As Rafiq began walking towards her now maybe she should do the same thing, she told herself. But she couldn’t run this time. This was her home. Her son lay sleeping upstairs. So she tightened her grip on the poker until her knuckles showed white, then made ready to defend herself.
His eyes were dark, his eyelashes lying thick against his cheekbones, his mouth a grim straight line. She sucked in a gulp of air as he reached out and closed a hand round the poker. With a gentle twist it was taken from her fingers.
‘Never brandish point-on,’ he said gravelly. ‘The first thrust will tear your arm from its socket. Use it like this.’ While she stood too dazed to stop him, he took hold of her hand, placed the poker back into it, angled it across her breasts, then, with a speed that set her gasping, he jerked the poker in a slashing arc towards his body. It came to stop with the point a breath away from his neck. ‘This way you have a chance of doing me some damage.’
It was mad, really stupid, but her mouth began to wobble and tears suddenly filmed her eyes. ‘I don’t want to damage you,’ she breathed shakily.
‘I know.’ He released his grip on the poker. ‘It was my fault. I frightened you.’ With that he turned and walked towards the door.
‘Wh-where are you going?’
‘You were right. I should not have come here tonight,’ he answered grimly. ‘I will go and leave you with your…safety.’
‘N-no!’ she cried, and wondered why. She wished she could stop trembling and tried to calm herself. ‘Y-you’re here now and…’
He stopped halfway across the room. Silence arrived. It pulled and it prodded. Melanie gripped the poker and tried to think of something to say that would not cause another eruption.
‘Would you like a drink?’ was her only inspiration. ‘I can soon…’
‘No—thank you,’ he refused.
‘Your jacket, then—let me take your jacket.’ It was made of the softest kind of leather, his trousers of the smoothest suede. She swallowed thickly.
As she made to walk forward she was stopped when he turned to show her what was written in his eyes. ‘I would really like to see my son.’
His son. The huskily possessive sound of his words had a creasing effect on her stomach. ‘He’s asleep. I don’t want—’
‘I was not intending to wake him, just…look upon him. Is that too much to ask?’
There was a bite to the last part. Without it she might well have given in, but the bite told her that his mood was still unpredictable. So she shook her head. ‘He’s a very light sleeper. The last thing he needs it to wake up and find a stranger standing over him.’
‘Whose fault is it that I am a stranger?’
She ignored that. ‘You need to understand a few things before we bring Robbie into this.’
‘Such as the fact that you were never married to William Portreath?’
‘I never said that I was,’ she denied.
‘You allowed me to assume it.’
‘I don’t recall being given the time to let you build any assumptions,’ she countered coolly.
He took the criticism with a straightening of his shoulders. Melanie turned to put the poker back on its stand, but changed her mind and began stabbing at the fire log instead. Given a choice, he would rather be anywhere else than here in this room having this conversation with her, she reminded herself as wood sparks began to fly. In his eyes she was nothing, just a piece of low life he believed he had rid himself of once and for all today. Now he was being forced to backtrack, to be contrite and polite and civilised when he felt like being neither.
She made another hard stab at the fire log.
More sparks flew around the grate. ‘You changed your name from Leggett to Portreath.’
‘It pleased William to know that Robbie would carry on the Portreath name,’ she explained.
The air was suddenly as tight at a bowstring, and Melanie knew why. He was thinking about Robbie’s right to carry on his name. But, by the grim way he pressed his lips together, she realised he was not going to make any comment—for now at least.
Instead he stuck to his original subject. ‘You call yourself Mrs Portreath,’ he stated. ‘Does this not signify a married status?’
‘Why are you so struck by my marital status?’ she countered, putting the poker back on its rest then turning to frown at him. ‘I’m an unmarried mother with a son’s feelings to consider,’ she reminded him defensively. ‘It made life simpler for Robbie if I invented a dead husband.’
‘And a dead father.’
‘I didn’t say that,’ Melanie denied. ‘He knows about you. Of course he does. It would be unforgivable of me to pretend you were dead just because—’
‘He knows who I am?’ For such a dark-skinned man he suddenly looked ashen.
‘Yes,’ she confirmed. ‘It was only natural that he should ask and only right that I should tell him the truth. But he—’
Rafiq’s response shook her—she just didn’t see it coming—so when he dropped down into one of the sofas then buried his face in his hands she was shocked.
‘Rafiq…’
‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘Leave me a moment.’
But he needed more than a moment to come to terms with what was suddenly raging inside him. His son knew about him. He knew he had a father who had never bothered to come and see him.
He couldn’t make up his mind if it would have been less painful to think the boy had believed him dead!
‘You have to understand. Robbie only—’
‘Shut up,’ he rasped, and found anger again, found strength in it, then lifted his dark head. ‘I want to break your deceitful neck for keeping my son from me!’ he ground out.
‘You had your chance to be a father, Rafiq, and you blew it, not me.’
‘When?’ He was suddenly on his feet again. ‘When did you give me this chance?’
‘When you threw me out of your embassy eight years ago!’
‘You knew then and said nothing?’
Melanie laughed. ‘You were the man who told me it was no use my saying a single word because you wouldn’t believe me anyway!’
