After Their Vows. Michelle Reid
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thought of as his domain.
Everything in this room was as tastefully designed as the rest of this vast place, but in here was Roque’s personal stamp. A telltale glimpse at the deeply serious side to his complex personality displayed in the rows of lovingly collected first edition books lining the rows of shelving, and the heavy black leather recliner on which he liked to stretch out to read.
The only television set in the whole apartment rested wafer-thin and flat against a wall of burnt orange. Beneath it spread all the technology required to make it and his complex music system feed sound throughout the whole apartment. Then, of course, the usual computer and communication equipment had a place, as you would expect of a man as internationally structured as him.
But the desk—the big, hand-carved antique desk made of rich dark colonial rosewood he’d had shipped here from his family estate—stood dead centre of everything, making a major statement about his proud Portuguese roots. He could spend hours sitting at that desk, working with a concentration Angie had used to find unfathomably sexy. The cut of his wide shoulders as he leant forward, the sheen of light across his bent head, and his strong, handsome features etched by a depth of concentration that she.
Angie sucked in a breath, not wanting to go there. Not wanting to recall anything intimate about their time spent here together or the fact that there were times when they’d actually existed here in peace.
Yet, right on the back of that desire not to remember, she saw herself, curled up in his recliner with her cheek supported on a cushion she’d filched from a living room sofa, slender white fingers idly twirling a ringlet of hair while she read one of her own meagre assortment of books.
Contentment … Her throat began to hurt. Bare pink toes curling and uncurling in time with the music playing softly in the background. A glass of wine and a snack within lazy reaching distance and her handsome dark man pooled in the desk light only a couple of metres away.
Her eyes dared to glaze with moisture for a second. Then she winked it away, drew in a breath, and made herself walk over to the desk.
She heard Roque pause in the doorway. The silence between them buzzed. He was curious, she knew that, waiting to discover what had brought her in here before he made any kind of comment.
But that was Roque—a master of strategic timing, Angie thought dryly as she set her bag down on the top of his desk, then began rummaging inside its capacious depths with a frowning ferocity that helped to keep her focused.
‘Okay, I will bite,’ he drawled lazily. ‘What are you doing?’
‘You should have known to lay off my brother,’ Angie responded. ‘You know you don’t have a single leg to stand on by threatening him with the police, because that credit card was mine.’
‘Linked to my personal bank account,’ he confirmed, moving closer.
‘Then you only have yourself to blame if you don’t like what I did with it. A wiser man would have cancelled it the same day I walked out.’
‘Strange,’ Roque said, ‘but I had this rather touching image of you cutting it into little pieces and then depositing the bits—ceremonially, of course—into some fiery hot furnace.’
Angie paused over what she was doing to wonder why she hadn’t thought of doing exactly that, instead of shutting the card away in a drawer.
‘Well, I didn’t,’ she said, ‘and now you know why I didn’t.’
He arrived at her side to settle the lean cut of his hips against the edge of the desk. ‘Are you telling me that you gave your brother permission to squander my money?’
Refusing to so much as glance at him, Angie returned to hunting through the assortment of things she kept in her bag while she fought a fierce battle with herself over giving him the honest answer or—
‘Yes,’ she forced out.
‘Liar.’ He sighed in disappointment. ‘We both know that you would rather pluck out your fingernails than hand over a credit card to your greedy brother.’ Reaching up, he gently brushed a twisting length of hair back from her smooth cheek. ‘You are one of those rare creations—an honest person, Angie,’ he murmured, grimacing when she flinched away from his touch. ‘I recall a time when you even made me drive you back into the centre of Lisbon because some shop assistant had overpaid you ten euros in your change. How many people do you think bother to do that, meu querida? Even honest people?’
Fingers closing around her chequebook, Angie drew it out of her bag, ‘You move in the wrong circles,’ she countered. ‘You want to try working in a shop—then you would know how that poor assistant would have had to make up the shortfall from her own purse if I hadn’t made the effort to take it back.’
‘However, as you informed me at the time, I am too rich to know how the real world works.’
‘Look …’ She turned her face to spear him a fierce look. ‘I was the one that played the stockmarkets, okay?’
Eyes of a disturbingly fathomless black held hers steady. ‘That makes it two lies you’ve told me.’
Angie tugged in a breath. ‘I decided it was time I made you pay for the months of hell I endured being your stupid blind wife.’
‘Blind? ‘ he echoed musingly, indecently long eyelashes lowering slightly. ‘Mmm,’ he confirmed, ‘very blind.’
Angie looked away from him, feeling hot suddenly, and agitated when she’d been so determined to feel nothing at all. Pushing her bag to one side, she spied Roque’s fountain pen lying on his blotter and reached for it. Aware that he was watching her every move, she opened the chequebook and bent over it to write.
What happened next threw her totally. In her own way she had been so fixed on what she intended to do that she had not given a thought as to how Roque might react. So his hand suddenly arriving to grasp her wrist, long brown fingers closing like a clamp and then tightening their grip, surprised her into uttering a sharp squeaking gasp.
‘Drop the pen,’ he gritted.
Angie’s fingers tightened in direct objection to his command. ‘I was just—’
‘I know what you were doing,’ he cut in thinly. ‘And I, as you see, am stopping you. So drop the pen, Angie.’
When she still refused to comply, the air left his lungs on a hiss. In a smooth snaking move he had completely surrounded her with his hard body as he rose up to swing in behind her, his other hand reaching out to snatch the pen from her, then tossing it away in contempt across the desk.
‘Y-you—’
‘Shut up,’ he growled.
Still holding her wrist imprisoned, he picked up her chequebook next, so he could read what she’d managed to write. Another hiss of anger shot from him, making Angie quiver, because his warm breath had seared across her already burning cheek.
She gave a yank of her wrist and managed to free it, then spun around to glare at him. ‘I’m not into cavemen!’
‘My apologies.’ He took a step back.
Her heart was thumping heavily and her breathing was clipped short. There was a terrible quiver going on inside her and— ‘Then what was all that about?’ she shook out.
Roque was still frowning at her hurried scribble, all hint of lazy humour wiped clean from his face. He threw out a few tart lucid curses, tossed the chequebook back down on the desk, then spun on his heel to pace away from her like a big prowling cat spoiling for a good fight.
Jerking up her hand to rub at her wrist where it still burned and tingled, Angie watched him warily, still feeling shaken and really uncertain of her ground now— because she had seen Roque angry before but never like this.
‘Twenty damn thousand,’ she heard him mutter, as if the sum was an insult.
‘It’s all I have right