Carole Mortimer - Italian Bachelors - Devilish D'angelos - A Bargain with the Enemy / A Prize Beyond Jewels

‘You’re not interested in taking this any further?’ he repeated slowly.

‘No. You’ve said you’re willing to forget the past, so I suggest we do the same with what happened just now. Let’s both just forget it ever happened,’ she repeated evenly.

Gabriel had never met another woman even remotely like Bryn Jones. Nor did he ever remember wanting to strangle a woman as much as he did Bryn at this moment.

First, she had aroused him so much that the two of them had almost had unprotected sex on the sofa in his office, of all places, and now she was giving him the brush-off. Unbelievable!

And was that injured pride speaking, or something else?

This woman had him so tied up in knots that Gabriel had no chance of sorting out his emotions. Except to know he wanted to see Bryn again, to be with her.

‘Dinner tomorrow evening,’ he repeated firmly.

‘No,’ she refused flatly.

Gabriel’s eyes narrowed. ‘You already have a date tomorrow night?’

Bryn raised her brows in silent rebuke. ‘My shifts at work have worked out that I have three days off together, so I’m travelling home tomorrow morning to see my mother and stepfather. It’s also the reason I was working late with Eric this evening,’ she added challengingly.

‘I see,’ Gabriel murmured slowly, not willing to get into that conversation again, or the jealousy he had felt seeing her with Eric.

‘How are you getting there?’

‘By train.’

‘Let me drive you—’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Gabriel,’ Bryn cut him off sharply, impatiently. ‘It’s bad enough that the two of us have met again. I don’t need to shock my mother by having you turn up on her doorstep with me tomorrow.’

His mouth thinned. ‘Are you saying she doesn’t even know about your participation in the exhibition at Archangel next month?’

Bryn snorted. ‘I wouldn’t even know where to start telling her of my reinvolvement with the D’Angelo family!’

‘Damn it, Bryn.’ Gabriel glared. ‘Your mother never hated me in the way that you do—’

‘You can’t possibly know that,’ she cut in dismissively.

As it happened, Gabriel did know that. But it appeared, from what Bryn was saying now, that Mary Harper had never told her daughter of their meetings after William went to prison.

‘Bryn, your father—’

‘I don’t want to talk about him!’ Her eyes flashed in warning.

Neither did Gabriel, but at the same time he knew it was a subject they couldn’t continue to avoid. ‘Bryn, he was a man, not a saint. Just a man,’ he repeated heavily. ‘His past misdemeanours weren’t allowed to come out in court because they would have prejudiced the verdict, but surely you know that your father was a professional conman.’

‘How dare you?’ she gasped furiously.

Gabriel frowned. ‘Not only that, but he brought about his own downfall.’

‘You already said that!’

‘But I mean this literally.’ He sighed. ‘Bryn, the reason I came to your home, talked to your father a couple times, was to try to talk him out of going through with trying to sell the painting. Because I knew, deep inside me, here—’ he held his hand to his heart ‘—that the painting was a forgery. I had no proof but that feeling, but that was enough for me to try to stop him from going through with it. The morning after I visited him the second time the headlines of the painting’s existence were blazing across half a dozen newspapers.’

‘You’re saying my father was the one who went to the press?’ Bryn gasped.

‘Well, I certainly didn’t. And if it wasn’t me, then it had to be him. If you don’t believe me—’

‘Of course I don’t believe you!’ she said scornfully.

He sighed heavily. ‘Then ask your mother about him, Bryn,’ he encouraged. ‘Ask her to tell you about all the years she suffered in silence through William’s schemes and machinations. Ask her if he went to the press. You have to ask her, Bryn,’ he repeated forcefully.

‘I don’t have to do anything.’ She gave a determined shake of her head. ‘I think—’ she breathed deeply ‘—that I may actually hate you for the things you’ve said tonight.’

Gabriel had no choice but to watch as Bryn left, accepting that if hate was all Bryn had to give him, then he would take even that hate.

CHAPTER EIGHT

‘OKAY, YOUNG LADY, time to spill the beans!’ Bryn’s mother smiled as she placed a jug of fresh lemonade and two glasses down on the picnic table, joining Bryn. They sat outside in the garden at the back of the cottage where she now lived with Rhys Evans, her second husband.

‘Spill what beans...?’ Bryn straightened in her garden chair as she slowly pushed her sketch pad aside, her expression cautious as she watched her mother pour lemonade into the glasses.

Mary, a slightly older version of Bryn, with shoulder-length brown hair and deep grey eyes, gave her a reproving glance as she dropped down into a seat on the other side of the wooden table. ‘This is your mother you’re talking to, Bryn. And you’ve been here for two days already and barely spoken a word since you arrived.’

‘I’ve been busy sketching.’ Bryn had found it soothing to lose herself in drawing the beautiful array of coloured flowers that scented her mother’s cottage garden, rather than think of the things Gabriel had said about her father before she left London.

‘I noticed,’ Mary dismissed. ‘Now tell me who he is!’ she prompted interestedly as she sipped her lemonade.

‘He?’ Bryn squeaked a reply. She should have known by now how impossible it was to divert her mother’s attention once she had made her mind up to something—which she now seemed to have done on the subject of Bryn’s distraction these past two days.

‘The man who’s making my normally chatty daughter so introspective.’

Bryn recognised her mother’s tone as being the ‘and don’t try telling me any nonsense’—in this case, that there was no man—‘because I won’t believe you’ tone.

And Bryn knew she had been unusually quiet since coming home to visit her mother and Rhys, that the last evening with Gabriel had left her in a state of confusion. About the things Gabriel had said about her father as much as about Gabriel himself.

She gave her mother a searching glance now. ‘Are you happy with Rhys?’

‘Absolutely,’ her mother answered instantly, a warm smile curving her lips.

Bryn nodded slowly. ‘And were you happy with Daddy?’

Her mother’s smile faded and a frown appeared between her eyes. ‘Where’s this coming from, Bryn?’

‘I don’t know.’ She stood up restlessly. ‘I just— I’ve watched you and Rhys together, the teasing, the easy affection, the total respect you have for each other, and—and I don’t remember ever seeing you and Daddy together like that.’

‘We were happy in the beginning. When you were little.’

Bryn gave a pained frown. ‘But not later on?’

Her mother grimaced. ‘It became...complicated. Everything was fine to start with, but then William became restless working in an office day after day, and started coming up with these get-rich-quick ideas—all of which failed miserably. You’re old enough to know these things now, Bryn. William used up all our savings on those ideas, and I never knew what he was going to do next. Or whether we would all still have a roof over our heads the following week.’ She shrugged. ‘That sort of uncertainty in a partner can test even the best of relationships to its limits, and our marriage was already pretty shaky. It very quickly deteriorated into chaos.’

Which was probably why her mother now appreciated Rhys’s steadiness, Bryn’s stepfather having been the local and much-respected carpenter for all of his working life.