After Their Vows (7 page)

‘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.’

So that was what their cosy meeting for two had been all about. Roque had convinced Carla to let her go, probably using the ‘giving their marriage a second chance’ excuse, and Carla had let him convince her without asking Angie what she wanted to do.

‘You are not my mistress, Angie,’ he inserted into the steadily thickening silence, so coolly she almost missed the relevance of the prod. ‘In general mistresses stay put in one place while wives travel.’

Nadia suddenly stood between them like a raven-haired apparition, with a very smug smile on her
beautiful face. Nadia was as exotically Brazilian as Roque was hot-blooded Portuguese. They even spoke the same language, which meant they could converse with each without anyone around them knowing what they said.

And Nadia travelled … As Angie had once travelled … Nadia followed the fashion drum wherever it led her, and if that happened to be the same port of call Roque was in then so much the better—did he think she was dumb?

‘Well, I don’t travel any more,’ she said.

‘You will go where I say you will go.’ Roque flatly countered that. ‘I let you off the hook too much the last time we were together. I let you dictate where and when I was allowed to be with my own wife. This time you will do the compromising,
querida
—and remember, please, before you start yelling at me, that your brother’s present situation is depending on your absolute acceptance of that.’

A ragged laugh was torn from Angie. ‘I don’t even know what his situation is, since you haven’t bothered to tell me.’

Roque flicked out a grimace in acknowledgement of that.

‘But if you think I’m going to just fly off to Portugal and leave Alex here alone to get into—’ Belatedly realising what she’d been going to say, Angie choked the rest of that sentence back.

Too late, though, to stop Roque from finishing it. ‘Alex will not be left alone here in England to get into more trouble for the simple reason he will not be in England at all.’

She was staring at him now, in the grip of total
stillness, so concentrated on what he was saying that she couldn’t even draw in a breath.

‘We went together to speak to his college dean this morning,’ he went on to explain. ‘Alex is taking a gap year from his studies, effective as of now.’

‘S-so where is he going?’ Angie breathed almost indistinctly.

‘Brazil,’ Roque relayed. ‘To my ranch near Sao Paulo, to be exact.’

‘Brazil …?’ she whispered, as if he had not added the other details.

‘He is going to learn all about ranching, cattle farming, living off the land—’

‘Brazil? ‘ Angie repeated one more time, her voice rising to a shrill pitch. ‘You are sending my nineteen-year-old brother to the other end of the world for a whole year without my say-so?’

‘Alex is over eighteen. He is allowed to make these decisions for himself.’

That wasn’t the point. ‘You mean it was your decision! What were his options—Brazil or a prison cell?’

‘Sim,’
he confirmed, without flickering a glossy black eyelash. ‘He chose to work the next year, helping to pay back what he stole from me.’

The blunt use of the word
stole
had its effect on Angie, paling her face even further and closing up her throat. ‘S-so where is he now?’ she only just managed to utter.

‘As of right now—?’ With a smooth flick of a bright white shirt-cuff he exposed his gold wristwatch and gave his attention to it. ‘Experiencing the comforts of first-class air travel somewhere over the Atlantic,’ he answered. ‘On his way to Sao Paulo …’

For a whole thirty seconds Angie couldn’t seem to find a reaction. Pure shock was holding fast. She just stared at Roque, still standing there behind his desk like some lofty, unreachable lord and master, dark as the devil and cool as a long drink of iced water. He watched the emerald glow in her eyes slowly, slowly disappear, until the colour had turned pure bottomless black. Then she lowered her head to look down at her hands, still clutching her recovered possessions.

‘You took my phone,’ she mumbled.

Not understanding the relevance of the comment, Roque drew his eyebrows together in a frown.

She said it again, this time lifting those darkened eyes back to his. ‘You took away my phone so I couldn’t call him. You sent him away without allowing me to speak to him before he left … Why would you do that? ‘

For the first time since this had begun Roque’s voice revealed a hint of roughness. ‘I felt it would be easier on you if you had no input—’ ‘Easier on you, you mean.’

‘Alex needs to face up to his responsibilities,’ he persisted doggedly. ‘He did this a lot faster believing that you were out of the loop.’

‘You—you let him think I’ve turned my back on him?’

Roque released a sigh. ‘Angie—we agreed that I would take control of your brother—’

‘Just shut up about our stupid agreement! ‘ She would have screeched all of that at him if her voice hadn’t become muffled by the strangling blockage currently in control of her aching throat.

‘We need a breathing space to work on our marriage
without your brother constantly tossing a spanner in the works!’

