‘Your jacket, then—let me take your jacket.’ It was made of the softest kind of leather, his trousers of the smoothest suede. She swallowed thickly.
As she made to walk forward she was stopped when he turned to show her what was written in his eyes. ‘I would really like to see my son.’
His son. The huskily possessive sound of his words had a creasing effect on her stomach. ‘He’s asleep. I don’t want—’
‘I was not intending to wake him, just…look upon him. Is that too much to ask?’
There was a bite to the last part. Without it she might well have given in, but the bite told her that his mood was still unpredictable. So she shook her head. ‘He’s a very light sleeper. The last thing he needs it to wake up and find a stranger standing over him.’
‘Whose fault is it that I am a stranger?’
She ignored that. ‘You need to understand a few things before we bring Robbie into this.’
‘Such as the fact that you were never married to William Portreath?’
‘I never said that I was,’ she denied.
‘You allowed me to assume it.’
‘I don’t recall being given the time to let you build any assumptions,’ she countered coolly.
He took the criticism with a straightening of his shoulders. Melanie turned to put the poker back on its stand, but changed her mind and began stabbing at the fire log instead. Given a choice, he would rather be anywhere else than here in this room having this conversation with her, she reminded herself as wood sparks began to fly. In his eyes she was nothing, just a piece of low life he believed he had rid himself of once and for all today. Now he was being forced to backtrack, to be contrite and polite and civilised when he felt like being neither.
She made another hard stab at the fire log.
More sparks flew around the grate. ‘You changed your name from Leggett to Portreath.’
‘It pleased William to know that Robbie would carry on the Portreath name,’ she explained.
The air was suddenly as tight at a bowstring, and Melanie knew why. He was thinking about Robbie’s right to carry on his name. But, by the grim way he pressed his lips together, she realised he was not going to make any comment—for now at least.
Instead he stuck to his original subject. ‘You call yourself Mrs Portreath,’ he stated. ‘Does this not signify a married status?’
‘Why are you so struck by my marital status?’ she countered, putting the poker back on its rest then turning to frown at him. ‘I’m an unmarried mother with a son’s feelings to consider,’ she reminded him defensively. ‘It made life simpler for Robbie if I invented a dead husband.’
‘And a dead father.’
‘I didn’t say that,’ Melanie denied. ‘He knows about you. Of course he does. It would be unforgivable of me to pretend you were dead just because—’
‘He knows who I am?’ For such a dark-skinned man he suddenly looked ashen.
‘Yes,’ she confirmed. ‘It was only natural that he should ask and only right that I should tell him the truth. But he—’
Rafiq’s response shook her—she just didn’t see it coming—so when he dropped down into one of the sofas then buried his face in his hands she was shocked.
‘Rafiq…’
‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘Leave me a moment.’
But he needed more than a moment to come to terms with what was suddenly raging inside him. His son knew about him. He knew he had a father who had never bothered to come and see him.
He couldn’t make up his mind if it would have been less painful to think the boy had believed him dead!
‘You have to understand. Robbie only—’
‘Shut up,’ he rasped, and found anger again, found strength in it, then lifted his dark head. ‘I want to break your deceitful neck for keeping my son from me!’ he ground out.
‘You had your chance to be a father, Rafiq, and you blew it, not me.’