A Prize Beyond Jewels (10 page)

‘And your real world doesn’t have a place in it for me.’ It was a statement rather than a question.

The only place Nina wanted Rafe in her life was one she could never have, nor was it one he was interested in her occupying. Despite the other side of Rafe she had discovered last night as they talked together, he had never pretended to be anything other than what he was: a thirty-four-year-old very eligible and handsome bachelor, who enjoyed women—lots of them.

Unfortunately Nina knew she wasn’t made that way, which was why it was better, for both of them, if this ended now. And not just because of her father. She had to end this now, before she lost her pride, as well as her heart, to the point she was completely broken when Rafe ended their affair in a few weeks’ time. As he surely would.

She raised her chin determinedly. ‘Not at this point in time, no.’

He raised dark brows. ‘And do you ever see a time when that might change?’

‘No.’

‘Fine,’ Rafe rasped harshly. He wasn’t about to beg, like a starving man asking for the scraps from Nina’s table. If one night was all Nina wanted from him, then one night was all they would have.

All they’d had.

Because Nina had left him in no doubts that she considered the two of them to already be in the past tense.

CHAPTER EIGHT

‘N
OT
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.

‘Not that I’m aware of, no,’ he answered carefully; no doubt Dmitri Palitov would have something to say to him when the two men next met, but at this moment Dmitri hadn’t told him how he felt in regard to the night Rafe had spent with his daughter.

Pure semantics, Rafe knew, because he could easily guess how the older man felt about it; he just didn’t know for certain.

Michael nodded acceptance of his answer. ‘Did you talk to the daughter?’

Rafe’s tension increased. ‘About what?’

‘About your idea of commissioning the display cabinets for all the Archangel galleries from her, of course,’ Michael answered impatiently. ‘For God’s sake, get a grip, Rafe. It was your recommendation that we ask her!’

Yes, it was, and it was a recommendation Rafe now had reason to regret. It very much looked as if Nina was going to accept the commission, and how the hell was he supposed to work on the design of those display cabinets with Nina when he only had to look at her to want her?

‘She’s on board with the idea.’ He nodded. ‘She said she would talk to you about it at the gala exhibition tomorrow night.’ He bleakly recalled his own less than happy response to that suggestion.

A response that continued to fester and grow after Nina told him she didn’t want to continue seeing him.

‘Me?’ Michael echoed blankly.

‘Yes—you,’ Rafe confirmed with hard derision. ‘Obviously Miss Palitov considers, as you’re the senior D’Angelo brother, that you’re the one she should be talking to about this rather than your disreputable younger brother!’

‘She doesn’t realise that I’m the businessman in the family, Gabe’s the artistic one, and you’re the new ideas man for all the D’Angelo galleries?’

Rafe’s mouth twisted. ‘Does anybody?’

‘And whose fault is that?’ Michael frowned.

‘Mine,’ Rafe sighed. ‘And it’s never really bothered me before.’

‘But it does now?’

It did, yes. Because for the first time in his life Rafe wanted someone, Nina, to see him not for who he was perceived to be but who he really was—the ‘ideas man’ of the D’Angelo family, as Michael had just called him.

Just earlier this evening the two brothers had discussed another new project of Rafe’s that he had been thinking about the past few days, one in which they took Gabriel’s original idea of a competition for new artists and broadened the spectrum to include all new artistic talent, from sculpture to the design of jewellery, giving over a room each month in the three galleries for displaying that talent.

The two previous competitions in the Paris and London galleries had been a great success, and a third was due to take place here in New York later in the year. Based on these successes, Rafe couldn’t see any reason not to expand the idea.

It would mean a lot of hard work for each of the brothers, but Rafe believed the rewards, of discovering and exhibiting new artistic talent, would ultimately be well worth it. Instead of just selling or exhibiting great art, they would be discovering it.

Michael was already enthusiastic about the idea, and the two of them would discuss it with Gabriel once he was back from his honeymoon.

‘Maybe,’ Rafe conceded hardly.

‘Becoming a little tired of the playboy label?’

‘I believe I am, yes.’ Especially so if it meant that was all Nina saw him as being!

‘It’s about time!’

‘It is?’ Rafe came back dryly.

His brother nodded. ‘It was okay in your mid and late twenties, but it’s good to see that it isn’t enough for you now. You’re a brilliant ideas man, Rafe, have always read the market perfectly, known in exactly which new direction we should take Archangel. I’d like other people to appreciate that as much as Gabe and I do. And I’ll talk to Miss Palitov tomorrow evening, by all means.’ Michael shrugged. ‘But only to tell her that you’re in charge of the project. As you’re in charge of all new projects at Archangel.’

Oh, yes, Nina was going to learn that Rafe was very much ‘in charge’ when it came to anything to do with her, and anyone else, working within the realms of the Archangel galleries.

It might be sheer torture for Rafe to work with Nina, desiring her as he still did, but there was absolutely no way he was going to let her bypass him in favour of working with Michael.