‘But I don’t
want
to work on our marriage!’

‘Then why are you standing here?’

The hard challenge shimmered over the full length of her taut figure. He dared to stand there, seemingly expecting her to turn into the perfect amiable wife because he had taken control of her brother and her life?

‘Why are you bothering to do this at all?’ she fed right back at him.

Roque lowered his dark head. ‘My family does not do divorce,’ he answered smoothly.

Angie had to suck in a long hard breath to control the ever-pressing need to tumble into the kind of wild weeping jag she had not allowed herself to vent since—

No… Swallowing tautly, she told herself she was just not going to go there, staring down at the things clutched in her fingers and refusing to let them blur out of focus.

‘So we must try harder to make a success of our marriage this time around …’

Still she made no response, but the telling sheen in her eyes held him captive. It was as if she was projecting an image of Nadia into the gap between them, and he let out a sigh.

‘I want to try,’ he added, in a roughened tone.

She blinked her long eyelashes and the sheen was gone—but not the hurt, he saw.

‘To your standards or mine?’ Without giving him a chance to answer that, she spun away from him. ‘Just be clear, Roque, that the moment I stop caring about my brother will be the same moment you will lose control over me.’

She closed the door softly on her way out, making Roque wince as if she’d slammed it, then grimace because what she had said was true.

The complicated paradox of having a relationship with Angie, he mused ruefully. Her brother was always going to come first.

He raked out a laugh, wondering why he was giving himself all of this hassle when there were lots of women out there he could be enjoying a perfectly contented relationship with.

The answer was in the question. He did not want any other woman. He did not want perfect contentment in his life. He wanted a red-hot-tempered, red-haired shrew, with a fierce ability to love unconditionally—so long as your name was Alex, not Roque.

R
OQUE
turned the Range Rover in through the gates of the Quinta d’Agostinho, and drove into a tunnel of trees. Darkness swallowed them up in a moment, the spread of the car’s headlights arcing eerily across the narrow strip of tarmac and into the surrounding undergrowth, washing the colour out of everything. The narrow driveway twisted and turned from there on, keeping them climbing steadily, as they had been doing since they’d left Lisbon behind.

For the
quinta
nestled in historic splendour on a lush green plateau near the peak of a forest-strewn hill. To see the house at all, unless from an eye-squinting far distance, you had to be in the air and flying over the top of his steep grey-tiled roofs.

As the tunnel of trees eventually thinned out, Angie shifted on her seat for the first time since they’d swapped Roque’s plane for his sturdy four-wheel drive. She had visited this place only once before, which felt oddly unnatural now, when this was after all her husband’s main home. Roque also owned an apartment in a beautifully converted sixteenth-century palace in the centre of Lisbon, which they’d used to use a lot. But this fabulous
estate, with its rich dark forests and neatly tended formal gardens, was almost a stranger to her.

The last of the trees gave way to an elegant spread of sweeping lawns and flower-strewn shrubbery. Light suddenly bathed the car. As if inexorably drawn by it, Angie sat forward even further, to peer through the windscreen up at the house itself, standing within its own pool of welcoming warmth.

Lit for the master coming home, she thought, feeling breathless and vaguely threatened at the same time, though she did not understand why.

Great wealth, quintessential elegance and centuries of history stood right there, in the sugared apricot colour of its grand manor house walls. Angie glimpsed softly lit deep ground-floor terraces, and pretty arched upper balconies dressed in white-painted latticework, and the stone-built tower curving out from one corner as if stuck on as an afterthought. She caught a glimpse of the silky blue water in the swimming pool shimmering in its own beautifully tended bowl of a garden towards the far side of the house.

Then the car took a sweeping turn to the left, dipping them down and away from the front elevation towards the left-hand side of the house, where several open-arched, stone-columned garages came into view.

Roque stopped the car, switched off the engine and climbed out.

Angie stared balefully at his proud, handsome profile as he strode around the car bonnet on his way to open her door for her. He held out a hand to help her alight, which she accepted. They had been very polite to each other since they’d left London. Polite, distant, seemingly finally emptied of words.

She shivered as the cool evening air touched her skin, and still without saying a word Roque slid out of his jacket and dropped it onto her shoulders.

She supposed he was thinking she should have worn her coat, but when numb silence was the current order of things she didn’t bother to say it out loud. She’d found a turquoise jersey shift dress lurking at the bottom of her holdall—one of those garments made of crease-free fabric that was so easy to pack—so she’d changed into it before they left and just stuffed everything else back into the bag—including her coat, along with her green bag.

