After Their Vows. Michelle Reid

of the horrifying total at the bottom of the third page that she finally—finally—blanched.

      Roque was silent. He just stood there and let her discover how deeply her brother had thrown her into debt to him. She could not even look at him. Horror and shame sent her trembling fingers flicking back and forth through the pages in the vague hope that she’d mis-tallied the figures—then it suddenly dawned on her.

       ‘Angie’ …

      She looked up. ‘You thought it was me, didn’t you? ‘ she breathed unsteadily.

      ‘At first.’ Roque nodded. ‘I thought you were trying to force a response out of me, so I decided to play along and see how far …’

      His voice tailed off to an expressive grimace, leaving Angie to fill in the bit he’d left out. Forever the strategist, she thought bleakly.

      ‘So you could have nipped Alex’s stupidity in the bud a whole lot sooner?’ Angie concluded thickly. ‘Thanks for nothing, Roque.’

      ‘It was not mere stupidity, Angie. It was theft!’ Roque thrust out the hard distinction. ‘And when did you ever allow me any say over what your brother did?’ he added harshly. ‘I was the interloper in my own marriage. If I uttered a complaint you went off the deep end. If I offered advice you threw it back in my face. Well, this time it will be different.’ Reaching over, he drew the dossier back to his side of the desk. ‘This time I will have control of what this represents, Angie, and you are going to have to swallow your frankly annoying stubbornness and deal with that.’

      The way he stabbed a long finger at the damning bank statements made Angie blink and her eyes started to sting. ‘But—but you know I will get you the money,’ she choked in confusion. ‘Why are you making such a meal out of this?’

      ‘Because,’ Roque stated, ‘it is not your debt.’

      ‘But it is!’ she insisted. ‘My credit card! My name on the bills! I know you can’t have a leg to stand on. I just need time to check that out with a lawyer or something, but—’

      ‘Or we could bring in the police and let them decide.’

      ‘Or I could change my divorce plea.’ Angie went in for the kill, because she had nothing else left to fight him with. ‘And go for half of everything you own, citing your adultery with Nadia!’

      Roque heaved in a breath.

      ‘Go for it,’ he invited, his fabulous bone structure hard as nails now, ‘and I will have your brother arrested. Make no mistake about it. This is called a stalemate, Angie, in case you have not yet worked it out.’

      What it was, Angie thought, was Roque throwing down the gauntlet between them. He might as well have slapped her with it, hard in the face!

      Dropping the pen, she stepped back from the desk with a jerk. ‘So why have you brought me here if you are not prepared to negotiate with me?’ she demanded in a hurt, bewildered voice.

      Her long, slender frame so taut that it trembled, her hands clenched into white-knuckled fists at her sides, she might sound bewildered and hurt, but she still had enough spirit left in her to fling back her head, Roque noted dryly as, within the circle of light from the overhead desk light, he watched her shimmer like a firecracker about to go off.

      Without needing to think about his answer, he went with his instincts and strode around that light pool until he was standing directly in front of her—towering over her as intimidating as hell.

      ‘I brought you here for this,’ he murmured ever so succinctly, lifting up one of his long-fingered hands to rest it warm against her throat.

      ‘Don’t you dare!’ she seethed, knowing what was coming.

      Oh, he dared. Angie tried to push him away, but Roque had that covered. He planted his other hand on the base of her spine and drew her inexorably against him. Anticipation as to what was about to happen sent fiery sparks showering down over Angie’s flesh. Everything about him was big and hard and familiar, like making contact with something precious she’d lost.

      ‘I hate you,’ she whispered in a last ditch attempt to save herself.

      He just hit her with one of his mocking smiles because he knew—oh, how well he knew—what she was really fighting.

      Then he wasn’t smiling. He was parting his lips and bringing them down into burning contact with hers. She stiffened her whole body and trembled in her determination to feel nothing. She tried—tried not to give any kind of response. But then he made that slow, sensuous glide with his tongue across her lips, and on the back of an unforgivable shiver of pleasure she surrendered. She surrendered like a fool with no brain and let her lips fall apart in an invitation he accepted with the hot, stabbing thrust of his tongue.

      She drowned in that kiss for a full thirty seconds. She let him drive her wild as the natural firecracker living inside her went off with passionate force. It spun her back into a world she had tried so hard not to remember—the feel of him, the glorious taste, the urgent trampling heat of desire he could create inside her so quickly, which flung her from icy with hatred to hot with desire without a gap in between. Her fingers clawed up his shirt-front, making him shudder as her nails raked flesh covered only by the thinness of his shirt, then wince when they dug like talons into the back of his neck.

      Roque jerked his head up. ‘Gatinho,’ he muttered.

      The little cat inside Angie purred with angry triumph, then went for the kill with a lethal precision he really should have been ready for. She sank her teeth into his full and pulsing sexy lower lip. With a grinding growl of reaction he bent her into such an acute arch that she cried out. The next thing she knew he was kissing her so deeply she lost the ability to do anything else but cling. Her heart went crazy, another anxious, helpless moan sounded deep in her throat, and her breasts were crushed against his chest now, their dusky pink tips stirring and tightening to sensitive pinpricks. If it hadn’t been for her coat he would have felt them. As it was he just kissed her until she gave back with a melting urgency she was thoroughly ashamed of even while she couldn’t stop herself from doing it.

      Roque drew back his head and looked down into the dazed shimmer of her eyes, then at her full, hot, pulsing mouth. With a sensual arrogance he lowered his head again to slide his tongue across its quivering width. Angie released a helpless little whimper. He repeated the stroke and finished it with a deeply erotic tangling with her tongue before he lifted up his head again.

      Smouldering dark eyes burned a cruelly implacable look down at her, ‘This,’ he said, ever so softly, ‘is your only negotiating chip, minha doce. Take it or leave it.’

      Then, with a coolness that stunned Angie into a deep freeze, he put her away from him, stepped around her, and strode for the door.

      Reeling around to watch him go, every inch of his long, powerful body in such perfect harmony, Angie cringed inside with the flaming heat of her own humiliation for being so weak as to let him do this to her.

      ‘To listen to you anyone would think you were lily-white and perfect,’ she flung after him shakily. ‘But you were unfaithful to me, Roque. Does that count for anything with you?’

      Roque stilled on the threshold, the breadth of his shoulders revealing only the slightest hint of a tense twitch. ‘It counted for something twelve months ago, when you deserved an explanation and redress from me but refused both. Now it is too late. I will give you neither. So take my advice and get over it, Angie. This is a different time, with different issues. Get a grip and move on.’

       Get a grip and move on …?

      Angie released a strangled little laugh that made those shoulders hunch a second time as he continued out of the room.

      ‘Get a grip and move on’ from the sight of the man you loved heart and soul wrapped in the arms of another woman? Not in this lifetime—or even in the next life, come to that. He’d broken her heart. He’d wrecked her ability to believe in herself.

      The