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.’
‘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.’