CHAPTER SIX
HIS suit was a dark blue, almost black, in colour, the fabric an exquisite weave of silk. His shirt was white, his tie blue, and the whole ensemble blended perfect
ly with the man he had turned himself into.
Cleanly shaven face; neatly combed hair; raven eyelashes keeping a permanent guard over his eyes, and his mouth a beautifully defined example of sombre elegance. Melanie had to bite hard into her bottom lip so as not to say a word. If he’d dressed like this to put Robbie at his ease with him then he could not have got it more wrong. Her son was more likely to stand in awe than feel at ease. Rafiq was the ice man, a man who belonged in a palace built of glass, steel and marble.
She shivered and fiddled with the ring on her finger. It was made of gold and bright, flawless sparkling diamonds. She had chosen it from a luscious selection set on a black velvet tray in the privacy of his sitting room. Between her running for cover in the bathroom and their confrontation across its threshold he had called up a top London jeweller and had had them bring a selection to his apartment.
It was money wielding its awesome power. She shivered again; he shifted tensely and sent her a sharp look that scoured the skin from the part of her profile he could see. Sitting next to each other in this car was the closest they’d been to each other since he’d fed her the brandy. No eye contact nor body contact, words spoken as if through a glass wall. Why? Because they’d delved into a dark place they knew they should never have visited. It had exposed too much of an inner core that most preferred to keep hidden away. 89
Now here they were, driving towards her home where another ordeal was about to be enacted. Melanie tried to swallow and found that she couldn’t. From the corner of her eye she caught sight of his hand where it rested on his thigh. The long fingers moved ever so slightly, but she could almost taste the tension that forced them to make that minuscule jerk. She dared a quick glance up from beneath her lashes and almost shattered on impact with the hard profile of a cold and aloof Arabian male: his long thin nose; his curling black eyelashes hovering against the firm glossy texture of his olive-toned skin; his jaw line taut and rock-like, the set of his mouth implacable and flat. If she superimposed Arab clothes over the suit she could be looking at the Arabian prince he was in everything but name.
But that memory belonged to another time, and it did nothing for her nerves to remember it now. Daunting as he was in his western sophistication, she preferred it to that other man she had met only once, when he’d torn her apart with his contempt.
This time she managed to contain the shiver. ‘Robbie might mention your father,’ she heard herself say as thoughts of his ruthless Arab side led her onto other things.
The dark head turned with frightening precision; eyes too dark to read fixed on her face. ‘He knows about my father?’
It was too quietly and too smoothly spoken. Melanie tried that swallow again. ‘W-William liked to keep him informed ab-about your country,’ she explained. ‘Your father’s poor health is reported in the press occasionally, and a party six months ago was given quite a lot of coverage. A thirty-year anniversary?’ she prompted.
He nodded. So did she, then dragged her eyes away to look down at the ring again. ‘Robbie decided that your father’s ill health m-must have kept you at home with him. H-he worries about things like that, so it suited him to give you that particular reason why you didn’t come to London.’
The hand resting on his thigh gave that telling minuscule twitch once more. ‘Without William Portreath’s money, would you ever have told me about him?’
It wasn’t harsh but it was coldly accusing. ‘Robbie only started asking questions about you a year ago. He never asked to see you, but if he had done I’d like to think I would have done something about it.’
‘You’d like to think?’ he repeated.
‘I had to protect both him and myself,’ she reiterated.
‘From me?’
‘From this!’ she cried, shattering the wall between them with a spectacular eruption, blasting away all of this nice polite civility. ‘Look at what you’ve already done, Rafiq! Even with William’s money as my so-called safeguard. I’ve been packed up and taken over! You did it before. You packed me up and took me over, then dropped me like a brick when I didn’t come up to your high expectations!’
‘You are twisting the truth.’
‘No, I’m not.’ Trying to make the eruption subside again was impossible. The bubble had burst and she suddenly didn’t know what she was doing, sitting here next to him travelling towards calamity at what felt like the speed of light. ‘If Robbie can’t meet those same high expectations does he get dropped?’ she pushed out thickly. ‘Do you truly think I believe I am doing the right thing bringing you into his life? Because I don’t! You’re so hard and tough and unpredictable.’ She sat upright on a raw flick of tension. ‘You blow hot, then icy cold. I can’t tell what you’re going to do next, and I’m frightened I’ve made a huge error of judgement here. I feel like I’m playing Russian roulette with a child’s life!’
‘I will not drop him!’ he raked at her. ‘Nor you, for that matter,’ he added with a lofty promise that aimed to put all the emotion back under wraps but didn’t quiet make it. ‘And if you still feel this way, why am I here at all?’ he demanded, and brought the whole thing toppling down again.
Melanie looked down at her tightly clenched hands, then out of the car window while her chest grew tight on words she did not want to speak.
But time was beginning to run out. ‘William’s death had a profound effect on Robbie,’ she told him. ‘He suddenly realised that without William he had only me to take care of him. So he worries that I—’
‘Might die too and leave him with no one.’ Rafiq took over in a deep voice so drenched in bleak understanding that she glanced sharply at him.
He was sitting there with the same carved profile, but his eyes had come alive, burning with a personal knowledge that brought into hard focus the kind of childhood he’d experienced as a motherless son—a second son and an illegitimate one at that.
‘Y-you had your brother,’ she reminded him.
His tight smile mocked the remark. ‘Hassan is six months older than I am. Every time his mother looked at me she saw the bitter proof of her husband’s infidelity while she was heavily pregnant. Do you think she didn’t yearn for the day when she could toss me out of her household? In the end she died before she could achieve her dearest wish, but as a child I learned to appreciate the vulnerability of my situation.’
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know.’
‘How could you?’ He shrugged. ‘These are not the kind of memories a man usually shares with other people.’
Not even with the woman he professed to love? If he had been a bit more open with her eight years ago maybe she would have stood a chance at understanding what had made him the man he was, and dealt with the situation of Robbie differently.