A Prize Beyond Jewels

CHAPTER EIGHT

‘NOT GOING OUT this evening?’

Rafe turned to scowl at his older brother as Michael looked up at him from reading through the paperwork he had brought with him from Paris. He’d been working on it since he’d arrived at the apartment an hour or so ago.

‘The clothes gave it away, huh?’ Rafe scoffed. The faded denims and black T-shirt Rafe had changed into when he got back to the apartment that evening weren’t something he would ever have worn to go out in on a Friday night.

‘Somewhat,’ Michael drawled. ‘Rafe, will you stop pacing, damn it, and tell me what’s wrong?’ he added impatiently as Rafe continued to prowl restlessly around the sitting room.

Because Rafe felt too unsettled to join his brother by sitting down in one of the armchairs. As he had been too unsettled all day to be able to tackle any of the work piling up on his desk. How could he possibly concentrate on work when he knew that Nina was down in the east gallery, calmly arranging her father’s jewellery collection in the display cabinets she had designed? And probably without so much as giving Rafe a second thought.

He had to admit, it was a little unusual for the woman to be the one to walk away from him. Unique, in fact. And frustrating as hell, when Rafe was nowhere near to being ready to let Nina go.

She had been so damned cool this morning. So distant and in control as she’d told him their relationship—such as it was—was over.

Was that how he had appeared to all those women he had said goodbye to over the years? So cool and uninvolved emotionally as he told them he didn’t want to see them again?

And had those women hated his guts in the same churning, furious, frustrated way that Rafe now—?

Now what?

Hated Nina?

Of course he didn’t hate Nina. How could he possibly hate her when he still wanted her so damned much?

He was angry and frustrated, that was all, at having Nina end their relationship so abruptly. But it was his ego that had taken the knock, nothing else. And for no other reason than this had never happened to Rafe before, and he hadn’t been ready to let Nina go, he assured himself.

‘Rafe?’

He glanced across at Michael, knowing by his brother’s perplexed frown that he really was concerned by his uncharacteristic distraction. ‘It’s nothing,’ he dismissed impatiently. ‘Do you want to order something in for dinner?’ He moved to the desk to take out the menus for the restaurants he usually ordered food from the rare evenings he spent at home. The brothers’ comings and goings were far too erratic for them to have ever considered taking on a full-time housekeeper.

Rafe wondered what Nina was doing for dinner this evening. No doubt she’d had some explaining to do to her father this evening. An explanation Rafe had half been expecting all day to have to make to Dmitri Palitov himself.

And Rafe readily admitted he had felt disappointed when the expected phone call from Dmitri, demanding an explanation from him, hadn’t come. He had been spoiling for a fight with someone all day, and he would very much have enjoyed telling the older man to stay out of his own and Nina’s business—endangering the exhibition of the unique Palitov jewellery collection, be damned!—as well as exactly what he thought of the older man for screwing up Nina’s life.

Only to be left with a feeling of disappointment when he hadn’t seen or heard from either member of the Palitov family all day.

‘Rafe, what in the hell is wrong with you this evening?’ Michael demanded impatiently.

‘What?’ Once again Rafe scowled his irritation as he turned back to his brother.

Michael put the paperwork aside. ‘You’ve been holding those menus in your hands for the past five minutes, not looking at them, and not saying a damned word, just staring off into space.’

Yes, he had, Rafe realised self-disgustedly. ‘So?’ he challenged as he handed the menus to his brother.

‘So it’s the sort of taciturn behaviour I’d grown to expect from Gabriel pre-Bryn, but not from you.’

Rafe’s mouth thinned. ‘What does that even mean?’

‘It means you’ve been mooning about all evening.’

‘I do not “moon about”,’ Rafe rasped scathingly. ‘I’m just a little distracted, that’s all.’

Michael’s gaze sharpened. ‘Are you having problems with the Palitov family?’

Rafe stiffened defensively, wondering how Michael could possibly have known? Michael didn’t know; he had to be referring to Dmitri Palitov rather than Nina Palitov.