After Their Vows (6 page)

‘Do you know where my husband is? ‘ Angie asked, stunned to hear herself use that possessive title as if she was sending out a warning to the blonde.

‘He left about half an hour ago,’ Molly Stewart told her. ‘He said for me to let you sleep.’ Picking up a towel, she began drying her hands on it. ‘Can I get you some breakfast? Cereal and juice? Some toast and a pot of coffee or tea?’

‘No—thank you,’ Angie answered with polite cool. ‘I’ll—I’ll just grab a bottle of water from the fridge.’

Why was she behaving so awfully? she asked herself. Because you don’t like the thought of this sexy creature polishing Roque’s floors and making his bed, Angie answered her own question, frowning as she crossed the kitchen towards the fridge, with the blonde watching her every step of the way.

It all felt just so weird—as if she was an intruder here. A one-night stand left behind to sort herself out while the great Latin lover disappeared out of the firing line of an awkward morning-after scene.

Then she wondered just how many one-night stands Molly the daily had greeted with offers of breakfast.
Had Molly Stewart been one of them? Was Roque into seducing the cleaning lady on her days off?

Not liking the ugly path her mind was taking her along, she tugged open the fridge door and selected a small bottle of water, then pushed the door shut again, turning to find Molly staring at her pensively, as if she had something she wanted to say.

‘Your husband said I was to make sure you ate something, Mrs de Calvhos,’ Molly murmured anxiously. ‘In fact he was very specific—’

‘That is not his decision to make,’ Angie responded, with a snap she would have preferred had not been there. But she was struggling with hearing herself referred to as ‘Mrs de Calvhos’ now, because she didn’t feel like a Mrs
anyone.
She didn’t want to feel like a wife at all.

Especially so after last night’s humiliating fiasco in Roque’s bed.

Great will power you have, Angie, she thought grimly, then glanced up sharply as Molly suddenly rushed into speech.

‘You’re Angie Hastings, aren’t you? Gosh, you’re even more beautiful in the flesh than you look in the magazines.’

Thoroughly startled by this unexpected compliment, Angie just stared, and Molly started blushing as if she’d made some terrible gaffe. Angie suddenly saw how young she was—and actually kind of cute. Despite possessing the sexiest curves she’d seen in a long time, being in the industry Angie was in, Molly Stewart had a natural warmth about her that made Angie feel mean for being so cool with her.

‘Let’s start again,’ she offered with a ruefully apologetic smile. ‘I was surprised to find you here, and I’m
cross with my … just cross,’ she edited, unwilling to use that
husband
word again. ‘I should have been at work by now, and—’

‘I wish I had your hair,’ Molly cut in breathlessly. ‘The colour is fabulous …’

‘Trust me, you don’t.’ Angie gave in and just laughed. ‘It’s hell to manage, and you can’t hide the fact that you’re a genuine ginger-head. Did my …?’ There it was again—the word she didn’t want to utter. Avoidance is futile, Angie, she told herself whimsically. ‘Did my husband leave a message for me other than that I am supposed to eat?’

‘Oh.’ Molly jumped. ‘He wrote you a note …’ Walking across the kitchen, she picked up an envelope, then released a giggly laugh. ‘He also said that if you tried to leave the apartment I was to barricade you in, but I don’t think I was supposed to pass that detail on.’

Frowning again, because Angie was picking up on a definite air of friendly intimacy being passed around between Roque and Molly, she asked as casually as she could, ‘How long have you worked here?’

‘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.

H
E 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?’

Angie nodded. ‘He didn’t answer.’

Something very close to grim satisfaction honed the naturally sensual curve of his mouth and Angie leapt on it. ‘What have you done? Why isn’t he answering his phone? Did you—?’

‘Calm down,’ Roque said, turning slightly, so she could see Carla standing just behind him, viewing their interaction through curious eyes. The last thing Roque needed right now was for Carla to jump back onto Angie’s side of the fence after the work he’d just put in bringing her down on his side.

