After Their Vows

What was it Roque had said during one of their fights about her brother? ‘You are in danger of creating a life-wasting lout if you don’t stop it.’

Well, that damning prediction had come true with a vengeance, Angie saw—only to toss that aside again with a stubborn shake of her head. For what gave Roque the right to criticise the way she’d handled a rebellious teenager when his own privileged upbringing had given him everything he wanted at the nod of his handsome dark head?

Alex had been only seventeen when she’d first met Roque, still attending boarding school and reliant on her for everything. Falling in love had not been an option she could afford to let happen—yet she’d been unable to stop herself from falling for Roque. And what Roque wanted Roque got, by sheer single-minded force of will—which in Angie’s view put him and Alex in the same selfish club. Between the two of them they had demanded so much from her that sometimes she’d felt stretched so taut in two different directions she’d thought she might actually snap in two.

On one side of her she’d had the brother who’d become such a handful to deal with, skipping lessons to go out on the town with his friends and constantly getting into scrapes, which meant she’d had to travel down to his school in Hampshire to deal with the inevitable fall-out. Then there’d been Roque on the other side, angry with her for pandering to her brother’s every whim.

But at least she’d felt vindicated when Alex won a place at Cambridge. He hadn’t achieved that by spending every night out on the town. And he’d settled into university life over the last year without giving her very much grief.

Then she shook her head—because Alex hadn’t settled down at all, had he? He’d just hidden it from her that he was still doing exactly what he wanted to do—even if that meant sneaking around her flat and stealing credit cards to pay for his excesses.

‘I hate him,’ Alex said, with no idea what his sister was thinking. ‘It would’ve served him right if I’d gone on a real bender and completely cleaned him out. I should’ve bought a yacht or two, or a private plane like his to fly myself around in, instead of sitting in my room at uni spending his rotten money before he found out it was me doing the—’

Alex snapped his mouth shut, leaving the rest of what he had been going to say to slam around the room like a clap of thunder.

Angie shot to her feet.

‘Finish that,’ she shook out.

Biting out a curse, her brother lifted a hand and grabbed the back of his neck. ‘Roque came to see me on campus today,’ he confessed. ‘He called me a weak, thieving wimp and threatened to break my neck if I didn’t—’ He stopped, clearly deciding to swallow down the rest of the insults Roque must have thrown at him. ‘The bottom line is,’ he went on huskily, ‘he wants his money back, and he told me that if I don’t give it to him he’s going to take the matter to the police.’

The police—? Angie sat down again.

‘Now I’m scared, because I don’t think he was bluffing. In fact I know that he wasn’t.’

So did Angie. Roque did not make threats unless he was prepared to carry them through—as she’d discovered in the hardest way there was.

Bitterness suddenly grabbed at her insides, burning a hole in her ability to hold back from recalling that final showdown, when she and Roque had stood toe to toe like mortal enemies instead of loving husband and wife.

‘I am warning you, Angie, go chasing off to your brother’s aid this time and I will find someone else to take your place tonight. ‘

She’d gone. He’d found Nadia. Marriage over.

Pulling back from where those memories wanted to suck her, Angie sat back in the chair. ‘So, how does he expect you to pay him back?’ she asked heavily, already suspecting what was coming before her brother loped over to the table and produced something from the back pocket of his jeans.

‘He said to give you this …’

He was holding out a business card, which he set down on the table in front of Angie. Looking down at it, she saw ‘Roque Agostinho de Calvhos,’ printed in elegant black script below the de Calvhos family crest, which crowned just about everything in Roque’s world— from his high-end international investment empire to some of the finest vineyards in his native Portugal and vast tracts of inherited land in Brazil.

‘He wrote something on the back,’ her brother indicated awkwardly.

Reaching out, Angie flipped the card over with a set of ice-cold fingers. ‘Eight o’clock. The apartment. Don’t be late,’ Roque had scrawled there.

If she’d had it in her Angie would have scratched out a dry, mocking laugh.

The underscored don’t was the ultimate command from a man who’d grown very intimate with her most besetting sin—an innate lack of good time-keeping. She’d kept him waiting at airports and restaurants. She’d kept him kicking his heels in their apartment while she rushed around like a headless chicken, getting ready to go out. She caught a sudden sharp glimpse of him waiting for her, looking tall, dark and fabulously turned out for a night at the theatre, lounging stretched out in a chair with his eyes closed, his silky black eyelashes resting against his high-sculpted cheekbones, his wide, full and sensual mouth wearing the look of long-suffering patience he could pull off with such excruciating effect.

He’d lost all patience with her, and perhaps she’d deserved it, Angie acknowledged—but enough to send him into the arms of another woman?

And not just any woman, his ex woman.

‘Will you go and see him? ‘

Having to blink to bring herself back from where she had gone off to, Angie swallowed thickly and gave a nod of her head.

‘Thanks.’ Her brother heaved in a long breath. ‘I knew you wouldn’t let me down.’

So did Roque, thought Angie.

‘Look …’ Alex shuffled his feet. ‘It’s already seven o’clock, so I’ll go now, sh-shall I? So you can—get ready …’

Desperate to escape now he’d done what he’d come here to do, Alex was already heading for the door when Angie stopped him.

‘The credit card?’ she prompted. ‘Where is it?’

She watched his shoulders give a wincing twitch. ‘Roque took it.’

‘Good,’ Angie murmured, and watched him flinch again as her meaning struck home.

Alex now knew he had lost her trust in him. Her home had always been his home—he had his own bedroom here, his own key. He’d had the same things at the apartment she’d shared with Roque. He was family. You should be able to trust family.

As if he knew what she was thinking, Alex twisted round to aim her a glancing look of remorse. ‘I really— really am sorry, Angie,’ he husked out painfully. ‘I’m sorry for all of it—but especially for dropping this part on to you.’

He’d done that because he had no other option. He’d done it because she’d always been there to fight his battles for him.

‘I promise you on my life I won’t ever do anything like this again.’

Looking up at him, Angie saw their father’s hair and nose and their mother’s eyes and mouth. The aching urge to just get up and go over there to hug him, reassure him that everything was going to be okay, almost got the better of her. But for the first time since she’d taken responsibility for him she controlled the urge.

‘I’ll call you later,’ was all she said, and after a few more seconds of helpless hovering he turned and slunk away, leaving her alone with Roque’s business card and that oh-so brief message to stare at.

Eight o’clock. The apartment. Don’t be late.

Angie felt a pang of wry appreciation for his slick, short way of getting his message across. She wasn’t a fool. She knew the divorce papers would have landed on Mark Lander’s desk today, and this was Roque’s response to them—with her brother sent along to deliver it and add a bit of clout.

A lot of clout, she extended.

Eight o’clock. The apartment. Don’t be late …

Angie drew in a deep, fortifying breath. Well, she could do that, she told herself, aware that she really didn’t have a choice. However, she would not be turning up in the role of a wimpy victim Roque was expecting to see, she determined grimly as she rose to her feet. Her brother might see her as a pathetic creature with all the stuffing knocked out of her, but she was not and would never be that feeble! She’d spent too many years fighting her own battles to let fear of what Roque could do to Alex grind her to a quivering pulp now.

On that bracing reminder, Angie tossed her hair back over her narrow shoulders and stepped across the kitchen to catch up her bag. A minute later she was standing in her hall, dragging on her coat as she followed her brother out of the door.

CHAPTER TWO

FRESH from the shower, Roque took a call from the lobby informing him that his wife had arrived in the building with a flicker of surprise.

She was half an hour early.