Even in the mood she’d been in, not wanting to care about anything, the natural stylist in her could not let her walk around in a turquoise dress with a huge vivid green bag slung over her arm. So all those essentials women had to carry around with them everywhere they went now resided in a Harrods carrier bag she’d found at the bottom of a drawer. It now languished with the assortment of luggage that had appeared at this end of their flight.

‘Your things,’ Roque had deigned to offer in flat response to her puzzled frown.

Her ‘things’, all professionally gathered and packed into a brand new set of tan leather trunks and cases, were now stacked in the rear of the Range Rover. She had been moved, lock, stock and barrel, in other words. Evicted and expatriated with the swift efficiency of a man who was so at his best when he was in charge.

A little man wearing a white shirt and a soft black apron appeared like a magician at Roque’s side, with a deferential bow and a smile. Turning his attention to the newcomer, Roque conversed with him for a minute
or two, then turned back to Angie.
‘Meu querida,
this is Antonio. He speaks no English, so please be kind.’

The
be kind
bit struck Angie like the plunge of knife. Why would she be anything else to any of the staff in Roque’s employ? Did he really think that she was such a shrew she did not know how to behave herself? The idea that he did think that hurt.

Finding a smile, she offered it to Antonio with an outstretched hand.
‘Boa tarde,
Antonio,’ she greeted him, as warmly as she could.

‘Boa tarde, senhora.’
Antonio beamed a smile back at her, then went off into a rush of Portuguese which forced Angie to angle a helpless look up at Roque.

‘He is welcoming you,’ he explained.

‘Oh.’ She looked back at Antonio. ‘I … thank you.’

‘Obrigado,
‘ Roque corrected.

‘Obrigado,
‘ Angie repeated obediently.

Antonio bowed again, before removing himself to the rear of the car, and she felt Roque’s hand arrive in the centre of her back, lightly pressing her to walk towards the house. They entered it by a side entrance, but still the black and cream chequered floor and rich mahogany woodwork spoke of timeless elegance lovingly preserved. The house was more like an antique emporium. Nothing Angie rested her eyes on was less than a hundred years old. Walking down a long hallway with Roque a half-step behind her, she felt as if he grew in stature the further inward they were drawn.

Eventually the chequered floor opened out onto a vast crescent-shaped grand front entrance, with spectacular wood and marble twin staircases sweeping up the curving apricot-painted walls to the floor above.

A neatly dressed woman who to Angie looked
uncannily like Antonio awaited them. The resemblance was confirmed when Roque explained that this was Antonio’s sister, Zetta. After he’d guided them through the same greeting ritual, he added a few brief instructions to Zetta.

It was only when his hand returned to the base of her spine to urge her towards the stairs that it began to hit Angie why they had come in through a side entrance.

Roque was making a very expressive point.

For the only other time he had brought her here had been as his new bride, and he had carried her in his arms through the front door. There had been no servants waiting to meet them, just the two of them and their soft laughter as he insisted on carrying all the way up the stairs.

This time there was to be no such romantic gesture— just a side entrance through which to gain access to the house, and the use of her own legs to carry her up the grand staircase. No soft laughter, no stolen kisses along the way.

Roque walked one step behind her and even the atmosphere felt cooler, making her tense fingers clutch the edges of his jacket more closely to her as she walked. And the silence between them grabbed at her heart and squeezed it. What had they lost? What had they done to all of that warm, soft, beautiful romantic love they’d brought into this house with them on their wedding night?

Reaching the point where the two stairways came together in a graceful sweep, Angie turned beneath the wide plaster archway which led through to the upper wings of the house. Without needing instruction she turned to the right, which led to the master apartments
in this huge many-bedroomed place. Any idea of trying to escape to a different suite of rooms didn’t even get an airing this time. It seemed pretty pointless to try it when she knew Roque would simply do what he’d done in London and gather her up and bring her here.

Anyway, she was all out of fight, tired and depressed, feeling hollowed out from the inside by old memories she wished she didn’t have.

As they reached the door that barred the way further, Roque stepped forward to lean past her and do the polite thing with the door.

For a second she felt his arm brush her shoulder. For a second she felt his breath stir her hair. For a second she felt her senses leap and then tighten when he made a breath-catching pause. She could feel him wanting to say something, could feel his gaze on her half-lowered profile, as if he was willing her to turn her head and look at him.

Was he remembering the same things she was remembering? Her heart gave that same aching squeeze again, and the need to take a breath or suffocate in the heavy airlessness of their shared tension acted as a stimulus to a set of vibrations she wished she couldn’t feel.

