t, no. But I’m curious as to why you’ve changed yours,’ he prompted shrewdly.

It was a good question. And the simple answer to that lay in the decision she had made during the night regarding her future. No matter how much her father might fight against it, it really was time, past time, for her to start to break free of the confines that had been put on her life. Rafe’s barbs had shown her she needed to start to make a life of her own.

And the best way Nina could think of to start doing that was to make that career for herself. Without the help of her father. And certainly without continuing to sleep with the man responsible for offering her the commission that would be the stepping stone to her starting that career.

The Archangel galleries, in New York, Paris and London, were the most prestigious privately owned galleries in the world, and having her work on show there, by designing display cases for each of the three galleries, would bring her work to the attention of collectors and other galleries.

‘Why not, when it seems I already have my first commission?’ she came back dismissively.

Rafe couldn’t say he didn’t feel a certain satisfaction in hearing Nina say she had finally decided to break away from her father, to do something she wanted to do. He just questioned the reasons as to why she was choosing to do it now.

He was also far from pleased at the way Nina so easily dismissed the idea of there being any future relationship between the two of them.

‘If you feel it could be a problem for us after last night,’ she continued lightly, ‘then I can always discuss my ideas with Michael when I see him tomorrow evening.’

Rafe tensed as he felt a sharp pang of— Of what? Jealousy? He had never been jealous over a woman in his life!

His emotions had never been engaged enough in the past with any of the women he had been involved with to ever feel anything so basic as jealousy because of them.

Another way in which his feelings towards Nina were different from anything he had felt before?

His mouth thinned at the suggestion. He liked Nina, had very much enjoyed making love with her last night, but that was all he felt for her. He certainly wasn’t jealous of her suggestion she spend time with Michael tomorrow night. ‘It was my idea, my project, which means that Michael will also insist you deal directly with me, and not him.’

Nina’s eyes widened at the harshness of Rafe’s tone. She was unsure as to the reason for it. Any woman, unaware of Rafe’s aversion to emotional entanglement, might have thought that he was expressing jealousy at her suggestion of talking with his haughty but equally handsome older brother. Because Rafe D’Angelo didn’t do emotions like jealousy; why should he, when he could have any woman he wanted just by crooking his little finger at them?

No, Rafe was obviously still annoyed with her for having left his apartment this morning without saying goodbye. As annoyed, it seemed, as Nina was relieved that she’d found the strength to do so.

It would have been so much easier not to leave, to wake Rafe instead, to spend the morning in bed with him, making love with him. But she felt far too much for him already to allow herself to become any more deeply involved with him; she also knew she was just asking for her heart to be broken if she continued to be intimate with him.

If it wasn’t already too late.

She had never met anyone like Rafe before. A man who had everything, it seemed. A successful businessman. Confident and wealthy and so handsome he made her heart beat faster just to look at him. So charming it took every effort of will on her part to resist giving him whatever he asked of her. So indulgent and experienced a lover that Nina had lost count of the amount of times she had climaxed in his arms last night.

Just so everything that Nina was afraid she might already, stupidly, have fallen in love with him.

‘Fine,’ she accepted abruptly. ‘Was that all? It’s the gala opening tomorrow night, and I really need to get back to the gallery now and finish placing the jewellery in the cabinets.’

Rafe barely managed to bite back his irritation, his frustration, with this conversation. With Nina. With the fact that she had somehow managed to answer, and yet at the same time not answer, a single one of the questions he had asked her.