‘Adeus,
Carlina,’ he bade her coolly, barely giving Angie time to snatch up her bag before he was ushering her towards the exit as fast as he could.

‘I will expect to hear from you, Roque,’ Carla fed after him like a threat.

‘Sim.
Soon,’ he promised over his shoulder.

Outside the building, instead of his Porsche, a sleek chauffer-driven silver limo idled on double yellow lines five strides away. Even with her long legs Angie struggled to keep up with him as he covered the distance in three. Handing her into the rear seat, he joined her and closed the door. A second later they were slipping smoothly into London’s nose-to-nose traffic.

‘What’s going on?’ Angie twisted on the seat to spear a taut look at him. ‘What have you been discussing with Carla? Have you just lost me my job? And where is my brother? You had better come clean fast, Roque, because you won’t enjoy watching me fall into a screaming rage!’

‘You are already there.’ Turning his dark head, he scanned her taut features and bright eyes. ‘If you had invested this much emotional energy into trying to make our marriage work we would not be in this present situation,’ he clipped out in contempt.

‘Well, that’s great, coming from the man who took other women to bed,’ Angie flung back.

He removed his eyes from her and said not a single word in his defence, and Angie slumped back against the soft leather upholstery. ‘You’re such a hypocrite.’

‘Your brother still has his head attached to his neck,’ he drawled, as cool as ice. ‘He is not languishing in a police cell or cowering in a dark corner somewhere, scared that I have set a band of hitmen onto him.’

‘Thank you,’ Angie murmured, with excruciatingly well-mannered ill grace.

Then she glanced back at him, to find he was looking at her again. The skin banding her throat started to prickle, because the way he was looking at her somehow relayed his resentment for needing to look. Sparks
flew between them—they always did. Hot sparks, angry sparks, sexually stimulating, breath-catching sparks.

‘What was all that with Carla?’ Angie mulishly persisted when his mood told her she should not.

‘Business.’

And that was it? The dark glint in his eyes dared her to continue. The need to constantly take him on fizzed like a fever in her blood. It had something to do with not letting him claim the upper hand over her, for he was the kind of man who would eat her alive if she gave him the chance.

The car pulled up outside his apartment block. Angie frowned when Roque instructed the driver that they would need him again in a couple of hours.

‘Why? Where are you going?’ Having to rush to keep up with him again, Angie was forced to ask the questions to his back.

He stabbed the lift button and leant back against the casing like a surly boy in a very bad mood. ‘Just shut up for two minutes, Angie,’ he growled at her. ‘I am still too angry with you to want to play fair right now.’

Widening her eyes, ‘What have I done?’ she cried out.

He didn’t bother to answer. He just strode out of the lift like a man in search of escape.

Angie followed at a slower pace, confused, really unsure of her ground now, for she did not understand his mood. Molly the cleaner was no longer in evidence, she noticed. Everywhere looked polished and neat. Sliding her bag off her shoulder and depositing it on one of the sofas, she followed Roque as he made directly for his study. The way he threw the door open wide made her
blink in anticipation of it hitting the cabinet she knew stood just behind it.

It didn’t hit the cabinet, but she was still left with a wincing sensation as if it had. This was crazy, she thought. She didn’t even know what he was angry about! And what had he been discussing with Carla? Why had her boss let her go with him without putting up an objection?

Tugging in a deep breath, she followed him, determined to get some answers even if it felt as if she was about to enter the lion’s den. And her heart was hammering at the prospect of taking him on yet again, she noticed.

He was standing behind the desk with his dark head lowered as he flipped through the small stack of mail Molly must have placed there. Angie could not see his face, but she could feel the circle of grim reserve he had drawn around himself like an invisible line he was silently warning her not to cross.

Pressing her teeth down into her bottom lip, she made herself walk forward. ‘Roque—’

‘Smile for me, Angie,’ he said.

‘Wh-what?’ She pulled to a nerve-crunching standstill.

‘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.’