A Bargain with the Enemy Read Online Free PDF

replacement bottle right now.’
    He gave an appreciative and throaty chuckle. And instantly threw Bryn into a state of rapid, heart-thumping awareness.
    It had been years since she had seen Gabriel laugh—there had been no room for humour or soft words between them once her father had been arrested!—and the transformation that laughter made to his harshly handsome face reminded her of exactly why she had fallen so hard for him all those years ago.
    She had believed—hoped—that if they should ever meet by chance, she wouldn’t still respond to him like this, but the warmth that now shone in his eyes, the laughter lines beside those eyes and the grooves that had appeared in his chiselled cheeks, along with the flash of straight white teeth between those sculptured and deeply sensual lips, instantly proved how wrong she had been to hope. Gabriel might be sinfully handsome when he wasn’t smiling, but he became lethally so when he was!
    Bryn abruptly averted her gaze to finish drying her face and hands before checking her appearance in the mirror behind the sink—dark shadows beneath tired eyes, pale cheeks, throat slender and vulnerable. A vulnerability she simply couldn’t afford in this man’s presence.
    She took a deep, controlling breath before turning back to face Gabriel. ‘I apologise for my comments earlier, Mr D’Angelo. They were both rude and premature—’
    ‘Stop there, Bryn,’ he interrupted as he straightened. ‘Abject apology doesn’t sit well on your defensive shoulders,’ he explained as she looked at him warily.
    Angry colour rushed back into her cheeks. ‘You could have at least let me finish my apology before mocking me.’
    He was obviously having difficulty holding back another smile as he answered her. ‘As I just said, abject apology doesn’t appear to come naturally to you!’
    She sighed at the deserved rebuke. ‘I apologise once again.’ Bryn didn’t even attempt to meet his mocking gaze now as she instead kept her gaze fixed on the beautiful marble floor. She might know exactly why she harboured such resentment against this man, but as she had guessed—hoped—Gabriel didn’t remember her at all, and she didn’t want to do or say anything that would make him do so either.
    ‘Shall we go and finish our conversation now?’ he prompted briskly. ‘Or do you need to hang over my toilet for a while longer?’
    Bryn gave a pained frown. ‘It was the whisky on top of an empty stomach.’ And the fact that she knew, as did he, that she had prejudged his words without so much as a single hesitation!
    ‘Of course it was,’ Gabriel humoured dryly as he stood aside for Bryn to precede him back into the office, only too well aware that it was her resentment towards him for past deeds that was responsible for her having jumped to the wrong conclusions. ‘And it’s sacrilege to drink single-malt whisky any other way but neat.’
    ‘At that price I can see that it would be, yes,’ he heard Bryn mutter derisively. A mutter he chose to ignore as he instead returned to the reason for her being there in the first place. ‘As I said, you are definitely one of the six candidates to have been chosen for the New Artists Exhibition being held in the gallery next month. Shall we sit down and discuss the details?’ He indicated the comfortable brown leather sofa and chairs arranged about the coffee table in front of those floor-to-ceiling picture windows.
    ‘Of course.’ She noticeably chose to sit in one of the armchairs, rather than on the sofa, before crossing one of her knees neatly over the other and looking up at him questioningly.
    Gabriel didn’t join her immediately, but went to the bar instead to take a bottle of water from the refrigerator, collecting a clean glass as well, then walking back to place them both down on the coffee table in front of her before lowering his length down into the chair opposite hers.
    ‘Thank you,’ she murmured softly, taking the top off the