The Arabian Love-Child

Michelle Reid

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER ONE

RAFIQ AL-QADIM climbed out of the back of a chauffeur-driven limousine and strode through the plate-glass doors that guarded the International Bank of Rahman. In the clenched fist of one hand he held a rolled-up newspaper, in his eyes glowed a look that foretold of hell to pay for some poor fool. Hurrying behind him, his newly appointed aide, Kadir Al-Kadir, was wearing an expression that suggested he might be that very unfortunate person.

As Rafiq struck a direct line for the row of steel lifts set into a wall of grey marble, people in his path took one look at him and began backing away to give the big man an uninterrupted passage to his target. He didn’t notice; he was too consumed by the blinding fury that carried his intimidating six-foot-four-inch frame into the nearest vacant lift. A dark-suited arm shot out; a decidedly murderous finger stabbed at the button for the top floor. The lift doors shut out Kadir Al-Kadir and the sea of stunned faces. No one who’d had any dealings with Rafiq Al-Qadim had ever seen him appear anything but formidably controlled.

But he was not in control. Rafiq had never been so angry. Rage was literally bouncing inside him, fighting to get out and vent itself. The lift took less than fifteen seconds to reach its destination. The doors opened; he strode out. Nadia, his secretary, took one look at his face, paled and shot to her feet.

‘Good morning, sir,’ she greeted warily. ‘There have been several messages for you and your first appointment arrives in—’

‘No calls. Nothing.’ He cut right across her and kept on walking, each of his powerfully constructed, sleekly toned muscles moving him with stallion-like grace to behind his office door, leaving Nadia staring after him in a state of near shock, for she too had never known Mr Rafiq to be anything but staunchly even-tempered and rigidly polite.

Rafiq’s private office was a statement in architectural drama. High ceilings, marble floors, a window that was a wall of glass, in front of which a large slab of grey marble rested on legs of forged steel. As he moved across to it the pale sunlight of a London winter morning shot shards of cold steel through his black hair and added a sharpened cast to his lean dark profile that spoke of his ruthless Arab heritage.

Stepping around the edges of the slab of marble, he slammed the newspaper down on its smooth grey top. It unfurled on impact, showing him the inner-page headline that his aide had helpfully presented to him. It was Kadir’s job to scour the world’s newspapers, his job to mark those items he believed would be of interest to the acting head of the International Bank of Rahman. But Kadir would not be making the same mistake again very quickly, Rafiq mused as he glared at the reason for all of his anger. He had been duped, he’d been betrayed, he had been taken for a fool by a woman. And there it was, splashed all over the page of a Spanish tabloid: his private life uncovered, picked over and mocked at.

‘SHOCK ANNOUNCEMENT,’ block capitals proclaimed. ‘SERENA CORDERO DROPS BILLIONAIRE SHEIKH TO MARRY HER DANCE PARTNER, CARLOS MONTEZ.’

His skin began prickling against his clothing, sharp white teeth setting behind the grim line of his mouth. Only two months ago she had been clinging to him like a limpet, adoring him, begging him, telling him she could never love anyone else.

The liar, the cheat, the unfaithful little slut. As far back as six months ago his brother Hassan had warned him about Serena and Carlos Montez. Rafiq had dismissed those rumours as mere publicity to add spice to the current world tour the two flamenco dancers were embarked upon. Now he knew the truth and he could taste the bitterness of his own conceit and arrogance at having believed that Serena could not have wanted another man while she could have had him. Only twice before in his life had he ever been betrayed by a woman: once by his mother, and once by the only woman he had ever let himself love. After that last bitter experience he had vowed he would never be betrayed like that again.

Yet here he stood, pulled into the betrayal trap by yet another woman, and he was so angry he could spit nails into the half-page picture of the beautiful Serena, smiling into her new husband’s handsome face.

His mobile phone began to ring; dragging it out of his pocket he put it to his ear.

‘Querida, please don’t hang up. I need you to listen to me!’

His face, like his height and the tough, muscled build of his body, made no compromises at the best of times but the low dark sensual tones that hit his ear made his face take on properties as cold as the marble and steel that surrounded him.

‘The tour is in trouble. We needed a sensation to put our names on people’s lips. I love you, Rafiq. You know I do. But marriage between us was never a possibility. Can you not accept this situation for what it is?’

‘You are someone else’s wife. Do not call me again,’ he incised, and broke the connection before tossing the phone from him as if it was contaminated.

Silence arrived, buzzing in his ears like a thousand wasp wings. In front of him lay the discarded phone and the damning newspaper. Behind him lay the rest of the world who would now be laughing at him. He was an Arab in every way you wished to look at him. Make an Arab look a fool and you win yourself a life-long enemy.

Eyes like black opals turned almost silver at the prospect. Picking up the newspaper, he flung it sideways and watched as it landed in the waste-paper bin. Serena Cordero’s name would never reach his eyes again, he vowed as the other telephone sitting on his desk dared to start ringing. Black opals fired as a hand snaked down and long fingers closed round grey plastic as if it was someone’s throat. ‘I thought I said no calls!’ he bit into the mouthpiece.

‘By your tone I presume you have seen the news today,’ a very dry voice drawled into his ear.

His half-brother, Hassan. He should have expected it. He swung himself down into his black leather desk chair. ‘If you have called me to say I told you so, then take my advice and try silence,’ Rafiq returned grimly.

‘May I commiserate?’ Hassan wryly suggested.

‘You may mind your own business,’ he snapped, then added tautly, ‘Does our father know?’

‘You think we swap gossip about your love life?’

‘I don’t have a love life,’ Rafiq hit back with bite. This had been part of the problem with Serena. Finding a time when their busy schedules came to together had been almost impossible. If he had seen her twice in the last few months he could well be exaggerating, for while Serena had been travelling the world in one direction with her flamenco dance troupe he had been travelling in the other direction, attending to business duties that usually belonged to Hassan.

‘How is Father?’ he enquired as one thought led to another.

‘He is well,’ his brother assured him. ‘His blood count is good and his spirit is high. Don’t worry about him, Rafiq,’ Hassan added gently. ‘He means to meet his first grandchild, believe me.’

This time Rafiq’s sigh was heavy. The last six months had been a trial for all of them. The old sheikh’s illness had been long and miserable, spanning years of waste and pain. But six months ago it had almost taken him from them. With thanks to Allah, he had rallied on hearing the news about his coming grandchild. Now the disease was in remission, but no one could say how long it would remain that way. So it had been decided that from then on one of the two brothers must always be at home with their father. He needed the comfort of their presence. They needed to know that one of them would be there if his new-found strength should suddenly fade again. With Hassan’s wife Leona in the latter stages of a much prayed for pregnancy, Hassan had elected to stay at home and deal with internal matters of state while Rafiq did all the travelling, taking care of the family’s international business interests.

‘And Leona?’ he enquired next.

‘Round,’ her husband drawled satirically. But Rafiq could hear the pleasure there, the love and the pride. He wished he knew what those things felt like.

Then, he told himself forcefully, no, he was not going to go down that particularly rocky pathway, and turned the conversation to the less volatile subject of business. But when he rang off he continued to sit there seething and brooding and contrarily wondering why it was that he was so angry.

He had never loved Serena. She had been speaking the truth when she’d said marriage between them had never been a possibility. She was beautiful and hot—the perfect bed partner, in fact—but love had never been the engine that drove them through the passages of pleasure, even if she’d liked to use the word to him. It had been sex, good sex, but just sex for both of them. And sitting here wishing for love like his brother had was a damn fool’s game.

