After Their Vows

by Michelle Reid

  She knew exactly where she was heading, so she made the long lines of dark teak flooring her runway. It was like falling off a bike, she discovered. Once you got back on the rest came naturally—even down to blocking her audience out.

  Roque followed the long graceful glide of her body as she walked towards him. He knew what she was doing. He’d been handed this kind of treatment before. Angie could be irritatingly focused when she wanted to be, infuriatingly stubborn and tough. Once he had dared to believe he was marrying a sweet and innocently naive lost creature. A lonely child trapped inside a woman’s body because she’d never given herself the chance to properly grow up and taste life. He’d soon learnt that the stubborn child in Angie had a grip of steel. The simple truth of it was she didn’t want to be anything other than what she was.

  Except in his bed, he reminded himself. In his bed, in his arms, she lost the will to fight him on every level—and so fast it was like watching driftwood catching light.

  On that grim reminder as to where he intended this evening to end up, Roque allowed his gaze to drift over her again. She was wearing a short black raincoat, tightly cinched to her waist, and her amazing long legs were sheathed in matt black. She had on a pair of flat black ballet shoes that did nothing to diminish her elegant height, and a bright green bag he had not noticed before swung from one shoulder—one of those extravagantly sized bags that were the fashion right now, which she kept crushed to her side with a taut elbow as she walked.

  The temptation to reach out and take it from her as she levelled with him curled his fingers into a light fist. The urge to pull her to a stop by placing his hands on her shoulders and then spin her around to make her acknowledge him properly stung like an itch he could not scratch. But he was curious as to what she thought she was up to, arriving early and then just walking past him as if she was the one of them in control here.

  So, instead of spoiling her frankly impressive entrance, he turned to follow in her wake.

  Angie cut a weaving line through the different cleverly designed living areas. She did not glance at the fabulous view to be enjoyed through the wall-to-wall windows. She did not glance up at the mezzanine gallery where the bedroom suites were situated. She was heading for the only room down here to have a solid door guarding it.

  Roque’s study.

  Her soft mouth set like a clamp as she turned the handle and pushed the door open, then felt an aching squeeze of emotion challenge her composure as she took the first step into what she’d always thought of as his domain.

  Everything in this room was as tastefully designed as the rest of this vast place, but in here was Roque’s personal stamp. A telltale glimpse at the deeply serious side to his complex personality displayed in the rows of lovingly collected first edition books lining the rows of shelving, and the heavy black leather recliner on which he liked to stretch out to read.

  The only television set in the whole apartment rested wafer-thin and flat against a wall of burnt orange. Beneath it spread all the technology required to make it and his complex music system feed sound throughout the whole apartment. Then, of course, the usual computer and communication equipment had a place, as you would expect of a man as internationally structured as him.

  But the desk—the big, hand-carved antique desk made of rich dark colonial rosewood he’d had shipped here from his family estate—stood dead centre of everything, making a major statement about his proud Portuguese roots. He could spend hours sitting at that desk, working with a concentration Angie had used to find unfathomably sexy. The cut of his wide shoulders as he leant forward, the sheen of light across his bent head, and his strong, handsome features etched by a depth of concentration that she.

  Angie sucked in a breath, not wanting to go there. Not wanting to recall anything intimate about their time spent here together or the fact that there were times when they’d actually existed here in peace.

  Yet, right on the back of that desire not to remember, she saw herself, curled up in his recliner with her cheek supported on a cushion she’d filched from a living room sofa, slender white fingers idly twirling a ringlet of hair while she read one of her own meagre assortment of books.

  Contentment … Her throat began to hurt. Bare pink toes curling and uncurling in time with the music playing softly in the background. A glass of wine and a snack within lazy reaching distance and her handsome dark man pooled in the desk light only a couple of metres away.

  Her eyes dared to glaze with moisture for a second. Then she winked it away, drew in a breath, and made herself walk over to the desk.

