‘Then we are both on a learning curve.’
‘Don’t talk business-speak to me!’ she snapped out angrily.
He leapt on her like a cat, picked her up and sat her down on the kitchen table, braced his hands beside her legs then pushed his dark face up close. ‘Would you rather I woo you into accepting me?’ he purred.
She stiffened like a cardboard cut-out; if he’d said it to insult her then he had certainly achieved his aim. ‘I’ve been wooed by you before and I would rather have a snake do it.’
‘Remove that ring one more time and you will regret it,’ he warned very, very succinctly.
Melanie looked down and was surprised to find her fingers trying to work the ring loose. The threatened tears came back. ‘I don’t want you here,’ she choked.
He saw the tears, touched a finger to the corner of her eye to capture one. ‘Too late,’ he announced, then stepped back.
He had heard what she had been too busy to hear—their son coming towards the kitchen. She leapt from the table just as Robbie appeared to take Rafiq off to watch his video. Melanie forced herself to tidy the kitchen, then went upstairs to make up the bed in the spare bedroom. It was a cold, dark little room with a cold little bed, and she had to grit her teeth as she made it so she would not let her conscience accept that a man of Rafiq’s size would never be able to sleep in it—or at least he’d freeze trying, she added as she snubbed her nose at the room and walked out.
Robbie kept the atmosphere buoyant right up until she eventually coaxed him into bed. He fell asleep blissful in the knowledge that when he awoke his daddy would still be there.
By the time Melanie trudged back down the stairs she had developed a throbbing headache and was intending to go straight to the kitchen to find some painkillers when she caught sight of Rafiq through the half-open door that led into the living room. He was standing by the fire with a hand thrust into his trouser pocket while the other held a mobile phone to his ear. He was speaking in fluent French. For a few seconds he even looked French, a smooth, sleek and dauntingly sophisticated Frenchman with the language for lovers falling from his lips.
It was not the cleverest of thoughts to have, she realised as her senses rose to the invitation to remember the lover once again. She made herself move on to the kitchen before he caught sight of her standing there looking at him like some sex-obsessed idiot. It had been that kind of day! A day packed full of old obsessions and new raging impulses. Sexual impulses; angry impulses. Her impulse to go and seek him out; his impulse to lay siege and seduce. The shocks, the grip of an old obsessive desire, the excitement in knowing they were both running out of control.
The headache got worse. She took two painkillers and set about preparing a pot of coffee. He was standing in more or less the same place when she carried the coffee tray into the room. He was still on the telephone, speaking in Spanish now, a language she recognised easily because Sophia was half-Spanish and could tumble into the language when she was angry enough to need its extra fire.
He turned his dark head as he heard the tray rattle. Their gazes clashed, and Melanie broke hers away. Five seconds later the mobile was back in his pocket.
‘Coffee?’ she offered politely.
‘Thank you, yes,’ he replied. ‘Black, no sugar.’
Black with no sugar, she repeated. Like the man himself: dark and unsweetened. She poured the coffee, then handed him his cup. He accepted it with a murmured, ‘Thank you.’
She looked pale and tired, Rafiq noticed, and had to smother the urge to sigh as he turned to look at the fire, taking with him the image of Melanie sitting there on faded velvet looking down at her coffee mug curled inside fingers that looked bloodless and cold. Hell, he thought in frustration, to him this whole house was cold. Even with the fire burning in the grate, the ancient central heating system only managed to take the edge of a subfreezing temperature! Despite his millions, and the loving attention he had poured into Rafiq’s son, William Portreath had not poured much love into his home. It was virtually falling down around them. Everything in it came from a bygone century.
‘Your requirements do not make any provision for the renovations this house clearly requires.’
Eyes like dark amber blinked at him. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘The papers you left with me,’ he explained. ‘They talk a lot about investments and trust funds but nothing about your annual expenditure or how much it is going to cost to bring this house into the twenty-first century.’
