His heart hit against his ribcage. He swung back to the window to stare down through sheets of rain to the street. A solitary figure stood against the building opposite, sheltering from the rain beneath a big black umbrella.
Melanie. Something burst into life inside him. With a twist of his body he snatched his jacket off the back of his chair. ‘Have my car waiting,’ he instructed Kadir as he headed for the door—then paused as his mind made a connection. ‘Don’t make a habit of lying to me, Kadir,’ he advised.
Then he left, with Kadir’s rather heavy, ‘No, sir,’ hanging in the air.
The lift took him downwards; his feet took him outside. The sheeting rain drenched him in the few seconds it took him to cross the street.
Melanie only realised he was there when she saw his feet appear in front of her. The umbrella was wrenched from her fingers, and was held higher, so he could join her beneath it. She looked up and saw the strain in his face, the tiredness, the frown. ‘Are you mad?’ he demanded. ‘Why are you standing out here?’
‘I didn’t want your security people throwing me off the premises,’ she explained. ‘But I needed to talk to you.’
By the way he flattened his mouth she assumed he’d forgotten about his instructions regarding her and his bank. Then he noticed that she was shivering so much her teeth were chattering and, taking a grim hold on her arm, he hustled her into the nearest doorway, snapped the umbrella shut and laid it aside. Then he removed his jacket and swung it around her shoulders.
‘You’re freezing,’ he muttered. ‘I cannot believe you came here dressed like this.’
She was in her designer suit again. It had seemed appropriate when she’d made the decision to come. Now she was so grateful for the added warmth of his jacket that she huddled greedily into it. ‘It w-wasn’t raining this much when I left home and—and I’m not thinking very clearly right now…’
‘I understand the fe
eling,’ he murmured dryly.
‘Now y-you’re wet too,’ she continued in an agitated rush. ‘Y-you should have got Kadir to—’
‘Run a few more messages?’ he offered when she tried to swallow her runaway tongue.
She glanced up, met his eyes, saw the sardonic gleam in them and released a sigh. ‘He told you. He promised he wouldn’t. I didn’t want him to get into trouble for colluding with me.’
‘You believed I would be angry with him?’
‘It’s been two days…’ Two days of waiting and pacing and jumping out of her skin every time the doorbell or telephone rang. In the end she hadn’t been able to take the stress any longer and had come to find him. Now she wished that she hadn’t because she was feeling like a fool.
‘Kadir carried out your instructions to the letter,’ Rafiq inserted. ‘As for the rest…I guessed.’
He’d guessed. ‘Mr Omnipotent,’ she muttered.
To her surprise he laughed, it was a low deep sound that brought her eyes fluttering up to his again, which were warm and dark and concentrated on her. Things began to happen she just didn’t want, like a pooling of warmth deep down in her abdomen and a breathlessness that tightened her chest.
Don’t look at me like that, she wanted to protest, but too many things were leaping between them, such as the son they shared, not to mention shared kisses. Intimacy, in other words; too much of it that went back too many years yet could tug on her senses as if everything, including the events leading to Robbie’s conception, had happened only yesterday.
‘I needed time to think,’ he murmured huskily.
Husky suddenly made her clothes feel too tight. ‘I know you m-must be hurt, but I h-had to protect myself.’
‘From the omnipotent Arab with revenge on his mind?’ He smiled as he said it, but it was a grim smile.
‘I’m sorry, but, yes,’ she answered honestly. ‘You—’
His hand lifted up to push a stray coil of damp hair away from her temple and she responded with a tense little jerk. Beyond the shelter of the doorway, the rain pounded on the pavements. The coil of hair left a trailing raindrop behind it so his finger moved to scoop it from her cheek.
Someone dashed into the doorway, stopped to shake out their umbrella, then, with a curious glance at them both, walked into the building, leaving Melanie with the disturbing impression that she must look like a wicked woman snatching a secret assignation with her tall dark lover.
Lowering her eyes, she huddled further into his jacket. It was big on her—huge—the slippery silk lining whispering softly against the thin fabric of her suit. She was picking up the scent of his aftershave from it, subtle and spicy, tantalisingly familiar. He couldn’t stand much closer to her if he tried.
Maybe Rafiq was thinking along similar lines, because he released a short sigh. Her eyes became fascinated with his slender red tie and the way it lay down the length of his white shirt, covering muscular proportions that expanded and contracted with the sigh.
Her lips began to pulse, and it scared the life out of her. Things were happening here that really should not. ‘I don’t think this is an appropriate place,’ she said a little wildly.
‘No,’ he agreed, but made no move to do anything about it.