  She heard Roque pause in the doorway. The silence between them buzzed. He was curious, she knew that, waiting to discover what had brought her in here before he made any kind of comment.

  But that was Roque—a master of strategic timing, Angie thought dryly as she set her bag down on the top of his desk, then began rummaging inside its capacious depths with a frowning ferocity that helped to keep her focused.

  ‘Okay, I will bite,’ he drawled lazily. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘You should have known to lay off my brother,’ Angie responded. ‘You know you don’t have a single leg to stand on by threatening him with the police, because that credit card was mine.’

  ‘Linked to my personal bank account,’ he confirmed, moving closer.

  ‘Then you only have yourself to blame if you don’t like what I did with it. A wiser man would have cancelled it the same day I walked out.’

  ‘Strange,’ Roque said, ‘but I had this rather touching image of you cutting it into little pieces and then depositing the bits—ceremonially, of course—into some fiery hot furnace.’

  Angie paused over what she was doing to wonder why she hadn’t thought of doing exactly that, instead of shutting the card away in a drawer.

  ‘Well, I didn’t,’ she said, ‘and now you know why I didn’t.’

  He arrived at her side to settle the lean cut of his hips against the edge of the desk. ‘Are you telling me that you gave your brother permission to squander my money?’

  Refusing to so much as glance at him, Angie returned to hunting through the assortment of things she kept in her bag while she fought a fierce battle with herself over giving him the honest answer or—

  ‘Yes,’ she forced out.

  ‘Liar.’ He sighed in disappointment. ‘We both know that you would rather pluck out your fingernails than hand over a credit card to your greedy brother.’ Reaching up, he gently brushed a twisting length of hair back from her smooth cheek. ‘You are one of those rare creations—an honest person, Angie,’ he murmured, grimacing when she flinched away from his touch. ‘I recall a time when you even made me drive you back into the centre of Lisbon because some shop assistant had overpaid you ten euros in your change. How many people do you think bother to do that, meu querida? Even honest people?’

  Fingers closing around her chequebook, Angie drew it out of her bag, ‘You move in the wrong circles,’ she countered. ‘You want to try working in a shop—then you would know how that poor assistant would have had to make up the shortfall from her own purse if I hadn’t made the effort to take it back.’

  ‘However, as you informed me at the time, I am too rich to know how the real world works.’

  ‘Look …’ She turned her face to spear him a fierce look. ‘I was the one that played the stockmarkets, okay?’

  Eyes of a disturbingly fathomless black held hers steady. ‘That makes it two lies you’ve told me.’

  Angie tugged in a breath. ‘I decided it was time I made you pay for the months of hell I endured being your stupid blind wife.’

  ‘Blind? ‘ he echoed musingly, indecently long eyelashes lowering slightly. ‘Mmm,’ he confirmed, ‘very blind.’

  Angie looked away from him, feeling hot suddenly, and agitated when she’d been so determined to feel nothing at all. Pushing her bag to one side, she spied Roque’s fountain pen lying on his blotter and reached for it. Aware that he was watching her every
move, she opened the chequebook and bent over it to write.

  What happened next threw her totally. In her own way she had been so fixed on what she intended to do that she had not given a thought as to how Roque might react. So his hand suddenly arriving to grasp her wrist, long brown fingers closing like a clamp and then tightening their grip, surprised her into uttering a sharp squeaking gasp.

  ‘Drop the pen,’ he gritted.

  Angie’s fingers tightened in direct objection to his command. ‘I was just—’

  ‘I know what you were doing,’ he cut in thinly. ‘And I, as you see, am stopping you. So drop the pen, Angie.’

  When she still refused to comply, the air left his lungs on a hiss. In a smooth snaking move he had completely surrounded her with his hard body as he rose up to swing in behind her, his other hand reaching out to snatch the pen from her, then tossing it away in contempt across the desk.

  ‘Y-you—’

  ‘Shut up,’ he growled.

  Still holding her wrist imprisoned, he picked up her chequebook next, so he could read what she’d managed to write. Another hiss of anger shot from him, making Angie quiver, because his warm breath had seared across her already burning cheek.

