A Bargain with the Enemy. Carole Mortimer
frown settled on her face. ‘What possible reason could I have for wanting to do that?’
Gabriel eyed her mockingly; with her hair styled in that short spiky fashion, at the moment she looked very much like a bristly, indignant hedgehog! ‘I thought, perhaps, in the interest of...a friendlier working relationship?’
She gave an inelegant snort. ‘We have no relationship, Mr D’Angelo, friendly, working or otherwise.’ She picked up her shoulder bag from where it had fallen to the floor during her choking fit. ‘And, while I’m sure many artists would feel flattered to be chosen seventh out of a six-candidate competition, I’m afraid I’m not one of them.’ She turned sharply on her heel and marched towards the door.
‘Bryn.’
She came to an abrupt halt at hearing her name spoken in that throaty rumble through those perfectly sculptured lips. The same chiselled lips that had once kissed her, that had filled her fantasies every night for months before, during, and after her father’s trial and incarceration.
Her name sounded...sensual, when spoken in that husky voice. Soft, seductive and definitely sensual. A sensuality Bryn’s body instantly responded to, her breasts once again feeling fuller, the nipples firming, aching.
Bryn turned slowly, her expression wary as she acknowledged, inwardly at least, that her traitorous body still thought Gabriel D’Angelo was the most decadent, wickedly attractive man she had ever set eyes on.
And it shouldn’t.
She shouldn’t.
How could she possibly still feel this way when this man had been instrumental in destroying her family?
They had been five tough years for both Bryn and her mother. The two of them had remained living in London while her father was in prison, only changing their surname and moving out of London after he had died.
On top of their grief had come the ordeal of finding somewhere to live, finally moving into the cottage they had found to rent in a little Welsh village.
Then had come the difficulty of Bryn finding and getting into a university that allowed her to live at home; she hadn’t wanted to leave her still-devastated mother on her own. Her mother was a trained nurse, and had found a job at a local hospital, but Bryn had had to settle for working in a local café and fitting her hours of study around her work shifts.
In amongst all that change and struggle there hadn’t been a lot of time for men in Bryn’s life—the odd date here and there, but never anything prolonged or intimate. Besides which, any serious involvement would have eventually necessitated that she confide her real name wasn’t Bryn Jones at all, and that her father had been William Harper, something she had been loath to do.
At least Bryn had thought, until now, that was the reason she had avoided any serious involvement....
To look at Gabriel D’Angelo now, however, to hear his voice again, and realise that he was the reason behind her lack of interest in other men, was humiliating in the extreme.
To realise, to know, that it was this man’s sensual good looks, that deep voice, that filled her senses and created a sexual tension within her without even trying.
To acknowledge that the hateful Gabriel D’Angelo, a man who had kissed her just the once, a kiss he had no doubt regretted as soon as it had happened, had been the yardstick against which Bryn had judged all other men for the past five years, was not only masochistic madness on her part, but disloyal to both her mother, and her father’s memory....
CHAPTER TWO
‘YOU’VE GONE PALE again,’ Gabriel said, striding determinedly towards where Bryn now stood transfixed and unmoving by the closed door of his office. A dark scowl creased his brow as he saw how the colour had once again leeched from those creamily smooth cheeks. ‘Perhaps you should sit down for a minute—’
‘Please don’t!’ She stepped back and away from the hand Gabriel had raised with the intention of lightly grasping her arm, her fingers tightly clutching her bag, her eyes deep pools of dark and angry velvet-grey as she gave a determined shake of her head. ‘I have to go.’
Gabriel’s mouth tightened at her aversion to his even touching her. ‘We haven’t finished our discussion yet, Bryn—’
‘Oh, it’s definitely finished, Mr D’Angelo,’ she assured him spiritedly. ‘As I said, thank you for the—the honour, of being chosen as the seventh candidate, but I really have no interest, or time, to waste on being a runner-up.’ Her eyes flashed darkly. ‘And I have no idea why you would ever have thought that I—’
‘You were far and away the best of the six candidates to be chosen for the exhibition, Bryn,’ Gabriel bit out briskly—before she had chance to dig a bigger hole for herself by insulting him even further. ‘I saved the best till last,’ he added dryly.
‘That I might be, so thank you for your interest, but—’ She broke off her tirade to stare up at him blankly as his words finally trickled through the haze of her anger. She moistened her lips—those sexily pouting lips!—with the tip of her tongue before speaking again. ‘Did you just say...?’
‘I did,’ Gabriel confirmed grimly.
‘But earlier you said— You told me that I was the seventh person being interviewed—’
‘And one of the previous six is the reserve. And happy to be so,’ he added harshly.
Bryn stared up at Gabriel as the full horror of what she had just done, what she had said, was replayed back to her in stark detail. At the same time realising he was right; at no time had Gabriel said she was the seventh-place candidate, only that she was the seventh artist being interviewed.
She swallowed as the nausea washed over her, and then swallowed again, to absolutely no avail, the single-malt whisky she had ‘guzzled down like lemonade at a child’s birthday party’ obviously at war with her empty stomach; she had been far too tense about coming back to the gallery to be able to eat any breakfast this morning. ‘I think I’m going to be sick!’ she gasped as she raised a hand over her mouth.
‘The bathroom is this way,’ Gabriel said quickly, lightly grasping her arm and pulling her towards a closed door on the opposite side of the office.
Bryn didn’t fight his hold on her this time, too busy trying to control the nausea to bother resisting as he threw open the bathroom door and pushed her inside. Bathroom? It was more like something you would find in a private home, with a full glass-enclosed walk-in shower along one wall, along with the cream porcelain facilities, and had to be as big as the whole of the bedsit in which Bryn had lived and painted this past year!
Bryn dropped her bag to the floor and ran across the room to hang her head over the toilet only just in time, as she immediately lost her battle with the nausea and was violently and disgustingly sick.
‘Well, that really was a complete waste of a thirty-year-old single-malt whisky!’ Gabriel commented dryly some minutes later, when it became obvious from Bryn’s dry retching that she had nothing else left in her stomach to bring up.
Adding further to her humiliation Bryn realised he must have remained in the bathroom the whole time she was being physically ill. ‘I’ll buy you a replacement bottle,’ she muttered as she flushed the toilet, and avoided so much as glancing at the dark figure looming in the doorway as she moved to the sink to turn on one of the gold taps and splash cold water onto her clammy cheeks.
‘At a thousand pounds a bottle?’
Bryn’s eyes were round with shock as she lowered the towel she had been patting against her cheeks, before turning to look at him as he leaned against the doorframe, arms folded across the broad width of his muscled chest.
She instantly wished she hadn’t looked at him as mockery gleamed evidently in his eyes. ‘Who pays that sort of money for—? You do, obviously,’ she acknowledged heavily as he raised his dark brows. ‘Okay,