‘Yes.’ His frown returned. ‘You don’t think Rafiq could be planning revenge on Serena, do you?’
‘I don’t get the link.’
‘There isn’t one.’ Lowering his eyes, he began gently stroking a point on her stomach where he could feel his child’s heart beating steadily. Leona reached out and gently touched a fingertip to the point where his brows met across the bridge of his arrogant nose.
He glanced up, smiled, then sighed and lay back against the pillows. ‘Rafiq was hit hard by a woman once before—about eight years ago,’ he confided. ‘She was a beautiful blonde creature with golden eyes and a mouth designed to turn a saint into a sinner. I must add that Rafiq has never been a saint. But he fell head over heels in love with this woman, then found out she was taking him for a fool.’
‘Name?’ Leona asked curiously.
‘I cannot remember. She was as English as you are, though, and young—quite shockingly young for one filled with such calculation. She was a farmer’s daughter, as I recall, and saw Rafiq as her ticket out of drudgery. He asked her to marry him then discovered she was sleeping with her step-cousin. Rafiq severed the relationship and that should have been the end of it.’
‘But it wasn’t?’
‘No.’ Hassan shook his head. ‘She tried to contact him again many months later. It was the only other time that I can recall him asking me to do him a favour. She rang the London bank while I was there and Rafiq was here in Rahman, playing the nomad while still licking his wounds. She wanted to see him. When I relayed the message he asked me to meet with her to see if she was okay.’
‘He still cared?’
‘He was besotted.’ His brother sighed out heavily. ‘I have never seen him like that with a woman before or since.’
‘So what did you do?’
‘I had her checked out before I did anything. Discovered she was living with a man old enough to be her grandfather and, more to the point, was as heavily pregnant as you are now, my sweet.’ He caught hold of her hand and kissed it. ‘I arranged a meeting; she arrived expecting to see Rafiq. She tried convincing me that Rafiq was the father of her baby. So I told her what I thought Rafiq would do if she managed to convince him that this was true. She did not pursue the claim,’ he concluded with grim satisfaction. ‘A very nasty paternity battle through the courts was too much for her to take, apparently. She slunk off into the ether and was never heard from again.’
‘But what if the child had been Rafiq’s?’
‘It was not,’ he stated with absolute certainty. ‘You know his background. If there had been the slightest possibility that he had made the woman pregnant he would have followed the prospect until he could be certain either way.’
‘What did he say when you told him she was pregnant?’
‘I didn’t tell him,’ he replied. ‘I said I couldn’t find her but that I’d heard she was living with some man. He never mentioned her name again.’
‘Sometimes I really don’t like you,’ Leona informed him. ‘You have a ruthless streak so wide it makes me shiver.’
‘She was a woman on the make, Leona,’ he said deridingly. ‘People in our position meet them all the time. They see dollar signs up above our heads and latch on like limpets.’
‘But still….’
‘Rafiq caught her red-handed with her other lover.’
End of story. ‘What a manipulating bitch,’ Leona murmured, taking it personally that some woman would dare to use her beloved bother-in-law in such a way.
Rafiq had only just put the phone down when Kadir knocked at his door, then quietly let himself into the room. He was wearing the look of a man who was walking towards the gallows. Rafiq straightened in readiness, but nothing prepared him for what he was about to be hit with.
‘My apologies, sir, but I think you should see this…’ Carefully Kadir placed a newspaper onto the desk in front of Rafiq. With his usual efficiency his aide had folded the English tabloid so that Rafiq needed only to glance down and see what it was Kadir was showing him.
There was Serena, smiling up at Carlos Montez. It was the same damn article, now reproduced in spiced-up English. Rafiq couldn’t believe it. He shot to his feet. ‘What the hell?’ he muttered.
‘Apparently Miss Cordero arrived in London this weekend, sir,’ Kadir quietly explained. ‘Her show opens at a West End theatre on Wednesday. The—er—article is by way of a promotion for this event. I thought…’
He was talking to fresh air because Rafiq was already striding across the room with the rolled-up newspaper clenched in his hand.
