Hot-Blooded Husbands Bundle

by Michelle Reid

  ‘William loved him.’

  If she’d meant to hurt by saying that, then she’d succeeded. Rafiq stiffened away from the door frame. ‘My half-brother, Hassan, loves me without question. But he could not be the mother I never met or fill the hole in my heart left by her.’

  With that he turned and walked back into the bedroom, not liking how much of himself he had just revealed and liking even less the way that Melanie followed him when he now wished to be alone.

  A familiar feeling, he noted with a tense flexing of his shoulders.

  ‘Who was she?’

  The question placed a bitter taste in his mouth. ‘A Frenchwoman—Parisian,’ he drawled with bite. ‘Very dark, very beautiful, very much out to catch herself a rich Arab with the oldest tricks known to man.’ He turned to look at her and saw a different kind of beauty standing in his bedroom doorway. A soft golden beauty—but the same flawed beauty nonetheless.

  Okay, he argued with himself as he moved over to the bank of wardrobes that filled one wall. So Melanie had not blackmailed him with the child they’d made together—still was not doing that, he was forced to concede since it was he who was using the blackmail here. But she had seen her chance of marrying wealth and had been prepared to forfeit her childhood sweetheart for it.

  Shame that he’d had to discover her duplicity, he thought angrily. Shame he had not married her anyway on a desire to punish her for the rest of her life. At least he would have known his child then, would have seen him grow big in her womb as Hassan was seeing his child grow. He would have been there at his son’s birth, and would have loved him so much he would never have needed to know those bleak, dark little moments in life when rejection could tear at the soul.

  ‘When she discovered that my father was already married, and his wife pregnant, she was not pleased.’

  ‘I don’t blame her,’ Melanie responded. ‘It sounds to me as if your father deserved the blame. He was playing with her, obviously.’

  ‘True.’ A glimpse of a hard smile touched his mouth as he pulled a clean shirt from a hanger. ‘He was young, he was arrogant and unforgivably self-seeking. But when my mother decided to cut her losses and have an abortion he showed a different side to his nature by talking her out of it—or should I say that his money did the talking?’ he offered cynically as he placed the shirt on the bed. ‘It matters not.’ He shrugged. ‘She died giving birth to me.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Melanie murmured.

  ‘Don’t be.’ The clean shirt was followed by a clean dark suit, still wrapped in a tailor’s suit bag. ‘The deal was that she hand me over to my father the moment it was legally possible to do so.’

  ‘And you think that decision denies her the right to have anyone feel sorry at her passing? That’s mean and shallow, Rafiq.’ He froze in the act of selecting fresh underwear. ‘For all you know she might have changed her mind about you. It happens all the time. How can you condemn someone who was never given the chance to offer an opinion?’

  He turned on her. ‘As I was offered that chance with my child?’

  She blinked, then lowered guilty eyes from him. For some reason it infuriated him to see her do that! He covered the distance between them in a few angry strides, then used his hand to capture her chin and make her to look at him. ‘Yes,’ he hissed at what he saw there. ‘We come full circle, my unforgiving Melanie. We reach the point where this truly began. You denied me my chance just as I deny my mother her chance. It makes us two of a pair, does it not?’

  ‘I’m giving you your chance now.’ Reaching up she grasped his wrist in a useless effort to pull his hand away. ‘But it doesn’t have to come with a ring attached to it!’

  ‘Yes, it does,’ he insisted. ‘Because my son will not remain a bastard. My son will be surrounded with love on all sides! My son will not be put at risk of you marrying another man who can treat him as a second-class member of his family!’

  Her beautiful eyes darkened in horror. ‘Who did that to you?’

  He let go. ‘It is of no matter.’ And turned away again, cursing his own stupid mouth!

  ‘Rafiq…’ She touched his arm with sympathy.

  Sympathy! The bubbling black mass of old hurts came thundering up to the surface. He turned back, knew he was losing it—knew it and could not stop it! ‘Get out!’ he breathed. ‘Get out of here, Melanie, while you still can!’

