chuckled throatily. ‘I already have a fortune. Besides which,’ he added, fingers moving lightly over her ankles and calves now, ‘I have no interest in massaging anyone else’s feet but yours.’
Bryn raised one lid, her heart beating a loud tattoo in her chest as Gabriel looked back at her, those brown eyes once again as compelling and addictive as chocolate. An addiction Bryn was once again finding hard to resist.
‘I think that’s enough of that, thank you.’ She pulled her feet out of Gabriel’s grasp before bending her knees and drawing her legs up into the chair—well away from Gabriel’s caressing hands. Her pulse raced as he made no effort to get up from kneeling in front of her. ‘It’s getting late, Gabriel,’ she prompted determinedly. ‘I need to leave soon.’
Gabriel sat back on his heels, looking up at her. ‘Did you tell your mother that the two of us had met up again?’
‘Did I—?’ Her eyes had widened. ‘Of course not!’ Bryn protested impatiently.
His eyes narrowed. ‘Why not?’
‘Don’t be obtuse, Gabriel,’ she snapped, glad now that he wasn’t still touching her. Because if he had been he would have been able to feel the way just being this close to him caused her to tremble in awareness. ‘My mother never knew— She didn’t know that we knew each other five years ago. I—I never told anyone about—about that evening you drove me home from the gallery.’
‘The evening I kissed you.’
She grimaced. ‘I’m surprised you even remember that.’
‘It was too memorable to ever forget,’ he assured gruffly.
Bryn looked at him sharply. ‘I somehow doubt that very much.’
Gabriel looked straight back at her with hot, glittering eyes. ‘The timing was all wrong, the circumstances impossible, but even then I wanted to do so much more than kiss you.’
‘I— You did?’ She was totally flustered by his admission.
He shrugged. ‘I was attracted to you then. I’m attracted to you now.’
Bryn gave a scathing snort. ‘Five years ago I was a chubby and gauche teenager wearing heavy-framed glasses.’ And this man had been lean and sophisticated, with the same dark and wicked good looks that still took her breath away.
He nodded. ‘And now you’re sleek and elegant, and I’m guessing you wear contact lenses?’
She nodded distractedly. ‘Except for when I paint, when I prefer to wear the glasses you returned to me last week.’
‘You weren’t chubby five years ago, Bryn, you were voluptuous,’ he assured her earnestly. ‘And your eyes were just as stunningly beautiful behind those glasses as they are tonight.’
She gave a dismissive shake of her head. ‘We’re veering off the subject, Gabriel.’
‘Which is?’
‘That just thinking about the distress it would cause my mother if I were to tell her I’ve met you again now, let alone this—this attraction, between us, is the very reason why it can’t continue.’
Gabriel looked up. ‘You can’t possibly know how your mother would react.’
Bryn frowned her impatience. ‘Get real, Gabriel, and try to imagine how that conversation would go. “Oh, by the way, Mum, guess who I almost had sex with a couple nights ago. Gabriel D’Angelo. How weird is that?”’
Gabriel drew in a sharp breath before pushing up onto his feet to pick up his glass of wine, taking a sip before answering her, knowing Bryn was now spoiling for a fight—probably as her way of putting an end to this situation. But he wasn’t about to give it to her, wasn’t about to make any of this easy for her after the week of uncertainty he had just suffered through. ‘We didn’t have sex, Bryn, although we came very close, and, as I said, the location could have been a little more...conventional, but I’m pretty sure there was nothing in the least “weird” about anything we did together.’
Those two wings of colour deepened in her cheeks as she looked up at him with overbright eyes. ‘You won’t even try to see this from my point of view, will you?’
His jaw tightened. ‘I’m not inclined to let you walk away from me just because you think your mother might react badly to knowing about the two of us, no.’
‘How about if I walk away because I’m reacting badly to just the idea of the two of us together?’
His eyes narrowed. ‘And are you?’
‘Yes!’
‘Why?’
She gave an exasperated shake of her head. ‘Gabriel, I know you to be an intelligent man—’
‘Thank you,’ he drawled dryly.
‘And as an intelligent man,’ she continued firmly, ‘you must know how impossible this whole situation is. For goodness’ sake, my father went to prison for attempting to defraud you and your family,’ she added impatiently when he made no response.
‘I’m well aware of what happened five years ago.’ He nodded grimly.
‘Then you must also be aware— You must have issues of your own about that situation.’
‘I deeply regret that I was in the wrong place at the wrong time,’ he conceded impatiently. ‘But it was sheer coincidence your father chose to bring his painting to Archangel, even more so that I, rather than Michael or Raphael, happened to be in charge of the London gallery when he did.’ Something Gabriel had also long had reason to regret.
Except he would never have met Bryn five years ago if not for her father’s greed.
She blinked long lashes. ‘And you’re saying you don’t have a problem with that? With the fact that I’m William Harper’s daughter?’
‘Of course I have a problem with that.’ Gabriel swallowed the rest of his wine before placing the empty glass down on the coffee table. ‘At the very least it’s inconvenient—’
‘Inconvenient!’ Bryn echoed incredulously.
He nodded. ‘Because the past is affecting how you feel about the two of us now.’
Bryn no longer knew how she felt about the past, let alone the here and now.
Five years ago she had been devastated by her father’s trial and imprisonment. A month ago she had still been resentful of Gabriel D’Angelo’s part in her father’s downfall. Even a week ago she had been disgusted with herself for allowing herself to respond to Gabriel in the way that she had.
But Gabriel was asking how she felt about that now.
She was still devastated by the events of the past, but the talk she’d had with her mother last week, the things Mary had told her about the deterioration of her marriage, her daily uncertainty of her own and her daughter’s future, how she believed William’s get-rich-quick
