After Their Vows (11 page)

‘Bit late for that,’ Angie said, shaking out a quiver of pleasure when he ran the flat of his hands all the way up her muslin-covered legs to the feminine curve of her slender hips. ‘I got to be well and truly ravished long before my wedding night—and I am not in any way, shape or form a
sacrifice,’
she added, in case he thought she was
that
sorry she hadn’t let him defend himself twelve months ago.

‘Don’t spoil the fantasy.’ Sending his hands on a further trail of her muslin-wrapped body, he shaped her narrow ribcage, then located the burgeoning fullness of her breasts. ‘We will make
this
our new wedding night, and this time—’ he paused to view the successful way he had outlined both budding peaks against the fine cloth with his long fingers ‘—we will follow it up with the honeymoon we did not manage to enjoy the first time around.’

‘You—’

‘Shut up now, Angie,’ he growled, losing all hint of humour as he lowered his dark head, claimed one nipple in the heat of his mouth, and sucked hard on it through the muslin.

Angie forgot what she had been going to say as she closed her eyes and arched her back, setting free a helpless
cry of pleasure. Her fingers dug into his hair. Her thighs sprang apart.

Roque husked out a very masculine laugh. ‘Not very virginal,
meu querida,’
he murmured dryly.

‘Shut up.’ It was Angie’s turn to call a halt to talking.

Roque’s answer was the swooping glide of a long-fingered hand down between the hot juncture she’d opened up. He touched her through the muslin and sent her spinning her off into an exotic world she did not come away from for a long, long time.

Afterwards she stared up into the all-consuming darkness enfolding them and hoped—prayed—that in giving him the benefit of the doubt about Nadia she was not making the biggest mistake of her life.

R
ESTING
her forearms against the rail on the sunny balcony, Angie looked down at the swimming pool situated directly below her, where Roque was currently cutting through the water like a man-eating shark.

The air this early still had a chill to it, and she did not know how he could stand it in the water, but then sharks were cold-blooded, she thought with a smile.

Not that she’d been treated to the cold-blooded, man-eating shark in him over the last three weeks. No, she’d had the very hot-blooded
woman-
eating shark. The one that circled her like a hunter and would pounce when she was least expecting it to devour her in a fest of passionate lust.

Lust.
She pulled a face at the word, because lust was what they shared on this honeymoon. No mention from either of them since the night they’d arrived here of that other word
—love.

Watching him cut through the water in a long, bronzed slither of supple male magnificence, she was not in the least bit surprised to feel her lust for him tangle up the sensitive muscles low down inside. Beneath the short slip of a nightdress she was wearing, her thighs shifted against a soft pulsing ache that reminded her just how
passionately lustful Roque had been as recently as an hour ago, before he had left her to sleep off the effects while he’d taken himself off to his all-purpose gym before his swim.

Roque possessed vibrant energy enough to drive ten men. He was rarely ever still. If he wasn’t dragging her off somewhere to show her Portugal from a proud native’s perspective, he was using up some of that excess energy in dealing with his many business interests via the fully equipped office on the ground floor. When that failed to hold his restless interest he hunted her down.

As honeymoons went, theirs had been filled with non-stop passion and occasional quick trips out thrown in as respite. He’d flown them in his helicopter to Porto, then down a long stretch of the Douro River, banked by its famed hills and frilled by tier upon tier of wine terraces. And he’d really impressed her by pointing out how many of those terraced hills belonged to him or came beneath the de Calvhos umbrella. Back in Porto they’d boarded his yacht and spent a few days sailing down to the Algarve. And they’d strolled through the smaller vine terraces right here on this estate, when he’d demonstrated what went into producing a wine as exclusive as the coveted d’Agostinho label, and he’d made her drunk from tasting samples directly from the barrel, then laughed when he’d had to carry her back to his car.