  What she did was step closer and wrap her arms around him like a mother would—like she would do with his son! ‘I’m sorry,’ she was saying. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know…’

  He gripped her arms and tried to prise her free; he needed to put a safe distance between them or he did not know what he would do! But she held on, lifted her face, lifted eyes that understood when he did not want anyone to understand!

  ‘I am dangerous,’ he grated. It was his final warning.

  She reached up and kissed him. Blackness turned molten, molten spun itself into something else. She was amazing, fearless—foolish! She had to be to still be here when anyone with eyes must know he was about to slake all this emotion in the only way he knew how!

  He caught that mouth with a kiss that blazed. He picked her up and pressed her back against the wall. Her skirt rose above her hips as he parted her legs and wrapped them around him. He entered her with no preliminary at all.

  Bright fireballs of sensation propelled themselves at her senses; she clung to his shoulders and his mouth. It was all so intense that she barely noticed when he ejected into her with the shuddering groans of a man lost in hell. When it was over her feet slithered like melted wax onto the hard wood flooring. Shocked and dazed, and still caught by the pulsing aftermath of her own shimmering climax, she stared blindly at his chest, where damp whorls of black hair curled around his gaping robe.

  Then once again the horror of reality hit: the knowledge that she could be so primitive! She choked on a sob as a stream of Arabic flooded over her, then hoarse thick English words of apology, of remorse and self-whipping disgust and disgrace as he picked her up in his arms and carried her out of the bedroom and down the hall.

  Safety came with the neatness of a sitting room, apparently. He set her down in a low soft leather armchair, then muttered something she did not catch before striding away. A doorbell rang; he must have gone to answer it because she heard the sound of voices talking, then nothing until he came to squat down beside her and offered a glass to her trembling mouth. It was brandy; it burned as she swallowed. He took a gulp himself.

  ‘I don’t know what to say to you,’ he pushed out thickly.

  Her lashes flickered downwards as she made herself look into his face. He was as white as the chair she was sitting on, guilt-riddled and appalled with himself.

  ‘I’ll marry you,’ she whispered. ‘I’ll marry you.’

  ‘Why?’ He couldn’t have sounded more stunned if he’d tried.

  Tears filled her eyes. It was all so—basic! She wanted him again so very badly it burned like a wound inside! He filled her with a thousand contradictions. Anger, hurt, resentment, confusion—desire! He ran cold, then hot, was ruthlessly hard and tough, yet so very vulnerable it almost broke her heart.

  And then they came—the words that really mattered. She was still in love him, even after all these years and all the heartache and pain and the sense of betrayal. She still loved him no matter what or why. Realising that hurt more than anything else did. She couldn’t tell him—would never tell him.

  ‘Robbie needs you,’ she said.

  Robbie needs you. Once again they’d arrived back at the beginning. A different beginning in an ever-confusing spiral of beginnings.

  He stood up. It was a withdrawal in many ways. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Of course. I will go and dress. You may safely use the bathroom to—tidy yourself before we leave.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  HIS suit was a dark blue, almost black, in colour, the fabric an exquisite weave of silk. His shirt was white, his tie blue, and the whole ensemble blended perfect
ly with the man he had turned himself into.

  Cleanly shaven face; neatly combed hair; raven eyelashes keeping a permanent guard over his eyes, and his mouth a beautifully defined example of sombre elegance. Melanie had to bite hard into her bottom lip so as not to say a word. If he’d dressed like this to put Robbie at his ease with him then he could not have got it more wrong. Her son was more likely to stand in awe than feel at ease. Rafiq was the ice man, a man who belonged in a palace built of glass, steel and marble.

  She shivered and fiddled with the ring on her finger. It was made of gold and bright, flawless sparkling diamonds. She had chosen it from a luscious selection set on a black velvet tray in the privacy of his sitting room. Between her running for cover in the bathroom and their confrontation across its threshold he had called up a top London jeweller and had had them bring a selection to his apartment.