  She gave a yank of her wrist and managed to free it, then spun around to glare at him. ‘I’m not into cavemen!’

  ‘My apologies.’ He took a step back.

  Her heart was thumping heavily and her breathing was clipped short. There was a terrible quiver going on inside her and— ‘Then what was all that about?’ she shook out.

  Roque was still frowning at her hurried scribble, all hint of lazy humour wiped clean from his face. He threw out a few tart lucid curses, tossed the chequebook back down on the desk, then spun on his heel to pace away from her like a big prowling cat spoiling for a good fight.

  Jerking up her hand to rub at her wrist where it still burned and tingled, Angie watched him warily, still feeling shaken and really uncertain of her ground now— because she had seen Roque angry before but never like this.

  ‘Twenty damn thousand,’ she heard him mutter, as if the sum was an insult.

  ‘It’s all I have right now!’ she cried out. ‘I mean to pay you the rest when—when I can. I just need—’

  ‘It is not your debt, Angie!’ He swung round on her forcefully.

  Green eyes shimmered, ‘What does it matter to you so long as you get your money back?’

  Roque scowled, his black satin eyebrows fusing together across the bridge of his long, thin flaring nose. ‘I did not allow for this,’ he muttered.

  ‘Allow for what?’ Angie demanded in bewilderment. ‘That I might still have some money of my own left?’

  ‘And this is it? ‘ The look he seared her brought her lips together with a tingling tremor of a snap. ‘Twenty lousy thousand is all you have left from your modelling days? Where has the rest gone, Angie?’ He strode back towards her in a way that sent her sinking backwards against the desk, but all he did was stop in front of her. ‘You were earning big money when I met you. The kind of money even your high-maintenance brother could not spend, given the chance.’

  Angie moved a narrow shoulder. ‘I b-bought my f-flat—’

  ‘Cash?’ he fired at her.

  Having found her dry lips had stuck together, Angie nodded.

  ‘Cash …’ Roque made a sound of disgust. ‘Only you would hand over that amount of money in cash!’

  ‘At least I did not go into debt, like most people do.’ She defended her strict principles.

  Like a man unsure what he wanted to do next, Roque swung away again—only to swing straight back, catching Angie out so that she blinked.

  ‘No, you don’t have a clue what it is like to go into debt, do you? Which is why you believed you could stroll in here like a holier-than-thou prima donna and calmly hand me an instalment on your stupid brother’s debt and it would make everything all right!’

  ‘I am not playing the prima donna!’ Angie protested.

  His expressive eyebrows rose to a sardonic arch. ‘Enter the betrayed wife, with her beautiful chin held up high and her sensational green eyes turned to ice. “I have nothing to say to you, Roque.’” He gave a wincingly good mimic of her cool boarding school accent, bringing an uncomfortable flush to Angie’s cheeks. ‘I was then treated to that fabulous supermodel walk through the apartment, the long sexy glide and the sizzling fire hair aimed to hook me into following you like a panting puppy dog—’

  ‘A puppy dog?’ She was glad to get her teeth into something. ‘You were never anyone’s panting puppy dog, Roque. You came into this world a fully grown, womanising wolf! ‘

  In a totally unexpected turn of mood, a shaft of pure amusement spread across his face, and he bared his perfectly even flashing white teeth, then uttered a low, sexy growl in response.

  Angie received that growl with a burst of indignant fury which set her eyes sparking and her slender body tensing away from the desk.

  The sting Roque felt hit his loins was hot. She was going to launch a physical attack on him. He could read her like an open book. When he flipped the mood over between them like this she never could resist rising to the bait. Every muscle he possessed went on alert, ready to catch her when she attacked. The inside of his mouth moistened in anticipation, his lips filling with warm pulsing blood.

  He watched her take a step towards him, sensational in anger, so beautiful to look at, and so much his woman he—

  Then he saw her remember, watched her eyes darken and her flushed cheeks wash white. In an abrupt movement she spun back round to face the desk again.

