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believe you have made this special effort on my behalf,’ her father added softly. ‘So, do you like this Raphael D’Angelo?’ he persisted.
    Nina gave an exasperated sigh. ‘I don’t know him well enough to like or dislike him, Papa.’
    ‘You spent some time alone with him yesterday.’
    She gave a pained frown. ‘I thought we had agreed, after I left Stanford, that I would continue to have my own security detail but that they would only report to you if I was in any danger?’
    ‘We did,’ her father confirmed unconcernedly. ‘And that has not changed, nor will it. I did not receive this information from your own security detail, Nina. I do not need to do so, when I have my own,’ he added softly.
    ‘Let me guess, one of the workmen who accompanied me to the gallery yesterday was one of your men,’ she guessed impatiently. ‘Papa, you really shouldn’t have done that.’ She sighed.
    He shrugged. ‘I am merely interested to know what you and D’Angelo talked about for the twenty-three minutes you were alone with him in his office,’ he prompted lightly.
    ‘Twenty-three minutes?’ Nina repeated, incredulous. ‘You timed how long I was in there?’
    ‘My man did, yes,’ her father dismissed unconcernedly. ‘Are you aware of D’Angelo’s reputation with women?’
    ‘Papa, I’m not going to discuss this with you any further!’ She threw her hands up in the air in disgust. ‘My meeting yesterday with Rafe D’Angelo was purely business.’
    ‘Rafe?’
    She nodded. ‘It’s what he prefers to be called. And my meeting with him yesterday was on your behalf, I might add.’ She felt a blush warm in her cheeks as she remembered those few seconds, just prior to her leaving Rafe’s office, when it had almost felt as if he had been about to kiss her. Before, because of her own nervousness, she had put an end to that intimacy.
    ‘I do not want to see you hurt by this man, maya doch ,’ her father said gently.
    ‘And I’m assuring you that isn’t going to happen,’ Nina insisted firmly. ‘I told you, I haven’t even decided yet whether or not I even like Raphael D’Angelo!’
    ‘That’s a pity, because I’ve decided I like you, Nina,’ drawled an infuriatingly familiar voice.
    Nina felt the colour drain from her cheeks as she turned sharply to face Rafe D’Angelo as he stood in the doorway slightly behind her father’s butler, obviously having just arrived, and looking breathtakingly handsome in his black evening clothes, with that overlong ebony hair brushed back from his handsome face.
    Rafe almost laughed out loud at the look of dismay on Nina Palitov’s face as she realised he had overheard her telling remark in regard to him.
    But he only almost laughed...
    Not only was it not particularly amusing to hear her state her uncertainty of liking him so plainly, but the way she looked this evening had totally robbed him of the breath to laugh even if he had wanted to!
    Nina was wearing a gown the same moss-green as her eyes, a knee-length sheath of a gown that clung lovingly to her womanly curves, with two ribbon straps across her otherwise bare shoulders and arms, the swell of her breasts visible above the low neckline, those long legs revealed as being slender and shapely, with three-inch-heeled shoes of the same colour as her gown bringing her height up to six feet. Her fiery red hair, that crowning glory, was held back from her temples with two diamond clips, but otherwise fell in that tumbling cascade of curls down the length of her spine to rest above the shapely bottom he had so enjoyed looking at yesterday as she’d walked away from him.
    ‘Mr D’Angelo, sir.’ The English butler maintained a wooden expression as he belatedly announced Rafe’s arrival.
    ‘Do come in and join us, Mr D’Angelo,’ his host invited smoothly.
    Rafe gave the butler a ruefully sympathetic smile as he stepped past him into the sitting room, that smile freezing, becoming fixed, as he looked at his