After Their Vows

‘Since I started full-time at the London Business School, with the help of Mr de Calvhos’s financial sponsorship,’ Molly informed her with prompt honesty. ‘I could not have studied full-time without his help, so I try to pay him back by keeping this apartment nice for him to come back to when he’s in London … My grandmother used to work here before me, but she had to retire due to ill health.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry. I hadn’t heard that Mrs Grant was ill.’

‘She’s not any more.’ Molly smiled as she handed an envelope to Angie. ‘Mr de Calvhos paid for her to have private treatment and she’s in fine health now. He’s been very good to us. We are ever so grateful.’

Hating herself for wondering how grateful, Angie let the envelope claim her attention instead. Murmuring something about going back upstairs to dress, she took the envelope with her, and didn’t open it until she was back in the guest bedroom.

‘I have organised professionals to clear out your apartment, so I’ve taken the keys from your bag,’ Roque had scrawled, without a care for the presumption he was displaying. ‘Be sensible and don’t try to contact your brother. Wait here for me. I will be back by lunch. R.’

Be good and stay put and wait for him like an obedient wife, in other words. Angie read between the lines of the final part of his missive, and instantly dived for her green bag, with the intention of fishing out her mobile phone to do exactly what he had told her not to do and call Alex.

It wasn’t there.

He didn’t trust her to do as he’d ordered, so he’d taken her phone as well as her keys!

Refusing—point-blank—to acknowledge that she had been about to add substance to his lack of trust in her, Angie stood seething with frustration for a few seconds. Then she remembered the time and took her frustration out on finding something to put on.

At least her holdall was still there, she saw. He hadn’t gone as far as removing her clothes so she couldn’t leave. Ten minutes later she was walking back down the stairs, looking hard-edged and street chic in drainpipe designer jeans and a purple top which should have clashed horribly with the green bag but somehow didn’t. She’d scrunched her hair back from her face, and now wore a pair of high, chrome-heeled leather clogs on her feet.

Molly stared in awe at her as she strode towards the lobby. ‘I wish I could look like that in ten minutes,’ she sighed wistfully.

Try living and breathing the fashion industry for a few years, Angie thought ruefully. She’d learnt quickly that it was all in the execution.

She managed to grab a passing cab as she stepped out of the building. Fifteen minutes later she was striding into the glossy white reception area belong to CGM Management, ready to take up her duties a whole hour late, only to be met by the surprise sight of her employer calmly manning the front desk.

‘You look as if you’ve spent a night on the tiles,’ Carla Gail drawled by way of a greeting.

Carla was an ex-supermodel from the nineteen-eighties, still stunningly beautiful, with a long slender figure and wheat-blonde hair. Inside she was made out of cut crystal, with a business brain that scared most men into shivering shakes.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ Angie apologised, without bothering to respond to the critique. ‘I overslept.’

‘With anyone I know?’ Carla posed curiously.

Angie lifted up her chin. ‘You want me to publish a kiss and tell?’

‘God, no,’ her svelte blonde boss refused, ‘Too boring, sweetie. And, knowing you as I do, it was probably the kid brother who put those worry bruises beneath your eyes. Get someone in Make-up to do something about them.’

Carla strode off then, leaving Angie to grimace at how close to the truth Carla’s supposition had been.

A steady string of hopeful wannabe models arriving for interviews kept the morning busy. Angie was experienced enough to know at a glance which of them—if any—were going to be seen by someone higher than the lowliest ranking member of the team. She kept looking at her watch, wondering what Roque was saying to Alex. Several times she almost gave in and called her brother using the desk phone, but then someone else would walk through CGM’s famous glass doors and the temptation would fade for another few minutes.

When lunchtime arrived, so did an increase in her stress levels. Had Roque arrived back at the apartment yet? Was he angry that she wasn’t waiting for him there like a good girl? Had he murdered her brother, or just threatened to do it? Was Alex trying to call her on her mobile phone?

Carla strolled back into the foyer with a casual glide that said she was on her way out to lunch. She paused halfway across the shiny white foyer as her mobile phone leapt into life. Lucky Carla, Angie thought as her boss paused to speak to her caller, then flicked a strange glance at Angie before turning back the way she had come.

‘Give me a minute to reach my office,’ Angie heard her murmur as she strode by.

Business before food. Business before pleasure. That was Carla, Angie thought. Her personal life currently involved a low-ranking member of the British aristocracy who liked to keep his extra-marital affairs discreet. Which, when she thought about it, was why Carla had turned bored at the mention of kiss and tells. Carla would rather be boiled in oil than swap personal stuff with anyone. The only reason Angie knew about Carla’s lover was because she’d been having dinner at Carla’s apartment one evening when the guy had turned up unexpectedly.

The hidden wheels and cogs of life, she mused cynically. She had yet to meet a married couple who could truly claim they had a strong, happy relationship—not in her social and business sphere anyway. Hotshot businessmen with vast wealth and huge responsibilities needed to vent their manic stress levels somewhere other than with the little wife.

She had watched it go on so many times during her modelling days. High-end mistresses attending catwalk shows with blank chequebooks provided by their indulgent lovers whose sadly blind wives would more often than not be at the self-same shows, with their own blank chequebook to use. It was the ugly underbelly of a beautiful world. A world she had vowed would never tempt her. Yet she’d fallen in love with and married such a man—a man who would turn into such a man when he got older, more jaded, and bored with playing happy families.

Had turned into one, Angie reminded herself, and he’d done it so fast that even she, with all her cynical views on marriage to rich men, had been left flailing like a landed fish, left to die a slow, suffocating death while the fisherman moved on to more appealing fishing grounds.

It wasn’t the best bit of timing for CGM’s plate glass doors to swing open and for Angie to glance up and see Roque striding

in.