He’d been relaxed and fun—a side to him she had rarely glimpsed the last time they been together. Back then they’d both been so busy, reduced to flying in and out of each other’s lives with a speed and frequency that shocked and appalled her when she thought about it now. It was no wonder she’d felt wired up when he
was with her and cast adrift when he was not. They’d been more like very intimate strangers, passing briefly in the warm passions of the night, than a real husband and wife. Except.

What they had now was not what she would describe as normal, Angie mused with a small frown. Because they hadn’t—not once—taken a trip into Lisbon, or visited any of their old social haunts. No long leisurely meals eaten in Tavares’ opulent surroundings, nor lively evenings spent with his friends at Club Lux. They had not gone near his city apartment, or strolled the shops on the Avenida da Liberdade. When she’d specially asked if they could go there he’d frowned and murmured some vague promise that they would discuss it later, then suddenly remembered a rush of calls he had to make.

Not that she wanted to shop till she dropped, or hop back onto Lisbon’s social merry-go-round. She didn’t. Her life had changed last year when she’d lost Roque and then their baby. Her wants and needs and ideals had changed. Perhaps his had, too. But this new life they were leading, encapsulated in a bubble, sealed off and protected from the life they’d used to live, was not sustainable. They couldn’t go on for ever locking the rest of the world out.

Angie’s frown deepened as she watched Roque make another looping turn in the pool and then spear back the way he had come. Yesterday Carla had called her with a business proposition that had roused her interest. When she’d told Roque about it over dinner he’d been so uncommunicative about the idea they’d almost had their first fight in three weeks.

She’d pointed out to him that if she was to live permanently here in Portugal then setting up a CGM branch
here in Lisbon would be the perfect challenge for her. She’d known that by saying it she had been putting the stamp of permanency on their marriage. She’d also been aware that she was taking a huge step by if not stating it out loud then showing that she was ready to put the Nadia thing aside for good.

Roque had taken that on board, she was sure he had, because his attitude had softened and he’d started firing really impressive and well-informed questions at her about CGM, which had forced her to jump through hoops to answer and to grow quite heated when his opinions differed from hers.

They’d taken the argument to bed with them, and finished it off with a different kind of heat. And now here she was, up out of her bed hours before she normally would be, eager to strike while the idea was hot and convince him to—

Distracted from her thoughts by the familiar sound of his mobile’s ringtone floating up from the terrace below her, Angie broke into an appreciative grin as she watched him haul himself out of the pool in a glorious ripple of water-washed muscle bronzed by the morning sun.

Gorgeous, she thought lushly, peering down at him like a sneaky voyeur—because he had no idea she was up here spying on him.

He picked the phone up off a table, then stood dripping water while he indulged in a sharp question and answer session in Portuguese. It had to be business, she decided, watching how, even wearing only a pair of black swimming shorts, he had taken on a whole new persona—the cold-blooded, man-eating shark kind.

Her grin widened.

Then suddenly died into stark frozen shock when the impatient snap of his voice drifted up to her.
‘Para Deus causa, Nadia, irá você escuta-me!’

For God’s sake—
Nadia?

The rest didn’t matter; she would not have been able to translate it anyway. Her grasp of Portuguese was still sketchy at best, and—

Roque was still in contact with Nadia.

Angie took a jerky step back from the rail, then just stood in her flimsy, peachy strip of a nightdress, feeling the slow chilling growth of shock rise up from her feet while she listened to the impatient cut of Roque’s voice fading as he strode into the house.

Silence folded around her like a huge stifling blanket. She didn’t know what to do or to think. One part of her brain was throwing up all kinds of excuses—there had to be more than one Nadia out there, and maybe Nadia meant something else in Portuguese.

Or was Nadia right here in Portugal? Was she ringing Roque to arrange where they were to meet?

Are you crazy, Angie? she asked herself. You
know
that Nadia returned to live in her native Brazil last year, after she’d spilled her kiss and tell to the press, and you
believe
Roque’s insistence that it was all just a pack of lies anyway.

