After Their Vows

‘Smile for me.’ He lifted his head up and speared her with a grim, cynical look. ‘I smiled for you when I came to collect you this lunchtime. So—smile for me. You owe me one. Smile for me and say something pleasant.’

This was a joke. It had to be a joke. ‘You’re angry with me because I didn’t return your smile? ‘

‘It is called interacting,’ Roque provided. ‘You know—man to woman—woman to man. I smile; you smile back. I say bom dia, Angie, you say hello, Roque.’

‘This is mad.’ She threw her hands up. ‘All I’m trying to do is—’

‘If you ask about your brother just one more time …’ he exploded, with quite spectacular force.

‘I wasn’t going to!’ she lied, only to blush and spoil it. ‘What’s got into you, for goodness’ sake? ‘

He responded with an action that stalled Angie’s ability to draw air into her lungs. He opened the drawer and withdrew her chequebook, then tossed it down on the desk. As she watched in blank silence her mobile phone arrived next, which he dropped onto the chequebook, followed by her keys, which he withdrew from his trouser pocket.

‘Take them,’ he invited, then slammed the drawer shut.

Angie couldn’t move. A deep chill of foreboding was settling over her. He was going to give up on her. He’d changed his mind because he was already fed up with her shrewish attitude. She could feel the change of heart bouncing off the grim hardness of his long, elegant stance.

‘Roque … please …’ She didn’t even care that she sounded pleading.

‘Please, Angie?’ he quizzed cynically. ‘Now, there is a word I don’t often hear you speak. Tell me, are you begging for your brother’s sake or for your own sake?’

‘I just don’t understand what’s the matter with you! ‘ she cried. ‘I thought we had an—an agreement, but the way you’re giving off so many confusing signals I no longer know what I’m supposed to think!’

His dark eyes flared on a snap of anger. ‘You remind me that we have an agreement, yet you’ve already defaulted on your side of it by taking yourself off to a different bedroom to sleep, then sticking a pillow down the middle of the bed when I carried you back to ours!’

Angie stared at him in gaping disbelief. ‘You’re in this mood because I refused to give you sex?’

‘I could have had the sex if I’d been inclined to take it, Angie,’ he drawled in grim derision, reminding her that she had not been the one who’d wanted to stop last night. ‘I am not that big a slave to my libido,’ he denied, implying that maybe she was. ‘I accept that we both need time to—adjust to being together again.’

‘Really?’ Angie folded her arms and speared a look at him. ‘Perhaps the blonde bombshell I met in the kitchen this morning keeps your libido less slavelike these days?’ she struck back. ‘Because all I recall from the last time we lived together is you wanting it wherever and whenever you could get it, and turning into a growling nasty bear when I said no—like you’re doing now.’

‘You never said no,’ he countered. ‘You grabbed with both hands and whatever other greedy part of your anatomy you could grab me with. When I mentioned the bed thing—’ he rolled a long-fingered hand ‘—I was merely trying to point out that you have been defaulting on our agreement from the moment we agreed it. And who is the blonde bombshell?’ he demanded curiously.

Feeling slightly ashamed that she’d brought Molly Stewart into this just to score points—though she was still uncertain as to whether the new cleaner did have other special duties—Angie stepped up to the desk.

‘Thanks for my stuff.’ She gathered up keys, phone and chequebook, then turned to leave.

‘Where do you think you are going?’ he sighed out.

‘To make myself scarce while you decide what the heck it is we’re supposed to be fighting about.’

‘Well, don’t make yourself too scarce. We are due to fly to Portugal in a couple of hours.’

Angie froze, then swung back round again. ‘Portugal? ‘ she echoed, as if he’d named a different planet.

‘I live there,’ Roque reminded her.

‘Yes, but …’ The ground suddenly felt shaky beneath Angie’s feet.

‘My London offices usually see me only one week a month.’

‘Yes.’ She knew that too. ‘But …’

Roque looked at her and waited, drawing her hesitation out as if it was stretched on wires while her mind ran through the string of objections she wanted to utter before she discarded them one by one in case she fed his weird mood.

‘I thought …’ She stopped yet again, and her lips quivered on a shaky intake of air. ‘There’s my job—’

‘Already sorted. Carlina has given you an extended leave of absence.’