‘He loves you. He was protecting you. I understand that now.’
‘You understand nothing,’ he denounced. ‘I asked him to check if you were all right. I trusted him to do that small thing for me!’
‘I was all right.’
‘Well, I wasn’t!’ he rasped. ‘I was out there—’ he flung a hand out towards the sand-dunes she could see rising above miles of lush fruit groves ‘—pining for you!’
Pining? Melanie blinked. He spun his back to her on a tight hiss of a sigh. ‘When Hassan told me you wanted to see me I did not dare go to London in case I fell at your feet,’ he went on. ‘But I needed to know that you were okay. I hoped that by some miracle you were going to tell him some magical reason that would make everything okay. I sat out there…’ the hand flicked again ‘…waiting like a fool for the call that would send me to London on the next plane. What I got was a call telling me he couldn’t find you but he had heard that you were living with a man.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Melanie murmured. ‘I didn’t—’
‘Don’t touch me,’ he grated.
For a moment she froze in dismay. Then with a sigh she did the opposite, and walked around in front of him so she could wrap him in her arms. His heart was pounding, the great chest trembling as he fought a battle with himself.
He had lost, she thought. He had lost the battle. His arms came around her. ‘I don’t know what I am supposed to say to you, Melanie,’ he muttered. ‘You make me realise what a fool I was eight years ago. You make me face the high price I paid for my own pompous pride. You make me see that I have been treating you without honour from the moment I met you, and have done it all from a superior stance that deserves nothing but your contempt.’
‘I don’t hold you in contempt,’ she denied.
‘Then you should.’
‘Because you believed what you were carefully primed to see?’
‘Your uncle said some wicked things about you that day,’ he said heavily. ‘He poured out his poison and I, like a fool, drank it down, when any other fool would have known you were not the person he was describing to me.’
‘If it had been you in that window with another woman and your brother pouring poison into me, I would have believed,’ she admitted.
‘Hassan did poison you.’
‘He frightened me off for your sake. And he did it out of love, not avarice. There is a difference.’
‘A forgivable difference?’
‘You forgave him,’ she pointed out.
‘I forgave him,’ he agreed. But not himself, Melanie defined from his tone. ‘Tell me what you want from this marriage, Melanie,’ he demanded. ‘Tell me what the hell I can do to put some of this right for you.’
Lifting her chin, she looked up at him, saw glinting black eyes and harshly etched angles burnished bronze by the morning sun. ‘I would like you to make love to me without thinking that you only do it because you feel utterly compelled to,’ she told him softly. ‘I would like to lie in your arms afterwards and know that you really want me there. I would like to look into your eyes and see tenderness sometimes, not just anger or passion.’
‘You want me to love you.’ He smiled oddly.
‘I want you to care,’ she amended.
‘Take the love,’ he advised. ‘For it has always been there.’ He grimaced, then released a long sigh and framed her face with his hands. ‘Eight years ago I fell in love with the scent of your skin as you leant over my shoulder. I fell in love with the heat that coloured your lovely cheeks whenever I caught you looking at me. I wanted every part of you, every minute of your time, every kiss, every smile…’ He kissed her. It was so tender it brought tears to her eyes. ‘If you want my heart on a platter, Melanie, you can have it,’ he offered huskily. ‘I could not forget you—did not want to forget you. It was a lonely—lonely state of mind.’
There was nothing she could find to say in answer to that. Instinct—only instinct could respond. Her arms lifted to his shoulders and she pressed her mouth to the warm brown skin at his throat. ‘I love you, Rafiq,’ she softly confided. ‘But you have to believe it if this marriage is going to stand a chance.’
‘I believe,’ he murmured. ‘How can I not believe when you are still here in my arms after everything I have put you through?’
But he didn’t sound happy. On a small sigh she lifted her eyes and parted her lips to speak again—only he stopped her. ‘No,’ he denied. ‘Don’t say any more. It tears me apart when we talk about those things we cannot alter. Just answer me one last question. Can we put the past behind us and start again?’
‘Of course we can.’ She smiled at him.
The smile turned his heart over. The shine in her eyes warmed him right through. Lifting her up against him, he caught her mouth with his and refused to let it go as he walked with her across pale blue marble and through a door on the other side of the room. The door closed behind them; he released her mouth only long enough to lock it.
‘What about Robbie?’ the mother in her questioned. ‘He might come looking for us.’
He was already carrying her across to a huge divan bed that stood on a raised dais. ‘Not while he has my father waiting to pore over maps of Rahman with him,’ Rafiq lazily replied. ‘And this is the beginning of our honeymoon.’