But the small lecture brought him to his feet and sent him to stand staring out of the window. He was remembering a time when he had once thought he had found the kind of love Hassan was enjoying—had believed he held it in his hand like a precious diamond only to discover it was merely paste. Since then he had never looked for love; he had no wish to feel its tortuous grip again, harboured no burning desire to pass on his genetic fingerprint. That delight belonged to Hassan and Leona, both of whom were worthy candidates to make the successful genetic mix. Whereas he…

That muscle within his chest called a heart gave a squeeze and he grimaced at the sensation. Alone. The sensation spoke to him of a bleak dark sense of aloneness that made him envy all of those people he could see moving about in the street below because they probably had good wholesome relationships to go home to at night, while he—

Well, he stood up here in his marble tower, personifying the rich and powerful and enviously privileged, when sometimes, like now, he felt as poor as any beggar you might pick out on any street corner—emotionally anyway.

Serena’s fault? No, not Serena but that other woman, the one with hair with the same golden sheen he could see on the woman standing in the street below. Melanie had ruined him. With a calculation that belied her beauty, her shyness and innocence, she had taken a younger Rafiq, full of confidence and optimism, and had turned him into this hardened cynic he was today.

Where was she now? he found himself pondering sombrely. What had the last eight years done for Melanie? Did she ever think of him and what their affair had done to him? Or had she simply moved on, left him so far behind that she would struggle to remember his name if they had the misfortune to come up against each other again? He guessed the latter—he knew the latter. Melanie might have possessed the face of an angel but she owned the heart of a harlot. Harlots did not remember names; one merged in with the many.

Behind him his mobile phone burst into life again. It would be that other harlot, Serena, he decided. She was not the kind of woman to give up easily. Did he answer? Did he leave it? Had he dropped down so low in his own estimation that he was actually asking himself those questions? His teeth came together, gleaming white against the satin darkness of his olive-toned skin as he let the phone ring and glared down at the street where the woman with the golden hair was still hovering, as if she was unsure what she was doing or where she was going. He understood the feeling, could even sympathise with it.

In fact, the golden-haired stranger had more chance of getting him to answer her call than Serena did, was his final thought on the subject of female betrayal.

Standing on the pavement outside the imposing marble, glass and forged-steel frontage of the International Bank of Rahman, Melanie tried very hard to convince herself that she was doing the right thing by coming here. The building was big, and it was bold; it spoke of no compromises when she knew she desperately needed many compromises if her plan was to succeed.

Could it succeed? Was she wasting her time by coming here to see a man she knew from experience held no respect for her at all? Remember what he said, remember what he did, a small voice in her head cautioned. Turn around, Melanie, and walk away.

But walking away was the easy option. And easy options had never come to her. It was either do this or go home and tell Robbie nothing, she determined. And if those two options were not the same as being caught between a rock and a hard place, then she didn’t know what was.

So, think of Robbie, she told herself firmly, and set her reluctant feet moving towards a giant pair of plate-glass doors reinforced by solid-steel tubing that defended the entrance to one of the most prestigious investment banks in the world. As she approached she glimpsed her own reflection in the polished glass doors and didn’t much like what she saw: a too-slender woman with pale hair caught into a neat little topknot and an even paler complexion touched by strain. Her eyes looked too big, her mouth too vulnerable. Overall she looked just too darn fragile to be taking on an arrogant giant like Rafiq Al-Qadim. He’ll step on you and not even notice, she warned her reflection. He’ll do what he did to you the last time and freeze you out with his black opal stare.

No, he won’t because you just won’t let him, she told herself forcefully, and kept her feet moving as the pair of doors slid open with a stealthy silence that made her insides curl.

Like its exterior, the International Bank of Rahman’s inside was a cavern of more glass, marble and steel. Glass walls for three floors gave her glimpses of open-plan office spaces flickering with busy computer screens and even busier people. Here in the foyer a marble fountain pushed moisture into the air while tall exotic plants tried and failed to soften the cold, cold atmosphere. People wearing statutory grey or black moved about with the confidence of those who knew exactly what they were doing here and where they were going.

It was sharp, it was sophisticated—it was everything she wasn’t. A point that would have made her smile at any other time, because she knew who she was and she liked that person. The cut-throat world of high finance held no fascination for her. Never had, never would. But as she stood looking around she was forced to accept the grim truth that, hate all this though she might do, she had still dressed for the occasion in a sharp black suit that blended in perfectly here.

Deliberate? Yes, it had been deliberate. She answered her own question as her high-heeled shoes took her across the busy foyer towards the line of steel-faced lifts. She had dressed to impress, to make him stop and think twice before he tried throwing her out again. Melanie Leggett in jeans had never managed to do that, but Melanie Portreath in a designer suit might.

A stainless-steel plaque set between two of the lifts listed the names of the departments and the floor on which each was situated. She hovered for a moment or two, unsure as to which department she should be making for, then realised that it could only be on the top floor, because high-powered executives liked to keep their minions firmly beneath them.

As she should know, having been there once upon a long time ago. She’d played the worshipping minion to a superior ego and had learned the hard way what it was like be walked all over. It wasn’t the best memory she could have picked to take with her into the lift, Melanie realised as her heart began to pump unevenly. Pressing the top-floor button, she barely felt the lift move it was so efficient, so nerves were putting that sinking feeling in her stomach, she determined. Nerves and just the teeniest hint of excitement about what she was about to do.

Face the truth, an eight-year-old truth, a dark and potentially dangerous truth. The lift doors opened, her knees began to shake as she stepped out into yet another foyer; this one was much smaller and bore the refined trappings of luxury in the soft carpet covering the floor. A steel-framed desk stood in front of a floor-to-ceiling stretch of glass covered by vertical blinds. A dark-haired woman sat working at the desk. She glanced up at Melanie’s approach, came to her feet and smiled.

‘Mrs Portreath? How nice to meet you.’ Her voice, like her smile, was warm and pleasant, the slight accent falling in with her dark and gentle Arabian looks. Coming out from behind her workstation, she presented Melanie with a hand. ‘My name is Nadia,’ she announced. ‘I am Mr Al-Qadim’s secretary. I am afraid Mr Al-Qadim is running a little late this morning,’ she went on apologetically. ‘And the information your lawyer sent ahead of you arrived on my desk only five minutes ago. Please…’ she indicated towards several soft-leather chairs ‘…make yourself comfortable while I check if Mr Al-Qadim is ready for you.’

Not for me, he isn’t, Melanie thought as she watched Nadia walk towards another giant pair of doors, made of solid wood this time. The secretary paused, seeming to need a moment to gather herself before she knocked rather tentatively on the door, opened it, stepped through and closed it behind her.

That small hesitation left Melanie standing there having to deal with the next rush of uncertainty that attacked her resolve. Rafiq was on the other side of that door, and if his secretary had to steel herself to go anywhere near him then what chance did she have of meeting a sane and sensible man?

Arrogance; she was suddenly remembering the hardened arrogance that could add such cold condemnation to his lean face. He was a man who could freeze out the world by just standing in silence, a man who could shatter a person with just two small words: ‘Get out.’

Her stomach muscles collapsed on the crippling memory. In the space of six short weeks he had wooed her into loving him. He had asked her to marry him and promised her the earth. He had told her that no one could ever love her as much as he did, then he had taken her to bed and wooed her of her innocence. Then, on the evidence of one cleverly constructed scene, he had simply turned his back on her with those now immortal words, ‘Get out,’ and had never looked at her again.

Did she really want to subject herself to that kind of humiliation again? she asked herself. Was she crazy to risk exposing Robbie to the same?

The urge to change her mind and just walk away while she still had the chance rose up to grab at her again; panic of the sort she hadn’t experienced in a long time actually set her feet swivelling towards escape.

The door behind her opened. ‘Mrs Portreath?’ his secretary’s smooth voice prompted.

Melanie froze—utterly. She couldn’t move, not a muscle; she couldn’t even bring herself to draw in breath. It was awful. For a horrible moment she wondered if she was going to faint.

‘Mrs Portreath…?’

Remember why you are doing this, she tried telling herself. Think of Robbie. He loves you and he’s suffering right now, feeling the vulnerability of his own mortality and, more significantly, yours. Rafiq does not know what he turned his back on eight years ago. He deserves this chance to know about Robbie, just as Robbie deserves this chance to know him.

