Of everything he had just thrown at her in the last bitter flood, the part making it's biggest impact on Angie was seeing the truth about the brother she so totally adored staring staring her hard in the face. In her endless efforts to make his life as comfortable as she could possibly make it for him she had created a monster. A bone selfish, petulant man child who thought it was okay to steal someone else's money if it got him what he wanted.
What was it Leonardo had said during one of their fights about her brother? You are in danger of creating a life wasting lout if you don't stop it.
Well, that damning prediction had come true with vengeance, Angie saw only to toss that aside away again with a stubborn shake of her head. For what gave Leonardo the right to criticise the way she'd handled a rebellious teenager when his own privileged upbringing had given him everything he wanted at the nod of his handsome dark head?
Alex had been only seventeen when she'd first met Leonardo, still attending boarding school and reliant on her for everything. Falling in love had not been an option she could afford to let happen, yet she'd been unable to stop herself from falling for Leonardo, And what Leonardo had wanted Leonardo got, by sheer single minded force of will which in Angie's view put him and Alex in the same selfish club. Between the two of them they had demanded so much from her that sometimes she'd felt stretched so taut in two different directions she'd thought she might actually snap in two.
On one side of her she'd had the brother who'd become such a handful to deal with, skipping lessons to go out on the town with his friends and constantly getting into scrapes, which meant she'd had to travel down to his school in Hampshire to deal with the inevitable fall out. Then there'd been Leonardo on the other side, angry with her for pandering to her brother's every whim.
But at last she'd felt vindicated when Alex won a place at Cambridge. He hadn't achieved that by spending every night out on the town. And he'd settled into university life over the last year without giving her very much grief.
Then she shook her head…. because Alex hadn't settled down at all. Had he? He'd just hidden it from her that he was still doing exactly what he wanted to do…even if that meant sneaking around her flat and stealing credit cards to pay for his
excesses.
'I hate him,' Alex said, with no idea what his sister was thinking. It would've served him right if I'd gone on a real bender and completely cleaned him out. I should've bought a yacht ot two, or a private plane like his to fly myself around in, instead of sitting in my room at uni spending his rotten money before he found out it was me doing the…
Alex snapped his mouth shut, leaving the rest of what he had been going to say to slam around the room like a clap of thunder.
Angie shot to her feet.
'Finish that', she shook out.
Biting out a curse, her brother like lifted a hand and grabbed the back of his neck. Leonardo came to see me on campus today, he confessed. He called me a weak, thieving wimp and threatened to break my neck if I didn't… he stopped, clearly deciding to swallow down the rest of the insults Leonardo must have thrown at him.
'The bottom line is,' he went on huskily, he wants his money back, and he told me that if I don't give it to him he's going to call the police.
The police…? Angie sat down again.
'Now I'm scared, because I don't think he was bluffing. In fact I know he wasn't.
So did Angie. Leonardo did not make threats unless he was prepared to carry them through….as she'd discovered in the hardest way there was.
Bitterness suddenly grabbed at her insides, burning a hole in her ability to hold back from recalling that final showdown, when she and Leonardo had stood toe to toe like mortal enemies instead of loving husband and wife.
'I am warning you, Angie, go chasing off to your brother's aid this time and I will find someone else to take your place tonight.'
She'd gone. He'd found Emily. Marriage over.
Pulling back from where those memories wanted to suck her, Angie sat back in the chair. 'So, how does he expect you to pay him back?' she asked heavily, already suspecting what was coming before her brother loped over to the table and produced something from the back pocket of his jeans.
'He said to give you this…'
He was holding out a business card, which he set down on the table in front of Angie. Looking down at it, she saw 'Leonardo Moreira da Costa', printed in elegant black script below the da Costa family crest, which crowned just about everything in Leonardo's world, from his high end international investment empire to some of the finest vineyards in his native Portugal and vast tracts of inherited land in Brazil.
'He wrote something on the back l,' her brother indicated awkwardly.
Reaching out, Angie flipped the card over with a set of ice cold fingers. 'Eight o' clock. The apartment. Don't be late,' Leonard had scrawled there.
If she'd had it in her Angie would have scratched out a dry, mocking laugh.
The underscored don't was the ultimate command from a man who'd grown very intimate with her most besetting sin…an innate lack of good time keeping. She'd kept him waiting at airports and restaurants. She'd kept him kicking his heels in their apartment while she rushed around like a headless chicken, getting ready to go out. She caught a sudden glimpse of him waiting for her, looking tall, dark and fabulously turned for a night at the theater, lounging stretched out in a chair with his eyes closed, his silky black eyelashes resting against his high sculpted cheekbones, his wide, full and sensual mouth wearing the look of long suffering patience he could pull off with such excruciating effect.
He'd lost all patience with her, and perhaps she'd deserved it, Angie acknowledged…but enough to send him into the arms of another woman?
And not just any woman, his ex woman.
'Will you go and see him?