‘H-How did you get hold of this?’ Melanie asked Sophia.
‘My grandmother likes to send me the Spanish newspapers to make sure I keep in touch with my roots,’ Sophia explained.
Melanie nodded unhappily. ‘And it says?’ she prompted.
‘You don’t really want me to read it out to you again, Melanie,’ Sophia murmured gravely. ‘The point is that this paper is dated last Tuesday—which is the same day you went to see Rafiq…’
‘Meaning what?’ Her lips felt too cold and numb to move properly; her whole face felt very much the same.
‘Meaning the guy was publicly dumped on the day you walked into his office. He was already out for someone’s blood before he even saw you. Therefore I think you have to ask yourself the question whether his actions since have been motivated by this.’
‘Saving face?’
‘Yes.’ Sophia sighed. ‘To suddenly pull a wife and son out of the hat will turn the tables on Miss Cordero. It will appear as if she is the one who married on the rebound while he walked away from their relationship of over a year unscathed.’
Over a year…Melanie lowered her gaze to the two photographs printed side by side on the page. One was of the beautiful Serena Cordero standing with her handsome new husband. The other was of Rafiq standing with Serena. Her heart crashed against her ribcage, turning her insides to jelly, because the photograph was just as Robbie had described it: Rafiq wearing Arab clothes while the lady wore a red frilly dress. William had shown this photograph to her son but hadn’t shown it to her. Everyone but her—including her son—seemed to know about Rafiq’s beautiful long-standing Spanish mistress!
Did Rafiq love this woman? Was the luscious dark beauty what he really wanted, and now that he couldn’t have her was he prepared to take anyone?
No, not just anyone, she grimly amended, but a woman who happened to come packaged with his son.
She thought about the phone call he had taken in his office when he hadn’t spoken a single word. She thought about the look in his eyes as he’d listened to whoever had been on the other end of that phone, followed by the kiss before he’d coldly thrown her out.
Then she thought about the way he had found out about Robbie and had been forced to rethink his stance. Days later had come his sudden explosion of hot passion followed by nothing since.
Nothing.
She swallowed down a lump of nausea. Clearly he had tried to burn Miss Cordero out of his system and failed. She had been nothing but a substitute, and a disappointing one at that. I must have been, she thought painfully—because look at her! Black hair, black eyes and a lush-red passionate mouth looked back at her. Miss Cordero possessed the kind of sumptuous hourglass figure that most women would kill to own.
Which makes me the consolation prize.
She caught the sound of a key in the front door then. Only one person beside herself had a key to this house. Her insides became a mess of misery as she listened to Rafiq call out her name. Sophia straightened in her chair, her eyes growing wide and dark and curious. Footsteps sounded on the polished wood floor as he strode towards the kitchen, then arrived to fill its doorway. Melanie tried focusing on his face, but all she saw was the shadowy outline of his whole dark bulk. Weakness feathered its way through the misery, because he did not fill the doorway with just his size, but with—everything. The darkness of his hair, his skin and his clothes said so much about him
, and the stillness of every perfectly formed feature warned of the inner strength that so matched the outer shell.
His gaze flicked from her face to Sophia’s face, then remained there. Melanie glanced at Sophia too, and was suddenly struck very hard by her friend’s likeness to Serena Cordero. Another wave of nausea lodged in her throat, because he couldn’t seem to take his eyes off her.
Rafiq had not expected to find Melanie with a visitor. For a moment he was struck numb by the thought that it was Serena herself, come to cause yet more trouble. Then the likeness faded and he glanced back at Melanie to find that she was looking down at the table. He saw the newspaper, felt his fingers clench around his own, and knew what Melanie was going to say before she even spoke.
‘You have a mistress.’
‘I had a mistress,’ he corrected, coming further into the room as Sophia rose from her seat.
‘I think I’ll leave you both to it,’ she murmured, and went to pick up the newspaper.