But she was scared of what it was going to mean to all of them. Rafiq was from a different race and culture. He viewed things through different eyes than she did. He might not want to know about Robbie. He might fling this chance right back at her and…

‘Mrs Portreath? Mr Al-Qadim will see you now.’

Mr Al-Qadim will see you, she repeated anxiously. Did it matter if he did toss Robbie aside? It would be his loss if he did. Robbie never needed to know about this visit, but if you’d asked him outright, he would say it was worth any risk. So do this one small thing for him and you might start to sleep nights.

Small. She almost laughed, because this was no small thing. It was huge, colossal, as big and unpredictable as the big man himself.

‘Get out’ her head echoed. What did those two cold words do but expose a man who was unwilling to face up to his responsibilities? Let him use them again, she decided as her chin lifted. She could take the rejection for Robbie. She had done it before, after all. Her conscience could be cleared and she could then walk away to get on with the rest of her life, and more importantly Robbie’s life, knowing she had at least tried.

‘Yes, thank you,’ she heard herself murmur, and by the time she turned to face Rafiq’s secretary she was back in control again, with her eyes clear and her slender shoulders set into a determined line. One of the doors to the office stood open. Nadia stood to one side of it, waiting for Melanie to step by. With only the smallest increase in her pulse-rate she walked towards that open doorway and through it, with her smile fixed and ready to meet fate full-on.

The room was just another play on steel and marble. It was huge, with high ceilings and wall-to-wall glass that framed a desk built of marble and steel. In front of the desk and standing slightly side-on stood Rafiq Al-Qadim. He was wearing a dark grey suit and was leaning over slightly with one big hand braced on the desk while he read the set of papers in front of him.

Her papers, Melanie recognised. Her requirements. Her nerves began to flutter. Had he seen? Did he know yet? A clammy sweat broke out on her skin as she stood just inside the door and waited for him to lift and turn his dark head so she could make that first stunning impact on eyes that, even after eight long years, still visited her in her dreams.

Rafiq was being deliberately slow in straightening to acknowledge Mrs Portreath. He was wishing he hadn’t agreed to this meeting. The woman might have inherited the Portreath fortune, but even her healthy millions were small fry to an investment bank like this. Randal Soames, the executor of the Portreath estate, had talked him into this interview. He was doing it as a favour to Randal because the woman herself was being so stubborn about wanting to use the services of the bank and, more significantly, she had insisted on seeing Rafiq. In his mind, if she’d managed to get the hard-edged Randal Soames to go against his own better judgement it made her one very manipulative woman.

He despised that kind of woman. Was learning to despise the whole female sex with each betrayal they hung upon him. If he had a choice he would have them all locked up in harems to use only when necessary. They called them the weaker sex, the vulnerable sex, when really they were stronger and more dangerous than a whole army of men.

‘Mrs Portreath to see you, sir,’ Nadia prompted. It was a brave thing to do when his secretary was already aware that his mood was about as volatile as an active volcano.

But it also meant that he had taken too long to lift up his head. So, gritting his teeth together behind the flat-lined set of his lips, he attempted to put some semblance of a smile on them as he straightened up and made himself turn to face the woman he was already predisposed to dislike.

What he found himself looking at shut his heart down. What he saw standing not fifteen feet away made him have to wonder if he was actually losing his mind. He could not believe it. He had conjured her up. Any second now two more women were going to walk through the door and stand right beside her: Serena and his mother. The three witches.

As that dark head lifted Melanie felt her breath begin to feather, felt her pulse begin to accelerate. He hadn’t changed, was her first breathtaking observation. He still had the build of a Roman gladiator and a proud cut to his jaw line that warned of no weakness anywhere. His hair was still as black as midnight, his hands as big and strong as she remembered them to be. He could fill a room like this with his size and the sheer electrifying force of his presence.

Yet his height and his size and his deep inner reserve had somehow always made her be very gentle with him. Why was that? Melanie asked herself now as she stood facing her past with the puzzled mind of maturity. It wasn’t as if he was a vulnerable giant. If anything, he had been cruel and heartless, utterly ruthless in his method of discarding her.

Her eyes took their time lifting to clash with his eyes. She was expecting to be frozen by cold disdain but what she found herself dealing with shook her to the core. For she was looking at Robbie’s eyes, Robbie’s beautiful, almost black eyes that were looking back at her with the same sensational long eyelashes that could turn her insides to soft, loving butter. And Robbie’s wonderful high slashing cheekbones, Robbie’s perfectly, perfectly moulded mouth.

And the beauty, dear God, she’d forgotten the masculine beauty in those lean dark high-born features that could flip her heart over and set her senses singing to the kind of tune she’d experienced with no other man. It hurt, oh, it hurt, because she was standing here staring love in the face again.

How could she not love, when she was seeing the man who had shaped her son’s image? she thought despairingly. It was like looking into the future and seeing her beloved Robbie as he would be thirty years on: the height, the riveting dark features destined to breaks hearts just as his father’s had done. Did that forecast worry her, or did it touch to life maternal pride, knowing she was in the process of rearing a heartbreaker for a son? She didn’t know, couldn’t think, didn’t even know why she was rambling over such ridiculous things when there were far more important issues to consider.

But her insides were a mass of shakes and tremors, her eyes stinging with the onset of tears. Tears for a lost love, a broken and irreparable love. She didn’t want to feel like this; she hurt as badly as if it was only yesterday that he’d thrown her out of his life.

A movement behind her caught her attention. Rafiq’s secretary was hovering, probably wondering what was going on. Neither she nor Rafiq had moved or even spoken. Rafiq was frozen, his face held by a shock so profound it was clear that he was in no fit state to say a word.

Which left that mammoth task to her, Melanie realised. She’d planned this moment, spent hours rehearsing it in her head. All she had to do was find the strength and the will to put her plan into action. But it wasn’t easy. She had come here believing that Rafiq had killed everything she used to feel for him. Now she knew that wasn’t the case, she accepted, as she set her feet moving across a vast space of marble until she came to a stop just an arm’s reach away from him.

She looked up—had to—he was six feet four inches, a towering figure in comparison to her five feet eight. It wasn’t a bad height for a woman, but compared to Rafiq she felt like a pocket miniature. He had shoulders that were three times the size of her slender ones, hands that could easily span her waist. His torso was lean and cased in hard muscle, and his legs—

No, stop it, she told herself fiercely as things began to stir inside that she just did not want to feel. She lifted her eyes, made contact with the dark, dark disturbing density of his still shocked eyes that seemed to want to pull her like a magnet into taking another step closer.

She resisted the urge, held it back with a fist-grabbing catch of control. Then, with every bit of sophistication she had acquired over the past eight years, she murmured, ‘Hello, Rafiq,’ and even managed to hold out a surprisingly steady hand. ‘It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?’

CHAPTER TWO

IT CAME as a punch to his stomach. The truth—reality. Melanie was standing here in front of him. No ghost, no spectre dragged up from the depths of his own bitter memory. The same spun-golden hair, darker gold eyes, creamy smooth skin covering perfect features; the same small, soft kiss-needy mouth and that soft-toned sensually pitched voice which brushed across his senses like a long-remembered lover’s caress.

Yet in other ways it was not the same Melanie. The clothes didn’t match, nor the way she styled her hair. The old Melanie had worn jeans and battered old trainers, not handmade leather shoes with spindles for heels and a slender black suit that shrieked the name of its designer label. Her hair used to stream around her face and shoulders, freely and simply like a child’s, though then she had been a twenty-year-old woman.

‘What are you doing here?’ he rasped out without any attempt to hide his contempt.

‘You’re surprised.’ She offered a wry smile. ‘Maybe I should have prewarned you.’

The smile hit his system like burning poison, seared through his bloodstream on a path that had no right to gather in his loins. He shifted, ignored the hand. ‘You would not have got beyond the ground-floor foyer,’ he responded with a gritty truth that sent her hand sinking to her side.

