After Their Vows

CHAPTER SIX

HE WAS wearing a grey pinstripe suit that draped his long, powerful frame as if it loved being there, and he looked—sensational. Tall, dark and tanned, with the kind of hard-angled, well-balanced features that just instinctively attracted women to him: the exotic curve of his cheekbones, the thin fleshless nose, the gorgeously sexy full, sensual mouth.

Her insides gave a telling little leap of soul-deep attraction, her eyes unwillingly gluing to the slightly sardonic gleam in his. And he was smiling.

But, worse than all of that put together, Angie could see him naked again, after his conceited pose beside the bed he had dumped her on last night. And this was a guy who liked snowboarding down the Alps or skydiving off them. This was a guy who swam umpteen laps of his swimming pool every day before breakfast and could pump iron without breaking into a sweat. So he had pecs, he had abs, he had big strong shoulders and bulging biceps, and a chest splashed with virile dark hair hidden beneath the fine cloth of his bright white shirt, and muscles that could take her breath away cording his long, powerful legs inside the smooth cloth of the pinstriped suit.

As he strode towards her a whole line of wannabes lost their boredom in favour of covetously lapping him up. Jealousy erupted. It was so horribly possessive Angie wanted to tell the wannabes to get their greedy eyes off him.

Mine, she heard some inner voice insist, and despised herself for feeling like that.

She shot to her feet. ‘I want my keys and my phone back,’ she hissed at Roque the moment he came to a stop at her desk. ‘And if you’ve hurt my brother you are going to be sorry.’

The row of wannabes shifted on the shiny black leather chairs they were sitting on, their interest further piqued.

Roque lost his smile.

With the instincts of a natural-born predator cornering its spitting prey, he used his superior height to lean forward and stretch a long-fingered hand out across the desk to capture her chin.

‘Bom dia, my beautiful green-eyed shrew,’ he greeted her softly. ‘May I advise you to keep your fight with me under wraps until we do not have an audience? ‘

The shrew part hit its mark, and Angie flushed. He was right. She was turning into a terrible shrew, all bitter and twisted and— ‘You—’

He kissed her into silence. He just leant further across the width of her shiny black desktop and claimed her shrewish mouth.

A skitter of appreciatively amused gasps ran along the row of wannabes. Feeling the helpless softening of her lips, for a second Angie feared that she was going to start gasping too. By the time he drew away again her lips were warm and pulsing and her cheeks were on fire, and Roque was looking grimly satisfied because he’d felt her respond to him.

‘Well, if this doesn’t answer a lot of questions …’ a cool voice drawled from somewhere just beyond Angie’s hazy vision.

It was Carla, being as sardonic as she possibly could be.

‘Bom dia, Carlina.’ Straightening away from the desk, Roque greeted her smoothly, using Carla’s full name even though he knew she disliked it. ‘You look atordoar, as always.’

‘I do hope that was a compliment, Roque,’ Carla responded.

‘What else?’ Roque sent her one of his charismatic smiles.

Walking forward, Carla aimed a brief glance at the row of onlookers, which sent their heads dipping as if they’d been struck by a whip. Then Angie watched her boss hold out a hand for Roque to take.

It was only when Carla said, ‘Shall we leave Angie to—cool down, and go through to my office?’ that Angie realised with a start there was something happening here that she wasn’t privy to.

‘What—?’

‘Ask Izzy to hold my calls, Angie,’ the boss side of Carla interrupted what Angie had been about to say.

The two of them strode off, leaving Angie gaping after them. Roque didn’t even spare her a second glance. It was obvious that Carla had been expecting him. More obvious now that the call Carla had taken here in the foyer a few minutes earlier must have been from Roque. She recalled the strange glance Carla had sent her before she’d walked back the way she had come.

And, whatever it was that Roque was up to now, Angie began to feel cornered. Was he sweet-talking Carla into sacking her? Was she about to become jobless as well as his reluctant wife again?

And what about her brother?

Making a quick decision which was really a surrender to something she’d been trying to stop herself from doing all morning, Angie picked up the desk phone and called her brother’s mobile phone.

There was no answer. It didn’t even go to voicemail. By the time Roque reappeared the wannabes had been led away into CGM’s hallowed inner sanctum and Angie had turned from shrew into anxious-eyed mouse.

‘Where is he, Roque?’ She almost fell on him in her urgency to know the answer.

He caught her by her elbows. ‘You called him?’