After Their Vows Read Online Free PDF Page A

not to remember, she saw herself, curled up in his recliner with her cheeksupported 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—thenyou 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