It also wiped the smile from her face, and with it Rafiq felt the heat in his body begin to dissipate. She shifted uncomfortably—so did someone else. Dragging his eyes across his office, he saw his secretary standing by the door. Fresh anger surged, a burning sense of bloody frustration, because this was the second time today that Nadia had witnessed him behaving like an ill-mannered boor.

‘Thank you, Nadia.’ He dismissed her with icy precision.

His secretary left in a hurry. Melanie turned to watch her go. Give it an hour and the whole building was going to know that Mr Rafiq was undergoing a drastic change in personality, he was thinking grimly as Melanie turned back to face him.

‘She’s afraid of you,’ she dared to remark.

‘The word you mean to use is respect,’ he corrected. ‘But, in truth, your opinion of my staff does not interest me. I prefer to know how you dare to think you can safely walk in here masquerading as someone you most definitely are not.’

Eyes that reflected the winter pale sunlight streaming in through the window, widened. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Rafiq. I thought you knew who I was. Didn’t you receive the papers from my lawyer’s office?’

Since those very papers were lying on his desk in front of both of them, it was sarcasm at its infuriating best. But it also made its point. Rafiq’s eyes narrowed. ‘You mean you actually are the Melanie Portreath who inherited the Portreath fortune?’ he demanded in disbelief.

‘Don’t sound so shocked,’ Melanie responded dryly. ‘Even poor little country girls can have a lucky change in fortune occasionally.’

‘Marry it, you mean.’

The moment he’d said it Rafiq could have bitten his tongue off. It was hard and it was bitter and gave the impression that he might actually still care that she’d been seduced by his wealth.

‘If you say so,’ she murmured, and turned away to take an interest in her surroundings. As she did so he caught the delicate shape of her profile and felt something painful tug at his chest. Damn it, he thought. Don’t do that to me.

‘This place is as cold as a mausoleum,’ she told him.

She was right, and it was. Leona was always telling him the same thing. His half-brother Hassan’s office, which was next door to this one, had received a full makeover by Leona’s gifted hand to make it more hospitable. But Rafiq refused to let her anywhere near his office because—because he liked mausoleums, having placed his life in one, he accepted with an inner sigh.

Maybe Melanie knew what he was thinking, because she turned suddenly and their eyes clashed again, golden light touching bleak darkness, and the years were falling away. She had once told him that he was incapable of feeling anything deeply, that his big test in life was to learn to trust his own feelings instead of deferring those judgements to others. ‘You’ll end up a cold and lonely cynic, Rafiq,’ she’d predicted. ‘Living on the fringes of real life.’

‘What do you want, Melanie?’ he demanded grimly.

‘To sit down would be nice.’

‘You will not be stopping long enough to warrant it.’

‘It would be to your loss.’

‘The door is over there,’ he drawled coldly. ‘My secretary will see you out.’

‘Oh, don’t be so arrogant.’ She frowned at him. ‘You could at least have the decency to hear what I have to say.’

‘You can have nothing to say that I wish to listen to.’ With that he turned and walked around his desk.

‘Now you sound pompous.’

He swung on her so angrily that she took a shaky step back from the desk in alarm. ‘I sound like a cheated man!’

The words rang in the space between them. Melanie looked into his face and felt her knees start to fail. Bold slashing features cast in bronze seemed to loom ever closer. Eyes spiked with bitterness threatened to shrivel her where she stood. His mouth was no longer a mouth, but a pair of parted lines between which a set of white teeth glinted with danger. And the cold slab of marble lying between them seemed to be the only thing holding him back from stretching out a large hand and taking hold of her by the scruff of her neck.

She was shocked. Oh, not because of the pulsing threat itself, but because she would never have believed that he could reveal so much of what was raging inside him. The man she’d used to know had been so fiercely controlled that it had taken him weeks to get around to admitting he was attracted to her. He’d used to haunt her family’s farm on the pretext that he was considering investing money into it. He’d used to turn up in strange places like the tack room at the stables, or the hay barn, and would stand watching as she heaved bales of hay onto a low-loader ready for transport to the animals scattered about the outlying fields.

‘You should not be doing this,’ he’d said in husky disapproval.

‘Why?’ She remembered laughing at him. ‘Because I’m a woman?’

‘No.’ He hadn’t smiled back. ‘Because you hate it.’

It had been a truth that had confounded her, because she hadn’t realised her dislike had showed. She’d been living on the farm since she was ten year’s old, had been expected to do her share of the many daily chores. But as for enjoying the life? No. She would have given anything to go back to how things used to be, when she’d lived in London with two loving parents instead of one bad-tempered uncle and his weak stepson.

‘You cheated yourself,’ she now returned unsteadily. ‘And you have no idea how badly you—’

‘Quit,’ he warned thinly, ‘while you still can.’

It was an outright threat. Instinct was telling her to heed it, but anger was already welling up from the dark pit where she’d stored it for the past eight long years.

‘As you did when you preferred to believe lies about me, rather than give me a single minute to explain what you saw?’ she flashed back at him. ‘Is this my cue to come over all tomb-like and walk out of here, Rafiq? Will it make you feel better if I leave you alone with your righteous belief that you were the only one injured eight years ago?’

‘Get out,’ he incised.

And there they were. Those magic words, delivered with the same black-toned lack of emotion as before, that literally froze her blood. Melanie looked into the cold dark cast of his face and thought, Ten minutes. It had taken just ten short minutes for them to reach the same point where they had finished things eight years ago.

She laughed, though it was a shaky sound, and swung away, aware that she might have mocked herself about those two small words earlier, but they were still having that same crippling effect on her now as they’d had then.

Only there was a difference. The younger Melanie had run; this older version was made of stronger stuff. She swung back, faced him squarely. ‘I have something important to tell you first,’ she announced.

‘I have no wish to hear it.’

‘You might regret saying that.’

‘Leave, Melanie,’ he reiterated.

‘Not until you hear me out.’

Where had that damn stubbornness come from? Rafiq glared at her with a mix of frustration and fascination. It had been a hard push to get the old Melanie to argue about anything. Now he could not shut her up!

The telephone on his desk began to ring, and glad of the diversion he picked it up. It was Nadia informing him that his next appointment had just cancelled. ‘Thank you,’ he murmured, and returned the receiver to its rest, then glanced at Melanie. ‘I’m sorry but my next appointment has arrived,’ he lied. ‘Which means that your time is up.’

Melanie stared at him. He could have done without seeing the hurt glinting in her eyes. ‘You never intended to give me a chance, did you?’ she gasped.

‘Even as Mrs Portreath?’ He arched a cold black eyebrow. ‘No,’ he confessed. ‘I have a congenital dislike of machinating women, you see, so using Randal Soames to get you into this room earned you no more extra time than if you had managed to get in here as Melanie Leggett.’

And that, Melanie realised, more or less said it. She had failed in her mission even before she’d arrived here. What a joke, what a sad little joke. For a few moments longer she continued to stand there, looking at this tall dark beautiful man with the romantic face of Arabia and eyes fit to turn a desert to ice, and seeing no sign at all that there was anything worth appealing to beyond those eyes she knew she was going to give up the fight.

‘You know what I think, Rafiq?’ she said quietly. ‘I think you’ve just lost the only chance you will ever be given to turn yourself into a human being.’

And with that she turned to walk away. From his chance, from Robbie’s chance. The threat of tears suddenly overtook her, because she knew deep down inside she was walking away from her own last chance to make this man understand the truth about her.

I was a fool for thinking I could do it, she railed at herself. Rafiq needed a heart before he could care enough to want to listen. Robbie didn’t need a man without a heart cluttering up his life. He had already known the best. It would be an insult to William Portreath’s memory to now offer her son the worst.

‘Wait…’

Her hand had a grip on the door handle. Melanie froze like a statue with her eyes to the door. What next? What now? she wondered tensely. Did she even want to hear it?

Yet she didn’t move. Bigger fool that she was, she just stood there and waited, with her teeth clenched tightly and her heart pumping heavily, while behind her there was…nothing. He didn’t speak again, nor move, as far as she could tell. And where the silence before had held a smothering sense of failure, this silence screamed with hope. Weak and pathetic, pained and helpless—hope.

