LITMIR.BIZ

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simply because I had anticipated that it might happen?’

      ‘You tell me,’ she responded tonelessly.

      Shaking his head with exasperation, he turned on his heel and walked across the room to the window, where the beauty of the spectacular backdrop of mountains momentarily took his breath away—something which did not happen to Rory Mandelson very often. He waited for a moment before he turned round and leaned negligently against the windowsill, and the semi-relaxed stance showed off his physique to perfect advantage.

      Did he not realise, Angel wondered rather helplessly, that with his long legs stretched out in front of him like that, and his ruffled dark hair and eyes of deepest blue, he looked like most women’s fantasy come to life? You would have thought that he might have the decency to wear something dull or at least something that camouflaged his body. Or was it his intention that the soft cashmere of the jade sweater should cling so lovingly to each hard sinew of his torso?

      Angel shook her head slightly, recognising with a shock the path her thoughts had been leading her down. What was she doing, for pity’s sake—drooling over her ex-brother-in-law?

      Rory’s mouth tightened as he registered the way she was looking at him. ‘What kind of brute would I be,’ he challenged softly, ‘if I rejoiced in the demise of my only brother’s marriage? God, Angel—is that the type of man you think I am? No, on second thought, please don’t answer that!’ He threw her a look which was tinged with regret. ‘Once I could see that you were both determined to go through with it, then naturally I wanted to see it last.’

      ‘But then I drove him away?’ she quizzed.

      He looked at her with ocean-dark eyes. ‘I don’t know. Did you?’

      Angel shook her head violently, and a black corkscrew curl dangled in a glossy spiral by her pale cheek. ‘Oh, what’s the point in discussing it now? Chad is dead! He isn’t coming back!’ Angel’s voice started to crack as she acknowledged for the first time in her life her own mortality.

      For, yes, she had grown up in a remote and fairly inaccessible part of Ireland, where the existence of a close-knit and small community meant that death was less feared than in many places—and many had been the time that Angel had been to pay her respects at houses where families sat and mourned, the body lying in the parlour while people laughed and drank and cried around it—but death had never affected her personally. Like it was affecting her now.

      Tears began to slide down her white cheeks. ‘It’s as though he never existed,’ she sobbed quietly. ‘As though he was never here!’

      Rory frowned at her obvious distress. He had seen Angel cry only once before, when Chad had disappeared without trace and she had come—inexplicably—to him for assistance. At the time he had been resolutely un-impressed by her distress, partly, he suspected, since he had so adamantly warned her off the marriage in the first place.

      But this time for some reason he found the sight of her tears unbearably moving. ‘Of course he existed,’ he contradicted softly, and, coming back to perch on the edge of the chair opposite hers, he took one pale, cold hand between his and rubbed at it absently with the pad of his thumb.

      As physical consolation went, it was merely a crumb of comfort, and yet Angel derived an extraordinary sensation of calm just from the touch of his hand. She sniffed, and took the handkerchief he silently proffered and blew her nose like a child.

      ‘You still haven’t told me exactly how it happened,’ she said.

      For the first time since his arrival Rory looked uncomfortable. He had rehearsed what he was going to say over and over again in the car—aloud and in his head—and yet now his pat words of explanation seemed curiously inadequate, especially when he was confronted by the sight of Angel’s over-bright eyes.

      He decided to try a different approach from the one he had planned. ‘Tell me about the last time you saw Chad,’ he instructed softly.

      Angel blinked. ‘But you know all about that! When he just completely disappeared like that, I came to see you.’ Thinking that if anyone would be able to trace Chad, then it would be his dynamic older brother.

      ‘But at the time you explained very little, Angel—other than the fact that he had gone,’ he reminded her quietly.

      Because she had felt raw and humiliated, with her confidence in tatters. Wondering just what sort of person she must be if her husband of less than a year could go off and leave her like that, without a word to anyone.

      ‘So tell me again, Angel,’ he insisted, in his deep, compelling voice. ‘Only this time tell me everything.’

      And, despite any reservations she might have had about discussing something as painful as Chad’s departure, Angel was no exception to anyone else in responding to the force of Rory’s personality. With those blue eyes boring into her like that it was impossible not to answer him. She focused her mind to concentrate on what he had asked her, though, to be perfectly honest, it was a relief to have something else to focus her thoughts on other than the wrenching realisation that Chad was dead.

      ‘The last time I saw Chad he was leaving for work,’ she began slowly, as she cast her mind back to that morning more than eighteen months earlier. ‘I remember that it was a glorious, golden June day. The sky was blue, the sun was shining, and I was going to meet him for a drink after work that night.’

      ‘And?’

      ‘And nothing.’ Angel shrugged. ‘That was it.’

      Rory’s face became shuttered. ‘Did he show any signs that something could be wrong?’

      She frowned at him in confusion. ‘Wrong?’ she echoed. ‘What could be wrong?’

      ‘With the relationship,’ he elaborated. ‘Anything which might have indicated to you that he was planning to disappear from your life without a word?’

      Angel bit her lip. With the benefit of hindsight it was easy to see that there had been plenty wrong with their relationship—but she had been so young. So green. So determined to prove wrong everyone who had prophesied disaster that she had ignored the danger signs looming large on the horizon. But she couldn’t possibly tell Rory about those, now, could she? She couldn’t really start explaining that within mere months of her marriage to his brother their sex life had not merely died down but had petered out all together.

      ‘We weren’t communicating that well,’ she hedged, which she supposed was one way of saying it.

      ‘But you hadn’t argued?’

      Angel shook her head. ‘No. That was the oddest thing. We hadn’t. Chad just seemed very distracted during those last few months. That’s all.’ She fixed him with an unblinking green stare that dazzled him with its emerald blaze. ‘But that’s all irrelevant, surely? Isn’t it time that you told me exactly what you’ve found out, Rory?’

      There was a fractional pause. ‘Do you want me to break it to you gently?’

      She cocked her head to one side and looked at him perceptively. ‘Is that possible?’

      ‘Not really, no,’ he admitted reluctantly. ‘He had another woman, you see.’

      His words confirmed her unspoken fears. Yes. Of course he had. Some part of her had known that all along. The part that wasn’t affected by her relative youth and lack of experience. The part that was passed on down through the generations and was known as a woman’s instinct. The part that had registered his complete lack of desire for her whenever he had looked at her. Angel swallowed.

      ‘He had another woman,’ Rory repeated baldly, because her total lack of reaction to his controversial statement made him imagine that she had not heard him the first time.

      ‘Yes,’ said Angel, and let out a long, low sigh. ‘That figures.’

      ‘Do you want me to continue?’ he questioned.

      She drew her chin up proudly. ‘I hope to

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