A Bargain with the Enemy. Carole Mortimer
which of the D’Angelo brothers it was; they were all arrogant and ruthless as far as Bryn was concerned, and she wouldn’t have come within twenty feet of a single one of them if not for the fact that she was as determined to become one of the six artists chosen to take part in the Archangel New Artists Exhibition next month, as she was desperate.
She gave a slow shake of her head. ‘I think there’s been some sort of mistake.’ She frowned. ‘Mr Sanders’ secretary phoned me and made the appointment.’
‘Because Mr D’Angelo was out of the country at the time,’ Linda said, nodding.
Bryn could only stand and stare at the other woman, wondering if it was too late for her to just cut and run while she still had the chance....
* * *
Gabriel rested his elbows on his desktop as he watched the link to the security camera in the entrance hall of the gallery on his laptop.
He had recognised Bryn Jones the moment she entered the gallery, of course. Seen the way she hesitated, before her expression turned to one of confusion as Linda spoke to her, followed by total stillness as her face went completely blank, making it easy for Gabriel to guess the moment Linda had told her that her appointment this morning was now with him rather than Eric.
Bryn Jones...
Or, more accurately, Sabryna Harper.
The last time Gabriel had seen Sabryna had been five years ago, day after day across a crowded courtroom. She had glared her dislike of him with glittering but velvet-soft dove-grey eyes from behind dark-framed glasses every time she so much as glanced at him. And she had glanced at him a lot!
Sabryna Harper had only been eighteen at the time, her figure voluptuously rounded, her manner a little clumsy and self-conscious, light brown hair growing silky and straight to just below her shoulders, dark-framed glasses making her eyes appear large and vulnerable. A vulnerability and appeal that Gabriel had been inexplicably drawn to.
Her figure had slimmed down to a svelte elegance that was shown to full advantage in a loose floral blouse and fitted trousers. The light brown hair looked as if it had been given blonde highlights, as well as being expertly cut and styled as it winged out perkily about her ears, nape and creamy, smooth brow. And she had dispensed with the dark-framed glasses, probably in favour of contact lenses. She also possessed a new self-confidence that had allowed her to walk into Archangel with purpose and determination.
The loss of weight was even more noticeable in her face; there were now slight hollows in her cheeks, revealing sculptured cheekbones either side of a pert little nose. Her mouth— Thank God Rafe had warned him about that sexy mouth. As it was, he had an arousal that would need several minutes to subside—the same minutes it would take Linda to bring Bryn Jones to his office, he hoped.
Would Gabriel have recognised this beautiful and confident young woman as the Sabryna Harper of five years ago if Rafe hadn’t prewarned him of her real identity, after Michael had decided to act with his usual arrogance by remaining silent on the subject?
Oh, yes, Gabriel had no doubts he would have recognised Sabryna. Voluptuous or slender, glasses or no glasses, slightly gauche or elegantly poised, he would have known Sabryna under any guise she cared to take on.
The question was, would she betray by word or deed that she remembered him too?
* * *
Delicious, decadent, sinful, melted-chocolate brown. It was the only way to describe the colour of Gabriel D’Angelo’s eyes, Bryn acknowledged with self-disgust as, Linda having delivered her to his office, she now stood in front of the marble desk looking at the man she had long considered her nemesis. The man who, with the whiplash of his arrogant and ruthless tongue, had not only helped to send her father to prison, but also succeeded in killing Sabryna Harper and necessitating that Bryn Jones rise from her ashes.
The same man that the youthful Sabryna had been beguiled by, kissed by and lost her heart to five years ago.
The same man who only weeks later had stood in a courtroom and condemned her father to prison.
The same man that Sabryna had looked at across that courtroom and known that she still wanted, despite what he was doing to her father. Just looking at him had aroused her when she should have felt nothing but hatred for him, robbing her of both breath and speech.
A reaction, a dangerous attraction, that in the years that followed Bryn had convinced herself she hadn’t felt. That the emotions that had bombarded her whenever she looked at him must have been dislike, perhaps even hate, because she couldn’t have still been attracted to him after what he had done to her family.
One look at him now and Bryn knew that she had been lying to herself for all these years; that Gabriel D’Angelo, despite being the one man she should never have been attracted to, never have allowed herself to be flattered by or allowed to kiss her, had then, and still now, held a dangerous fascination for her.
So much so that she could feel how his overpowering presence managed to dominate the dramatic and opulent elegance of the huge office with floor-to-ceiling windows looking out over the London skyline and original artwork adorning all of the delicate pink-silk-covered walls.
Gabriel D’Angelo...
A man who should by now—Bryn had many times wished it so!—be balding, running to fat, with lines of dissipation etched into his overbloated and self-indulgent face.
Instead, he was still well over six feet of taut, lean muscle, all shown to advantage in a dark and tailored designer-label suit that probably cost as much as a year of Bryn’s university fees! And his hair was just as thick and dark as she remembered it too, brushed casually back from his face to fall in silky ebony waves to just below the collar of his cream silk shirt.
As for his face...!
It was the face of a male model. The sort of face that women of all ages would have drooled over before buying whatever it was he was selling; a high intelligent brow above those sinful brown eyes, his nose aquiline, cheekbones high and sharply defined against light olive skin—with not a line in sight, of dissipation or otherwise! He had perfect chiselled lips—the top one fuller than the bottom—and the strong line of his jaw was exactly as Bryn remembered it: square and ruthlessly determined.
‘Miss Jones.’ His cultured voice, as Bryn had discovered five years ago, wasn’t in the least accented, as might have been expected from his name, but was as English as her own. The same deep and husky rumble of a voice that had once caused Bryn’s knees to quake, and had still done so even as she had listened to that voice condemn her father and seal his fate.
Bryn almost took a step back as Gabriel D’Angelo stood up and moved out from behind the marble desk. She managed to stand her ground as she realised he had only risen to his feet in order to hold out his hand to her in greeting. A lean and elegant hand totally in keeping with the strength Bryn could discern in every leanly muscled inch of him.
The sort of strength that she had no doubts was capable of crushing every bone in her own much smaller hand, if he chose to exert it.
Bryn gave an inward jolt as she realised he was studying her just as closely through narrowed lids, those melted chocolate-brown eyes appearing to see everything and miss nothing.
Would he recognise her as Sabryna Harper? Somehow she doubted it, given the fact that the gauche Sabryna, despite Gabriel having kissed her once, would have made very little impact on the life of a man like Gabriel D’Angelo, and there would have been so many other women in his life—and his bed!—during the past five years.
Besides which, her name was different, and she looked dramatically different: she was twenty pounds lighter, her hair was now cut short with blonde highlights, her face thinner, more angled, and she wore contact lenses rather than dark-framed glasses.
But was it possible—could Gabriel D’Angelo have recognised her, despite those changes?
Bryn moved one sweat-dampened hand surreptitiously against the thigh of her trousers before raising it with the intention