She was trembling; Rafiq could see it happening. So much so that the knot of silk hair was threatening to come loose. Was she close to tears also? He had a suspicion that she was—just as he had a suspicion that he’d just made the biggest mistake of his life by stopping her from leaving here.

But her last remark had got to him; it had touched a raw nerve inside that went back eight years to when he’d regretted not listening to what she’d had to say. The human being part had pricked him, because if anyone knew he was only half-human then it had to be himself. But here stood the woman he blamed for that.

So why had he stopped her when she could have been gone by now? Confusion at his own actions set him frowning as he threw himself down into his chair and tried to decide what do next. As he did so his eyes fell on the stack of papers he’d only had time to glance at before Melanie had walked into the room.

‘Tell me about William Portreath,’ he invited.

Her shoulders sagged a little, her chin dipping towards her chest to expose the long slender length of her nape. A nape he could almost feel against his fingers—fingers that actually stretched out on cold smooth marble in a feather-like caress. He drew them into a fist, sat outwardly relaxed in his chair while inside every muscle he owned had knotted in an effort to cast out what had been daring to take a grip. His gaze dropped to where her hand still grasped the door handle. Like him, she was dubious about continuing this.

The tension rose along with the silence, and his heart began to pump unevenly in his chest. When his mobile phone began to ring he was so glad of the diversion that he answered it without even thinking about it.

It was Serena again. Of course it was Serena. She had just remembered who was financing her tour, and was using her most seductive voice to try and make him see sense.

At last Melanie moved. He didn’t. In fact his eyes, ears, his capacity to breathe had all been lost in a stress-loaded moment as he watched her fingers slacken and finally drop away from the handle altogether. She began to turn. It was slow and uncertain. She began walking back across the room with her eyes carefully lowered so he could not see what was going on behind them.

Serena was turning on the heat now, the fact that he hadn’t cut the connection giving her encouragement. She wanted them to carry on as they had been. She wanted him to remember what it had been like for them.

But he was remembering what it had been like with Melanie. He watched her come towards him in her smart suit that skimmed her slender body like a smooth outer skin, but he saw tight faded jeans and a simple tee shirt, saw himself peeling both from her wonderful flesh with hands that worshipped what they found. He saw beautifully formed breasts with rose-tinted areolae and perfect nipples that tightened at the slightest caress. His eyelashes grew heavy as his gaze skimmed downwards to recall the flatness of her silk-smooth stomach with its perfect oval for a navel and gently rounded hips that loved to be cradled in his. Shy Melanie, virginal Melanie, with a soft mouth that had trembled because she had wanted him so badly, and eyes glowing like topaz, aroused and ready to offer him her one precious gift. If everything else she had ever offered him had been lies then he knew without question that wanting him so badly she had had to give him her virginity had been Melanie’s one truth.

Should that count for something now? he pondered grimly. In his own country it would count for everything. They would have been man and wife on the strength of that one night alone. Indeed, his sense of honour had already made that decision before he had claimed his exquisite prize. It was a prize that still held a power over him as he sat here in the present listening to one woman beg for his passion while the other aroused him without having to try. He recalled a single afternoon spent upon an old-fashioned feather mattress beneath an eiderdown when her arms had clung to him and her body had accepted him with small soft gasps that had rolled his heart around. He had felt the barrier, could still feel it tempting the proud crown of his sex. ‘Yes,’ she had said in that soft breathy whisper, and it had stirred him beyond anything he could ever remember.

He was in agony, he noted ruefully. But while he sat here struggling with his own discomfort, he also had the satisfaction of seeing Melanie’s cheeks grow warm and her eyelashes flicker in a way that placed a wry smile on his lips. She knew what he was thinking and was unable to look at him because she was feeling the effects of those memories just as strongly as he was.

It was sex, nothing more. He could deal with sex—as the beautiful Serena would agree.

If he didn’t stop undressing her with his eyes she would change her mind and leave, Melanie decided as she sank down into the chair by the desk. He was daring to sit there looking as laid back as a man could look while listening to a telephone conversation, but his hooded eyes were burning through her clothing. Did he think she was too dense to know what he was doing?

A wry smile twitched his mouth. It was a mouth that should have looked mean and cold, but by some quirk of fate looked anything but. She sighed, dropped her eyes away from him and wished his expression did not reminded her of sex. One man, one afternoon, only that one experience to call upon—and she was certainly able to call upon it, she noted helplessly. All it had taken was a knowing glint in those eyes and she could see the man in all his naked glory. The breadth of his wide bronzed shoulders and long muscular torso peppered with soft dark hair and—no, stop right there.

Who was on the other end of the phone that could hold him in silence for so long? she wondered as she shifted restlessly on the chair. She wished he would speak, if only to break this terrible tension that was eddying in the air.

Sexual tension. The man had always had the power to turn her inside out with that heavy-lashed, steady stare. Perhaps he knew it, perhaps the call had finished ages ago but he was stretching out the silence on purpose just to extend the agony. Could he be that calculating?

Yes, she decided, of course he could. He had made it very clear that he didn’t want her here, but then for some baffling reason had decided to give her a chance to say what she’d come to say. Perhaps she’d touched a nerve when she’d challenged his status as a human being, and this was his idea of payback. Rafiq had pride enough for ten men. He had an ego as big as…other parts.

Oh, stop it! she railed at herself as a second wave of heat crawled up her cheeks.

Rafiq saw the blush and was reminded of the first time he’d seen her, at a friend’s country estate. He had been there as a weekend guest and Melanie had been one of the paid staff. She’d served him throughout dinner, quiet, shy, and wearing a perpetual blush to her cheeks. Every time she’d leant over his shoulder to serve him he’d inhaled the scent of her delicate perfume, had felt the soft brush of her breath and her silk hair brushing his cheek. Electric, clinging…He stopped breathing for a moment in dark recollection. Twice she’d caught his shoulder with a serving dish and had almost died with embarrassment. Twice he’d found himself making a joke about his own size in an attempt to deflect the wrath of his hostess.

‘She’s new—temporary,’ Sally Maitland had explained with the condescending tone of someone who had lived her whole life being served only by the best. ‘Leave it, Melanie!’ she had snapped in annoyance while Melanie valiantly tried to remove spilled sauce from where it had landed on the tablecloth by Rafiq’s plate. Her hand had been trembling, the heat from her cheeks hot enough to heat his own cheek as she leant across him. ‘You just can’t get the staff these days. Melanie is more used to feeding chickens than people.’

He smiled at the memory, though it was more like a grimace. Melanie had fed him a lot that weekend. She’d fed his mind and his senses by being everywhere he’d happened to be. Her perfume had lingered in his bedroom whenever he’d walked back into it after she’d been there tidying the bed; her shyly lowered eyes had followed him whenever she’d had the misfortune to be serving food. If they’d met on the stairs she’d blush like mad and scurry hastily away from him; if they’d brushed arms or shoulders she’d jump like a startled kitten and refuse, though he’d tried, to utter a single word to him. Nods and shakes had been all he’d got for his trouble.

Nods and shakes that had almost driven him out of his mind.

‘Come on, querida. Forgive me and let us put this behind us. Carlos is not expecting fidelity from me and I—’

With a flick of the hand he cut the connection. Melanie lifted her face. ‘You didn’t speak a single word,’ she said, almost accusingly.

‘No words were required,’ he drawled lazily, and smiled the kind of smile that made her feel threatened and edgy and eager to get out of here.

‘About William,’ she said firmly, ‘I think I should start by—’

‘Lunch,’ he inserted.

‘Lunch?’ Melanie offered him a perfectly blank stare.

He offered a smile to her. ‘I think we will take this conversation away from the business environment and place it in a more…congenial setting.’

‘But you have another appointment waiting outside!’

His answer to that was to reach out and pick up the other phone. Several smooth words spoken in Arabic and as far as Melanie was concerned the problem of his next appointment had been consigned to the archives. The phone went back on its rest.

