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THIS Raphael D’Angelo who is coming to dine with us this evening?’
    Nina tensed, her hand shaking slightly, as she paused in pouring her father’s usual pre-dinner drink of single malt whisky from the cut-glass decanter into one of the matching glasses on the silver salver. She waited several seconds for her hand to stop shaking, and to compose her expression, before she finished pouring, and then turned to carry the glass over to her father. ‘Have I told you how handsome you look this evening, Papa?’ she complimented lightly.
    ‘A man of almost seventy-nine cannot be called handsome,’ he drawled dismissively, his English still accented, despite his having lived in the States for more than half his life. ‘Distinguished, perhaps. But I am too far beyond the flush of youth to ever be called handsome.’
    ‘You always look handsome to me, Papa,’ Nina assured him warmly.
    Because he did. Her father might be heading towards his eightieth year, but his habitual air of suppressed vitality made him seem much younger, and his iron-grey hair was still thick and plentiful, his face one of chiselled strength, even if his eyes had faded over the years to a pale green rather than the same moss-green as her own.
    Her father gave her a knowing look. ‘You are avoiding answering my original question.’
    That was probably because Nina had no idea what had prompted her father to ask it.
    She had once again spent the day at the gallery, organising the final arrangement of the display cabinets. She’d felt slightly on edge in case she should see Rafe D’Angelo again, and then a certain amount of disappointment when she’d left the gallery at four o’clock without catching so much as a glimpse of its charismatic owner.
    A disappointment she had chastised herself for feeling as she lay soaking in a perfumed bath an hour or so later; Rafe D’Angelo was not a man she should become in the least interested in. He was arrogant, mocking, and, even more importantly, not in the least bit interested in her.
    Even so, Nina hadn’t been able to resist switching on her laptop and looking him up on the Internet once she had finished her bath, sitting on her bed in her dressing gown, her wet hair wrapped in a towel, to scroll through the pages and pages of information and gossip on the highly photographed Raphael D’Angelo. She’d told herself that it was because she needed to know all that she could about the man her father had invited to dinner this evening—other than the fact that he brought out a physical reaction in her that she found distinctly uncomfortable.
    It had taken her several minutes of scrolling before she found a photograph of him from the previous evening, as he enjoyed an intimate dinner for two at an exclusive New York restaurant, with the beautiful actress Jennifer Nichols—obviously the ‘previous engagement’ that had prompted him to refuse her father’s initial dinner invitation. Nina had switched off her laptop in disgust.
    Nina had decided that Rafe D’Angelo was nothing more than a rake and a womaniser, and she refused to waste any more of her time—or her emotions—on him.
    ‘You are still avoiding it, Nina,’ her father prompted gently.
    She gave a rueful shake of her head. ‘That’s probably because I have no idea what prompted you to ask such a question, Papa.’
    ‘You are looking very beautiful this evening, maya doch .’
    ‘Are you saying I don’t normally?’ she teased.
    Her father gave an answering smile. ‘You know you are always beautiful to me, Nina. But tonight you seem to have made a special effort to be so.’
    Probably because, after seeing that photograph of Rafe D’Angelo with the actress Jennifer Nichols, that was exactly what she had done! Which was pretty silly of her; she could never hope to compete with the beauty or sophistication of the A-list actress.
    Nor should she want to.
    Rafe D’Angelo meant nothing to her. As she meant nothing to him.
    ‘And I do not