Then he was pushing the door inwards and she was free to move again, walking on legs that felt rubbery into a huge, beautifully appointed bedroom, with four long windows dressed in a bitter lemon-and-lime-coloured heavy silk brocade which matched the cover thrown over the huge central bed.

Angie didn’t look at the bed. She didn’t really focus on anything. She just slipped Roque’s jacket off her taut shoulders and draped it over the back of a chair, then
kept on going across an expanse of wooden floor strewn with beautiful rugs. She only came to a halt when she reached one of the windows, though it was much too dark outside to see anything through it.

‘Antonio will bring up your luggage shortly.’ Roque spoke at last.

Angie nodded.

‘And Zetta is preparing a light supper,’ he pushed on, sounding like a super-polite hotel concierge. ‘As the hour is so late, I thought you might prefer to eat it up here.’

Angie nodded again, then added a courteous, ‘Thank you.’

The long hiss of his breath ran straight down her spine. ‘Angie—’

‘I’ll have a bath first, if that’s okay,’ she interrupted.

‘Of course it is okay.’ He’d started to sound irritated, but she didn’t react—didn’t want to react. She didn’t want to fight with him any more. She felt cold and empty, as if she’d lost something precious.

Which she had, she acknowledged bleakly. Her freedom of choice.

She could almost feel him biting back the desire to say something else, but instead he turned and strode back out of the suite, the door closing into its housing with such a numbing softness it made her flinch.

Turning around, she crossed the bedroom and stepped beneath one of the plaster archways which stood either side of the huge, deeply carved bed. The archway opened up into a spacious, custom-designed dressing room she could have fitted the whole of her London flat inside. She crossed the floor to where she remembered the bathroom was situated, and by the time she’d run a bath in
the huge porcelain tub, and indulged herself by soaking in it for ages, she began to feel more human again.

Wrapped in the velvet-smooth white bathrobe she’d found hanging behind the door, Angie padded out of the bathroom—only to pull to a stop in surprise when she discovered that while she’d been soaking in the bath her things had been unpacked and put away. Her suits, her dresses, tops and blouses all hung in co-ordinated neatness in the open-plan-style wardrobe spaces. Her assortment of shoes lined up in rows. Toiletries, cosmetics, perfumes were all carefully arranged on the wall-to-wall mirrored dressing table, and everything else was either neatly folded away or placed discreetly in the central island bank of drawers.

I’ve well and truly been moved in, she noted ruefully. Then padded out into the bedroom to find the promised supper spread out on a table by one of the windows. She discovered fresh, warm crusty bread, a baby tureen filled with a light aromatic soup, and a pot of tea with the distinctive scent of her favoured Earl Grey.

Left alone to enjoy her supper, she eventually let her attention drift towards the bed. A bed she had carefully avoided looking at until now, because it was the place she had spent her wedding night.

A night of warm and gentle teasing, then wild and hot rising passion as their hunger for each other closed them in. She’d learnt right there in that bed that there was a difference between being a lover and being a wife, as if the vows they’d exchanged had cast aside the mere physical, opening them up to a new and deeper intimacy that had overwhelmed them both.

He had loved her then. Angie was sure of it. And she had so loved him. They’d told each other so over and
over during the long, dark and deeply passionate night in that bed.

A bed she would share with Roque again tonight— and goodness alone knew what else he intended them to share. It had already been prepared, with the lemon and lime cover stripped away and left neatly folded on the ottoman at the end of the bed, the crisp white bedding turned down.

Well, hello, honeymoon, she thought with a mockery she did not like to hear at work in her head. But there it was, mocking her rather than the situation, because their real honeymoon had spanned only that one night before her mobile phone had started ringing and she’d been rushing out of here to catch a flight back to London. Her brother had got himself into trouble again.

It was a wonder Roque had put up with it, she thought now, almost eighteen months after the event. The thought made Angie rise up from the table, tense again suddenly, restless, not liking it that she was seeing how putting her brother’s needs before everything, even their honeymoon, must have felt to Roque.

Like an interloper in his own marriage.
Angie winced as she recalled Roque saying that. It was no wonder they’d stopped loving and started fighting.

The suite door suddenly swung open and Roque strode in, still wearing the dark suit he had changed into before they’d left London, minus the jacket, of course, and now also minus his tie. Butterflies inside her stirred into life. He oozed streamlined grace and smooth, dark sophistication, exotic and earthy and unconditionally male. The bright white of his shirt highlighted the width of this shoulders and long lean torso. The absolute finest
dark silk-wool mix draped his hips, his long, powerful thighs and legs.