‘And you could not bring yourself to stand your ground and insist I listen to you?’
Chin up, eyes bright, face white and body trembling, she still held her ground. ‘For what purpose?’ she demanded. ‘You would have still called me a liar.’
A flick of a hand brought contempt back into the fight. ‘You were sleeping with your step-cousin. Of course I would have questioned the boy’s parentage!’
If Melanie had still had the poker in her hand she would have hit him with it. Who did he think he was, standing here trying to lay all the blame on her? ‘What if I had come to you with your son in my arms, Rafiq?’ she challenged. ‘What if I’d said, Look, Rafiq, see for yourself that this child belongs to you?’ She released a bitter little laugh. ‘I’ll tell you what you would have done. You would have taken him away from me. You would have used your filthy billions to split me from my child!’
‘I would not!’ He actually dared to look shocked.
Melanie wasn’t impressed. ‘Yes, you would,’ she insisted. ‘You believed I was a cheap little slut and a gold-digger who had made an utter fool out of you. You would have wanted revenge—probably still want it!’ she flashed. ‘But I have my own money with which to fight you now. I also have Robbie, who loves me, Rafiq. He loves me, as his mother, and he’s old enough and wise enough to hate anyone who might dare to try and pull us apart!’
He went paler with every bitter word she tossed at him, until a white ring circled his taut mouth. ‘If you feel like this, why have you decided to bring me into his life?’
‘Because he needs you,’ she whispered.
‘And did not need me before?’
‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘Before, he had William.’
CHAPTER FOUR
RAFIQ turned away as if her answer had cut him. His action more or less said it all for Melanie. Her anger fle
d, leaving her feeling weak and shaken, and she too turned away, putting a hand up to cover her trembling mouth, and waited for him recover from what she’d thrown at him. Because she knew it wasn’t over, not by a long way.
Neither moved nor tried to speak again. In the drumming silence Rafiq was trying to decide how he felt about these latest revelations, and realised he was in no fit state to attempt the problem. Or was he being a coward and delaying the ugliness of truth?
And what was that truth? he asked himself. The truth was that Melanie had accused him of things he couldn’t argue with. He would not have believed her son was his, unless presented with positive evidence. He would certainly have moved heaven and earth to remove his son from the clutches of a woman he believed unfit to rear his child.
He still believed it, which only helped to make the situation that bit uglier.
‘I think I should leave,’ he heard himself murmur.
‘Yes,’ she agreed.
‘I think we should defer the rest until another time when we are both…calmer.’
‘Yes,’ she agreed again.
Yet he didn’t move—he wanted to move but something was stopping him. A need to stay? To be here where his son was? Or was it Melanie who was holding him? He turned to look at her, at the fall of her pale hair against slender shoulders that were no longer straight with defiance but hunched and heavy. Her black woollen top clung to the gentle curves of her body and the jeans followed the lines of her hips and thighs. She held a hand to her mouth, he saw, which explained why her answers had sounded muffled, and the other hand was wrapped around her body, the fingernails trembling where they dug deep into black wool.
He turned away again, and looked at the room for the first time since he’d entered it. It came as a small surprise. The décor was old-fashioned, the furniture the same, mostly heavy dark pieces that spoke of another era, like the patterned red carpet that covered the floor and the dark red velvet curtain fabric that matched the upholstery covering the sofas and chairs. It was a man’s kind of room, warm and solid, with the odd female touch, such as the jewel-coloured silk cushions heaped on the sofas and chairs.
He liked it, which further surprised him because he was so predisposed to dislike anything to do with Melanie right now.
Or was it William Portreath’s taste he was reluctantly admiring? he then wondered suddenly, and felt the bitterness well up again, felt the hard cut of envy for a man who had loved another man’s child enough to present him with his own name.
He didn’t want to leave. Melanie could feel his reluctance wrapping round the room like a heavy dark cloud that stole all the oxygen. He was still steeped in shock. His son was here in this very house. He needed to see him, see the truth for himself. She understood that, and wished so much that things had worked out differently this morning, because they could have got all the fighting out of the way then and he could have happily met Robbie and have seen what a wonderful child they had made together. More importantly, Robbie would have met his father and would have known that he was no longer in danger of being left alone in this world if anything should happen to her.
Should she say something—hold out yet another olive branch? Should she tell him that she understood how he was feeling, but that she had to protect both herself and her son?
Would he listen? Was he ready to do that now?
A log dropped in the grate and sent out a spray of crackling sparks. As it did so the Westminster mantel clock chimed the hour. Then a floorboard creaked somewhere, making Melanie turn to look at the door. Sensing her doing it, Rafiq did the same thing. It came again; the pair of them went so still they could hear their hearts beating. Melanie knew every bump and creak in this old house; she knew every draught and whistle.
‘What?’ Rafiq asked.
‘Robbie,’ she said, and started walking. ‘Stay in here,’ she cautioned as she opened the door. Then she disappeared, closing the door behind her without seeing that Rafiq was incapable of going anywhere.