  It was money wielding its awesome power. She shivered again; he shifted tensely and sent her a sharp look that scoured the skin from the part of her profile he could see. Sitting next to each other in this car was the closest they’d been to each other since he’d fed her the brandy. No eye contact nor body contact, words spoken as if through a glass wall. Why? Because they’d delved into a dark place they knew they should never have visited. It had exposed too much of an inner core that most preferred to keep hidden away. 89

  Now here they were, driving towards her home where another ordeal was about to be enacted. Melanie tried to swallow and found that she couldn’t. From the corner of her eye she caught sight of his hand where it rested on his thigh. The long fingers moved ever so slightly, but she could almost taste the tension that forced them to make that minuscule jerk. She dared a quick glance up from beneath her lashes and almost shattered on impact with the hard profile of a cold and aloof Arabian male: his long thin nose; his curling black eyelashes hovering against the firm glossy texture of his olive-toned skin; his jaw line taut and rock-like, the set of his mouth implacable and flat. If she superimposed Arab clothes over the suit she could be looking at the Arabian prince he was in everything but name.

  But that memory belonged to another time, and it did nothing for her nerves to remember it now. Daunting as he was in his western sophistication, she preferred it to that other man she had met only once, when he’d torn her apart with his contempt.

  This time she managed to contain the shiver. ‘Robbie might mention your father,’ she heard herself say as thoughts of his ruthless Arab side led her onto other things.

  The dark head turned with frightening precision; eyes too dark to read fixed on her face. ‘He knows about my father?’

  It was too quietly and too smoothly spoken. Melanie tried that swallow again. ‘W-William liked to keep him informed ab-about your country,’ she explained. ‘Your father’s poor health is reported in the press occasionally, and a party six months ago was given quite a lot of coverage. A thirty-year anniversary?’ she prompted.

  He nodded. So did she, then dragged her eyes away to look down at the ring again. ‘Robbie decided that your father’s ill health m-must have kept you at home with him. H-he worries about things like that, so it suited him to give you that particular reason why you didn’t come to London.’

  The hand resting on his thigh gave that telling minuscule twitch once more. ‘Without William Portreath’s money, would you ever have told me about him?’

  It wasn’t harsh but it was coldly accusing. ‘Robbie only started asking questions about you a year ago. He never asked to see you, but if he had done I’d like to think I would have done something about it.’

  ‘You’d like to think?’ he repeated.

  ‘I had to protect both him and myself,’ she reiterated.

  ‘From me?’

  ‘From this!’ she cried, shattering the wall between them with a spectacular eruption, blasting away all of this nice polite civility. ‘Look at what you’ve already done, Rafiq! Even with William’s money as my so-called safeguard. I’ve been packed up and taken over! You did it before. You packed me up and took me over, then dropped me like a brick when I didn’t come up to your high expectations!’

  ‘You are twisting the truth.’

  ‘No, I’m not.’ Trying to make the eruption subside again was impossible. The bubble had burst and she suddenly didn’t know what she was doing, sitting here next to him travelling towards calamity at what felt like the speed of light. ‘If Robbie can’t meet those same high expectations does he get dropped?’ she pushed out thickly. ‘Do you truly think I believe I am doing the right thing bringing you into his life? Because I don’t! You’re so hard and tough and unpredictable.’ She sat upright on a raw flick of tension. ‘You blow hot, then icy cold. I can’t tell what you’re going to do next, and I’m frightened I’ve made a huge error of judgement here. I feel like I’m playing Russian roulette with a child’s life!’

  ‘I will not drop him!’ he raked at her. ‘Nor you, for that matter,’ he added with a lofty promise that aimed to put all the emotion back under wraps but didn’t quiet make it. ‘And if you still feel this way, why am I here at all?’ he demanded, and brought the whole thing toppling down again.

  Melanie looked down at her tightly clenched hands, then out of the car window while her chest grew tight on words she did not want to speak.

