He turned his dark head as he heard the tray rattle. Their gazes clashed, and Melanie broke hers away. Five seconds later the mobile was back in his pocket.
‘Coffee?’ she offered politely.
‘Thank you, yes,’ he replied. ‘Black, no sugar.’
Black with no sugar, she repeated. Like the man himself: dark and unsweetened. She poured the coffee, then handed him his cup. He accepted it with a murmured, ‘Thank you.’
She looked pale and tired, Rafiq noticed, and had to smother the urge to sigh as he turned to look at the fire, taking with him the image of Melanie sitting there on faded velvet looking down at her coffee mug curled inside fingers that looked bloodless and cold. Hell, he thought in frustration, to him this whole house was cold. Even with the fire burning in the grate, the ancient central heating system only managed to take the edge of a subfreezing temperature! Despite his millions, and the loving attention he had poured into Rafiq’s son, William Portreath had not poured much love into his home. It was virtually falling down around them. Everything in it came from a bygone century.
‘Your requirements do not make any provision for the renovations this house clearly requires.’
Eyes like dark amber blinked at him. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘The papers you left with me,’ he explained. ‘They talk a lot about investments and trust funds but nothing about your annual expenditure or how much it is going to cost to bring this house into the twenty-first century.’
‘I don’t want to bring it into the twenty-first century. I like the house just as it is.’
She did? Was she lying just to go against him? ‘It is cold in here, Melanie,’ he said, stating the obvious. ‘The walls are so cold that the wallpaper is peeling.’ Not that its demise was much of a loss, he added with silent disdain. ‘I, for one, see no reason why we should live like this.’
She bristled. ‘Nobody is asking you to!’
He ignored that. ‘I will employ someone to draw up some plans for renovation,’ he announced.
Tired golden eyes began to sparkle. The mug was replaced on the tray. ‘William has been gone only two months and you come in here wanting to obliterate thirty years of his life?’ She rose stiffly. ‘You will touch nothing,’ she told him. ‘It isn’t yours to touch. And if you don’t find that acceptable then you know what you can do!’
She was hurt; he could see it. Rafiq wanted to kick himself. Ridding himself of his cup, he offered her a deep bow. ‘I have offended you,’ he acknowledged. ‘I apologise. It was not my intention to—’
‘Y-you think I can’t compare this—home to that super-expensive luxuriously blank space you like to live in?’ she said, interrupting his apology. ‘That I haven’t noticed the way you’ve been looking on everything here with disdain? Does it offend your ego to know that your son loves this house?’
‘No.’ He denied that. ‘I just think that it needs—’
‘Well, forget it,’ she said, cutting right across him a second time, and turned her stiff back towards him and walked to the door. ‘You can use the room at the end of the landing. Be sure to make the fire safe before you go up. Now, goodnight.’
She’d left the room before he could speak another syllable, leaving him standing there feeling as if he’d just struck a woman for the first time in his life.
‘Damn,’ he muttered, and took the first step to go after her. Then on a heavy sigh changed his mind. She’d had enough for one day. He had had enough! ‘Damn,’ he cursed again, and turned back to the fire. It was dying fast, like the whole blasted day.
A car drew up outside the house. He listened to the sound of its door slamming shut. Another sigh and he was striding for the front door before Kadir could ring the doorbell and awaken Robert. I learn very quickly, he mused grimly as he reached out to take the suitcase from his aide.
‘Thank you,’ he grunted. ‘I do not need to tell you that this situation is no one else’s business.’
‘No, sir. Of course, sir.’
He nodded, said goodnight and closed the door.
Upstairs Melanie listened to the car from the comfort of her duvet. She’d curled up beneath it after taking a shower in her en-suite, very ancient bathroom. Her teeth still chattered from the chills she’d given herself drying her body. She’d pulled on a knitted-cotton nightdress and was now only waiting for the duvet to infuse some warmth into her body.
Okay, she reasoned, so she knew the house needed a complete face-lift. She’d been wanting to do it for years, but William hadn’t liked change. He’d been an old man who’d had a right to feel like that. And he did not deserve that some complete stranger should walk in here and start tearing his life down!
How dared he? Her throat caught on a muffled sob. How dared Rafiq believe he could just take over everything—even her bed if she let him get away with it!
The front door closed; she felt it reverberate through the floor beneath her bed. She’d heard Rafiq telling Robb
ie that someone was going to bring his suitcase here. Well, she hoped he’d changed his mind and had left with the delivery person! And on that final, wholly satisfying thought she closed her eyes and willed her icy feet to get warm so that she could just go to sleep. She had almost—almost—achieved both impossible feats when a curse in the darkness brought her swimmingly awake.
Suddenly the duvet was being lifted, to let the cold night air come into her warm cocoon. A short second later a body followed—a very cold, very naked body with an arm that clamped her to him and powerful limbs that curled snugly into hers.
‘Oh, my God,’ she gasped on a shocked little shiver. ‘What do you think you are doing?’