Nina might not like it, but, as far as Rafe was concerned, if she was serious about wanting to design the new display cabinets for the three galleries, then she was stuck with him for the duration.

He looked across at his brother now. ‘Ni— Someone made a comment to me a couple of days ago, implying that maybe the reason you’ve always had to be the serious one is because you had two mischievous younger brothers.’

Michael arched a dark brow. ‘“Someone”?’

‘Someone,’ Rafe insisted. ‘Is it true?’

Michael gave the idea some thought. ‘Maybe,’ he finally conceded. ‘As the eldest I always felt I had to be more responsible than you and Gabe.’

‘Not much fun for you, though?’

‘Has being the middle brother, feeling as if you have something to prove all the time, or constantly being the joker in order to grab your share of the attention, been any more fun?’

Rafe grimaced. ‘Not really.’

Michael looked at him searchingly. ‘You really are tired of that role, aren’t you?’

Yes, he really was, and if he wasn’t careful Michael was very soon going to ask why it was he suddenly felt that way. ‘Let’s order dinner, hmm?’ he encouraged lightly, determined to change the subject and not to think about Nina, or anything she had said, again tonight.

Tomorrow night at the gala opening of her father’s jewellery collection would be soon enough for that.

* * *

‘If you have something to say, Papa, then I really wish you would just say it!’ Nina frowned across at her father as the two of them travelled in the back of the limousine together on their way to the gala opening at the Archangel gallery on Saturday evening. The New York traffic was as dense and noisy as usual, the early evening sun shining into the smoked glass windows of the car through the gaps in the surrounding skyscrapers.

‘About what,
maya doch
?’ Her father returned her gaze steadily, his expression unreadable.

Nina gave a shake of her head. ‘Don’t be coy, Papa.’

He raised grey brows. ‘In what way am I being coy?’

She sighed. ‘You haven’t said anything, but let’s neither of us pretend you don’t know about my having spent Thursday night at Rafe D’Angelo’s apartment.’

It was a statement rather than a question. After all, she had been waiting thirty-six excruciating hours for her father to so much as mention the subject of her having spent the night with Rafe.

Her father shrugged. ‘That is your affair, no?’

Her eyes widened. ‘The other evening you warned him to stay away from me,’ she reminded.

‘Ah, he told you about that.’ Her father nodded ruefully.

‘Oh, yes,’ she recalled with feeling.

‘He was not pleased by my warning.’ Her father nodded. ‘As I fully expected he would not be.’

‘And you knew I wouldn’t like it either, so why do it?’ Nina frowned.

‘To see how Rafe would respond, of course,’ he answered with satisfaction.

She stared at her father incredulously. ‘You were testing him?’

‘I was attempting to see what manner of man he is, yes,’ her father acknowledged unapologetically.

‘And?’

Dmitri gave a half-smile. ‘And by inviting you out to dinner, spending the night with you, despite that warning, he has obviously shown himself to be a man who is not cowed, by me, or the Palitov name.’

Knowing Rafe, as she now did, Nina knew he was a man who wouldn’t be cowed by much at all, least of all her father or the Palitov name.

And, much as she loved her father and didn’t want to hurt him, she knew it was time for her to do the same.

She drew in a determined breath. ‘Rafe approves of the display cabinets I designed for your collection, so much so he’s asked me if I would design more for all the Archangel galleries,’ she revealed huskily.

Unreadable emotion flickered in her father’s eyes before it was quickly masked. ‘And you wish to do this?’

Nina sat back as she met those guarded eyes a paler green than her own. ‘I do, yes.’

‘You now like him.’ It was a statement rather than a question.

‘Enough to spend the night with him, at least!’

‘Perhaps we should discuss this further once we have returned home later this evening?’ her father suggested as the limousine pulled up at the back of the Archangel gallery.

Her father had expressed a wish to be lifted from the car and into his wheelchair there, rather than in the full glare of the photographers crowded about the front steps of the gallery, eagerly snapping photographs for tomorrow’s newspapers of the glittering array of personalities invited to attend this private showing of the Palitov jewellery collection.

‘There is much I still need to tell you. About the past,
maya doch
,’ he continued huskily. ‘But this is not the place or time in which to do it.’

Nina gave her father a searching glance, noting the pained expression in his pale green eyes, the lines of tension beside his nose and mouth, the pallor of his hollowed cheeks. ‘Are you quite well, Papa?’ She placed a hand on his arm, feeling the way it trembled slightly beneath her fingertips. ‘If you’re unwell we don’t have to attend the gala.’

‘I am as well as I can ever expect to be in regard to my health, daughter,’ he assured gruffly. ‘My heart and mind are another matter, however. Not now, Nina.’ He placed his hand over hers and squeezed lightly as he saw her anxious expression. ‘We will attend and enjoy the gala together, as planned, and talk of these things again later tonight. I only hope you will be able to forgive me—’ He broke off, his expression anguished as he looked across at her.