Hot-Blooded Husbands Bundle

by Michelle Reid

  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 ha
dn’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 paper
s 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.’