‘I had her checked out before I did anything. Discovered she was living with a man old enough to be her grandfather and, more to the point, was as heavily pregnant as you are now, my sweet.’ He caught hold of her hand and kissed it. ‘I arranged a meeting; she arrived expecting to see Rafiq. She tried convincing me that Rafiq was the father of her baby. So I told her what I thought Rafiq would do if she managed to convince him that this was true. She did not pursue the claim,’ he concluded with grim satisfaction. ‘A very nasty paternity battle through the courts was too much for her to take, apparently. She slunk off into the ether and was never heard from again.’
‘But what if the child had been Rafiq’s?’
‘It was not,’ he stated with absolute certainty. ‘You know his background. If there had been the slightest possibility that he had made the woman pregnant he would have followed the prospect until he could be certain either way.’
‘What did he say when you told him she was pregnant?’
‘I didn’t tell him,’ he replied. ‘I said I couldn’t find her but that I’d heard she was living with some man. He never mentioned her name again.’
‘Sometimes I really don’t like you,’ Leona informed him. ‘You have a ruthless streak so wide it makes me shiver.’
‘She was a woman on the make, Leona,’ he said deridingly. ‘People in our position meet them all the time. They see dollar signs up above our heads and latch on like limpets.’
‘But still….’
‘Rafiq caught her red-handed with her other lover.’
End of story. ‘What a manipulating bitch,’ Leona murmured, taking it personally that some woman would dare to use her beloved bother-in-law in such a way.
Rafiq had only just put the phone down when Kadir knocked at his door, then quietly let himself into the room. He was wearing the look of a man who was walking towards the gallows. Rafiq straightened in readiness, but nothing prepared him for what he was about to be hit with.
‘My apologies, sir, but I think you should see this…’ Carefully Kadir placed a newspaper onto the desk in front of Rafiq. With his usual efficiency his aide had folded the English tabloid so that Rafiq needed only to glance down and see what it was Kadir was showing him.
There was Serena, smiling up at Carlos Montez. It was the same damn article, now reproduced in spiced-up English. Rafiq couldn’t believe it. He shot to his feet. ‘What the hell?’ he muttered.
‘Apparently Miss Cordero arrived in London this weekend, sir,’ Kadir quietly explained. ‘Her show opens at a West End theatre on Wednesday. The—er—article is by way of a promotion for this event. I thought…’
He was talking to fresh air because Rafiq was already striding across the room with the rolled-up newspaper clenched in his hand.
‘H-How did you get hold of this?’ Melanie asked Sophia.
‘My grandmother likes to send me the Spanish newspapers to make sure I keep in touch with my roots,’ Sophia explained.
Melanie nodded unhappily. ‘And it says?’ she prompted.
‘You don’t really want me to read it out to you again, Melanie,’ Sophia murmured gravely. ‘The point is that this paper is dated last Tuesday—which is the same day you went to see Rafiq…’
‘Meaning what?’ Her lips felt too cold and numb to move properly; her whole face felt very much the same.
‘Meaning the guy was publicly dumped on the day you walked into his office. He was already out for someone’s blood before he even saw you. Therefore I think you have to ask yourself the question whether his actions since have been motivated by this.’
‘Saving face?’
‘Yes.’ Sophia sighed. ‘To suddenly pull a wife and son out of the hat will turn the tables on Miss Cordero. It will appear as if she is the one who married on the rebound while he walked away from their relationship of over a year unscathed.’
Over a year…Melanie lowered her gaze to the two photographs printed side by side on the page. One was of the beautiful Serena Cordero standing with her handsome new husband. The other was of Rafiq standing with Serena. Her heart crashed against her ribcage, turning her insides to jelly, because the photograph was just as Robbie had described it: Rafiq wearing Arab clothes while the lady wore a red frilly dress. William had shown this photograph to her son but hadn’t shown it to her. Everyone but her—including her son—seemed to know about Rafiq’s beautiful long-standing Spanish mistress!
Did Rafiq love this woman? Was the luscious dark beauty what he really wanted, and now that he couldn’t have her was he prepared to take anyone?
No, not just anyone, she grimly amended, but a woman who happened to come packaged with his son.
She thought about the phone call he had taken in his office when he hadn’t spoken a single word. She thought about the look in his eyes as he’d listened to whoever had been on the other end of that phone, followed by the kiss before he’d coldly thrown her out.
Then she thought about the way he had found out about Robbie and had been forced to rethink his stance. Days later had come his sudden explosion of hot passion followed by nothing since.
Nothing.
She swallowed down a lump of nausea. Clearly he had tried to burn Miss Cordero out of his system and failed. She had been nothing but a substitute, and a disappointing one at that. I must have been, she thought painfully—because look at her! Black hair, black eyes and a lush-red passionate mouth looked back at her. Miss Cordero possessed the kind of sumptuous hourglass figure that most women would kill to own.