The way Roque flung himself across to the plate glass window behind the desk and thrust his hands in his pockets made Angie’s voice slither to a strangled stop. It wasn’t so much that he’d turned his back on what she’d been saying but the way he had done it which filled her with dread.
When he wanted to, Roque could become chillingly unreachable. And he felt no love for Alex at all. In his view her brother was the main reason why their marriage had fallen apart. He’d refused to understand that in taking on the parental mantle for her brother she had a duty to see her responsibilities to Alex through—even when they intruded an awful lot on their marriage.
It was just the way things had to be. Teenagers by reputation were rebellious and pushy and difficult. And, okay, so Alex had played up to Roque’s often stinging criticism of him, she conceded, but even that did not change the unalterable fact that standing between the two of them had made her marriage a year-long exhausting fight.
‘Please listen to me …’ Angie lowered her stubborn guard because she knew that she had to, her voice trembling as she did so. ‘I can—’
‘No.’ He turned around again, and the moment she looked into his face she felt a wave of sick apprehension riddle her stomach. ‘Not this time, Angie. This time you are going to listen to me.’
He strode back to the desk and opened the drawer again. With a graceful flick of his long fingers he produced a folder which he set down on the desk. ‘Angie’, it said, in his own sharp scrawl on the label. That was all—just ‘Angie’—yet seeing her name written there made Angie feel slightly sick.
Opening the dossier and flicking through the pages until he found what he was looking for, Roque then spun the whole thing round and sent it sliding across the desk, so it came to a neat stop in front of her.
Mouth so dry now it felt as if she’d been eating sand, her eyelashes fluttered, and she looked down and began to read. Her heart started to thump as she tallied up the column of figures on the right hand side of a long list of transactions going back months and months. It was only when she saw confirmation 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.