After Their Vows (10 page)

‘I ch-changed my mind and came back—’

‘Exatamente,’
Roque said curtly. ‘You changed your mind—as was your right … As it was my right to change my mind about putting another woman in your place.’

‘Oh, very slick.’ Angie utterly derided that. ‘I saw you with my own eyes, kissing her!’

‘Sim.
‘ He revealed absolutely no crack in his superior attitude. ‘Guilty as charged. And
you
made it halfway to your brother’s school before you decided to turn back.’

The parallel lines he was drawing suddenly dovetailed so neatly Angie almost choked on her breath as the two merged together. He was saying he had taken his threat as far as kissing Nadia before he’d changed his mind.

Her lips trembled and parted. She dropped her arms to her sides. She was hunting her head for a line of defence but could not find one.

As if he knew that, Roque nodded his head, spun a swift final glance of glinting contempt at her mobile, then turned and walked off.

Angie couldn’t move a single muscle. The chilly wash of truth was sinking through her as she listened to the suite door open, then shut.

Could he be telling the truth?

She knew she was still hunting for a chink in his cold demolition of her totally self-righteous belief in her own version of what had happened. Face it, Angie, you need to find a chink or Roque is right!

He was certainly right about Nadia’s message—she
had
hugged it to her like some self-punishing hair shirt. Her skin was suddenly riddled with a prickly quiver. Spinning round, she snatched up the phone and deleted Nadia’s wretched message with tense taps of her finger, then tossed the phone away from her as if it had burned to touch it at all.

She heard the sound of another door closing, and swung around, her breath caught and her eyes glued to the archway, until it registered with her that the door she’d heard closing was the one that led out of the suite.

He’d left her alone to fester. He’d taken his bad temper off to another part of the house. The burning urge to go chasing after him almost got the better of her, but then common sense arrived, telling her to give him time to cool off.

Give them both time to cool off.

It seemed crazily fitting that when she opened the wrong drawer to look for her normal nightdress she found herself staring at a piece of white tissue paper folded carefully over something familiarly soft, with an oh-so neatly scripted label carefully pinned to it.

‘My Baby’s First Shawl by Angelina de Calvhos’
she read with a thick, sinking swoop of her heart. Silly, soppy, sentimental.

As her lips parted and started trembling she felt a different kind of tremor take control of her throat. Reaching
out, even her fingers trembled as she slowly, carefully picked up the piece of tissue and placed it gently on the drawer-top. She did not want to look inside it. She had a horrible feeling her heart was going to crack wide open if she did. Yet, with her breath caught in her chest, she still drew back the folds of tissue, then stood, feeling an odd numbness spread up from her toes.

Barely half finished and very amateur-looking, the gossamer-fine snowy white shawl had been her very first attempt at crocheting. She’d spent hours, carefully threading the fine lacy pattern, only to constantly need to unpick half of it again when she realised she’d made a mistake.

Dry-eyed, she saw herself sitting curled up in a chintzy armchair in the tiny cottage deep in the Cotswolds Carla had sent her to when she’d needed to seek refuge from the press.

And from Roque, she added as she stroked her fingers across the soft fine wool. The cottage had belonged to a spinster aunt of Carla’s. She’d inherited it when the aunt died, but had rarely used it herself. ‘An investment’, her boss had called it. For Angie it had become her sanctuary, a place to hide away from the public eye while she nursed her wounds and nurtured the tiny life growing inside her womb. She’d found the hooks, wool and patterns languishing in a cupboard. It had just felt kind of fitting that she occupied some of her time taking on the challenge of teaching herself how to crochet.

‘Bad therapy, sweetie,’ Carla had drawled in her dry, mocking way, when she’d called in one day and caught her fumbling attempts to work with the hook and wool and demanded to know what she was doing. ‘Maternal instincts gone mad. You should come back into the
real world before you turn into one of those awful mummy frumps. I’ve got loads of work for a pregnant model.’

Well, not for
this
model, Angie thought sadly. A week after that conversation with Carla she’d been taken into hospital and confined to complete bedrest in an attempt to stop a threatening miscarriage. A month later it had happened anyway, for no reason anyone could give except the old one about nature taking its course.

