A Prize Beyond Jewels

Yes, the shortened version, the rakish version, of this man’s name suited him far more than the more formal Raphael.

‘Nor do I react well to threats, Nina,’ he drawled softly.

‘I believe you will find I made a statement rather than a threat, Rafe,’ she replied just as ultra-politely. ‘As I also believe you will find that the contract between my father and your brother is completely binding on both sides.’

Nina had been present on the day Michael D’Angelo had met with her father at his Manhattan apartment, both men also having their lawyers present in order to check the details of the contract before it was signed by both of them. Her father never left anything to chance, and the safety of his beloved jewellery collection came second only to his protection of Nina.

‘If you have any reservations or doubts, then I suggest it might be preferable if you take them up with your brother before speaking to my father,’ she added challengingly.

She had no idea what it was about Raphael, or rather Rafe, D’Angelo that made her bristle so defensively. So uncharacteristically. That arrogant confidence perhaps? Or maybe it was the fact that he was just too dangerously handsome for his own—and any woman’s—good? Whatever the reason, Nina found herself wanting to challenge him in a way she never had any other man.

Rafe had more than ‘reservations’ where Nina Palitov was concerned. Where his attraction to her was concerned.

But he certainly didn’t doubt her claim regarding the contract and the security of her father’s collection. He knew from the steadiness of that unflinching moss-green gaze that Nina Palitov was telling him nothing but the truth about the contract Michael—ergo, Archangel—had signed with her father. Something else Michael hadn’t warned him about, and which Rafe intended taking up with his big brother at his earliest convenience.

He nodded abruptly. ‘Very well, I’ll make the necessary arrangements for you to view the gallery’s full security tomorrow.’

‘Today would be more convenient.’

Rafe looked down at her through narrowed lids, easily seeing the challenge in those unblinking green eyes. ‘Very well, later today,’ he ground out tautly.

‘Good.’ She gave another terse nod. ‘I’ll see you in your office on the third floor at eleven o’clock.’ She turned away dismissively, gathering up the wild abundance of her hair and pushing it back under her baseball cap as she walked over to rejoin her workmen.

The two bodyguards shot Rafe a warning glance before following hot on Nina Palitov’s heels.

A totally unnecessary warning, as far as Rafe was concerned.

He had absolutely no interest in deepening his acquaintance with one Miss Nina Palitov. She was beautiful, yes, and those lips definitely begged to be explored in deeper, more sensuous detail, but the presence of the bodyguards said that wasn’t going to happen any time soon, and her dismissive attitude towards Rafe wasn’t in the least encouraging either.

No, Miss Nina Palitov was not a woman Rafe had any intention of pursuing on a personal basis.

CHAPTER TWO

A DECISION RAFE had serious reason to question when his assistant, Bridget, showed Nina Palitov into his office two hours later!

Rafe had been extremely busy over those two hours, having no intention of being caught wrong-footed again where this young woman was concerned.

His telephone conversation with Michael hadn’t been particularly helpful, his brother showing no interest in the fact that Nina Palitov was aged in her twenties rather than middle-aged, as Rafe had assumed she would be. Michael had simply repeated that it was Rafe’s duty to keep Miss Palitov sweet.

The Internet had proved a little more helpful regarding Nina Palitov, revealing that she had been born to Dmitri and Anna Palitov when her mother was thirty and her father in his mid-fifties, which now made Nina twenty-four. It also stated that Anna had died five years after Nina was born, but gave no cause for her premature death.

It also listed the schools Nina had attended, after which she had gone on to Stanford University, attaining a degree in art and design, before taking up a position in her father’s extensive business empire.

None of which changed the impact the flesh and blood Nina Palitov had on Rafe when she walked into his office at eleven o’clock.

Somewhere during the course of her morning’s work she had removed the bulky black sweatshirt, revealing a close-fitting white T-shirt beneath. The tightness of the material across her breasts also revealed that she wasn’t wearing anything beneath that T-shirt. Her breasts were small and pert, and tipped with darker nipples—the same peach colour as her lips?—as they pressed noticeably against that clinging white material, her abdomen silkily slender as the T-shirt finished just short of her low-rise denims.

She had dispensed with the baseball cap again, that over-abundance of fiery red hair a wild cascade onto the narrowness of her shoulders and down the slender length of her spine. A wild and fiery cascade that now made Rafe’s fingers itch to touch it.

And the rising, hardening of Rafe’s shaft told him his body had decided, completely in contradiction of his earlier decision to stay away from this young woman, that it also liked what it saw.