‘Problem solved,’ he murmured with lying smoothness.

‘I really do prefer to deal with this right here.’ It was almost a desperate little plea.

‘Oh, come.’ He stood up. ‘Here I am attempting to show you my human side by offering to listen to you, and you throw this gesture back in my face?’

If he thought listening to her talk over lunch was going to be pleasant then he was in for a surprise, Melanie thought ruefully. And why did she feel as if she’d just come face to face with a slippery snake?

She watched him warily as he walked around the marble slab. The dig about his human side hadn’t passed her by either, nor the fact that in the space of a one-way conversation with his mobile phone his whole manner towards her had taken a complete reversal. He arrived at the side of her chair. The hairs on the back of her neck began to stand on end. He was waiting for her to give in and stand up, but her eyes were level with a certain part of his anatomy and what she could see happening there sent a wave of shocked heat sweeping down her front.

This had nothing to do with lunch, or talking, or even him showing his human side! It was to do with sex. Let-me-rumble-you-on-the-nearest-bed kind of sex—for old times’ sake.

‘Stop this, Rafiq,’ she uttered tensely.

‘Stop what?’

‘You know what!’ Jumping up, she took an anxious step back. The chair was in the way, the marble desk blocking any other form of escape. ‘Let me pass,’ she insisted.

‘Of course.’ He took a step sideways.

Flustered beyond daring to think, Melanie went to slither between him and the desk. His hand snaked out, caught her by the waist to bring her to a standstill. It was the first time he’d touched her in eight long years and it turned her senses into live wires that forced her to draw in a sharp breath.

He laughed huskily. ‘Sure you want to go?’

She lifted her face to spit out her answer at him. Eyes clashed with eyes, hot and elemental. She parted her lips on a shivering gasp. Rafiq dipped his dark head and covered them. She fell into his kiss like a suicidal lemming.

What shocked Rafiq more was that he did the same thing himself. He had no idea where it all came from. One minute he was toying with her just for the hell of it, the next he was locked into hottest, darkest, most sexually arousing kiss he had ever experienced in his life! He could feel every quivering inch of her as if they were already naked. Her perfume filled his head, and the desperate little groans she was making as she tried to fight what was happening and knew she did not stand a chance vibrated in every one of his nerve cells.

Melanie the harlot, he thought grimly as she arched compulsively then hungrily deepened the kiss. Well…why not? he asked himself as the anger still burning within the desire gave him the excuse to do what he liked. The desk was convenient. All it would take was a lift of his arm and he could be enjoying her on a slab of cold marble. Sex in a mausoleum, he thought grimly, sacrificial and pagan. It suited him very well.

A sound beyond the door infiltrated the madness. With a tug Melanie managed to separate their mouths, then took a jerky step back. Shocked and shaken by the whole experience, she slumped weakly against the edge of the marble and gasped like a sprinter while trying to clear the dizzy fog from her head.

‘What made you do that?’ she choked out when she could manage to say anything.

He laughed—harshly—as if she’d just told a really bad joke. But the really bad joke was the way he was standing there calmly fastening shirt buttons she must have unfastened! Horrified, she looked down, and saw her jacket was hanging open revealing her skimpy black lace bra. Pure vanity had made her decide to wear nothing else beneath the jacket, so as not to spoil its smooth line. But now she had to deal with the mortifying knowledge that he knew she had come here only half-dressed!

As if she was begging for it. She shuddered. She could almost hear him saying those derisory words out loud. Why not? She had fallen into that kiss like a love-racked teenager.

Her skin was flushed, her nipples hard. ‘I don’t believe this is happening,’ she breathed shakily, while urgently redoing buttons with numb fingers and wishing she couldn’t still feel his hands on her body.

‘You should not have come here, Melanie,’ Rafiq said grimly.

‘I didn’t come here for this!’ she cried.

‘Take my advice and get out of here.’ Turning, he strode back round the desk. ‘And if you have any sense at all you will not attempt to come back.’

Melanie nodded in complete agreement, tried swallowing down the lump in her throat and tried to stand without the aid of the desk. It didn’t happen. Her legs refused to support her. It was the final humiliation and she had to put a trembling hand up to cover her burning eyes.

He was a ruthless, heartless, arrogant devil. How could she have let herself forget all of that?

But she hadn’t forgotten it. She’d merely shelved it in a box marked, Has had time to change.

‘I n-need my papers,’ she stammered, and in a last-ditch attempt to leave with some dignity she forced her stupid legs to carry her weight.

He nodded coolly, and began gathering the papers together. Melanie stood at his side and waited in stiff silence for him to hand them over so that she could get out of here and never, ever come back.

‘Your uncle is still running the farm?’ he asked suddenly.

She frowned at the question, her head still too fluffy to think properly. ‘He died five years ago in a farming accident.’

‘I’m sorry, I had not heard.’

Melanie shrugged away his commiserations. There had never been any affection between her and her uncle. She was sorry he had died so tragically, but other than that, she still could not bring herself to forgive him for the part he had played in trying to ruin her life.

‘And Jamie?’

Ah, he couldn’t resist it, could he? A fresh wave of bitterness welled, putting the light of defiance back in her eyes. Her chin went up and she threw that defiance straight at him. ‘My papers,’ she prompted, holding a hand out.

To Rafiq, this was a challenge and a refusal to make any comment on the person she had betrayed him with. He lowered his gaze to the outstretched hand.

‘You’ve changed,’ he remarked. ‘Grown more assertive.’

‘Life has a habit of changing you.’

‘And money.’

‘And money.’ She nodded in agreement.

‘Which you would like me to invest for you?’

‘Money is a devil to look after if you’re not used to handling it,’ she answered.

‘Why me?’ he asked, suddenly curious when Melanie no longer wanted him to be.

‘Because Randal assured me that you were the best.’ And that’s all you’re getting out of me, she added silently.

‘Liar,’ he drawled. ‘You suggested me to Randal.’

Oh, that shook her. She hadn’t expected Randal to reveal that juicy bit of information. Still, she rallied. ‘Are you trying to tell me that you aren’t the best?’

His smile this time was disturbing. Disturbing because she’d seen Robbie use the exact same expression, but had never connected it with his father before. She knew that physical things, like the colour of eyes and hair and skin, came as part of the genetic package, but she hadn’t realised that smiles did also.

‘There you are, then.’ She tried a smile. ‘I was hoping your business ethic would put you above bearing grudges. It seems I was wrong. My mistake. I’ll find someone else.’

‘To…’ he glanced at the top piece of paper “‘…invest one half of your inheritance in long-term options while the other half is locked into a trust fund,”’ he read out loud.

A frisson of alarm disturbed her breathing. He was beginning to show interest when she no longer wanted him to. ‘Randal is setting the trust fund up for me,’ she said tensely, her eyes fixed on those long brown fingers set against the white paper that held the details of her entire life.

Her life and Robbie’s life.

‘For whom?’ Rafiq questioned.

‘Does it matter?’ she countered stiffly.

‘If you want me to work with you, it does,’ he murmured quietly.

‘But I don’t any longer.’

He ignored that and went to sit down in his chair—taking her papers with him. ‘Sit and explain,’ he smoothly invited, then flipped to the next page.

‘N-no,’ she refused. ‘I’ve changed my mind, Rafiq. I made a mistake to come to y-you. I know that now. You were right. I should leave. I’m s-sorry I intruded.’

Rafiq narrowed his eyes on her taut stature; something inside him went very still. She was afraid, white with it, suddenly no longer defiant but teetering dangerously on the edge of panic.

‘For whom?’ he repeated very quietly, and watched with deepening interest as her eyes flickered away, nervously scanning anything that did not include him. They settled on the illuminated numbers on the communications console.

‘Lunch is out,’ she announced jerkily. ‘I have to be somewhere else at one.’