‘I don’t want to bring it into the twenty-first century. I like the house just as it is.’
She did? Was she lying just to go against him? ‘It is cold in here, Melanie,’ he said, stating the obvious. ‘The walls are so cold that the wallpaper is peeling.’ Not that its demise was much of a loss, he added with silent disdain. ‘I, for one, see no reason why we should live like this.’
She bristled. ‘Nobody is asking you to!’
He ignored that. ‘I will employ someone to draw up some plans for renovation,’ he announced.
Tired golden eyes began to sparkle. The mug was replaced on the tray. ‘William has been gone only two months and you come in here wanting to obliterate thirty years of his life?’ She rose stiffly. ‘You will touch nothing,’ she told him. ‘It isn’t yours to touch. And if you don’t find that acceptable then you know what you can do!’
She was hurt; he could see it. Rafiq wanted to kick himself. Ridding himself of his cup, he offered her a deep bow. ‘I have offended you,’ he acknowledged. ‘I apologise. It was not my intention to—’
‘Y-you think I can’t compare this—home to that super-expensive luxuriously blank space you like to live in?’ she said, interrupting his apology. ‘That I haven’t noticed the way you’ve been looking on everything here with disdain? Does it offend your ego to know that your son loves this house?’
‘No.’ He denied that. ‘I just think that it needs—’
‘Well, forget it,’ she said, cutting right across him a second time, and turned her stiff back towards him and walked to the door. ‘You can use the room at the end of the landing. Be sure to make the fire safe before you go up. Now, goodnight.’
She’d left the room before he could speak another syllable, leaving him standing there feeling as if he’d just struck a woman for the first time in his life.
‘Damn,’ he muttered, and took the first step to go after her. Then on a heavy sigh changed his mind. She’d had enough for one day. He had had enough! ‘Damn,’ he cursed again, and turned back to the fire. It was dying fast, like the whole blasted day.
A car drew up outside the house. He listened to the sound of its door slamming shut. Another sigh and he was striding for the front door before Kadir could ring the doorbell and awaken Robert. I learn very quickly, he mused grimly as he reached out to take the suitcase from his aide.
‘Thank you,’ he grunted. ‘I do not need to tell you that this situation is no one else’s business.’
‘No, sir. Of course, sir.’
He nodded, said goodnight and closed the door.
Upstairs Melanie listened to the car from the comfort of her duvet. She’d curled up beneath it after taking a shower in her en-suite, very ancient bathroom. Her teeth still chattered from the chills she’d given herself drying her body. She’d pulled on a knitted-cotton nightdress and was now only waiting for the duvet to infuse some warmth into her body.
Okay, she reasoned, so she knew the house needed a complete face-lift. She’d been wanting to do it for years, but William hadn’t liked change. He’d been an old man who’d had a right to feel like that. And he did not deserve that some complete stranger should walk in here and start tearing his life down!
How dared he? Her throat caught on a muffled sob. How dared Rafiq believe he could just take over everything—even her bed if she let him get away with it!
The front door closed; she felt it reverberate through the floor beneath her bed. She’d heard Rafiq telling Robb
ie that someone was going to bring his suitcase here. Well, she hoped he’d changed his mind and had left with the delivery person! And on that final, wholly satisfying thought she closed her eyes and willed her icy feet to get warm so that she could just go to sleep. She had almost—almost—achieved both impossible feats when a curse in the darkness brought her swimmingly awake.
Suddenly the duvet was being lifted, to let the cold night air come into her warm cocoon. A short second later a body followed—a very cold, very naked body with an arm that clamped her to him and powerful limbs that curled snugly into hers.
‘Oh, my God,’ she gasped on a shocked little shiver. ‘What do you think you are doing?’
‘Getting warm,’ Rafiq informed her grimly. Furious, she wriggled to get free. ‘Stay still,’ he gritted, close to her ear lobe.
He had to be joking! ‘You could have had the decency to put some clothes on!’
