A D'Angelo Like No Other by Carole Mortimer

lives.
    But Michael was certainly acting very strangely now...
    Nor did she feel in the least reassured when she reluctantly took his hand—a strong and firm hand that swallowed up her much smaller one as he curled his fingers about hers—and he led her out of the kitchen and down the hallway in the direction of the bedrooms.
    His own bedroom, Eva realised as he opened a door at the end of the corridor and flicked on a light switch, illuminating two paintings on the opposite wall, but otherwise leaving the room in darkness.
    Even so Eva could see that the décor was in browns and creams, the carpet a dark chocolate-brown, the drapes at the windows of cream brocade, the four-poster bed a dark and masculine mahogany and draped with the same cream brocade.
    But the added giveaway to this being Michael D’Angelo’s own bedroom was the suit he had been wearing earlier draped over the mahogany chair in front of the masculine dressing table, a pair of highly polished black leather shoes tucked neatly beneath that chair, and a set of gold cufflinks glittering on the dressing-table top.
    Eva instinctively pulled back from entering his obviously personal domain, although she didn’t succeed in freeing her fingers from his. ‘I don’t know what you have in mind, but I think I should warn you that I’m really not— What are you doing?’ she protested as Michael released her hand, only to take a firm hold of her arms and push her further into the bedroom. ‘Michael...?’
    ‘There!’ Michael stood behind her, keeping that light grasp on both her arms as he faced her towards one of the paintings illuminated on the bedroom wall.
    Except it wasn’t a painting.
    There, on Michael D’Angelo’s bedroom wall, was a large, framed, limited edition photograph. A photograph Eva easily recognised. Because she had taken it...

CHAPTER SIX
    I N THE FOREGROUND of the photograph was a young African woman, her baby strapped to her back with a wide strip of coloured material, and above and behind her, silhouetted in the setting sun, was a lioness lying on the flat rock of an escarpment, her cub at her feet. A small gold plaque on the base titled it ‘Harmony’.
    Eva blinked back the tears as the photograph brought back memories of that last evening of her stay in Africa. She had spent over a week at the tribe’s encampment, listening to their stories, and had taken dozens of photographs. But this particular photograph, of the woman and her baby, the lioness and her cub atop that escarpment, she had taken on her last evening there, and it held special meaning for her.
    It represented the harmony of man and nature, living together, each respecting the other’s right to be there. Even if that occasionally led to one or other of them being killed...
    ‘There’s something more to the photograph, isn’t there?’ Michael prompted gruffly, intensely, the photograph affecting him emotionally, as it usually did.
    Eva looked at him sharply. ‘How did you know that?’
    He shrugged broad shoulders. ‘I just did.’
    Moisture dampened her eyes as she nodded before turning back to the photograph. ‘The mother had lost her older child when this same lioness attacked the village a few weeks earlier.’ She spoke in a hushed voice, as Michael had, as if they might disturb the mother or the lioness if they spoke too loudly. ‘The men of the village tracked the lioness down, left her unharmed, but killed one of her two cubs.
    ‘They saw it as balance, that with only one cub to feed the lioness would not be hungry enough to attack their village a second time.’ She gave a shake of her head. ‘I talked to the mother for hours, and, while she deeply mourned her lost child, she harboured no ill will towards the lioness for wanting to nurture her own children, and, as you can see, she felt no fear either. She just accepted the balance, the—the—’
    ‘Harmony,’ Michael murmured softly, appreciatively.
    Eva swallowed. ‘Yes. I don’t think I