Free A Prize Beyond Jewels by Carole Mortimer Page B

‘And now I think it’s time I was going. There may be no bodyguards following you around tonight but I’m pretty sure the extensive security cameras in this building have already shown your father that I came into your apartment with you earlier but haven’t left yet!’ he added lightly as the two of them walked the short distance down the hallway to the door to her apartment.
    Nina was pretty sure they had too.
    Which wasn’t to say she liked it, only that this level of security had been in her life for so long she had mainly ceased to even notice it. Maybe it was time she did.
    And maybe meeting Rafe, and this attraction she felt towards him, were exactly the wake-up call she had needed to do something about changing it.
    * * *
    Rafe considered telephoning Michael once he got back to his own apartment twenty minutes later, and then dismissed the idea. His brother would be arriving in New York on Friday evening anyway, in time for the invitation-only gala opening of the Palitov jewellery collection on Saturday evening. The brothers attended any new exhibition presented in one of their three galleries. Gabriel wouldn’t make it this time, but Michael would certainly be there.
    And, amongst other things, Rafe was going to take the opportunity of Michael’s presence to discuss a new business venture he had in mind for the Archangel galleries. Not too many people were aware of it, but Rafe was the new ideas man for the Archangel galleries, and always had been. And the reason people weren’t aware of it was because Rafe was really quite modest. He didn’t mind that the media had him tagged as the playboy.
    Only maybe it was now time for that to change.
    Rafe brought his thoughts up with a start, having no idea why he’d had them in the first place. Or why now.
    It couldn’t possibly be because of his attraction to Nina. Could it?
    Damn it, he needed to concentrate on learning more about the enigmatic Dmitri Palitov, not his daughter.
    Nina had said her father was in a wheelchair because he had been involved in an accident, which probably explained why he had become so reclusive. No doubt it was just as easy for Dmitri Palitov to run his business empire from his apartment on the fiftieth floor of a building he owned as it was to have an actual office in another part of the city.
    But an accident didn’t explain why Dmitri Palitov was so obsessive about security.
    His daughter’s security in particular.

CHAPTER FIVE
    ‘I HAVEN ’ T EATEN here before,’ Nina told Rafe as she glanced appreciatively at their surroundings. They had been seated at a secluded table near the window of a fashionable—and wildly exclusive—New York restaurant.
    Situated on the top floor of one of New York’s most prestigious skyscrapers, with three-hundred-and-sixty-degree views over the city, it was one of the in places for the rich and famous to enjoy themselves in relative privacy. Nina had spotted several easily recognisable TV personalities, as well as actresses and actors, as they were shown to their table. She even recognised a couple of politicians.
    As she had said she would, Nina had spent the day at the gallery—most of the time vacillating between going out to dinner with Rafe this evening, as planned, or telling him she couldn’t make it after all.
    The latter hadn’t been because she had received a particularly negative response from her father in regard to the date she had planned with Rafe for this evening; her father’s mouth might have tightened with disapproval, but he seemed to know, from the stubbornness of Nina expression, not to comment further.
    No, Nina’s earlier trepidation, in regard to having dinner with Rafe, had been for a completely different reason. And that reason was Rafe D’Angelo himself.
    Rafe was unlike any other man she had ever met. Confident and forceful, but not obnoxiously so, with a wicked sense of humour that was also teasing. He was intelligent without being pompous, and his bad-boy