After Their Vows

Roque released a sigh and pressed his tense lips together, in a cowardly way glad of her interruption, because it had given him time to think. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe she had eaten something that had upset her stomach. Maybe she’d caught a bug.

He did not want there to be a baby yet. Angie was only twenty-three years old, and already she had been a mother to her brother for six years of her life. She deserved a break—a chance to learn how to be Angie. And, damn it, he wanted to learn more about the real Angie he had been watching slowly blossom from behind her old tough shell now that she’d passed on responsibility for her brother to him.

Was she already thinking what he was thinking? Was that the reason she had told him to go away? Was she hating him already and wishing she hadn’t allowed him to coax her back into his life?

Coax? he mocked. Blackmail came closer to the truth. Coercion, intimidation—and don’t forget the desire for retribution, he told himself, feeling guilt take a stranglehold on his taut throat.

Angie uncurled from her huddle and made herself sit up in the bed. She was already beginning to feel a bit better now the sickening shock had started to wear off.

‘M-may I have a drink of water?’ she asked, pushing back the tumbled tangle of hair from her face.

Roque stretched out a hand to pick up the vacuum flask standing on the bedside table, and poured some chilled water into a glass.

‘Thanks,’ she mumbled as he handed the glass to her, but she kept her eyes lowered as she sipped.

She couldn’t look at him. She wished he would just go and—and get dressed, or something. Because she needed to be on her own so she could think. Drawing her knees up to her chin, she clutched the chilled glass in equally chilled fingers, glad her hair had slithered forward again and was hiding her face. For God’s sake, Nadia, was playing over and over inside her head, alongside old lurid headlines like ‘The Playboy and the Two Supermodels…’

She took another trembling sip of her drink.

Roque continued to squat there, watching her with that brooding dark frown on his too-handsome face and giving the impression that he just didn’t know what to do or say next. The air of indecisive helplessness he was emitting just did not suit him, and it niggled Angie because she knew that behind it his brain would be working. Any second now it was going to make the connection between his phone call down on the terrace and the balcony directly above it, and the idea of that happening coiled her sensitive stomach into knots.

‘You m-mentioned going to Paris?’ she mumbled, attempting to throw him off the scent.

He nodded his dark head. ‘I received a call this morning about some business I need to attend to—but that no longer counts.’ He waved a long-fingered hand in a gesture of indifference to Paris. ‘Have you considered that you might be pregnant? ‘

It was like a shot to her blindside. Angie’s chin shot up, her green eyes standing out like emerald pools of shock against the stark white colour of her pinched, strained face. It was the last thing she’d expected him to say—the last thing!

‘Of course I’m not pregnant!’ she choked out. ‘I have not—no way—missed a single pill!’

She was taking the contraceptive pill? Why hadn’t he known that? Roque asked himself, and tension grabbed a hold of his chest muscles as he had to control the need to release a sigh of relief.

‘What gave you such a c-crazy idea in the first place?’ Angie demanded, managing to turn an ever paler shade of white.

‘It just came into my head,’ he responded rather dryly. ‘You don’t have to snap at me.’

Oh, yes she did! The idea of another pregnancy would scare her witless. She didn’t ever want to go through that heartbreaking trauma again!

‘Well, I’m not,’ she snapped, reaching out to set the glass aside before her trembling fingers dropped it. ‘And if you need a reason why I’m feeling like this, then look to yourself,’ she told him waspishly, fighting fear and hurt and a million other scary emotions. ‘If you let me have two hours’ sleep straight without wanting sex with me I feel like I’m on a winning streak—and don’t look at me as if I’ve just stuck a knife in your ribs!’

As he rose up to his full height, Roque’s chin went up, two lines of heat streaking high across his taut cheeks. ‘Well, then, perhaps my trip to Paris is well timed,’ he countered stiffly. ‘It will

allow you to sleep as many hours as you like for the next couple of nights.’

Was that where Nadia was waiting for him?

Angie threw herself back down against the bed and rolled over. ‘Don’t wake me up as you leave,’ she flipped out, and shut her eyes tight.

A thunderous silence bounced off the walls while he continued to stand there. Angie felt as if her insides were collapsing. A baby … Didn’t they have enough problems without him bringing a baby into the mix?

Tears burned like fire in her eyes, ‘Will you just—go away?’ she breathed thickly. ‘I’m—sleepy.’

‘Of course. My apologies,’ he offered. ‘Excuse me for delaying your much needed rest.’

Angie shivered as that crushingly impassive cool he could pull off with such chilling effect washed over her. She listened to him striding away and pulled the covers up over her head.

She should just ask him outright about Nadia. She knew she should. She should just get it over with and spit the poisoned woman’s name out of her mouth! But she couldn’t. She was too scared. What if he admitted that he still had a thing going with Nadia? What if she’d misheard and made a horrible fool of herself? What if he was glad of the excuse she’d just handed him to get out of here and meet up with his on-off love in romantic Paris?

Roque cut himself with his wet razor and ripped out a curse. What kind of husband was he that he couldn’t take Angie’s lippy backlash when she was feeling unwell?