After Their Vows

She started walking again, and actually managed to reach the opening archway before he spoke. ‘You still don’t believe me about Nadia.’

It wasn’t a question. Reluctant though she was to do it, Angie turned to look at him, and was surprised to discover that he’d moved without her hearing him, and now stood in the opening to his own dressing room. It felt kind of ironic that they both stood naked, with the rumpled spread of the bed between them giving evidence of what they had just shared. For they might as well both be fully dressed and facing each other across a courtroom she felt so coldly indifferent to him now.

‘I liked you better w

hen you did not resort to lying to shore up your bruised ego,’ she told him. ‘I saw you, you see—with my own eyes. So coming up with such a weak story now is just a bit sickening to me.’

She should have walked away then, because it had been such a good exit line, but she didn’t move. She stayed to watch the frown darken his hard, handsome face.

‘You cannot have seen what did not happen.’

Well, she had. ‘I came back that night,’ she enlightened him. ‘I got halfway to Alex’s school, then changed my mind. I realised you were right. I had to stop putting him first and start thinking about us. So I got my driver to turn around and bring me back to London—to the club …’

She could still see it all, as if it had happened yesterday. Still feel the same clutch of anxiety as she’d stepped into the nightclub. It had been a friend of Roque’s birthday. He’d invited a whole group of them to help him celebrate it. Julian someone-or-other—she couldn’t recall the rest of his name right now. Not that it mattered.

‘I saw you with Nadia.’

He’d gone so still now Angie wondered if he had stopped breathing. She certainly had, but there was nothing unusual in that for her when she allowed herself to recall the scene that had murdered her marriage. And by his taut silence she knew Roque was right there with her, seeing what she must have seen then. The tiny lowlit dance floor. The slow smoochy dance. Nadia with her arms wrapped around his neck, swaying against him. Roque using his hands to hold her close.

‘She was all over you, and you were loving it.’

‘No.’ He denied that.

‘You were loving it, Roque! Do you think I can’t tell when you’re aroused?’

‘I was not aroused!’

‘You were kissing her! ‘ Angie was charged up like a stoked fire. ‘Your hands were clamped to her backside! I watched the pair of you sway to the music and I would have to be really stupid not to know you were both only half a step away from having sex on the bloody dance floor!’

‘Don’t swear,’ he growled, frowning fiercely now.

‘I saved myself the indignity of being noticed and got out of there as fast as I could!’ Angie careered on. ‘I went to Carla’s and stayed there the night. She woke me the next morning with a stack of tabloids showing you and Nadia still wrapped around each other, entering her apartment block!’

‘She was drunk.’

Angie sucked in a fire-eating breath of air.

‘I did not have sex with her—’

‘Don’t lie!’ she yelled at the top of her voice.

‘She was drunk—high on something anyway!’ he fired right back at her. ‘I took her home and dumped her safely inside her apartment. Then—I—left!’ he punched out like a violent fist. ‘I went home and sat up all night, waiting for my wife to come home!’

If Angie thought she was angry fit to burst, Roque had now hit the same furious place.

‘But you did not come back. So I started ringing people! Your brother’s school had not seen you. Carla told me that she had not seen you!’ He threw out an arm in disgust. ‘How damn cruel was that? She knew we’d had a row because I told her! I was worried about you! Then the newspapers happened. But still I trusted you to come home to me, Angie. To give me a chance to explain myself! You denied me that right! You judged and condemned me without a damn hearing, then flounced off out of the firing line for months without anyone knowing where you had gone. So I deserved my moment of retribution, minha esposa,’ he insisted harshly. ‘And you know what? The way you are standing there, willing to listen to me now, infuriates me even more—because it has come twelve months too late! ‘

On that final stinging volley he strode into his dressing room. Ten seconds later Angie blinked as she heard his bathroom door slam shut.

Pushing her tangled hair back from her face with trembling fingers, she let a choky shrill laugh break free from her throat.

They’d just had their fiercest row yet while standing there stark naked. How crazily bizarre was that?

Reeling around, she walked into her own dressing room. Then, because anger was still fizzing around inside her, she walked into her bathroom and slammed her door shut.

Was he telling her the truth? Could he be telling the truth?

No, she refused to believe it—could not dare to believe it. Because it would make her hidden months of misery such a cruel, hard waste.