It was a gesture that did not pass by Rafiq. ‘If the newspaper is yours, then I must assume you enjoy playing devil’s advocate,’ he drawled icily.
Sophia being Sophia, she took up the challenge in his tone. ‘I don’t like whatever it is you are trying to do here,’ she informed him coolly.
Sparks began to fly. ‘You believe I care one way or another what you like or dislike?’
The dark beauty’s chin lifted, sending ripples of raven hair flying over her shoulders. ‘I don’t think you care about anyone’s feelings so long as you get your own way.’
‘Well, I did not get my own way here,’ he said, stabbing a long finger at the damning newspaper article.
It was then that he realised what it was he was stabbing at, and began to frown in confusion. While he was doing that Melanie got up and on a soft choke, rushed from the room. The urge to stop her was halted by his curiosity about this other woman.
His eyes narrowed. ‘How did you get hold of this?’ he demanded.
She shrugged. ‘I am Spanish on my mother’s side,’ she explained. ‘My grandmother sends me her newspapers once a week.’
‘Industrious lady.’
‘Very.’
‘You have a point in hurting Melanie with this?’
‘You are the one playing hurtful games with her feelings,’ Sophia responded. ‘I didn’t like it from the beginning.’ She let her glance fall to the newspaper. ‘This tells me why I don’t like it.’
And I do not like you, Rafiq thought as he looked into her face and saw a different face once again. She was so like Serena it could be the dancer standing there.
‘You are on a face-saving exercise,’ she dared to accuse him.
‘What is your name?’ he demanded.
‘Sophia Elliot,’ she announced, making his gaze narrow even further, because he had heard that name before. ‘I am the next-door-neighbour from hell, Mr Al-Qadim,’ she informed him, with a cool humour that confirmed the impression he had gained from his son that this woman was as tough as she was beautiful. ‘I am also a pretty good lawyer,’ she added. ‘So if you are thinking of trying to bully Melanie into accepting a situation she doesn’t really want, then try thinking again,’ she advised. ‘Because it is my belief you don’t give a fig for her feelings, and Melanie and Robbie have taken enough over this last year without you using them as a method of deflecting your little embarrassment with the—’
‘Name of the law firm you work for?’ he cut in coolly.
She told him.
With a curt nod he stepped up to open the back door. ‘You come and go via this route, I believe?’
‘How did you know that?’
Because his son had been as admiringly vocal about his aunt Sophia as he was about William Portreath. ‘Trouble rarely enters by conventional means, Miss Elliot,’ he replied, knowing that she would work out his source later. But for now she was simply too busy bristling.
‘I don’t think you have the right to—’
‘May I suggest that you mention my name to your employer before you begin informing me of my rights?’ Rafiq drawled coolly.
‘Is that a threat?’ she demanded.
Rafiq’s answer was a polite bow of his head meant to leave the question open to interpretation. ‘Good day to you, Miss Elliot,’ was all he said.
But the woman had sense, Rafiq allowed, as he watched her self-confidence begin to waver. She wasn’t sure about him and therefore took the wiser route: lifting her chin and stepping through the door.
He closed it behind her, took a moment to grit his teeth. Then he was moving across the kitchen on his way to find Melanie. He located her in the bedroom, where she stood in the window gazing out on yet another cold grey frost-grained day. The room was no warmer, the woman in it was as cold as ice. Anger roared. A bloody anger aimed at Serena, at the press, Miss Elliot and anyone else who thought they could meddle in his life!
‘Your cynical friend stole my thunder,’ he announced very grimly.
‘Don’t try telling me you came back here to confess your sins.’
‘It is not a sin for a single man to maintain a mistress,’ he countered. ‘And I was referring to…this.’
‘This’ arrived on the tallboy beside her left shoulder. Melanie turned to see what it was he was talking about. It might have been Sophia’s Spanish newspaper, only the glaring headline shouted at her in English and the date printed on it was today’s. It was one of the more down-market British tabloids.
