A Prize Beyond Jewels

Or maybe Nina was Palitov’s granddaughter, and for some reason was here in place of her mother?

Rafe forced the tension to ease from his shoulders.

‘Not what, who,’ he excused lightly, deciding to keep the ‘pretty boy’ mistake to himself as he finally briefly shook the hand she held out to him. A warm and artistically slender hand, the fingers long and delicately tapered, the nails kept short.

She looked up at him quizzically with those moss-green eyes. ‘And exactly who were you expecting, Mr D’Angelo?’

‘Your mother, probably,’ Rafe dismissed dryly. ‘Or possibly your aunt?’

She gave a rueful smile. ‘My mother is dead, and I don’t have an aunt. Or an uncle, either,’ she added dryly as Rafe would have spoken again. ‘Or any other family apart from my father,’ she said softly.

Rafe blinked, eyes narrowing as he attempted to process the information this woman had just given him. No mother, no aunts or uncles, just her father. Which meant...

‘I’m the Miss Palitov you were told to expect, Mr D’Angelo,’ she confirmed huskily. ‘I believe I’m what some people might describe as being a child born in the autumn years of my father’s life.’

And Rafe would be one of those people!

He’d had no idea that Dmitri Palitov’s daughter would be so young. Had Michael known? Probably not, otherwise his brother would never have suggested that Rafe charm her! It was unusual for his big brother not to have all the facts, but this just went to prove that not even the meticulous Michael was infallible.

And this woman’s identity probably also explained those two muscle-bound men now standing as silent and watchful sentinels at Nina Palitov’s back. No doubt Daddy Palitov kept a very close guard over his young and beautiful daughter.

As if those bodyguards, and the information that this young woman was Dmitri Palitov’s daughter, weren’t disconcerting enough, she now reached up and swept the baseball cap from her head, releasing a waterfall of fiery red curls that framed the beauty of her face and cascaded over the slenderness of her shoulders before flowing riotously down almost to her waist.

And leaving Rafe in absolutely no doubt that she was a woman.

Rafe’s preference in women had always been towards pocket-sized blondes, but as he saw the rueful amusement—at his expense—in those moss-green eyes, the slightly mocking curve to those lushly full lips, evidence, no doubt, that Nina Palitov found his discomfort amusing, he knew that he would enjoy nothing more at this moment than to take this beautiful woman in his arms before kissing that amusement from the sweet curve of those lush and pouting lips.

A move on his part that would no doubt cause those two muscle-bound sentinels to move with lightning speed in her defence.

Nina eyed Raphael D’Angelo beneath lowered lashes, knowing, by the glance he briefly gave at Rich and Andy as they stood behind her, that he had now realised helping to move display cases wasn’t their only reason for being at the Archangel gallery.

She had been surrounded by the same bodyguards for most of her life, had grown so accustomed to having at least two of them watch over her day and night that she rarely noticed they were there any more. She now treated the eight men who made up her security detail more like friends than people employed by her father to ensure her safety.

Which was a sad reflection on what her life had become, Nina realised with a frown.

Admittedly her father was a wealthy and powerful man, and Nina knew better than most that with that wealth and power came enemies. But she had often thought wistfully of how nice it would be to be able to do as other people her age did, and just pop out to collect the newspaper or a carton of milk in the mornings, or a takeaway for dinner from a fast-food restaurant, or share a fun evening out with several girlfriends, without her bodyguards having to check out the venue first.

Or maybe go out for a date with an arrogant and decadently handsome man with the face of a fallen angel.

And exactly where had that ridiculous thought come from?

The long years of her father’s protection meant that Nina was usually extremely shy when it came to talking to men; she certainly never had erotic fantasies about them the first time she met them!

She frowned up at Raphael D’Angelo, a man who could never be considered as being anything other than an arrogant and decadently handsome man with the face of a fallen angel.

‘I have a lot to do here today, Mr D’Angelo,’ she told him, hiding her shyness behind the briskness of her tone. ‘So if there was nothing else?’

Rafe knew when he was being dismissed. And he also knew when he didn’t like it!

He was in charge of the New York gallery at the moment, and it was time that Miss Nina Palitov and those muscle-bound goons standing behind her were made aware of that fact.