Roque had not even known she was pregnant. She had not known it herself until a couple of weeks after their marriage fell apart. She hadn’t told her brother. Only Carla knew, and the doctor she’d gone to see. After it was over she’d been glad she’d kept it to herself.

And she had no intention of telling Roque now, she thought as she folded the tiny shawl into its tissue wrapping and placed it back in the drawer. They had enough problems cluttering up their marriage without adding a lost baby to them. What would be gained from telling him now?

What was gone was gone.

Angie slid back into bed and curled up on her side. Closing her eyes, she listened to the steady pump of her own heartbeat and felt as if she was lying in the loneliest place on earth. Roque would not come back into this bed tonight—she just knew that he wouldn’t. There was too much angry bitterness bubbling between them, and if he
had
been telling her the truth then.

She caught the sound of a door opening and then closing with a quiet click into its housing. Her heart missed a beat as she lay there, listening to Roque’s quiet tread. The whole suite was shrouded in darkness because she’d switched off all the lights before she’d climbed into bed,
so she lay listening to the rustle of clothing, then picked up the scent of brandy as he lifted the covers and slid into the bed.

‘You are awake,’ he said, and it was not a question.

Turning over, she peered at him through the darkness. He was lying on his back, staring up at the ceiling, the covers riding low across his chest. And he looked so very sombre Angie wanted to reach out and stroke her fingers along his unsmiling lips.

‘Okay, I have been thinking,’ he declared quietly. ‘We do not communicate about the right things. This must change.’

Angie thought about that for a couple of seconds, then gave a jerky nod of her head, engrossed in the dark resonance of his accent, which had deepened since they’d stood flinging accusations at each other.

‘I should not have brought my—bitterness about what has happened into this bed earlier. My
retribuiç
ã
o
crack was unforgivable in the circumstances, and I apologise for making it.’

‘I—’

‘Let me finish,’ he cut in, and like a naughty child chided for interrupting Angie was silenced. ‘The evidence of Nadia has always been stacked against me. I know that. When she lied to the press about our— involvement, I had no way of proving my innocence so I said nothing. That was also a mistake.’

‘I sh-should have let you say it, though,’ Angie dared to whisper.

‘After witnessing that kiss?’ He turned his dark head on the pillow and looked at her through the darkness. ‘No.’ He turned to stare at the ceiling again. ‘It was not a kiss a husband should give any other woman but his
wife. It should not have happened and you were right to feel cheated. If I had caught you kissing another man like that I would have ripped him limb from limb, then thrown you out of my life without conscience.’

‘Not much love lost, then.’ Angie could not help throwing in the jibe.

‘I am Portuguese,’ he claimed, as if it made him different from the rest of the human race. ‘We are possessive of our women. We do not forgive infidelity. We don’t like to share.’

‘If that last bit was aimed at my brother, then I—’

‘And your career,’ Roque put in. ‘Which took you away in one direction while I went off in another … Your brother was an added intrusion I did not … enjoy.’

‘Alex was—’

‘Your responsibility. And
he
did not like to share.’

‘I warned you I would make a lousy wife,’ Angie sighed out heavily, flopping onto her back.

‘And you were,’ he agreed.

‘You shouldn’t have married me.’

‘I was irritated with you as my lover. My arrogance told me I could turn you into a more satisfying wife.’

Angie released a very unsatisfied breath of air at his note of dry whimsy. It offered no answer at all as to why he’d suggested marriage—or for that matter why she had agreed. Oh, she knew that she’d been wildly in love with him. The ‘first love’ syndrome had grabbed a really tight hold on her. But they’d been sharing a very exciting and passionate relationship without commitment, so why had he bothered to change the status quo?

Then there was the ‘no divorce’ thing he’d thrown at her yesterday—or the day before that, she amended,
when she remembered the lateness of the hour. What kind of man with a ‘no divorce’ clause built into his family pride married a woman because she irritated him as a lover?

‘And I was in love with you.’ He added the flat appendage as if he’d tapped directly into her thoughts.