‘If my nakedness offends you then consider it punishment for that bed you prepared for me.’
He’d actually tried it? In a mulish kind of way Melanie was rather pleased that he had at least attempted to do the honourable thing. ‘I don’t want you here,’ she protested nonetheless.
‘The choice does not belong to you. Our son expects me to be in this bed when he wakes in the morning, and the other bed was an insult.’ A hand on her shoulder turned her to face him; dark eyes glittered down into hers. ‘You are a ruthless woman, Melanie Portreath,’ he told her. ‘Now it is my turn to be ruthless.’
And he was, in the way he wrapped himself around her, punishing her by stealing all her warmth, then punishing her again by falling fast asleep.
CHAPTER EIGHT
IT WAS a horrible weekend. There was not one single part of it that Melanie would have wanted to live through again. Daylight became an agony of hours watching her son sink himself into total hero-worship, and the nights an agony of too much intimacy with a man who clearly did not want more than to share her bed.
In his new role of father Rafiq dedicated himself to learning everything he could about his son. They talked, and they commandeered William’s study, where Robbie hit Rafiq with a million questions, all of which his father answered with a considered seriousness that made Melanie’s heart ache. Rafiq could do no wrong. She tried not to resent the way Robbie was turning to his father for everything. She tried to tell herself that this was what she had wanted, what she had hoped and aimed for when she had brought Rafiq into Robbie’s life.
But it hurt to witness their growing closeness while she was required to contribute very little other than the odd smile or nod, or food when necessary. By the end of each day she was so exhausted playing the smiling little woman in the background that the moment Robbie was safely in bed she took herself off to bed too, leaving Rafiq to do what men like him did—use his evenings to work from the laptop computer that had arrived with his suitcase—before he came to slide into her bed, draw her in, sigh, then fall asleep.
She didn’t understand him—didn’t think she wanted to understand a man who could ravish her with a blind compulsion one minute then spend whole nights lying beside her and not offer one measly pass! 121
Their son loved the whole family scenario. In fact it made Robbie’s day to run into their bedroom each morning and find both his parents wrapped snugly around each other. He couldn’t be happier if he tried.
But for Melanie resentment sizzled across her senses; frustration throbbed in her loins. Had she sunk so low that she could become hooked on passion after a couple of quick sips?
Monday morning could not come quickly enough. She waved Rafiq off to work in his sharp dark business suit, and only did that because her son’s hand was firmly attached to his father’s. Rafiq was delivering Robbie to school, along with other children, as part of the morning school run!
I’ve been made redundant, she thought peevishly as she closed the front door. Daddy is the new rising star in the street and I am the fading one.
The jaded one, she corrected as her shoulders sagged wearily through lack of sleep and a whole truckload of tension. Standing there in the sudden quietness of the hallway, she actually took a moment to consider going upstairs and just crawling back beneath the duvet to sleep the rest of the day away while there was no Rafiq to spoil it for her.
But his presence was there in the bedroom, she remembered. His clothes hung with her clothes in the wardrobe; the scent of his soap permeated the adjoining bathroom.
You wanted this, she tried telling herself. You instigated the whole darn thing and, if anything, you should be pleased by how successful Robbie’s introduction to his father has turned out, not standing here wilting like a wet leaf.
The light tap on the back door was a welcome diversion. Straightening her shoulders she walked into the kitchen just in time to watch Sophia step into the house.
‘Hi,’ Sophia murmured, and her expression could not have looked more sombre if she’d tried. In her hand she held a newspaper, which she set down on the kitchen table. ‘Take a deep breath, Melanie,’ she suggested, ‘because you are not going to like this…’
Rafiq was sitting in his chair behind his desk in his beautifully warm centrally heated office wishing he dared close his eyes and fall asleep because for these last miserable nights he’d lain awake in that bed with Melanie and had ached.
Ached. There was no better word for it. Was he a fool? Was he going insane, playing it this coolly? Yes, he was a fool, he accepted, because all it would have taken would have been one touch and she would have been his for the taking.
