The Arabian Love-Child

‘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.