Rafe might have claimed to have been joking on Saturday evening, as to the possibility of her father being some sort of gangster, but Nina had always had her own suspicions that weren’t so far from the truth. Her conversation with her father late on Saturday evening hadn’t gone far enough to confirm that, but it had certainly proved to her how powerful a man her father really was.
As a result, Nina knew there was no way she could ever tell Rafe of those new and shocking truths about her mother that her father had revealed to her late Saturday evening. Nina was having trouble accepting that truth herself, so how could anyone else possibly be expected to understand?
Which was why Nina had decided—again!—that from now she and Rafe could only have a business relationship. She would design the new display cabinets for the Archangel galleries, and as one of the owners of those galleries Rafe could approve those designs. Straightforward. Simple.
At least, it had seemed straightforward and simple when Nina had made that decision in her hotel room yesterday. She’d spent most of the night sitting dry-eyed in a chair beside the window looking sightlessly out at the New York skyline, wondering how, after the things her father had told her about her mother, she was going to get through the next few hours, let alone all the days that were to follow.
Here and now, with Rafe just a staircase away, her decision seemed far from simple. Rafe had already shown that he wasn’t the type of man to just accept what she said at face value, that he would want to prod and probe in order to learn the reasons for her having made that decision. Reasons Nina couldn’t possibly share with him. That she couldn’t share with anyone.
Her footsteps slowed, grew heavier, the closer she got to Rafe’s office. To the confrontation she had decided she had no choice but to face if she really was serious in her intention to make a life for herself. She planned to start by setting up her own business, well away from her father’s influence. This work for the Archangel galleries was her door into doing that, at least.
All she had to do, before any of that became possible, was to fend off or dismiss any of Rafe’s demands for the answers she couldn’t give him.
All she had to do!
Just standing here outside the door to Rafe’s office made her heart pound louder and her palms grow damp, so how much worse was it going to be once she was face to face with him?
* * *
‘Bridget, I thought I told you no interruptions—Nina!’ Rafe rasped in recognition as he looked up from the catalogue he had been studying and saw it was Nina standing in the doorway rather than his assistant.
He stood up to move swiftly around his desk and cross the room in long strides before taking one of her hands in both of his, his gaze roaming over her face searchingly—hungrily!—easily noting the pallor of her cheeks and the distance in those cool green eyes that looked into his so steadily.
‘Have I come at a bad time?’ Her voice had that same distance and coolness.
He continued to look at her searchingly, wanting, needing to see some of ‘his Nina’ in the pained depths of her eyes. ‘Are you okay?’ Stupid question, Rafe instantly rebuked himself impatiently; of course Nina wasn’t okay!
If Nina was ‘okay’ she wouldn’t have walked out of her father’s apartment on Saturday night. If she was ‘okay’ she would have come to Rafe that same night, as they had agreed she would. If she was ‘okay’ she wouldn’t be looking at Rafe now as if he were a stranger to her rather than her lover.
She shrugged dismissively. ‘Why wouldn’t I be okay?’
Rafe didn’t know the full answer to that; Dmitri Palitov hadn’t been exactly forthcoming on the details yesterday, and would only reveal that Nina was upset about something he had told her, and had been missing since the previous night.
‘Come inside.’ Rafe kept a firm hold of her hand as he pulled her further into the room before shutting the door behind her. ‘I can’t tell you how pleased I am that you came here, Nina,’ he added huskily.
‘Why?’
Because now at least Rafe knew she was alive. Because now he knew she was safe.
Just because he needed her here with him, damn it.
‘Nina, your father came to see me yesterday.’
Emotion flickered in the cool depths of those green eyes before it was quickly quashed. ‘Did he?’ she dismissed uninterestedly as she firmly but determinedly removed her hand from within Rafe’s before walking away from him to stand in front of his desk. ‘That must have been pleasant, for you both,’ she added tersely.
Rafe continued to look at Nina searchingly, seeing the brittle fragility beneath her cool exterior. A fragility that was all the more apparent to him because she wore her hair up today, clearly revealing the hollows of her cheeks, the dark shadows beneath her eyes, and the delicate arch of her throat.