Rafiq said nothing. He just continued to sit there watching as her cheeks grew even paler and her tongue made a nervous pass across trembling lips. Lips that still pulsed from his kiss, he noticed. Lips that seemed to have forgotten how to speak. She was tense, she was edgy, she was so nervous he could see the fine tremors attacking her flesh.

A sudden thought made his eyes narrow. She was Melanie Portreath now, not the Melanie Leggett he’d used to know. William Portreath had been in his nineties when he’d died, making his widow very rich. Rafiq knew how these things usually worked: wise men tended to protect their money from the machinations of a trophy wife.

But protect it for whom? ‘Answer me, Melanie,’ he commanded grimly.

She shimmered a glance at him then dragged it away, swallowed, and murmured huskily, ‘M-my son. The trust is to be set up for my son.’

So, the old man had been capable of enjoying the charms of his lovely young bride! Rafiq’s skin began to prickle at the very idea of it. She was now so pale her eyes were bruising. Was it shame? Was she beginning to realise that it was not as easy as she had expected to come in here and admit that she had sold herself for a pot of gold to a man old enough to be her grandfather?

Sickness was suddenly clawing at his stomach, disgust climbing up the walls of his chest, as she stood there staring at him through eyes that seemed to beg him for some kind of understanding. But all he saw was her beautiful, smooth naked form lying beneath a withered old man.

Placing the papers on his desk, he stood up and was amazed at the smoothness of the movement, was impressed by the way his legs carried him around the desk. ‘Come with me,’ he said, and was further impressed by the steadiness of his voice as he gave the instruction.

Melanie was looking slightly bewildered. He had no wish to look into her face any longer so he turned and walked away. As he strode towards the door he could hear her following him. In the outer foyer Nadia was busy at her computer, and Kadir was leaning against her desk while talking on the telephone. He was speaking Arabic, but Rafiq had not a single clue what words were being spoken in his natural tongue.

‘Kadir!’ With a flick of a hand he brought his aide to attention and kept on walking towards the other side of the room, where the lift stood with its doors conveniently open and waiting for them.

Kadir arrived at Rafiq’s side as he was silently indicating to his aide Melanie should precede him. She was frowning as she did so, eyeing Rafiq warily as she passed him by. He ignored her to indicate to Kadir to follow suit. Kadir entered the lift. Rafiq stepped in after them, but only for as long as it took him to hit the ground-floor button. He was taking no chances here.

‘Escort Mrs Portreath off the premises,’ he instructed Kadir. ‘And ensure that she does not gain entrance to this building again.’

With that he walked away, hearing Melanie’s shocked gasp as the lift doors put solid steel between them. As he strode past Nadia’s workstation he ignored his secretary’s stunned expression. With the easy flow of a man completely in control of his own actions, he stepped back into his office and closed the door.

Melanie was staring at the walls of her steel prison. Shock was holding her silent and still. Beside her, the dark-haired young Arab called Kadir was almost as frozen.

She found her voice. ‘What happened?’ she whispered.

He offered her a very formal bow. ‘I’m afraid I do not know.’

Then, before either could say anything else, the doors were opening onto the ground-floor foyer and Kadir was politely carrying out his master’s wishes by escorting her all the way to the giant glass doors and even beyond. In a daze of bewilderment Melanie found herself being offered another polite bow before the young man turned and retreated through the doors again, leaving her standing there in a state of utter disabling shock at the slick smooth way Rafiq had just executed his revenge on her—if revenge was what it had all been about. She didn’t know, didn’t care. He had thrown her out—publicly. In all her life she’d never felt so humiliated.

Stunned beyond being able to function sensibly, she began moving and almost fell beneath the wheels of a passing car. The car horn sounded; she just stood watching as it brushed by within inches.

Up high, in his marble tower, Rafiq viewed her near-death experience through black eyes and with bone-crackingly clenched teeth. It was only as he stood there fighting a battle between fear for her life and a wish never to lay eyes on her again that he made the connection between Melanie and the golden-haired woman he had watched hovering in the street before.

If he had known then what he knew now she would not have got beyond the building’s entrance doors, saving them both a lot of trouble.

The liar, the cheat, the little slut, he seethed in ice-cold silence. And he’d had the pleasure of experiencing two of her kind in a single day! All he needed now was for his mother to rise up from the grave and tell him exactly how much money she had squeezed out of his father before she’d agreed to carry his child full term.

Money. It always came down to money with women, he concluded, as he turned away from the window after watching one of their number safely cross the road. His mobile phone began to ring. Striding over to his desk, he picked it up, opened the back, removed the SIM card, then discarded the lot into the waste-paper bin where today’s Spanish newspaper was already showing yesterday’s news.

By tomorrow he would have pulled the plug on Serena’s finances. And his mother had ceased to be an issue when she’d died on the day of his birth. Which left only Melanie—or Mrs Portreath, he amended bitterly as he picked up the stack of her papers with the intention of consigning those to the waste-paper bin along with everything else.

Only something caught his eye and he hesitated…

CHAPTER THREE

MELANIE had no idea how she managed to get home again. She had only a vague recollection of standing on an Underground train and being strangely comforted because she was just one more blank face amongst many. But now here she stood in her own warm kitchen, surrounded by everything that represented familiarity, comfort and security to her—and she felt like an alien.

An alien being in an alien place, present, yet not a part of. It was an odd sensation, because she recognised everything yet couldn’t seem to connect with any of it. The old Aga set into the chimney-breast, for instance, the scrubbed table that took up too much space but was as much a part of the family as Robbie’s pictures decorating the cork notice-board on the wall by the door. Assorted mugs hung from old-fashioned cup hooks suspended beneath one of the ancient wall cabinets, and at some point since coming home, she had set the old kettle to heat on the Aga, though she didn’t remember doing it. It was puffing out steam in a gentle flow now, telling her the water was hot but not yet boiling. She had lost her shoes somewhere and was standing on cold quarry tiling in silk stockings that had cost her the absolute earth, though it felt as if she was floating above the floor.

Shock. She was suffering from shock. She understood that even if she couldn’t seem to do anything about it. Every time she tried to think what had thrust her into this foggy state she experienced that awful sinking sensation of a lift swooping downwards and the claustrophobic sensation of being encased in steel. But what had happened before the lift and what had come after it was refusing to show itself.

She looked at the wall clock, saw it wasn’t even one o’clock yet, and realised she’d done well to get back so quickly after…

That lift swooped her downwards again and she fumbled for a kitchen chair then sank onto it, put a cold hand up to cover her mouth and caught a brief flash of Rafiq’s stone-like face. She blinked slowly as the part of her brain that stored pictures refused to connect with the part that stored emotion.

He’d thrown her out.

She dropped the hand onto the table, fingertips hovering in the air as if they knew that making contact with anything solid would cause some kind of horrible calamity.

He’d played with her like a cat with a mouse. He’d insulted her, kissed her, had brought her right there to the very edge of panic by suddenly showing an interest in things she’d no longer wanted him to know about. Then, quite calmly and precisely, he had thrown her out.

Her fingers began to curl down towards the table, her stomach muscles coiled into a ball, and at last blood began to pump more oxygen to her brain. Across the kitchen the kettle began to make hissing noises; the clock on the wall chimed the hour. The fingers touched base and she stood up; it was quick and tense and impulsive.

How could she have got it so wrong? How could she have talked herself into believing that he possessed a heart worth pleading with? Where had she ever got the stupid idea that he was a worthy father for her very precious son?

The telephone mounted on the wall behind her began ringing. Forcing herself to go and answer it took most of her self-control.

‘I saw you come back,’ a female voice said. ‘How did it go?’

It was her neighbour, Sophia. ‘It didn’t go anywhere,’ Melanie replied, then burst into tears.

Sophia arrived within minutes, banging on the back door with a demand to be let in after having come through the hole in the hedge that separated their two gardens. She was a tall, dark-haired, sex-seething bombshell with lavender eyes and a lush mouth that could slay the world. But inside the stunning outer casing lurked a legal mind that was a sharp as a razor and as tough as the glass ceiling she was striving to break through.

