to put some semblance of a smile on them as he straightened up and made himself turn to face the woman he was already predisposed to dislike.
What he found himself looking at shut his heart down. What he saw standing not fifteen feet away made him have to wonder if he was actually losing his mind. He could not believe it. He had conjured her up. Any second now two more women were going to walk through the door and stand right beside her: Serena and his mother. The three witches.
As that dark head lifted Melanie felt her breath begin to feather, felt her pulse begin to accelerate. He hadn’t changed, was her first breathtaking observation. He still had the build of a Roman gladiator and a proud cut to his jaw line that warned of no weakness anywhere. His hair was still as black as midnight, his hands as big and strong as she remembered them to be. He could fill a room like this with his size and the sheer electrifying force of his presence.
Yet his height and his size and his deep inner reserve had somehow always made her be very gentle with him. Why was that? Melanie asked herself now as she stood facing her past with the puzzled mind of maturity. It wasn’t as if he was a vulnerable giant. If anything, he had been cruel and heartless, utterly ruthless in his method of discarding her.
Her eyes took their time lifting to clash with his eyes. She was expecting to be frozen by cold disdain but what she found herself dealing with shook her to the core. For she was looking at Robbie’s eyes, Robbie’s beautiful, almost black eyes that were looking back at her with the same sensational long eyelashes that could turn her insides to soft, loving butter. And Robbie’s wonderful high slashing cheekbones, Robbie’s perfectly, perfectly moulded mouth.
And the beauty, dear God, she’d forgotten the masculine beauty in those lean dark high-born features that could flip her heart over and set her senses singing to the kind of tune she’d experienced with no other man. It hurt, oh, it hurt, because she was standing here staring love in the face again.
How could she not love, when she was seeing the man who had shaped her son’s image? she thought despairingly. It was like looking into the future and seeing her beloved Robbie as he would be thirty years on: the height, the riveting dark features destined to breaks hearts just as his father’s had done. Did that forecast worry her, or did it touch to life maternal pride, knowing she was in the process of rearing a heartbreaker for a son? She didn’t know, couldn’t think, didn’t even know why she was rambling over such ridiculous things when there were far more important issues to consider.
But her insides were a mass of shakes and tremors, her eyes stinging with the onset of tears. Tears for a lost love, a broken and irreparable love. She didn’t want to feel like this; she hurt as badly as if it was only yesterday that he’d thrown her out of his life.
A movement behind her caught her attention. Rafiq’s secretary was hovering, probably wondering what was going on. Neither she nor Rafiq had moved or even spoken. Rafiq was frozen, his face held by a shock so profound it was clear that he was in no fit state to say a word.
Which left that mammoth task to her, Melanie realised. She’d planned this moment, spent hours rehearsing it in her head. All she had to do was find the strength and the will to put her plan into action. But it wasn’t easy. She had come here believing that Rafiq had killed everything she used to feel for him. Now she knew that wasn’t the case, she accepted, as she set her feet moving across a vast space of marble until she came to a stop just an arm’s reach away from him.
She looked up—had to—he was six feet four inches, a towering figure in comparison to her five feet eight. It wasn’t a bad height for a woman, but compared to Rafiq she felt like a pocket miniature. He had shoulders that were three times the size of her slender ones, hands that could easily span her waist. His torso was lean and cased in hard muscle, and his legs—
No, stop it, she told herself fiercely as things began to stir inside that she just did not want to feel. She lifted her eyes, made contact with the dark, dark disturbing density of his still shocked eyes that seemed to want to pull her like a magnet into taking another step closer.
She resisted the urge, held it back with a fist-grabbing catch of control. Then, with every bit of sophistication she had acquired over the past eight years, she murmured, ‘Hello, Rafiq,’ and even managed to hold out a surprisingly steady hand. ‘It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?’
CHAPTER TWO
IT CAME as a punch to his stomach. The truth—reality. Melanie was standing here in front of him. No ghost, no spectre dragged up from the depths of his own bitter memory. The same spun-golden hair, darker gold eyes, creamy smooth skin covering perfect features; the same small, soft kiss-needy mouth and that soft-toned sensually pitched voice which brushed across his senses like a long-remembered lover’s caress.
Yet in other ways it was not the same Melanie. The clothes didn’t match, nor the way she styled her hair. The old Melanie had worn jeans and battered old trainers, not handmade leather shoes with spindles for heels and a slender black suit that shrieked the name of its designer label. Her hair used to stream around her face and shoulders, freely and simply like a child’s, though then she had been a twenty-year-old woman.
‘What are you doing here?’ he rasped out without any attempt to hide his contempt.
‘You’re surprised.’ She offered a wry smile. ‘Maybe I should have prewarned you.’
The smile hit his system like burning poison, seared through his bloodstream on a path that had no right to gather in his loins. He shifted, ignored the hand. ‘You would not have got beyond the ground-floor foyer,’ he responded with a gritty truth that sent her hand sinking to her side.
It also wiped the smile from her face, and with it Rafiq felt the heat in his body begin to dissipate. She shifted uncomfortably—so did someone else. Dragging his eyes across his office, he saw his secretary standing by the door. Fresh anger surged, a burning sense of bloody frustration, because this was the second time today that Nadia had witnessed him behaving like an ill-mannered boor.
‘Thank you, Nadia.’ He dismissed her with icy precision.
His secretary left in a hurry. Melanie turned to watch her go. Give it an hour and the whole building was going to know that Mr Rafiq was undergoing a drastic change in personality, he was thinking grimly as Melanie turned back to face him.
‘She’s afraid of you,’ she dared to remark.
‘The word you mean to use is respect,’ he corrected. ‘But, in truth, your opinion of my staff does not interest me. I prefer to know how you dare to think you can safely walk in here masquerading as someone you most definitely are not.’
Eyes that reflected the winter pale sunlight streaming in through the window, widened. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Rafiq. I thought you knew who I was. Didn’t you receive the papers from my lawyer’s office?’
Since those very papers were lying on his desk in front of both of them, it was sarcasm at its infuriating best. But it also made its point. Rafiq’s eyes narrowed. ‘You mean you actually are the Melanie Portreath who inherited the Portreath fortune?’ he demanded in disbelief.
‘Don’t sound so shocked,’ Melanie responded dryly. ‘Even poor little country girls can have a lucky change in fortune occasionally.’
‘Marry it, you mean.’
The moment he’d said it Rafiq could have bitten his tongue off. It was hard and it was bitter and gave the impression that he might actually still care that she’d been seduced by
