to ignore Gabriel’s advice to take his painting and just walk away, had instead informed the press of the painting’s existence, ballooning the situation beyond anyone’s control.
And all of those things put a different slant on that past situation. Bryn had worshipped her father when she was a child, had loved him dearly for the man she had believed him to be. But as an adult she now realised, and was forced to accept, that he had been far from the perfect husband or father.
And, yes, Gabriel had been involved in her father’s being sent to prison, but he hadn’t done it out of spite, had merely, as he had just pointed out, been caught up in the sequence of events created and executed by Bryn’s father, and over which Gabriel himself had no control.
It wasn’t the past, or Gabriel’s involvement in that past, that made a relationship between the two of them so impossible now; it was how Bryn felt about Gabriel.
Five years ago she had been infatuated, utterly mesmerised, by the dark and devastatingly attractive Gabriel D’Angelo. Since meeting him again, sharing intimacies with him that she had never experienced with any other man, she had realised that it hadn’t just been infatuation she had felt for Gabriel five years ago. She had fallen in love with him then, she loved him still, and he—how she felt about him—was why none of the men she had met since had ever held her interest. How could any man compete with Gabriel D’Angelo? Or the fact that Bryn had fallen in love with him all those years ago?
And it was a futile love. Not just because of the past, but because Gabriel, still single at the age of thirty-three, so obviously didn’t do falling in love, let alone for ever.
Oh, he was attracted to her, admitted to desiring her, but that was all he felt, and the only way, the only defence Bryn had left against falling even more in love with Gabriel than she already was, was to continue to use the shield of the events of the past to keep him at arm’s length.
Gabriel watched through narrowed lids as Bryn swung her feet to the carpeted floor before sitting up.
Her expression was one of cool dismissal. ‘I don’t feel anything about the two of us now,’ she told him coldly.
His jaw tightened. ‘That’s not—’
‘Nor do I think it a good idea for us to be alone together like this again,’ she continued firmly. ‘You asked that we talk, Gabriel, and we’ve done that. And I’ve told you exactly how I feel.’ Her chin rose. ‘And if anything I’ve said means you now change your mind about including my paintings in the New Artists Exhibition, then so be it!’ she added challengingly as she stood up.
Gabriel eyed her frustratedly, knowing that Bryn was deliberately shutting him out, but he had no idea how to break through the defences she was deliberately putting up against him. The fact that she felt the need to put up those defences at all was surely telling in itself. In what way, Gabriel couldn’t be sure. And this stubbornly assertive Bryn obviously wasn’t about to enlighten him either.
‘I won’t change my mind, Bryn,’ he assured grimly. ‘About anything.’ He used the same challenging tone she had to him.
She eyed him guardedly. ‘What does that mean?’
Gabriel gave a mocking smile. ‘It means that you don’t know me very well if you think that anything you’ve said tonight means I’m going to just walk away from you. It means,’ he continued firmly as she would have spoken, ‘that, for the two weeks left before the exhibition, I’m going to require that you come to the gallery at least once a day, and that those meetings will be with me, rather than Eric. It means, Bryn, that you can try running away from me, from the attraction between us, but for the next two weeks, at least, I have no intention of allowing you to just ignore me.’
‘Why are you doing this?’ Tears glistened in those dove-grey eyes.
‘Why do you think I’m doing it?’ Gabriel rasped, hating being the cause of those tears, but hating even more the idea of giving up on what he knew was between the two of them. Bryn could fight it all she liked, but her responses to him told him that she wanted him as much as he wanted her.
She made a dismissive gesture with her hands. ‘Probably because you’re the arrogant Gabriel D’Angelo?’ she accused huskily. ‘Because a D’Angelo doesn’t take no for an answer?’ She gave a disgusted shake of her head. ‘Or possibly because you just enjoy torturing me!’
Gabriel’s hands clenched at his sides even as he bared his teeth in a facsimile of a smile. ‘Nice try, Bryn, but I’ve already warned you I’m not backing off because you deliberately insult me.’
‘I’m not—’
‘Yes, you are, Bryn,’ he rasped. ‘And yes, I’m arrogant. Enough so that I don’t intend taking the answer “no” from the woman I know wants me as much as I want her.’
She drew in a sharp breath.
‘You—’
‘Your lips might be saying no, Bryn,’ he continued remorselessly, ‘but the rest of your body, your aroused nipples especially—’ he deliberately lowered his gaze to where those hardened nubs were pressed so noticeably against her black cotton shirt ‘—are definitely saying yes, please!’
Bryn instinctively crossed her arms over her breasts even as she inwardly acknowledged the truth of Gabriel’s claim; she was aroused from the sensual pleasure of having Gabriel’s hands caressing her feet and calves just a few minutes ago, but also because she seemed to be in a constant state of arousal whenever she was in Gabriel’s company.
She only had to look at him, into those sultry dark eyes, at those sculptured kissable lips, the long, lean lines of his utterly masculine body, for her own body to become achingly aroused.
And now Gabriel was suggesting—no, ordering—that she spend at least part of every day for the two weeks before the exhibition in his company.
Her eyes glittered with anger now rather than tears. ‘I don’t even like you very much at this moment, Gabriel.’
He gave another humourless smile as he crossed the distance between them in soft predatory strides. ‘If this is not liking me then long may it continue,’ he scorned harshly as Bryn took those same steps back, until she could go no farther, her spine pressed flush against the wall as she stared up at him. ‘I believe I could become addicted to the way you hate me, Bryn.’ Gabriel’s expression was grim as he once again held her imprisoned by placing his hands on the wall on either side of her head, his dark gaze deliberately holding hers as his head lowered and his mouth claimed hers.
Bryn groaned low in her throat as, after the briefest hesitation, her arms moved up about Gabriel’s shoulders and she met the fierceness of that kiss with a hunger of her own, no room for gentleness as their tongues duelled, Bryn’s fingers becoming entangled in the dark thickness of the hair at Gabriel’s nape as she moved up on tiptoe to curve her body into his. The softness of her breasts pressed against the hard muscles of Gabriel’s chest, her thighs arching as she pressed her mound against the hardness of his arousal, that arousal pulsing in response, growing longer, firmer, as she ground her thighs against his slowly, instinctively seeking that pressure against her hardened nub.
Gabriel wrenched his mouth from hers to hungrily kiss the length of her throat, the tops of her breasts, groaning his frustration as her fastened shirt stopped him from going any lower. A barrier he easily dispensed with by taking hold of both sides of her shirt and simply pulling,