He had frozen into a posture only his brother would recognise. But even Hassan had only seen it happen when it involved their father and his battles with death that were sometimes too close to call. The name of it was fear—fear of losing a man he loved above all else in this world—only here he was experiencing the same paralysed fear of meeting his seven-year-old son.
Would she do that? Would Melanie bring the boy down here and present them to each other without any preparation to ease the—?
Another log fell in the grate and broke him free from his stone-like stasis. He turned his head and saw the log was in danger of rolling into the hearth.
Robbie was just coming out of the bathroom when Melanie arrived on the upstairs landing. ‘Okay?’ she asked softly.
‘Mmm,’ he murmured sleepily. ‘I thought I heard voices.’
‘The television, probably.’ Melanie smiled through the untruth and walked with him into his bedroom, then helped to tuck him into bed.
‘I had a dream tonight, but it wasn’t a bad one,’ he told her.
‘Good.’ She stroked his silk dark head.
‘There was a man on a big black stallion and he stopped and said, “Are you Robbie?” I said, “Yes” and he smiled and said, “Next time, you can ride up here with me, if you like.”’
‘Well, that was nice of him.’ Melanie smiled, thinking she didn’t like the idea of some stranger offering her son rides.
‘Mmm.’ His eyes were drooping; he gave a yawn. ‘He was wearing one of those white robes and had a thing on his head, like Arabs wear.’
Melanie’s stomach rolled over. She wasn’t one of those people who believed dreams forecast the future, and Robbie knew about his Arabian side because William had spent hours with him in his study, filling his mind with all things Arabian. No doubt there had been a picture of an Arab on horseback at some time. But for her son to have the dream tonight of all nights disturbed her more than she liked.
‘Go back to sleep,’ she whispered.
‘You won’t go anywhere, will you?’
‘No, I won’t go anywhere,’ she softly promised. ‘Except back downstairs to watch television,’ she added, just in case he was expecting her to remain right here, kneeling beside his bed for the rest of the night. It had happened before and probably would again, she mused bleakly.
But not tonight, she saw as he dropped back into sleep without another murmur. She waited a few minutes longer to make sure he was fully asleep, though, taking no chances in a situation that was hazardous enough as it stood without Robbie deciding to follow her downstairs as she knew he was quite capable of doing. But eventually she rose up and left him, silently closing the bedroom door behind her—just in case voices became raised again.
Walking back into the living room required her to take a deep breath for steadiness. What she found was that Rafiq had removed his jacket to reveal a black cashmere roll-neck sweater and was squatting down in front of the fire. His body twisted when he heard her come in, eyes fiercely guarded as they shifted across the empty spaces at her sides. Tension screamed from every muscle, from every flicker of an eyelash. He was looking for Robbie.
‘He got up to use the bathroom,’ she explained quickly. ‘Then fell asleep again almost as soon as he’d climbed back into bed.’
With a nod of his head Rafiq turned away again, but not before she’d seen a war between desire and relief taking place upon his face, and her heart gave a twist of sympathy for this man who had to be struggling with just about every emotion available to him.
It was only as she began to walk forward that she noticed he held the hearth brush and pan in his hands. She also noticed the stretch of fine wool across expanded shoulder blades and remembered what it had felt like to press against them with the flat of her palms. Heat began to pool low down in her stomach; memories that really should not be so clear and sharp after all of these years sent her eyes on a journey down the length of his spine to the leanness of his hips and the power in his spread t
highs.
‘A log fell onto the hearth,’ he said as she came up beside him. His voice sounded rough, like gravel. He wasn’t actually using the brush and pan because he was just squatting there, staring at them as if they weren’t there.
Coming down beside him, Melanie took them from his loose fingers and laid them aside. ‘Rafiq…I’m sorry for saying what I said before. I was angry, and—’
‘You needed to say those things, and I suppose I needed to hear them.’
But he wasn’t sure. She watched the firelight play with his taut features and enrich the dark olive tones of his skin. ‘Here,’ she said, and dipped a hand into the pocket in her jeans, then gently slotted a photograph into one of his hands. ‘I thought you might like to have this.’
It was Robbie, looking all grown-up and smart in his school uniform and wearing that familiar rather sardonic half-smile. It had occurred to her as she was coming back down the stairs that Rafiq still had no conception of how like him his son was. If she had taken him into William’s study he would have seen Robbie’s face laughing back at him from photos on every available surface, because that was the way William had liked it and she hadn’t yet got around to moving anything—hadn’t had the heart to change anything anywhere in the house.
‘It was taken in school only a few weeks ago,’ she explained. ‘He looks so much like you that it came as a shock when I walked into your office this morning and realised just…’
Her voiced trailed away, dying on words that did not need saying because she could tell from Rafiq’s reaction that he was seeing it all for himself. His eyes were fixed on the simple four-by-four portrait. She could hear the strain in his shallow breathing, feel the tension in his body and the pulsing, stinging agony of his stress.
She tried to swallow, but found it impossible. She felt the sudden need to give him some space and privacy for what was battering him, but couldn’t bring herself to get up and move away. Tears thickened her throat; her chest began to feel too tight. In desperation she reached out to pick up the hearth brush and pan and began carefully gathering up fine flakes of wood ash still scattered on the grate.
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