‘Mr D’Angelo?’ Nina prompted as he made no effort to get up and greet her but instead remained seated behind the black marble desk placed in front of the windows across the spacious room.

He had removed his jacket and put it on a hanger some time during the morning, his shoulder-length hair an ebony sheen against the white of his silk shirt. As she had suspected earlier, the broadness of his shoulders, muscled width of his chest, and the tautness of his abdomen owed absolutely nothing to the perfect tailoring of his designer label suit.

Nina deliberately looked away from all that blatant maleness to take in the rest of the spaciously elegant office. Floor-to-ceiling windows made up two of the walls of the corner office, cream silk wallpaper adorned the other two, along with several filled bookcases and a bar, with a comfortable seating area in front of the second wall of windows.

All totally in keeping with the luxurious elegance associated with the world-famous Archangel galleries and auction houses. That reputation and the expensive opulence of this gallery were no doubt the reason her father had chosen Archangel as the venue to exhibit his collection.

Even so, Nina knew that her father would not appreciate the lack of manners Raphael D’Angelo was currently exhibiting towards his only daughter.

‘Is this an inconvenient time for you, after all?’ she questioned coolly as she turned back to look across the marble desk at him.

‘Not at all,’ he drawled as he finally stood up to turn away and take his jacket from the hanger and shrug it back on over his wide shoulders before facing her fully, dark brows raised over mocking gold eyes. ‘Did you decide to dispense with the bodyguards?’

Nina steadily returned that mocking gaze. ‘They’re standing just on the other side of that door.’ She nodded towards the closed door behind her.

Raphael D’Angelo grinned as he leant back against the front of his black marble desk, arms folded across the width of that muscled chest, every inch of him crying out hot, dangerous male, beware.

‘Out of consideration for the fact that I pose absolutely no threat to you?’

Out of consideration for the fact that Nina had told Rich and Andy that that was where they were going to wait for her. They hadn’t particularly liked it, but Nina had been adamant. Alone in Raphael D’Angelo’s office, very aware of his predatory maleness, and that wicked glint once again visible in those golden eyes, she wasn’t so sure of her decision.

Rafe D’Angelo was a dangerously attractive man who even Nina knew had the reputation of being something of a rake when it came to women. An outgoing love-’em-and-leave-’em type of man, in fact, and as such he was completely out of Nina’s own limited experience with men.

Which, she knew, was the main reason for her brusqueness towards him earlier this morning; she simply had no previous experience of dealing with men as powerfully attractive as Raphael D’Angelo. With any men at all, other than her father and bodyguards, if the truth be told.

Her father had become something of a recluse after her mother died, at the same time as he had become obsessively protective of Nina. That protection, from men like Rich and Andy, meant Nina had only been out on a few dates these past few years. Always with men her father had first approved of, and who had passed the stringent security checks made on them before Nina could so much as accept an invitation from them to even go out for a pizza.

Rafe D’Angelo, charming on the outside but with a steely and determined inner core, didn’t seem like a man who would give a damn about whether he passed security checks or not, if he should decide he was interested in a woman.

Not that Nina thought that he ever would be interested in her; she very much doubted she was beautiful or sophisticated enough to arouse the interest of a man as physically attractive and sought after as she knew Rafe D’Angelo to be. A man who could have any woman he wanted, and usually did.

But Nina knew instinctively, even from her brief acquaintance with him, that Rafe D’Angelo wouldn’t give a damn about whether or not he had her father’s or anyone else’s approval, or be bothered by the fact that Rich and Andy were standing on the other side of his office door, if he should feel the inclination to kiss her—

What on earth was wrong with her?

Anyone would think that she wanted Rafe D’Angelo to find her attractive. To kiss her, even.

Which was ridiculous. She was only at the Archangel gallery in order to oversee the installation and security of her father’s jewellery collection, nothing more. The fact that she was so totally aware of everything about Rafe D’Angelo—the silkiness of his overlong dark hair, that predatory glint in those golden eyes, the hard contours of that sculptured and ruggedly handsome face, the muscled strength of his body—was irrelevant, when she had no intention of allowing her attraction to him to go any further. When her father’s protection of her wouldn’t allow that attraction to go any further.

‘I’ve made arrangements for you to go down to the basement and view our security at twelve o’clock,’ Rafe D’Angelo informed her briskly now, the expression in those golden eyes guarded. ‘I trust that time is convenient for you?’

‘Perfectly, thank you.’ Nina nodded coolly. ‘You’re also aware, once the collection is in place, that there will be two men from my father’s own security detail in the east gallery guarding the collection at all times?’

‘So I believe.’ He nodded tersely.

Her brows rose at his tone. ‘You don’t approve?’