A Prize Beyond Jewels

She straightened her shoulders determinedly. ‘The only reason I’m here today is to show you my designs,’ she assured him coolly. ‘If you’re still interested in seeing them, that is?’

‘Nina, we can’t just sit down together and discuss your designs as if your conversation with your father on Saturday night had never happened.’

‘I don’t see why not,’ she cut in icily.

‘Nina—’

‘Exactly what did he tell you about that conversation, Rafe?’ she prompted again, harshly. ‘How much of the truth, having known you for a week and me my whole lifetime, did he decide to confide in you?’

Rafe straightened, his tone soothing. ‘You have to calm down, Nina.’

‘No, Rafe, I really don’t. I don’t have to do anything, not any more.’ Her eyes had a reckless glow. ‘From now on I intend to do exactly as I damn well please. Now, do you want to see my designs or not?’

He winced at the aggression in her tone. ‘Of course I want to see your designs.’

‘Then could we do it now, please?’ She handed him the file. ‘I have business premises and an apartment to find this afternoon.’

‘You aren’t returning to your own apartment?’ He frowned.

Her jaw tightened. ‘No.’

Rafe was at a complete loss to know how to deal with this hard, unreachable Nina. He barely recognised her as the woman who had occupied most of his waking thoughts this past week—and quite a few of his sleeping ones too.

The woman he only had to look at to feel aroused. The woman who teased him and made him laugh. A woman of warmth and gentleness. A woman he had confided in. A woman so unlike any other that Rafe felt beguiled by her. The woman he knew he wanted to be with.

The same woman who was hurting so badly right now she was falling apart inside.

Because whatever Dmitri had told her on Saturday night it hurt her. Deeply.

Rafe didn’t know all the facts—no matter what Nina might think, Dmitri really hadn’t been willing to go quite so far as to confide in him—but Rafe knew enough to know that whatever secrets the other man had been keeping from Nina all these years it was breaking her apart.

If it hadn’t already broken her heart.

‘Nina—’

‘Please, Rafe.’ Her voice cracked emotionally. ‘If you care anything for me at all, then help me do this.’

If Rafe cared?

He had realised, during these past two days that he cared more for Nina, about Nina, than he ever had for any woman. Than he ever would again for any woman. ‘Nina...’

Both of them turned as the door to his office was suddenly thrown open without warning. Rafe groaned inwardly as the two burly bodyguards entered the room before parting to allow Dmitri Palitov to enter in his wheelchair.

One look at Nina’s white and accusing face, and Rafe knew that she believed he’d had something to do with her father’s unexpected arrival.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

‘DID YOU INSTRUCT your assistant to inform my father if I came here?’ Nina looked at him with hurt accusation.

‘No.’

‘Rafe has absolutely nothing to do with my being here this morning, Nina.’ Dmitri spoke quietly, the two bodyguards once again instructed to wait out in the hallway, the door firmly closed behind them. ‘I’ve had both Rafe’s apartment and this gallery under observation since yesterday, on the off-chance that you might come to him.’

Rafe scowled darkly. ‘You have one hell of a nerve!’

Which wasn’t to say, despite the outrage Rafe felt now on Nina’s behalf, that he didn’t still feel a certain inner warmth in the knowledge that, whatever reason she claimed for being here today, Nina had come to him.

‘My apologies, Rafe. But it was necessary,’ the older man added.

‘In your opinion,’ Nina snapped, though she was relieved that Rafe hadn’t had anything to do with her father being here. She wasn’t sure she was strong enough to face another betrayal by one of the two men who meant so much to her.

Her father looked at her calmly. ‘Where have you been for the past two days, Nina?’

‘Right here at a hotel in New York.’

‘We checked all the hotels.’

‘I booked in under the name Nina Fraser,’ she said, feeling no sense of satisfaction as she saw the way her father flinched at hearing she had booked into the hotel using her mother’s maiden name.

She was hurt and angry with her father, yes, for the things he had kept from her, but Rafe was right, she wasn’t, and never could be, deliberately cruel to anyone, least of all her father. ‘You should have told me the truth about Mama from the beginning, Papa,’ she said softly.