After Their Vows

Her rings!

If her brother could calmly lift a credit card from her bedside drawer and swan off to use it, then what about the other things she’d stuffed in the drawer with it?

Moving on legs which felt vaguely fluffy now, she stepped away from the table and ran across the apartment into Roque’s study. A few seconds later she was rushing back out again, with her bag swinging from her fingers while she struggled to drag on her coat.

‘Where do you think you’re going?’ Roque demanded.

Angie hovered halfway between the lobby and the table, where he now stood looking like an angry black cloud about to pour down on her head.

‘I … need to go back to my flat.’ Knowing she must look as white as a sheet, because she felt as if she did, she moistened her dry trembling mouth. ‘I think I l-left something on—the cooker. I …’

Lying didn’t come easy to her, and by his face Roque knew she was lying through her chattering white teeth. But she didn’t dare say out loud what she was thinking. She didn’t dare bring her brother’s name back into this.

‘I’ll come back,’ she promised, and started moving again, quickly, like a prisoner trying for escape. ‘When—when I’ve—’

‘I’m coming with you.’

‘No!’ Taut as a stretch of wire, the refusal almost scraped the lining off her throat. ‘I can grab a cab—’ She hit the lift’s call button. ‘You don’t have to—’

Roque’s hand on the base of her spine propelled into the lift carriage, ‘Stop taking me for a fool, Angie,’ he bit out as he sent them sinking down. ‘Whatever it is that just spooked you, I want to know about it.’

‘Nothing has spooked me! I just remembered I might have left a pan on the cooker!’

‘Liar,’ he rasped, and that was it as far as he was concerned.

The lift doors slid open onto the basement car park. He guided her to his midnight-blue Porsche and saw her inside it with such grim precision Angie had to scramble inelegantly to fold in her long legs.

She dared a swift glance up at his hard profile. ‘I might not have done.’ She decided she’d better cover herself, ready for the moment when her lie was exposed. ‘I’m just not sure. But I have to go and—’

‘Shut up.’ Roque shut the door.

By the time he joined her his temper was on such a fine trigger Angie decided to take his advice.

They drove across London in absolute silence, Angie growing more tense and anxious the closer they came to her flat. She was out of the car before Roque had even stopped it, scrambling in her bag for her keys while she hurried to get the door open before he arrived. In her tiny hallway it took only two strides for her to reach her bedroom. Trembling lips pressed together, she walked over to her bedside cabinet and slid open the drawer, then just stood looking down at its contents through eyes that stung.

All kinds of small things were scattered in the drawer. She had not seen or thought about them in months. But it was a small box her fingers reached for, and with a heavy thump playing havoc with her heartbeat she pulled in a taut breath, then flipped open the lid.

Two rings winked back at her. One an intricately woven rich yellow gold wedding ring Roque had had to have altered to make it fit the narrowness of her finger. It was a family heirloom, passed down the line through the de Calvhos brides for too many centuries for her to dare to count. The same with the betrothal ring, with its fabulously rare pink diamond gleaming like a lustrous living thing from a bed of exquisite white diamonds.

She’d meant to return the rings to Roque when she’d returned to London, but she’d pushed them into this drawer along with the credit card and promptly forgotten about them.

Wanted to forget about them.

Needed to forget about them.

Though now, as she stared at these priceless and irreplaceable pieces from the de Calvhos jewellery stock, guilt made a fierce grab at her conscience for the way she had just tossed them into this drawer as if they were worth nothing.

Her brother had missed the jackpot when he’d left the rings behind, she thought helplessly, for the pink diamond alone would have paid off his debts, with an obscene amount left over for him to squander fu

rther.

A spike of hot bloody anger held Roque still in the doorway. It wasn’t because of the rings. The rings were still there—he could see them sparkling in the box from here. It was having to witness Angie’s fear that her brother had taken them that was infuriating him.

Without saying a word, he walked forward, then bent to ease the ring box out of her grasp. She flinched when he snapped the box shut and closed it inside his clenched fist.

‘Okay.’ He sounded harsh, but couldn’t help it. ‘Now we are here, you can pack a bag before we leave again.’

‘He—he didn’t do it, Roque,’ Angie whispered.