After Their Vows

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.’