Eva breathed softly. ‘I— How did you get this?’
‘The same way every other lucky person at the E J Foster exhibition in London eighteen months ago acquired their own exclusive photograph—I bought it,’ Michael stated with satisfaction, remembering how he had been drawn to this image that evening. He had been determined, compelled, to own it.
He’d had no idea he would one day meet the photographer under such unusual circumstances.
‘You weren’t at the gallery that evening...?’ If she had been Michael would have made a point of being introduced to her. And, in view of his attraction to her now, it was anyone’s guess where that introduction might have led...
She drew in a sharp breath. ‘No. I— It was the night of my parents’ car accident.’ She gave a shake of her head. ‘They were on their way to the exhibition when another car went through a red light and hit them head-on. They were both killed instantly. The exhibition didn’t seem important after that.’
‘God, I’m sorry...’ Fate, it seemed, had found a cruel way to intercede in the two of them not meeting before now.
‘That was the first, and last, exhibition of my work,’ Eva acknowledged wistfully.
‘Why?’
She smiled ruefully as she shrugged. ‘Life—and obviously death—got in the way.’
Michael nodded. ‘Your parents, then the twins and your sister.’
‘Yes.’
‘You said you were out of the country when Rachel discovered she was pregnant...?’
‘Tibet,’ Eva confirmed.
‘Photographing for another exhibition?’
‘Yes,’ she sighed.
‘An exhibition that never happened.’
‘No.’ Eva still had the photographs on her camera, but hadn’t had the time, or the inclination, to do anything with them since returning to England.
And she now found it weird, too uncomfortably strange, that Michael D’Angelo, of all people, should have one of her earlier photographs displayed on his bedroom wall. She couldn’t even attempt to dismiss or make light of it.
Stranger still that Michael had sensed, known, there was more to the photograph than could be seen with the naked eye...
It was an intuition, a sensitivity, she would never have expected from the coldly brisk businessman she had met at Archangel that first morning, in his expensive tailored suit, silk shirt and soft Italian leather shoes.
The same man who had initially treated her with such suspicion, and who still didn’t trust her not to bring shock waves of scandal to his family, simply because she could. To the point that Michael had preferred to invite her and the twins to invade his own personal space, namely this Parisian apartment, rather than allow her to return to England before he’d had the opportunity to confirm or deny her claim by speaking to his brother Rafe.
That man, that coldly aloof and arrogantly forceful man, had exhibited none of the inner sensitivity Michael had revealed to her these past two days, and had just reinforced, by his complete understanding of one of her African photographs...
Because, as Eva had come to realise, Michael D’Angelo was a man of many layers. Layers she now suspected he had deliberately put in place in order to guard himself and his emotions. She had no idea what—or possibly who—had caused this reaction in him, only knew that they were layers he allowed very few, if any, to peel away to reveal the sensitive man hidden beneath.
No doubt his family knew the real Michael.
And the twins, in their innocence, had recognised, had known instinctively from the beginning, the emotionally sensitive man that lay beneath that outer veneer of cold urbanity, and they had been drawn to him, had trusted him.
Eva would have preferred, it would have been safer, if she had never so much as glimpsed that man beneath those layers...
Because she was far too aware of Michael already. Against her will—her loyalty to her sister—she had found him overpoweringly attractive as the co-owner of the Archangel galleries, dressed in his dark and exquisitely tailored business suits. But she found him even more so in the casual T-shirts and faded denims he changed into in the evenings, both emphasising the lean strength of his body, while at the same time doing nothing to diminish the leashed sensuality of the man wearing those clothes.
‘I had always assumed E J Foster was a man.’
Eva turned to him in surprise. ‘Why?’
‘I have no idea,’ he acknowledged gruffly, eyes glittering darkly as he continued to look up at the photograph rather than at Eva. ‘I really should have known... It’s so obvious to me now that a woman took this photograph,’ he added ruefully. ‘It’s there, in the gentle way the fading light picks up the darkness of the baby’s eyes as its head rests tiredly against its mother’s shoulder, in the smooth turn of the mother’s cheek as she gazes up at the lioness with its own cub. I believe a man would have concentrated on the majesty of the lioness and cub, rather than the more gentle beauty and calm of the mother and her baby.’
Eva felt slightly...unnerved—very unnerved!—by this further example of Michael’s insight into what her feelings had been that evening in Africa, because those had been exactly her emotions as she photographed the woman and lioness. And Michael had known that just from looking at the photograph. So much so that he had wanted to own it...
Her discomfort, her awareness of him, in this dimly lit bedroom, increased exponentially.
It was so quiet in this part of the apartment, no sound of traffic or people, just the soft sound of their joint breathing, and the dim lighting to add to the air of intimacy.
An intimacy Eva knew she desperately needed to break—before she did something incredibly stupid!
In fact, now would definitely be a good time for one of the twins to cry out for attention!
No such luck, she realised, as the rest of the apartment outside this bedroom remained completely, eerily, silent...
