After Their Vows (14 page)

Reaching up, she touched his lips with her fingers, and smiled tenderly when he kissed them. Then she wasn’t smiling—she was drowning, in him, and in what he could make her feel.

Later they lay together in their bed, with the winter moonlight tracing a path across the windows. Angie felt her baby give her a pummelling kick, and smiled when Roque soothed his son with a stroke of his hand.

‘To think,’ she said, ‘we almost lost all of this.’

It didn’t seem possible they had come so close to the brink.

‘A esperança é a última que morre,
‘ Roque murmured.

‘You’ve said that before.’ Angie turned to look at him. ‘What does it mean?’

One of those impassive smiles she found difficult to read passed across his face. ‘Hope is the last one to die,’ he translated.

He had never lost faith.

‘Oh, Roque, come and look at this,’ Angie called softly.

She was leaning on their balcony rail, looking down on the pool terrace below. Feeling the stroke of his hands as they claimed her waist, Angie indicated with her head to the sunny terrace, where her brother Alex sat on a
sun lounger with their son sitting within the protective circle of his strong tanned legs.

Alex was reading out loud from one of his course books, while six-month old Luis listened, his attention fixed on his uncle’s face and the melodious resonance of his voice.

‘Do you think we have produced a genius?’ Roque posed dryly.

‘They get on like a house on fire.’ Angie smiled. ‘My handsome grown-up brother and my beautiful son.’

‘I am feeling left out again,’ her handsome husband murmured.

‘Oh, dear.’ She turned around to look at him. ‘Three—I have
three
demanding men to deal with,’ she sighed.

‘And you love it.’ Roque had no sympathy. ‘Your beautiful son had you to himself all morning. Your handsome brother had you to himself all afternoon. When is it my turn?’

As if he did not know, thought Angie, as she laughed and allowed him to draw her in through the balcony doors.

Angie sent him a questioning look when he stepped around her to pull the doors shut. ‘I am saving your blushes because you are about to get noisy,’ he explained.

Angie blushed anyway. ‘You are—’

‘Mad for you,’ Roque inserted, silencing her with his first scorching kiss.

All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all the incidents are pure invention.

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First published in Great Britain 2011
Harlequin Mills & Boon Limited,
Eton House, 18-24 Paradise Road, Richmond, Surrey TW9 1SR

© Michelle Reid 2011

ISBN: 978-1-408-92553-9