After Their Vows

So that was what their cosy meeting for two had been all about. Roque had convinced Carla to let her go, probably using the ‘giving their marriage a second chance’ excuse, and Carla had let him convince her without asking Angie what she wanted to do.

‘You are not my mistress, Angie,’ he inserted into the steadily thickening silence, so coolly she almost missed the relevance of the prod. ‘In general mistresses stay put in one place while wives travel.’

Nadia suddenly stood between them like a raven-haired apparition, with a very smug smile on her beautiful face. Nadia was as exotically Brazilian as Roque was hot-blooded Portuguese. They even spoke the same language, which meant they could converse with each without anyone around them knowing what they said.

And Nadia travelled … As Angie had once travelled … Nadia followed the fashion drum wherever it led her, and if that happened to be the same port of call Roque was in then so much the better—did he think she was dumb?

‘Well, I don’t travel any more,’ she said.

‘You will go where I say you will go.’ Roque flatly countered that. ‘I let you off the hook too much the last time we were together. I let you dictate where and when I was allowed to be with my own wife. This time you will do the compromising, querida—and remember, please, before you start yelling at me, that your brother’s present situation is depending on your absolute acceptance of that.’

A ragged laugh was torn from Angie. ‘I don’t even know what his situation is, since you haven’t bothered to tell me.’

Roque flicked out a grimace in acknowledgement of that.

‘But if you think I’m going to just fly off to Portugal and leave Alex here alone to get into—’ Belatedly realising what she’d been going to say, Angie choked the rest of that sentence back.

Too late, though, to stop Roque from finishing it. ‘Alex will not be left alone here in England to get into more trouble for the simple reason he will not be in England at all.’

She was staring at him now, in the grip of total stillness, so concentrated on what he was saying that she couldn’t even draw in a breath.

‘We went together to speak to his college dean this morning,’ he went on to explain. ‘Alex is taking a gap year from his studies, effective as of now.’

‘S-so where is he going?’ Angie breathed almost indistinctly.

‘Brazil,’ Roque relayed. ‘To my ranch near Sao Paulo, to be exact.’

‘Brazil …?’ she whispered, as if he had not added the other details.

‘He is going to learn all about ranching, cattle farming, living off the land—’

‘Brazil? ‘ Angie repeated one more time, her voice rising to a shrill pitch. ‘You are sending my nineteen-year-old brother to the other end of the world for a whole year without my say-so?’

‘Alex is over eighteen. He is allowed to make these decisions for himself.’

That wasn’t the point. ‘You mean it was your decision! What were his options—Brazil or a prison cell?’

‘Sim,’ he confirmed, without flickering a glossy black eyelash. ‘He chose to work the next year, helping to pay back what he stole from me.’

The blunt use of the word stole had its effect on Angie, paling her face even further and closi

ng up her throat. ‘S-so where is he now?’ she only just managed to utter.

‘As of right now—?’ With a smooth flick of a bright white shirt-cuff he exposed his gold wristwatch and gave his attention to it. ‘Experiencing the comforts of first-class air travel somewhere over the Atlantic,’ he answered. ‘On his way to Sao Paulo …’

For a whole thirty seconds Angie couldn’t seem to find a reaction. Pure shock was holding fast. She just stared at Roque, still standing there behind his desk like some lofty, unreachable lord and master, dark as the devil and cool as a long drink of iced water. He watched the emerald glow in her eyes slowly, slowly disappear, until the colour had turned pure bottomless black. Then she lowered her head to look down at her hands, still clutching her recovered possessions.

‘You took my phone,’ she mumbled.

Not understanding the relevance of the comment, Roque drew his eyebrows together in a frown.

She said it again, this time lifting those darkened eyes back to his. ‘You took away my phone so I couldn’t call him. You sent him away without allowing me to speak to him before he left … Why would you do that? ‘

For the first time since this had begun Roque’s voice revealed a hint of roughness. ‘I felt it would be easier on you if you had no input—’ ‘Easier on you, you mean.’

‘Alex needs to face up to his responsibilities,’ he persisted doggedly. ‘He did this a lot faster believing that you were out of the loop.’

‘You—you let him think I’ve turned my back on him?’