‘You are awake,
senhora …’

Eyelashes fluttering, Angie turned to find Maria standing in the open doors which led into the bedroom, holding a breakfast tray in her hands. The little maid sounded surprised to find her out here, because she knew all about Angie’s preference for lazing in bed each morning while Roque did his macho thing with the gym and the pool.

‘Sim,
‘ she replied, without knowing she’d said it. A dizzy sensation was beginning to spin in her head.

‘You eat out here in the sun this morning, then?’ Maria smiled as she stepped forward to place the tray down on the small table. ‘It is such a beautiful day, no?’

‘Beautiful,’ Angie repeated like a dim echo, and pushed a set of icy cold fingers up to cover her mouth. It was trembling, she noticed, and the inside of her mouth and throat felt like dry sand.

Maria busied herself pouring out Angie’s first cup of tea for her. As the fragrant scent of Earl Grey wafted towards her she felt her stomach churn.

Next thing she knew she was reeling around to face the doors, and heading towards them as a swirling clutch of nausea suddenly took hold. In her unsteady rush to get to the bathroom she bumped into a chair and knocked it over.

Maria straightened up with a jolt, then spun to stare at her. ‘Oh,
senhora,
you are ill!’ She heard the little maid gasp.

Angie forced herself to keep moving. Runway training, she kept telling herself over and over. You can make it to the bathroom before you throw up.

She was halfway across the bedroom when the suite door suddenly flew open, halting her mid-step. Turning her head, she saw Roque standing there, still wearing his swimming shorts with a towel looped around his neck. He was frowning as if he was in a bad temper.

‘I have to fly to Paris this afternoon,’ he growled out when he saw her.

Was Nadia in Paris?

With a muffled choke, Angie took flight on legs that
felt like fragile spindles. The archway ahead kept swimming in and out. She heard Roque say something sharp, and Maria answer him, and then the little maid’s arm arrived around her waist to help support her—she had never felt so grateful for anything in her entire life.

Feeling too tall and gangly, and as weak as a rag doll, she let Maria guide her towards the bathroom. She threw up in the toilet bowl with Maria holding her hair back just as Roque arrived in the doorway. She could hear the concern in his voice as he spoke with Maria, then felt his closeness as he took over from the maid until it was over. His strong hands gently lifted her into his arms.

Angie wanted to fight him. She wanted to tell him to get off her. She wanted to scream at him to get out. But she found she couldn’t raise the energy, and the dizzying sickness was already trying to pull her back down again.

Maria was still there. She could hear the two of them talking in low voices, but couldn’t understand a word that they said.

Well, what did she expect? She’d married a foreigner. She was living in a foreign country and the language was still foreign to her. It wasn’t to Nadia. Nadia’s native Brazilian was almost an exact match to Roque’s Portuguese. She was dark, like him—exotic, like him, and.

He laid her down on the bed, then stretched out to bring the rumpled sheet fluttering over her. Angie huddled beneath it, so cold she was shivering like mad.

‘I’m calling the doctor,’ he said harshly.

‘Don’t you
dare
call a doctor!’ Angie shrieked out,
then groaned when it made her head feel as if it was splitting apart.

She flinched when she felt the warmth of Roque’s palm on her brow. For some reason it brought her eyes flickering open. He was squatting down beside the bed, so close to her she could see tiny golden-brown shards of concern in his eyes.

‘Go away,’ she whispered, and squeezed her eyes shut again. She didn’t want to look at him. She didn’t want to blurt out the question stinging on the tip of her dry, acrid-tasting tongue.

Roque viewed her pinched pallor from the taut position of a man who was recalling the times he had cut it too fine with the use of a condom. He might not have any previous experience with morning sickness to draw upon, but his instincts had been yelling the cause at him from the moment he saw her standing there, looking pale as death, with a hand clamped to her mouth.

What else
could
be wrong with her? Maria had told him the smell of the tea had turned Angie’s stomach. The maid insisted she’d been perfectly fine a minute before, enjoying the sunshine on the balcony.

‘Angie …’

‘No doctor,’ she mumbled, completely misreading what he had been about to say.

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.