‘Getting warm,’ Rafiq informed her grimly. Furious, she wriggled to get free. ‘Stay still,’ he gritted, close to her ear lobe.
He had to be joking! ‘You could have had the decency to put some clothes on!’
‘If my nakedness offends you then consider it punishment for that bed you prepared for me.’
He’d actually tried it? In a mulish kind of way Melanie was rather pleased that he had at least attempted to do the honourable thing. ‘I don’t want you here,’ she protested nonetheless.
‘The choice does not belong to you. Our son expects me to be in this bed when he wakes in the morning, and the other bed was an insult.’ A hand on her shoulder turned her to face him; dark eyes glittered down into hers. ‘You are a ruthless woman, Melanie Portreath,’ he told her. ‘Now it is my turn to be ruthless.’
And he was, in the way he wrapped himself around her, punishing her by stealing all her warmth, then punishing her again by falling fast asleep.
CHAPTER EIGHT
IT WAS a horrible weekend. There was not one single part of it that Melanie would have wanted to live through again. Daylight became an agony of hours watching her son sink himself into total hero-worship, and the nights an agony of too much intimacy with a man who clearly did not want more than to share her bed.
In his new role of father Rafiq dedicated himself to learning everything he could about his son. They talked, and they commandeered William’s study, where Robbie hit Rafiq with a million questions, all of which his father answered with a considered seriousness that made Melanie’s heart ache. Rafiq could do no wrong. She tried not to resent the way Robbie was turning to his father for everything. She tried to tell herself that this was what she had wanted, what she had hoped and aimed for when she had brought Rafiq into Robbie’s life.
But it hurt to witness their growing closeness while she was required to contribute very little other than the odd smile or nod, or food when necessary. By the end of each day she was so exhausted playing the smiling little woman in the background that the moment Robbie was safely in bed she took herself off to bed too, leaving Rafiq to do what men like him did—use his evenings to work from the laptop computer that had arrived with his suitcase—before he came to slide into her bed, draw her in, sigh, then fall asleep.
She didn’t understand him—didn’t think she wanted to understand a man who could ravish her with a blind compulsion one minute then spend whole nights lying beside her and not offer one measly pass! 121
Their son loved the whole family scenario. In fact it made Robbie’s day to run into their bedroom each morning and find both his parents wrapped snugly around each other. He couldn’t be happier if he tried.
But for Melanie resentment sizzled across her senses; frustration throbbed in her loins. Had she sunk so low that she could become hooked on passion after a couple of quick sips?
Monday morning could not come quickly enough. She waved Rafiq off to work in his sharp dark business suit, and only did that because her son’s hand was firmly attached to his father’s. Rafiq was delivering Robbie to school, along with other children, as part of the morning school run!
I’ve been made redundant, she thought peevishly as she closed the front door. Daddy is the new rising star in the street and I am the fading one.
The jaded one, she corrected as her shoulders sagged wearily through lack of sleep and a whole truckload of tension. Standing there in the sudden quietness of the hallway, she actually took a moment to consider going upstairs and just crawling back beneath the duvet to sleep the rest of the day away while there was no Rafiq to spoil it for her.
But his presence was there in the bedroom, she remembered. His clothes hung with her clothes in the wardrobe; the scent of his soap permeated the adjoining bathroom.
You wanted this, she tried telling herself. You instigated the whole darn thing and, if anything, you should be pleased by how successful Robbie’s introduction to his father has turned out, not standing here wilting like a wet leaf.
The light tap on the back door was a welcome diversion. Straightening her shoulders she walked into the kitchen just in time to watch Sophia step into the house.
‘Hi,’ Sophia murmured, and her expression could not have looked more sombre if she’d tried. In her hand she held a newspaper, which she set down on the kitchen table. ‘Take a deep breath, Melanie,’ she suggested, ‘because you are not going to like this…’
Rafiq was sitting in his chair behind his desk in his beautifully warm centrally heated office wishing he dared close his eyes and fall asleep because for these last miserable nights he’d lain awake in that bed with Melanie and had ached.
Ached. There was no better word for it. Was he a fool? Was he going insane, playing it this coolly? Yes, he was a fool, he accepted, because all it would have taken would have been one touch and she would have been his for the taking.
But he was out to prove a point. Melanie had hit him hard with some of the things she had thrown at him. She had made him out to be selfish and fickle. She had implied he did not have it in him to stay the course. She believed he would get weary of being a father and walk away when the novelty wore off him.
She’d also told him he thought her cheap by tumbling her into bed with him at the first opportunity. Which he had done; he freely admitted it. But not for one moment had he considered her cheap! Indeed, it had cost him a very great deal because he had been so bowled over by the strength of their feelings that he wanted to do it all again and again—and again.
She had claimed he had made love to her eight years ago then had despised her afterwards. Now she was waiting for him to despise her again. So sex was out of the question until he had placed a wedding ring on her finger. If that did not show her he meant serious business, then nothing would.
So, he thought with grim impatience. He had arranged a civil wedding service. From that day on he meant to have everything: a wife, his son, and some serious passion—preferably in a bedroom that did not send him into a paroxysm of shivers every time he stripped off his clothes.
And he had just the right place for this serious seduction. He knew the day on which it was going to happen. Now all he had to do was ring home and speak to half-brother, Hassan.
‘Where have you been hiding?’ his brother demanded, the moment the connection was made. ‘I have been trying to contact you all weekend.’
‘It cannot have been urgent or Kadir would have found me.’
‘What intrigues me is why he refused to divulge to me where you were.’