Eva moved abruptly to look at the second illuminated frame, frowning as she found herself looking up at a painting of a single red rose. A dying rose, the blood-red petals falling softly down onto the base of the canvas. ‘This painting is...’ She broke off, lost for words as to both the poignant beauty and starkness of the subject of the painting.
‘Allegorical,’ Michael provided huskily.
‘Yes.’ Eva nodded, having known immediately that the painting represented so much more than the dying of that beautiful, perfect rose.
Just as she knew that the death of the rose would represent different things to different people. In some, the death of hopes. In others, dreams. And to many, love...
The question was, which of those things did it represent to Michael, a man Eva hadn’t initially believed to be capable of any of those softer feelings, but had come to see differently?
He was a wealthy and successful businessman, so she very much doubted that he had any unfulfilled hopes and dreams in the professional side of his life.
Which left his personal life, and the possible death of love. Or perhaps trust...? Which would go a long way to explain his distrust of her initially, a distrust she had realised was slowly fading...
Michael was still single. And completely unattached romantically? Eva had never thought to ask! Had he once hoped for more? Had he loved and lost, a loss this painting represented to him?
Eva couldn’t imagine any woman wanting to walk away from the intensity of emotions she was now so sure Michael was capable of feeling.
So perhaps it wasn’t the painting itself, but the artist, that meant something to him?
‘Bryn Jones.’ She read the name of that artist in the bottom right corner of the painting. ‘I saw pictures of some of the pieces from her exhibition online. She’s an amazing new artist, isn’t she?’ And perhaps meant more than that to Michael?
‘And my sister-in-law,
’ he provided huskily. ‘Bryn is now married to my youngest brother Gabriel,’ he added as Eva looked at him curiously.
‘Oh.’ Eva frowned as that theory crashed and burned. ‘It’s...a beautiful painting.’
Michael chuckled. ‘But sad,’ he acknowledged wryly. ‘So very sad...’
‘Yes.’ What else could she say? It was a sad painting. Very much so. And a reflection of Michael’s own inner emotions? Of his disillusionment, with life or love? Or possibly both?
Eva would much rather not think of Michael in that way. Much preferred to keep him at arm’s length, emotionally as well as physically, rather than finding herself, as she now believed she did, understanding the emotional man that lay beneath that outer veneer of cold severity.
A veneer that Eva found she saw less and less the more time she spent in Michael’s company...
‘Bryn tells me she’s painting its opposite—a red rose in full bloom—for her next exhibition,’ he revealed.
Eva arched dark brows. ‘In the hopes you’ll buy it?’
‘Apparently not.’ He gave a rueful shake of his head. ‘The painting will make an appearance at the exhibition, but it won’t be for sale; Bryn insists on giving it to me as a gift. In the hope, she says, that it will help me to eventually see and feel love the way she and Gabriel do.’ He grimaced. ‘It’s a little sickening to hear someone as lovely as Bryn talking about my little brother in those terms!’
And Michael, Eva realised shrewdly, with that last remark, was deliberately deflecting the conversation away from what his first comment had revealed...
Michael had once loved and lost, Eva acknowledged uncomfortably. It might have been many years ago, rather than recently, but Eva had no doubt that an artist of Bryn Jones’ calibre would also have been able to see, as she now did, the man beneath that outer shell of cold aloofness. A veneer he had chosen to adopt because of that lost love?
It was significant, Eva thought, that Michael kept the painting in the privacy of his bedroom rather than on public view in any of the main rooms of the apartment.
As he did her African photograph...
Eva felt another quiver of awareness down the length of her spine, an increase in the tension in the air, at the intimacy of knowing Michael kept one of her photographs on the wall of his bedroom. She had always felt that all of her photographs were a part, an extension, of herself. And it was a little unnerving to know that all this time Michael would have looked at this particular photograph on a daily—and nightly—basis!
Of course he wouldn’t, she instantly chastised herself. Not only was Michael a businessman, which meant he no doubt considered both the painting and the photograph as investments, but he had told her himself that he and his two brothers rotated the management of the three Archangel galleries, here, New York and in London. Which meant that Michael would only be in Paris for a maximum of four months a year—
‘The painting and the photograph travel on the D’Angelo plane with me wherever I live,’ he said huskily.
Eva frowned her impatience as she turned. ‘Why did you tell me that?’ she snapped irritably.
Because Michael had been able to see, to know, the thoughts that had been running around in Eva’s beautiful head just now. Because all of Eva’s thoughts, and her emotions, were becoming easier for him to read.
And a few minutes ago she had definitely been in the process of putting both Bryn’s painting, and her own photograph, in a neat little box, no doubt marked ‘Michael D’Angelo’s investments’!
Oh, there was no doubting that the painting and photograph could both be classed as investments; they just meant so much more to him than that, to a degree that Michael knew he would never sell either one of them.
To have now realised, to know, that Eva was E J Foster, the photographer of ‘Harmony’, was...unsettling, to say the least.
