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Within months she was the model everyone wanted on their catwalk or on the front cover of their magazines. She’d spent the next three years following the fashion drum around the world. She’d stood for hours while designers fitted their creations to her long slender figure, or posed in front of cameras for glossy fashion shoots— and she had willingly accepted every single second of it, coveting the money she earned so she could keep Alex safe in his boarding school environment.
Her proudest achievement, in Angie’s view, had been ensuring that Alex never missed out on a single thing his more privileged schoolfriends enjoyed doing. When he’d won a place at Cambridge she’d felt as pleased and as proud as any parent could, and she’d done it all without once being tempted to take on debt.
‘It’s all right for you.’ Her brother broke into her reverie. ‘You’re used to having money to play with, but I’ve never had any for myself.’
‘I give you an allowance, Alex, and I’ve never denied you a single thing you’ve asked for over and above that!’
‘It was the asking that stuck in my throat.’
Tightening her arms across her body in an effort to crush the pangs of hurt she experienced at that totally unfair response, it took Angie a few seconds before she could dare let herself speak.
‘Come on,’ she urged heavily then. ‘Just get it over with and spit out how much it is we’re discussing, here.’
With a growling husk of reluctance Alex quoted a figure which blanched the colour out of Angie’s face.
‘You’re joking,’ she whispered.
‘I wish.’ He laughed thickly.
‘Fifty—did you just say fifty thousand?’
Turning around, Alex flushed. ‘You don’t have to beat me over the head with it.’
Oh, but she did! ‘How the heck did you get the credit to spend fifty thousand on speculation, for goodness’ sake?’
Silence came charging back at her as they stood with the width of the kitchen between them, Angie taut as a bowstring now, with her arms rod-straight at her sides, and her brother with his chin resting on his chest.
‘Answer me, Alex,’ she breathed unsteadily.
‘Roque,’ he growled.
Roque—?
For a horrible second Angie felt so light-headed she thought she was actually going to faint. She tried for a breath and didn’t quite make it. ‘Are—are you telling me that—Roque has been encouraging you to play the stockmarkets?’
‘Of course he hasn’t!’ her brother flung back in disgust. ‘I wouldn’t take his advice if he did. I hate him— you know that. After what he did to you, I—’
‘Then what are you saying?’ Angie sliced through what he wanted to say, ‘Because I’m really confused here as to why you’ve even brought his name into this!’
Alex scuffed a floor tile with a trainer-shod foot. ‘I used one of your credit cards.’
‘But I don’t use credit cards! ‘
She had the usual cash debit cards everyone needed to survive these days, but never, ever had Angie dared to own a credit card—because a credit card tempted you to go into debt, and debt was …
‘The one that Roque gave to you.’
Angie blinked. The one that Roque gave to her … The credit card attached to Roque’s bottomless financial resources that she had never used, though the card still languished in this apartment somewhere, like a—
‘I came across it in your bedside drawer last time I was here and …’
She sucked in a painfully sharp breath. ‘You went through my private things?’
‘Oh, hell,’ her brother groaned, 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.
