After Their Vows. Michelle Reid

shifting his long body in a squirm of regret. ‘I’m sorry! ‘ he cried. ‘I don’t know what came over me! I just—needed some money, and I didn’t want to have to ask you for it, so I went looking to see if you’d any spare cash hanging around the flat. I saw the card lying there in your bedside drawer, and before I knew what I was doing I’d picked it up! It had his fancy name splashed all over it—the great and glorious De Calvhos Bank!’ he rasped out, revealing the depth of his dislike for a man he had never tried to get along with. ‘At first I meant to cut it into little pieces and post them back to him with a – message. Then I thought, why not see if I can use it to hit him where it will hurt him the most? It was really easy …’

      Angie stopped listening at easy. She was so sure that she was going to really faint away this time that she reached for a chair and sat down on it, lifting up a set of icy fingers to cover her trembling mouth.

      Roque—dear God. Closing her eyes, she gave a helpless shake of her head. ‘I don’t want to believe you could do this to me,’ she whispered against her cold fingers.

      ‘What do you want me to say? ‘ her brother choked out. ‘I did a stupid thing, and now I’m sorry I did— but he was supposed to take care of you, Angie! You deserved to be taken care of for a change. Instead he cheated on you with Nadia Sanchez and—well, now look at you.’

      She flicked her startled eyes open, ‘Wh-what’s wrong with me?’

      Alex let loose with a short laugh, as if she’d made a stupid joke. ‘You used to have the kind of career most girls only dream about, Angie. I couldn’t look around without seeing you plastered on a billboard or a magazine somewhere. You were famous—fabulous. My friends used to envy me for having such a gorgeous sister. They’d fight each other for a chance to meet you. Then Roque came along turned you inside out. You stopped modelling because Roque didn’t like it—‘

      ‘That’s not true—’

      ‘Yes, it is!’ His face was hot with anger now. ‘He was a selfish, arrogant, superior swine who wanted to rule over you like a tyrant. He didn’t like your job commitments—your commitment to me.’

      There was a bit too much truth in that part for Angie to argue with it. Roque had demanded her exclusive attention. In fact Roque had been demanding all round— her attention, first call on her loyalty, the full extent of her desire for him focused on him between the sheets …

      ‘Now you work at a lousy reception job for the same modelling agency that used to roll out the red carpet every time you walked into it. And you struggle to make ends meet again while he flies the world in his private jet, and I daren’t ask you for an extra penny any more without feeling as guilty as sin. Roque owed me big-time for what he did to you, Angie, and you just let him get away with it—as if—’

      ‘He owes me, not you!’ Angie flared in response to all of that. ‘Roque was my mistake, not your mistake, Alex. He never did a single thing to you!’

      ‘Are you kidding?’ her brother flared back. ‘He robbed me of the sister I used to be proud of and left me with the empty shell I’m looking at now! Where’s your natural vibrancy gone, Angie? Your stylish sparkle? He took them.’ He answered his own bitter question. ‘If Roque had not married you and then cheated on you, you would not be floating through life looking like the stuffing has been knocked out of you. You would still be flying way up there at the top of your profession, raking in the money, and I would not have needed to use his credit card to play the markets because you would have financed me!’

      Of everything he had just thrown at her in that last bitter flood, the part making its biggest impact on Angie was seeing the truth about the brother she so totally adored staring her hard in the face. In her endless efforts to make his life as comfortable as she could possibly make it for him she had created a monster. A bone-selfish, petulant man-child who thought it was okay to steal someone else’s money if it got him what he wanted.

      What was it Roque had said during one of their fights about her brother? ‘You are in danger of creating a life-wasting lout if you don’t stop it.’

      Well, that damning prediction had come true with a vengeance, Angie saw—only to toss that aside again with a stubborn shake of her head. For what gave Roque the right to criticise the way she’d handled a rebellious teenager when his own privileged upbringing had given him everything he wanted at the nod of his handsome dark head?

      Alex had been only seventeen when she’d first met Roque, still attending boarding school and reliant on her for everything. Falling in love had not been an option she could afford to let happen—yet she’d been unable to stop herself from falling for Roque. And what Roque wanted Roque got, by sheer single-minded force of will—which in Angie’s view put him and Alex in the same selfish club. Between the two of them they had demanded so much from her that sometimes she’d felt stretched so taut in two different directions she’d thought she might actually snap in two.

      On one side of her she’d had the brother who’d become such a handful to deal with, skipping lessons to go out on the town with his friends and constantly getting into scrapes, which meant she’d had to travel down to his school in Hampshire to deal with the inevitable fall-out. Then there’d been Roque on the other side, angry with her for pandering to her brother’s every whim.

      But at least she’d felt vindicated when Alex won a place at Cambridge. He hadn’t achieved that by spending every night out on the town. And he’d settled into university life over the last year without giving her very much grief.

      Then she shook her head—because Alex hadn’t settled down at all, had he? He’d just hidden it from her that he was still doing exactly what he wanted to do—even if that meant sneaking around her flat and stealing credit cards to pay for his excesses.

      ‘I hate him,’ Alex said, with no idea what his sister was thinking. ‘It would’ve served him right if I’d gone on a real bender and completely cleaned him out. I should’ve bought a yacht or two, or a private plane like his to fly myself around in, instead of sitting in my room at uni spending his rotten money before he found out it was me doing the—’

      Alex snapped his mouth shut, leaving the rest of what he had been going to say to slam around the room like a clap of thunder.

      Angie shot to her feet.

      ‘Finish that,’ she shook out.

      Biting out a curse, her brother lifted a hand and grabbed the back of his neck. ‘Roque came to see me on campus today,’ he confessed. ‘He called me a weak, thieving wimp and threatened to break my neck if I didn’t—’ He stopped, clearly deciding to swallow down the rest of the insults Roque must have thrown at him. ‘The bottom line is,’ he went on huskily, ‘he wants his money back, and he told me that if I don’t give it to him he’s going to take the matter to the police.’

      The police—? Angie sat down again.

      ‘Now I’m scared, because I don’t think he was bluffing. In fact I know that he wasn’t.’

      So did Angie. Roque did not make threats unless he was prepared to carry them through—as she’d discovered in the hardest way there was.

      Bitterness suddenly grabbed at her insides, burning a hole in her ability to hold back from recalling that final showdown, when she and Roque had stood toe to toe like mortal enemies instead of loving husband and wife.

       ‘I am warning you, Angie, go chasing off to your brother’s aid this time and I will find someone else to take your place tonight. ‘

      She’d gone. He’d found Nadia. Marriage over.

      Pulling back from where those memories wanted to suck her, Angie sat back in the chair. ‘So, how does he expect you to pay him back?’ she asked heavily, already suspecting what was coming before her brother loped over to the table and produced something from the back pocket of his jeans.

      ‘He said to give you this …’