Angie just froze as a trail of words like,
amo-te, eu te amo, eu quero te,
echoed in her head. Soul-melting endearments from a handsome ex-playboy, a guy with a fatal charm built into his genes. And she had responded to his softly spoken words with her own English versions … Yet how was it that she’d known absolutely how much
she’d
meant them while not taking on board the true worth of his words?

Then she remembered how those soul-melting endearments had gone missing within a few days of his ring sliding onto her finger, and Angie knew deep inside that she had been the one to blame. She’d continued on in her busy life with blind disregard to the fact that their relationship had changed, or that she needed to make changes along with it. Her wake-up call had arrived too late, when she’d found out she was pregnant two weeks after their marriage had blown apart.

Her eyes began to sting in the darkness as she thought about it. The horrible bad timing, the terrible hurt, the miserable weeks of loneliness when she’d hidden herself away to lick her wounds while hugging the news about their baby to herself, as if he’d forfeited the right to care.

‘W-was …?’
she prompted tremulously. ‘As—as in you don’t feel that way about me any more? ‘

Watching her through the sultry darkness, Roque saw the glitter of tears in her eyes and wanted his right to
retribution back. Where the hell did she get off, daring to ask him that question after the year she had put him through?

‘You think I should still love you?’ He threw the loaded ball right back into Angie’s court.

Pressing her trembling lips together, she gave a shake of her head, and a burning sense of dissatisfaction grabbed hold of his chest muscles, making him want to take hold of her by the shoulders and give her a damn good shake. So what was new there? he asked himself heavily. He could hardly recall a time when she hadn’t annoyed him enough to make him want to shake her until she woke up and recognised what they’d had going for them once.

‘A esperança é a última que morre,’
he quoted heavily.

‘I don’t know what that means,’ she whispered through the darkness.

‘Then learn my language,’ he suggested without remorse. He added a gruff, ‘Go to sleep,’ and then a sigh when he recognised he was bringing the last twenty hours in a full circle, with a gap between them in their bed as wide as an ocean.

Only this time Angie wasn’t playing. ‘Okay, so you’re angry with me,’ she accepted, drawing in a fortifying breath of air. ‘I’m sorry I made you wait twelve months to tell me about Nadia. And I wish I wasn’t so stubborn and unforgiving—but if you tell me what I must do one more time, Roque, I will—’

He moved without her seeing it coming. One of his arms just stretched out and appeared through the darkness to grab hold of her wrist, and the next thing Angie knew she was being hauled across the gap between
them. She landed against his chest in a quiver of gasps and protests. They looked at each other—two deep-diving seconds of looking—and then his other hand arrived at the back of her head and he was pulling her down to receive the full onslaught of his kiss.

She didn’t even think of fighting to get away from him this time. Instead she just kissed him back with every last bit of fevered anxiety she felt running rife in her blood. In fact she was so intent on what she was feeding into her kiss that when she felt something cool slide onto her finger she pulled her head back so hard it was a wonder she didn’t snap her neck.

She stared dazedly down at him, watched a mocking little smile take control of his mouth. Then she lifted her left hand and stared at the two rings now slotted onto her finger.

She’d forgotten all about the rings again. She’d forgotten that Roque had taken them back. Her eyes were luminous even without the threat of tears as she looked back at his handsome dark face.

‘A esperança é a última que morre,
‘ he repeated softly, then pressed her back against the pillow and came over her to capture her lips with another hot, ravishing kiss. Angie’s hands found his shoulders, and she set light so fast she almost hyperventilated when he snaked back from her to rear up onto his knees.

‘What the hell are you wearing? ‘ he ground out incredulously, staring down at the voluminous folds of white muslin.

‘Hair shirt,’ Angie whispered. ‘I didn’t think you would come back to this bed tonight.’

He spread back the covers so he could get a better look at the nightdress. After spending long seconds
scanning her, from spiralling flame hair splashed against the pillow down to slender pink toes, he let out a lazy laugh. ‘You look like Count Dracula’s bride! No, don’t fire up, Angelina the sacrifice.’ He grinned rakishly when she tensed up. ‘I like it.’ Reaching down, he tugged the muslin all nice and neat around the shape of her body. ‘I think it is appropriate attire for a lady about to be ravished on her wedding night.’