PROLOGUE
‘DON’T WORRY, MIK, he’ll be here.’
‘Take your damned feet off the desk,’ Michael snapped in reply to his brother’s reassurance, not even glancing up from the papers he was currently reading in the study at Archangel’s Rest, the secluded Berkshire home of the D’Angelo family. ‘And I’m not worried.’
‘Like hell you’re not!’ Rafe drawled lazily, making no effort to swing his black-booted feet down from where they rested on the front of his older brother’s desk.
‘I’m really not, Rafe,’ Michael assured mildly.
‘Do you know if—?’
‘I’m sure it can’t have escaped your notice that I’m trying to read!’ Michael sighed his impatience as he glared across the desk. He was dressed formally, as usual, in a pale blue shirt and neatly knotted navy blue silk tie, dark waistcoat and tailored trousers, the jacket to his suit draped over the back of his leather chair.
It had always been something of a family joke that their mother had chosen to name her three sons Michael, Raphael and Gabriel to go with the surname D’Angelo, and the three brothers had certainly taken their fair share of teasing about it when they were at boarding school. Not so much now they were all in their thirties, and the three of them had been able to utilise their names by making the three Archangel auction houses and galleries in London, New York and Paris the most prestigious privately owned galleries in the world.
Their grandfather, Carlo D’Angelo, had managed to bring his wealth with him when he fled Italy and settled in England almost seventy years ago before marrying an English girl, and producing a son, Giorgio: Michael, Raphael and Gabriel’s father.
Like his father before him, Giorgio had been an astute businessman, opening the first Archangel auction house and gallery in London thirty years ago, and adding to the D’Angelo wealth. When Giorgio retired ten years ago and he and his wife Ellen settled permanently in their Florida home, their three sons had turned that comfortable wealth into a veritable fortune by opening up similar Archangel galleries in New York and Paris, resulting in them now all being millionaires many times over.
‘And don’t call me Mik,’ Michael instructed harshly as he continued to read from the file in front of him. ‘You know how much I hate it.’
Of course Rafe knew that, and he considered it part of his job description as a younger brother to annoy the hell out of his older sibling!
Not that he had as many opportunities to do that nowadays with the three brothers usually at a different gallery at any one time. But they always made a point of meeting up for Christmas and each of their birthdays, and today was Michael’s thirty-fifth birthday. Rafe was a year younger and Gabriel, the ‘baby’ of the family, another year younger at thirty-three.
‘I last spoke to Gabriel a week or so ago.’ Rafe made a face.
‘Why the grimace?’ Michael quirked a dark brow.
‘No reason in particular—we all know that Gabe’s been in a bad mood for the past five years. I never understood the attraction myself.’ He shrugged. ‘She looked a mousy little thing to me, with just those big—’
‘Rafe!’ Michael cautioned in a growl.
‘—grey eyes to recommend her,’ Rafe completed dryly.
Michael’s mouth thinned. ‘I spoke to Gabriel two days ago.’
‘And?’ Rafe prompted impatiently when it became obvious his older brother was doing his usual clam impersonation.
Michael shrugged. ‘And he said he would arrive here in time for dinner this evening.’
‘Why the hell couldn’t you have just told me that earlier?’
Rafe swung his booted feet impatiently down onto the carpeted floor before rising restlessly to his feet. He ran an irritated hand through the short thickness of his sable-dark hair as he paced the room, tall and leanly muscled in a fitted black T-shirt and faded denims. ‘That would have been too easy, I suppose.’ He paused his pacing to glower at his older brother.
‘No doubt.’ Michael gave the ghost of a smile, eyes dark and unreadable, also as usual.
The three brothers had similar colouring, height and build; all a couple inches over six feet tall, with the same sable-black hair. Michael kept his hair short, his eyes so dark a brown they gleamed black and unfathomable.
Rafe’s hair was long enough to curl down onto his shoulders, his eyes so pale a brown they glowed a deep gold.
‘Well?’ he rasped impatiently as Michael added nothing to his earlier statement.