  Disappointment grabbed at every alerted instinct inside him and closed them all down into a single tight clench. Once, just once, he had called her bluff when she’d firmly put her brother between them. If he’d ever wondered what it was like to stumble into a deep black hole of his own damn making then he’d found out that long and miserable night.

  Anger and guilt rolled around Roque’s chest in equal measures, followed by a bitterness that thankfully overshadowed the other two feelings—because the devil if he was going to apologise, he told himself harshly. The devil if he was going to explain himself or the motives of that foolish bitch Nadia now, when it was twelve months too late.

  And this was about Angie’s brother, he reminded himself grimly. Alex—the spoiled, weak, thieving lout.

  Stubborn to the last drop of her hot swirling blood, Angie opened up the chequebook, then stretched across the desk to recover the pen. With a firm scrawl she laid her signature in the appropriate place.

  Angelina de Calvhos … She stared at it, vowing fiercely that it was going to be the very last time she would ever sign that name.

  Then he was right there behind her again like some grim dark power force, reaching for the chequebook again, taking it from her resistant fingers yet again. This time he took it with him as he strode around the desk. With a finality that made Angie choke out a gasp, he opened a drawer and dropped the book into it, then closed the drawer again with a resolute snap.

  Tall, dark, supremely in control of himself, he then lifted his proud dark head. ‘I think we will begin this again from a more formal perspective,’ he intoned coolly.

  Angie snapped her arms across her body to contain the way it wanted to shiver in the sudden chill. ‘Please don’t hurt my brother,’ she begged.

  CHAPTER THREE

  LIKE a man hewn from stone, Roque showed no reaction whatsoever to her quivering climb-down.

  ‘He is a thief.’ He stated it brutally. ‘He stole your identity and committed credit card theft! And he did it with a complete disregard to the amount of money he was stealing from me. How can you, Angie, of all people, want to defend him for doing that?’

  She’d winced all the way through his cold judgement of Alex, but still it did not change a thing she felt. ‘He’s my brother,’ she whispered.

  And there it was, Roque recognised, the unconditional love she had a right to expect her brother to
return in equal measures. But somehow she did not seem to understand that.

  ‘I can pay you back the full amount he st … spent,’ she insisted, with only that small but telling fault in the middle. ‘I will just need a little time to get it.’

  ‘By selling your flat and making yourself homeless?’ Roque was not impressed.

  Neither was Angie. She flared him a scornful look, ‘My flat is worth more than fifty thousand pounds, Roque,’ she informed him. ‘And you already have twenty thousand sitting in that chequebook you’ve just stolen from me and put in that drawer!’

  Fifty … Roque had stopped listening at fifty. His lean face carefully without expression, he added lying wimp to his brother-in-law’s steadily mounting list of sins.

  ‘I’ll—I’ll go back to modelling,’ she explained quickly. ‘I’m still in demand, and Carla keeps on trying to get me to change my mind, so I could earn the rest in—in—’

  The way Roque flung himself across to the plate glass window behind the desk and thrust his hands in his pockets made Angie’s voice slither to a strangled stop. It wasn’t so much that he’d turned his back on what she’d been saying but the way he had done it which filled her with dread.

  When he wanted to, Roque could become chillingly unreachable. And he felt no love for Alex at all. In his view her brother was the main reason why their marriage had fallen apart. He’d refused to understand that in taking on the parental mantle for her brother she had a duty to see her responsibilities to Alex through—even when they intruded an awful lot on their marriage.

  It was just the way things had to be. Teenagers by reputation were rebellious and pushy and difficult. And, okay, so Alex had played up to Roque’s often stinging criticism of him, she conceded, but even that did not change the unalterable fact that standing between the two of them had made her marriage a year-long exhausting fight.

  ‘Please listen to me …’ Angie lowered her stubborn guard because she knew that she had to, her voice trembling as she did so. ‘I can—’