  But time was beginning to run out. ‘William’s death had a profound effect on Robbie,’ she told him. ‘He suddenly realised that without William he had only me to take care of him. So he worries that I—’

  ‘Might die too and leave him with no one.’ Rafiq took over in a deep voice so drenched in bleak understanding that she glanced sharply at him.

  He was sitting there with the same carved profile, but his eyes had come alive, burning with a personal knowledge that brought into hard focus the kind of childhood he’d experienced as a motherless son—a second son and an illegitimate one at that.

  ‘Y-you had your brother,’ she reminded him.

  His tight smile mocked the remark. ‘Hassan is six months older than I am. Every time his mother looked at me she saw the bitter proof of her husband’s infidelity while she was heavily pregnant. Do you think she didn’t yearn for the day when she could toss me out of her household? In the end she died before she could achieve her dearest wish, but as a child I learned to appreciate the vulnerability of my situation.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know.’

  ‘How could you?’ He shrugged. ‘These are not the kind of memories a man usually shares with other people.’

  Not even with the woman he professed to love? If he had been a bit more open with her eight years ago maybe she would have stood a chance at understanding what had made him the man he was, and dealt with the situation of Robbie differently.

  ‘So, he worries?’ Rafiq prompted.

  She nodded. ‘He has nightmares about it,’ she confessed, and watched in thick-throated distress as he turned his head so she could see those dark knowing eyes. ‘He worries himself sick if I so much as sneeze. As I’ve been saying from the start, he—’

  ‘Needs me,’ Rafiq finished. ‘As back-up,’ he added.

  It sounded so very cold put like that, but—‘Yes,’ she confirmed.

  ‘And if I had not come through with this back-up?’

  She looked away and did not answer. But, being the man he was, he had already worked out what her alternatives were going to be. His hand snaked out to catch her chin, then he made her to look back at him. Hard eyes glinted into her eyes. ‘As far as my son and his mother are concerned I will not be walking away,’ he vowed very clearly. ‘So you may put away any other options, Melanie. For the ring on your finger will be joined by another, and you will not need to look elsewhere for anything—understand?’

  Yes. She nodded and let her eyelashes flutter onto her cheeks so he couldn’t read her thoughts. Because she was beginning to understand an awful lot of things, and none of them helped her to feel less anxious about the situation. With every word he uttered, Rafiq was reveali
ng an affinity with his son that promised to grow into a bond like no other. Who would become the expendable link then? She would, and on realising it she began to appreciate what it meant to feel so frighteningly vulnerable.

  The car pulled up outside her house. Melanie was never so relieved for an excuse to escape. She went to pull her chin free of his fingers, but he held on until she surrendered and looked back up at him. The glow in his eyes was skin-piercingly covetous. It pricked at just about every nerve-end she possessed. The sexual pull was stunning; the emotional one threatened to strip her bare. Sparks flew; her breathing snagged; for a few blind seconds she had to fight the urge to turn her mouth into those cool fingers and say something calamitous like, I still love you, Rafiq.

  She wanted to run and Rafiq didn’t blame her. He could not look at her without the sexual fallout drenching the air. The cool tips of his fingers slid against skin like fine satin, the inner recesses of his mouth sprang into life with a need to taste what he could feel. A driving compulsion to lean down and take what was throbbing in the atmosphere held him motionless, because he dared not even breathe in case he gave in to its magnetic pull.

  He had revealed the absolute worst of himself to her today, yet she was still sitting here looking at him through those hungry eyes. Why was that? he asked himself. She was wearing his ring and was prepared to marry him when she had to know his arguments for marriage were a bluff, and that she possessed the resources to turn her back on him if she so pleased.

  Was she doing this for their son? A son who had not even looked upon his father’s face and who, when he did, might well decide he didn’t like what he saw! What then—what did Melanie do then?

  He removed his fingers and looked away from her, and heard her feather out a shaky breath. His driver opened the door for her. She scrambled out of the car and hurried up the path to fumble the key into the lock of her front door. The black suit skimmed her slender figure; her pale hair swung around her slender nape. His heart gave a tug. It was fear. He grabbed it and crushed it down again.