‘Well, what?’ His brother arched an arrogant brow as he relaxed back in his leather chair.
‘How was he?’
Michael shrugged. ‘As you said, as bad tempered as ever.’
Rafe grimaced. ‘You two are the pot and the kettle!’
‘I’m not bad tempered, Rafe, I just don’t choose to suffer fools gladly.’
He raised dark brows. ‘I trust I wasn’t included in that sweeping statement...?’
‘Hardly.’ Michael relaxed slightly. ‘And I prefer to think of all three of us as perhaps being just a little...intense.’
Some of Rafe’s own tension eased as he gave a rueful grin in acknowledgement of the probable reason none of them had ever married. The women they met were more often than not attracted to that dangerous edge so prevalent in the D’Angelo men, as much as they were to their obvious wealth. Obviously not a basis for a relationship other than the purely—or not so purely!—physical.
‘Maybe,’ he conceded dryly. ‘So what’s in the file you’ve been looking at so intently since I arrived?’
‘Ah.’ Michael grimaced.
Rafe eyed him warily. ‘Why do I have the feeling I’m not going to like this...?’
‘Probably because you aren’t.’ His brother turned the file around and pushed it across the desk.
Rafe read the name at the top of the file. ‘And who might Bryn Jones be?’
‘One of the entrants for the New Artists Exhibition being held at the London gallery next month,’ Michael supplied tersely.
‘Damn it, that’s the reason you knew Gabriel would be back today!’ He glared at his brother. ‘I’d totally forgotten that Gabriel’s taking over from you in London during the organisation of the exhibition.’
‘And I get to go to Paris for a while, yes,’ Michael drawled with satisfaction.
‘Intending to see the beautiful Lisette while you’re there?’ He eyed his brother knowingly.
Michael’s mouth tightened. ‘Who?’
The dismissive tone of his brother’s voice was enough to tell Rafe that Michael’s relationship with the ‘beautiful Lisette’ was not only over, but already forgotten. ‘So what’s so special about this Bryn Jones that you have a security file on him?’
Rafe knew there had to be a reason for Michael’s interest in this particular artist. There had been dozens of eager applicants for the New Artists Exhibition; since Gabriel had organised the first one in Paris three months ago and it had been such a success, they had decided to go ahead and hold a similar one in London next month.
‘Bryn Jones is a she,’ Michael corrected dryly.
Rafe’s brows rose. ‘I see....’
‘Somehow I doubt that,’ his brother drawled dismissively. ‘Maybe this picture will help....’ Michael lifted the top sheet of paper to pull out a black and white photograph. ‘I had Security download the image from one of the security discs at Archangel yesterday—’ which explained the slightly grainy quality of the picture ‘—when she came into the gallery to personally deliver her portfolio to Eric Sanders.’ Eric was their in-house art expert at the London gallery.
Rafe picked up the photograph so that he could take a closer look at the young woman pictured coming through the glass doors into the marbled entrance hall of the London gallery.
She was probably in her early to mid-twenties. The black-and-white photograph made it difficult to tell her exact colouring. Her just-below-ear-length hair, in a perky flicked-up style, looked to be light in shade, her appearance businesslike in a dark jacket and knee-length skirt, with a pale blouse beneath the jacket—none of which detracted in the least from the curvaceous body beneath!
She had a hauntingly beautiful face, Rafe acknowledged as he continued to study the photograph: heart-shaped, eyes light in colour, pert little nose between high cheekbones, her lips full and poutingly sensual with a delicately pointed chin above the slenderness of her throat.
A very arresting, and slightly familiar, face.
‘Why do I have the feeling that I know her?’ Rafe asked, lifting his head.
‘Probably because you do. We all do,’ Michael added tersely. ‘Try imagining her slightly more...rounded, with heavy, black-framed glasses, and long mousy-brown hair.’
‘Doesn’t sound like the sort of woman any of us would ever be attracted to—’ Rafe broke off abruptly, his gaze narrowing sharply, suspiciously, on the black-and-white photograph in front of him.