‘Now you may read the whole article for yourself,’ Rafiq said cynically. ‘It has been spiced up since the original Spanish version was written. But—please…’ he flicked a long hand in invitation ‘…enjoy—if you are into this kind of trash.’
‘I never read newspapers.’
He had noticed their lack of evidence about the house. ‘Well, read this one,’ he advised, shot back a shirt-cuff, then strode towards the door.
‘Where are you going?’
‘I have things to do.’
‘Aren’t you even going to explain about this?’
‘What is there to explain?’ he countered. ‘Serena Cordero and I were lovers until recently. But that, and the fact that she decided to use this very public source to announce the end of that relationship, has nothing to do with you, quite frankly.’
‘It does when that announcement also came on the same day that I went to see you.’
‘You see this coincidence as significant?’
She folded her arms across her body again. ‘You changed,’ she told him. ‘After you took a call on your mobile. It was her on the phone, wasn’t it? That call gave you the idea of using me to save your face.’
‘It crossed my mind,’ he admitted. ‘But if you recall, Melanie, I still threw you out.’ She flinched at the reminder. He nodded in acceptance of what that flinch represented. ‘And if you believe that anything I have done since then has been due to a need to save my face, then there is really nothing left for me to say here.’ With that he turned back to the door.
‘Then why did you bother to come back here now?’
‘Courtesy,’ he said icily. ‘I believed I owed you the courtesy of an explanation for why this article appeared in the newspaper today. But since you and your—friend have already dissected the week-old version, I see I wasted my time.’
‘Wasted nearly a whole week of your time,’ she murmured bitterly.
He paused. ‘What is that supposed to imply?’
‘I am not going to marry you.’
‘Why not?’
She lowered her eyes. ‘You’re in love with her. She’s what you really want.’
He laughed; it was harsh. ‘If I’d wanted to marry Serena I could have done so at any time over the last year,’ he announced. ‘But what interests me here is that you seem to be thinking that loving someone is a prerequisite for marriage.’
‘I don’t think that.’ She stiffened. ‘I just don’t want to marry a man who is pining for someone else.’
�
��Pining?’ he repeated.
‘It’s obvious.’ She shrugged, then made the big mistake of glancing at the bed.
His dark gaze followed suit. One of those awful tense silences they were so good at developing began to sing in the room. Hot colour flooded her complexion; she spun back to the window, wishing the man wasn’t so good at reading her like an open book!
Did she have to be so obvious? she railed at herself. Did it always—always—have to be this man who made her feel like a lovesick fool?
Sex-sick, she then corrected. God, she hated herself sometimes. ‘Go, if you’re going,’ she snapped. Make it quick and don’t come back!
‘I have changed my mind.’
‘Not on my account.’ She tried to recover lost ground.
But she should have known by now that this man gave nothing back once he had gained it. She heard a rustle, felt a shot of alarm shoot down her backbone, spun, then just stood there staring in open dismay as the jacket to his suit hit the floor.
‘Come any closer and I’ll start screaming,’ she warned, backing herself into the window as he began walking towards her with fingers smoothly loosening his tie.
‘Scream,’ he invited. ‘Who will come? Your cynical friend from next door?’ Reaching over her shoulder, he tugged the cord that closed the heavy curtains. The room was suddenly shrouded in darkness. A dangerous glitter burned in his eyes. ‘Think of the embarrassment, Melanie, if Miss Elliot was foolish enough to come running in here only to find you begging in my arms.’
‘I will never beg!’ She gave an angry push at his body.
He laughed, low and deep and tauntingly. ‘One kiss and you will not be able to stop yourself,’ he derided. ‘Do you think I have not been aware that you have hardly slept a wink in that bed because you want me so badly?’
‘That’s a lie.’
He kissed her. It was no lie. She dived, she fell, she almost—almost begged him. Her breathing went haywire, her senses caught alight, and she whimpered into his urgent mouth. His arms imprisoned her, but they didn’t need to. She was clinging tightly.
‘I hate you for doing this.’
Hot-Blooded Husbands Bundle Page 47