Michael had attended the exhibition of E J Foster’s photographs that night eighteen months ago without too much hope of finding anything to interest him. His acceptance of the invitation had been more of a courtesy to a fellow gallery-owner than anything else. Photography wasn’t a medium that had ever particularly meant anything to Michael. It had certainly never touched him emotionally, the way a painting or sculpture could.
He had been impressed by the E J Foster photographs at first glance, and totally hooked the moment his eye had caught ‘Harmony’. Had felt himself being drawn into the photograph, along with an instant affinity with the raw emotion and majesty of the subject.
And the photographer?
Perhaps.
But until this evening Michael had assumed that E J Foster was a man, allowing his own emotions to be centred on the photograph rather than the photographer. To now know that Eva was that ‘man’, and the history behind the photograph, a history he had only been able to guess at before this evening, somehow now seemed to give Michael that same affinity with her...
‘Michael...?’
He looked at Eva through narrowed lids, his breath catching in his throat, his pulse pounding loudly, as he saw how beautiful she looked in the dimmed lighting of his bedroom, her eyes a deep and drowning purple.
It had been a serious mistake to bring her to his bedroom at all, Michael now realised as another part of his anatomy began to pulse and harden to the heated rhythm of the blood that now pounded through his veins as he found himself captured, ensnared, by those deep purple wells of emotion.
Deep purple wells of desire?
The same desire that now held Michael in its thrall?
Eva could almost feel, touch, the intensifying, the thickening of the air as it now seemed to still about them, as she and Michael continued to stare at each other in the semi-darkness of his bedroom, only the light spilling in from the hallway and over the two picture frames to illuminate the room.
Eva barely felt able to breathe, certainly couldn’t look away, or move so much as a finger in protest, as Michael’s gaze continued to hold hers and his head slowly began to lower towards hers.
Her heart leapt in her chest, electricity now charging the air about them as she felt the first, exploratory, questioning touch of those chiselled lips against her own, before they hardened, taking control, as Michael obviously felt her response.
Eva’s hands moved up to grasp onto the broadness of Michael’s shoulders as her knees went suddenly weak, instantly feeling the heat of the hard flesh beneath her fingers, and the muscled strength of Michael’s chest as his arms moved about her waist and he pulled her in closer against him.
She groaned low in her throat even as her lips parted to the moist and rasping brush of Michael’s tongue, that marauding tongue instantly seeking, exploring, the heat of her mouth as he held her even closer, making Eva fully aware of the throbbing heat and fullness of his arousal as it pulsed long and thick against her abdomen.
It was a desire Eva knew she felt too as her breasts swelled with arousal, the nipples becoming hard and aching berries as that heat now swelled, dampened, between her thighs, her whole body on fire with need as she returned the intensity of Michael’s kisses.
Heated kisses that deepened, grew hungrier still, as Eva felt the warmth of Michael’s hand against the bare flesh of her abdomen beneath her T-shirt, moving slowly and caressingly upwards, until that hand cupped the fullness of her breast, the soft pad of Michael’s thumb a soft caress against the aching tip.
Eva wrenched her mouth from Michael’s in a gasp, her throat arching as the heat of his mouth trailed across her cheek to the sensitive column of her throat, and then lower still as he pushed up the barrier of her T-shirt before taking the fullness of her nipple into the heat of his mouth, suckling deeply even as his tongue moved in a rough and sensuous rasp across the plump nipple.
Eva’s knees threatened to buckle as desire coursed through her body in hot, pulsing waves, her fingers b
ecoming entangled in the dark thickness of his hair as between her thighs swelled, ached, moistened in invitation, Eva needing, wanting more.
And Michael gave her more as he transferred the attention of his mouth and tongue to her other breast, the v between her thighs becoming an urgent needing throb as his hand moved down to cup her there.
‘I need—oh, God, I need—Michael...?’
‘Do you trust me to know, to give you what you need, Eva?’ Michael groaned urgently.
‘Yes...! Just— Please!’ She was going out of her mind with desire, with aching need, had to have relief from the pleasure that now surged and swelled inside her in hot and consuming waves.
Michael’s lips and tongue returned to caressing and suckling her sensitive breast as he curled one arm about her shoulders, the other beneath her knees, before he lifted her up into his arms and carried her over to the bed, placing her gently down on top of it before joining her there.
He moved up on his knees between her parted thighs as he pulled her T-shirt up and over her head before throwing it to one side as he then feasted his eyes on the bareness of her breasts. Full and swollen mounds that fitted perfectly into the palms of his hands as he cupped them, and tipped by deep rose-coloured and engorged nipples.
Michael’s gaze held Eva’s as he slowly lowered his head to suckle first one nipple and then the other, knowing he had never tasted anything so exquisite; her skin was so soft, and tasted of warmed honey.
It was a taste he could all too easily become addicted to!
He continued to hold Eva’s gaze as he kissed down the leanness of her abdomen, her eyes dark and glittering between sooty lashes, her cheeks flushed, her lips red and moistly swollen from their earlier kisses.
Would those lips between her thighs be as swollen, as red, as glistening with that same arousal? Would they have the same honey taste?
Michael ached to know!
A D'Angelo Like No Other Page 9