‘Dry those tears,’ she instructed the moment Melanie opened the door to her. ‘He doesn’t deserve them, and you know he doesn’t.’

Half an hour later Melanie had poured the whole thing out to her over a cup of tea. By then Sophia’s amazing eyes had turned glassy. ‘It sounds to me as if you and Robbie have just had a very lucky escape. The man is a first-class bastard. I did tell you, you should have stuck with me, kid,’ she added sagely. ‘I’m a much better father-figure for any boy child.’

It was such a ludicrous thing to say that Melanie laughed for the first time. But in a lot of ways Sophia was speaking the truth, because her neighbour’s curt, no-nonsense approach to life had always appealed to Robbie. When he was in need of something other than his mother’s loving softness he would disappear through the hole in the hedge to search out Sophia. So did Melanie, come to that.

‘What did your lawyer have to say when you told him?’ Sophia asked curiously. ‘The same as me—I told you so?’

Randal. Melanie’s brain ground to a halt again; she went still, her eyes fixed and blank. Then—

‘Oh, dear God,’ Melanie breathed, then jumped up and made a dive for the telephone.

‘What?’ Sophia demanded anxiously. ‘What did I say?’

‘Oh—hello.’ Melanie cut across Sophia with the tense greeting. ‘I need to speak to Randal Soames, please. I’m M-Mrs Portreath…W-what do you mean he isn’t there? I was supposed to be meeting him there for lunch!’

‘Mr Soames was called out on urgent business, Mrs Portreath,’ his secretary told her. ‘I was expecting you to arrive at any minute so I could offer you his apologies.’

She didn’t want an apology. ‘I have to speak to Randal!’ She was becoming hysterical. ‘When will he be back?’

‘He didn’t say…’

‘W-well…’ Melanie took in a breath and tried to calm herself ‘…I need you to get him on his mobile phone and tell him I have s-speak to him urgently.’

‘Yes, Mrs Portreath. I will try to contact him for you but I can’t promise. He tends to switch off his mobile when he’s in a meeting, you see.’

Melanie placed the receiver back on its rest, then sank weakly against the wall and put a hand up to cover her aching eyes.

‘What was all that about?’ Sophia questioned.

‘I left my papers on Rafiq’s desk,’ she breathed. ‘How could I have been so stupid!’

The covering hand began to tremble. On a sigh, Sophia came to place an arm across her shoulders. ‘Okay, calm down,’ she murmured soothingly. ‘I think you need to remember that he didn’t give you much chance to do otherwise,’ she pointed out.

No, he hadn’t, Melanie agreed. He’d just got rid of her. He’d heard enough—had enough—and had just got up and marched her out! Sophia almost copied him by marching her back to the kitchen table and sitting her down again, only her friend used a guiding arm to do it whereas Rafiq hadn’t even spared her a glance, never mind touched her! As if she was unclean. As if he would have contaminated himself if he’d remained in her company too long.

A shudder ripped through her. ‘Stop shaking,’ Sophia commanded. ‘The man isn’t worth the grief.’

But Melanie didn’t want to stop shaking. She wanted to shiver and shake and remember another time when he’d done almost the same thing. She had followed him back to London, had almost had hysterics in her desire to get inside his embassy and plead with him. What she’d met with when she’d eventually been granted an audience had been Rafiq locked into his Arab persona, about to attend some formal function dressed in a dark red cloak, white tunic and wearing a white gut rah on his head. He’d looked taller and leaner, foreign and formidable. His face had taken on a whole new appearance: harder, savage, honed to emulate some cold-eyed, winged predator. ‘Get out.’ He’d said those two immortal words then turned his back on her to stride away.

‘Melanie, if he still despises you as much as you think he does, he will probably consign your papers to the bin without bothering to read them.’

‘Yes.’ She liked that scenario.

‘But would it be a very bad thing if he did read them?’ Sophia then dared to suggest. ‘At least he would know everything—which is what you wanted, remember? It was why you decided to go to see him in the first place.’

Sophia was holding onto her hands while trying to talk some good sense into the situation. But she hadn’t been there this morning; she hadn’t seen the size of the mistake Melanie had made. It had been huge; she’d been damned by her own foolish optimism, letting the years soften Rafiq’s hard image until she’d actually begun to question whether she had been fair to him.

William had helped by gently nudging her in this direction. Dear, sweet, gentle William who, like herself, hadn’t liked to see bad in anyone. But even William’s advice had only been wise with all the facts laid before him. If Rafiq did decide to read those papers they would only tell him half the story. As for the other half—

Well, that half belonged to his eagerness to believe badly of her simply because people had told him to.

But, no. She sighed. There had been so much more to it than words of poison spoken into his ear. He had seen her with Jamie. It had all been so desperately damning. And explainable, she reminded herself, if he had only given her the chance to explain. He hadn’t and still wouldn’t. That hadn’t changed. He still looked at her and saw her through the unforgiving eyes of a half-Arab man with his feet firmly entrenched in cultural principles and a deep-rooted belief that all women were natural sinners.

And she no longer wanted a man like that to come anywhere near her son so he could contaminate him with his poisonous view of her.

‘Melanie—’

No. She scrunched her hands free, then got to her feet. She didn’t want to talk about it any more. For what was the use in talking when it was basically too late? All she could hope for now was that Randal would come through for her and manage to retrieve her stuff before Rafiq decided to feed his hatred by reading things that he really did not want to know.

‘What are you doing at home at this time of the day, anyway?’ she asked Sophia as an abrupt change of subject. ‘I thought you were supposed to be wowing them all in some court or other.’

‘The case was adjourned,’ Sophia explained. ‘And I’m off to wow them in Manchester tomorrow, so I decided to come home to pack a bag and catch a flight up there today. I’ve got friends there I haven’t seen in ages—but I’ve changed my mind,’ she then added swiftly. ‘I’m going to stay here with you, just in case—’

‘No, you’re not.’ Mouth set in a stubborn line, Melanie glared at her with a warning look. ‘I had a bad experience today but I’m all right,’ she insisted, and to prove it she gathered up the tea mugs and took them to the sink. ‘Maybe I even needed it to help me move on from the past.’

‘You believe you can do that?’ Sophia sounded sceptical.

Maybe she was right to. ‘I have no choice.’ Just as soon as I’ve got my papers back, she thought with a shiver. ‘Because I won’t be repeating the same mistake twice.’

It was such a complete, final statement that Sophia didn’t even attempt to say another word. Ten minutes later she’d gone, leaving Melanie with the rest of the afternoon stretching out in front of her like a long dark road filled with nerve-stretching uncertainty—and a heartache she didn’t want to feel.

She called Randal’s office three times with no satisfaction. Actually picked up the phone to call Rafiq’s secretary, only to change her mind when his final words came back to hit her full in the face. She would not even get beyond the main switchboard.

How could a man fester in such hatred that it could make him want to humiliate her like that? Tears threatened again; she swallowed them down and went upstairs to change out of her suit. As she removed the jacket she caught sight of herself in the mirror, saw the black lacy bra and relived the feeling of long brown fingers staking their claim. She shuddered, despising herself for being so easy, finished removing the suit and scrambled into a pair of faded old jeans and a roll-neck top that covered everything. By the time she walked downstairs a few minutes later she was the casual Melanie her son was used to seeing when he arrived home from school. No sign of designer clothes left anywhere for him to pick up on. No hint that she’d been doing anything today that was different from any other day.

Robbie arrived with a shout and a bump of his school bag against the polished hall floor. She turned from chopping vegetables at the sink to watch him come in through the kitchen door. His maroon and gold striped tie had flipped over his shoulder, and beneath his gaping school blazer she could see the white tails of his shirt hanging free from grey school trousers. One grey sock was up, the other was down, and his glossy black hair looked as if it had been in a fight.

Her heart dropped like a stricken bird, because even with his rumpled appearance he was hitting her hard with his father’s image.

‘Hi,’ he said. ‘Guess what we did today?’

‘What?’ she asked.

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