But he was out to prove a point. Melanie had hit him hard with some of the things she had thrown at him. She had made him out to be selfish and fickle. She had implied he did not have it in him to stay the course. She believed he would get weary of being a father and walk away when the novelty wore off him.
She’d also told him he thought her cheap by tumbling her into bed with him at the first opportunity. Which he had done; he freely admitted it. But not for one moment had he considered her cheap! Indeed, it had cost him a very great deal because he had been so bowled over by the strength of their feelings that he wanted to do it all again and again—and again.
She had claimed he had made love to her eight years ago then had despised her afterwards. Now she was waiting for him to despise her again. So sex was out of the question until he had placed a wedding ring on her finger. If that did not show her he meant serious business, then nothing would.
So, he thought with grim impatience. He had arranged a civil wedding service. From that day on he meant to have everything: a wife, his son, and some serious passion—preferably in a bedroom that did not send him into a paroxysm of shivers every time he stripped off his clothes.
And he had just the right place for this serious seduction. He knew the day on which it was going to happen. Now all he had to do was ring home and speak to half-brother, Hassan.
‘Where have you been hiding?’ his brother demanded, the moment the connection was made. ‘I have been trying to contact you all weekend.’
‘It cannot have been urgent or Kadir would have found me.’
‘What intrigues me is why he refused to divulge to me where you were.’
‘I was busy,’ he said, and could almost see Hassan’s grimace at his don’t-go-there-tone. ‘How is Father?’
He asked the usual question and he received back the reassuring answer he was looking for. ‘He is well and content.’
‘And Leona?’
‘The same—what is this, Rafiq?’ Hassan put in curiously. ‘You sound—different.’
Different? He grimaced. Different did not come close to describing the changes in his life. ‘Do you think it would be safe to leave them for a couple of days?’
‘Yes, if I have to.’ But Hassan sounded puzzled. ‘Is there something wrong at the bank?’
‘No, this is a—personal matter,’ Rafiq answered coolly. ‘I need you to do me a great favour. If you could be in London on Friday I
would much appreciate it.’
‘Rafiq needs a favour?’ Leona repeated as she lay on the bed, letting her husband smooth oil into her swollen abdomen. ‘Well, that has to be a first.’
‘Not quite,’ Hassan murmured. ‘But it is certainly unusual for him to ask anyone for anything.’
Leona was frowning thoughtfully. ‘Do you think this business with Serena Cordero has upset him more than we thought it would?’
‘Could be.’ Hassan paused in his ministrations to kiss her frown away, then went back to his duties, long fingers smoothing oil over creamy white skin stretched taut across the mound that was their growing child. ‘He has been acting strangely since the announcement of her marriage.’ It was his turn to frown. ‘I am reliably informed that he has hardly been to the bank since the newspaper article appeared and is almost impossible to track down. Nadia gets shifty if I ask questions, and so does Kadir. So I will have to go to London if only to quench my curiosity as to what it is he’s up to.’
‘Of course,’ Leona agreed. ‘But I hope you’re just a bit worried about him, too.’
‘Of course,’ he mimicked. ‘Do you want to roll over so I can rub this into your back now?’
‘No, thank you.’ She declined the offer. ‘I am perfectly happy with what you are doing right now.’
‘Witch.’ He laughed, and came to lean over her, eyes like brown velvet gently mocking hers of saucy green. Late afternoon sunlight was pouring in through the grilled window, turning everything in the bedroom a burnished gold. Leona’s hair shone like fire on the pillow; her porcelain skin wore a lustrous glow. She was exquisite in every way possible. ‘Why did no one warn me that pregnant women were such rampant sex machines?’ he murmured throatily.
‘It is nature’s secret weapon, aimed to keep husbands from straying to more slender delights.’ She smiled.
A black eyebrow arched. ‘Was that a deliberate dig at my father?’
‘Like father, like son,’ Leona quoted.
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