As if Roque had planned this whole wretched scene, a police car’s siren whined past her bedroom window as it sped down the street. In her hand her phone sang out its insistent melody, and her mouth began to tremble, her eyes began to sting.
On a hiss of impatience, as if he wasn’t happy at all about what he was going to do next, Roque reached out and took the phone from her. ‘I will talk to him.’
Was that supposed to make her feel better? ‘Please, Roque.’ Angie burst into speech. ‘Don’t—’
‘Pack that bag.’ He turned with her phone and strode out of her bedroom.
Left standing there, Angie listened as the ringing stopped, then Roque’s deep, smooth-accented voice murmured with excruciating casualness, ‘Boa tarde, Alex. Your sister is busy right now. Can I be of help?’ before the bedroom door swung shut.
She packed an overnight bag with the mindless inefficiency of someone who did not care what she packed. She did not pack more than she needed for an overnight stay—refused to. Refused to think beyond this one horrible night.
By the time she’d hauled the holdall strap over her shoulder and scooped up her green bag, Roque was striding back into the bedroom again with the long, loose-limbed grace of a man in control of everything—even his body. Angie sizzled with the desire to take a swing at him with the heaviest bag and knock the over-confident devil off his self-assured plinth.
‘Ready to leave?’
Pressing her lips together, she said nothing, knowing if she opened her mouth at all she would be begging him to tell her what he’d said to her brother—and she refused to give him the satisfaction of seeing how completely she felt she was dancing to his tune.
He reached out to lift her holdall off her shoulder, then really surprised her by offering her back her mobile phone.
‘Don’t you want to put it in your desk drawer alongside my chequebook?’ she asked him tartly.
‘Don’t put ideas in my head.’
Angie snatched the phone from him and plunged it to the bottom of the green bag. Roque did not bother to tell her he had switched it off before handing it back. Switched-off phones did not hand out temptation to use them, and he wasn’t comfortably sure he had eased her brother’s panic.
He offered up information. ‘I have set up a meeting with Alex for tomorrow.’
Bright head tilted down, Angie cinched the belt even tighter to her tiny waist, as if the coat was a piece of armour she could use to protect herself from him.
No chance, Roque thought. ‘What happens at the meeting depends entirely on you,’ he added, soft and goading as a sharp fingernail being drawn down the skin of her back.
Shoving past him, she walked into the hallway, leaving him to grimace as he followed her outside. They drove back to his apartment in sizzling silence and entered it in silence. By then the time had gone way beyond midnight, and Angie felt as if she was about to drop where she stood. Turning around and almost bumping into Roque, because he was so close behind her, she kept her eyes firmly lowered from his hard, handsome face while she took her holdall from him.
‘Goodnight,’ she said, then walked off towards the stairs.
Once again Roque said nothing, and she dragged that nothing with her all the way up the staircase onto the mezzanine above. She’d already said her piece about their sleeping arrangements, she reminded herself stubbornly. It did not need repeating.
She did not look down to where she knew he stood, watching her every single step of the way. She refused to give the ever-present tears she could feel pushing at the back of her throat room to vent. She chose a bedroom as far away from their old shared bedroom as she could possibly put herself. Dropping her bags down on the chaise at the end of the bed, she unzipped the holdall, fished out a set of hastily packed pink silk pyjamas and her soap bag, then headed for the bathroom.
Ten minutes later she was crawling beneath a fluffy white duvet with her mind turned into a stubborn blank.
Ten minutes after that Roque trod silently into the same bedroom and came to stand looking down at her, a wry, slightly regretful expression on his face.
She was just a curled-up mound beneath the duvet, topped by a glossy mass of copper curls spread out behind her on the pillow, and she was well and truly out for the count.
Watching the gentle rise and fall of her breathing, he wondered what kind of rat would want to disturb her from such a deep slumber.
This rat, he answered his own question. There was no way he was going to ease up on Angie in this new order of things he had mapped out.
Drawing his hands out of the pockets of his bathrobe, he bent down and gently scooped her and the duvet up into his arms. She stirred with a complaining sigh which sent him still for a second, his arms tensing in readiness for a fight. But she just settled more comfortably into his shoulder, and he got his first good look at her sleeping face. A rush of feeling sank down through his torso as he gazed at her softly parted lips. The urge to dip his head and claim that mouth almost got the better of him—until he grimly curbed the urge and turned instead to head out of the room.
Angie felt as if she was floating. She felt warm and comfy and safe. She turned her head so she could nuzzle the pillow, and dreamed she was nuzzling Roque’s warm throat.
That dream again, she thought with a sigh, and then dreamed up the soft hiss that Roque always used to let her know he was becoming aroused. One day, she vowed, she would find someone else to dream about who would wipe Roque de Calvhos clean out of her head.
Then she shivered as her floating body touched down onto something cool and the duvet was summarily stripped away, bringing her awake with a start. Her eyes flew open, hot and gritty. She threw a sleepily confused glance down the length of the bed, where the duvet now lay neatly folded beneath her feet. Bewildered as to how it had got there, Angie stretched down to grab it. She had just managed to haul it up to her chin when a sound sent her head twisting on the pillow to discover that Roque was standing right there beside the bed, calmly stripping off a navy blue robe.
Heart banging against her ribs, ‘What do you think you are doing in here?’ she tossed at him.