Michelle Reid - The Arabian Love-Child

‘Liar,’ he drawled. ‘You suggested me to Randal.’

Oh, that shook her. She hadn’t expected Randal to reveal that juicy bit of information. Still, she rallied. ‘Are you trying to tell me that you aren’t the best?’

His smile this time was disturbing. Disturbing because she’d seen Robbie use the exact same expression, but had never connected it with his father before. She knew that physical things, like the colour of eyes and hair and skin, came as part of the genetic package, but she hadn’t realised that smiles did also.

‘There you are, then.’ She tried a smile. ‘I was hoping your business ethic would put you above bearing grudges. It seems I was wrong. My mistake. I’ll find someone else.’

‘To…’ he glanced at the top piece of paper “‘…invest one half of your inheritance in long-term options while the other half is locked into a trust fund,”’ he read out loud.

A frisson of alarm disturbed her breathing. He was beginning to show interest when she no longer wanted him to. ‘Randal is setting the trust fund up for me,’ she said tensely, her eyes fixed on those long brown fingers set against the white paper that held the details of her entire life.

Her life and Robbie’s life.

‘For whom?’ Rafiq questioned.

‘Does it matter?’ she countered stiffly.

‘If you want me to work with you, it does,’ he murmured quietly.

‘But I don’t any longer.’

He ignored that and went to sit down in his chair—taking her papers with him. ‘Sit and explain,’ he smoothly invited, then flipped to the next page.

‘N-no,’ she refused. ‘I’ve changed my mind, Rafiq. I made a mistake to come to y-you. I know that now. You were right. I should leave. I’m s-sorry I intruded.’

Rafiq narrowed his eyes on her taut stature; something inside him went very still. She was afraid, white with it, suddenly no longer defiant but teetering dangerously on the edge of panic.

‘For whom?’ he repeated very quietly, and watched with deepening interest as her eyes flickered away, nervously scanning anything that did not include him. They settled on the illuminated numbers on the communications console.

‘Lunch is out,’ she announced jerkily. ‘I have to be somewhere else at one.’

Rafiq said nothing. He just continued to sit there watching as her cheeks grew even paler and her tongue made a nervous pass across trembling lips. Lips that still pulsed from his kiss, he noticed. Lips that seemed to have forgotten how to speak. She was tense, she was edgy, she was so nervous he could see the fine tremors attacking her flesh.

A sudden thought made his eyes narrow. She was Melanie Portreath now, not the Melanie Leggett he’d used to know. William Portreath had been in his nineties when he’d died, making his widow very rich. Rafiq knew how these things usually worked: wise men tended to protect their money from the machinations of a trophy wife.

But protect it for whom? ‘Answer me, Melanie,’ he commanded grimly.

She shimmered a glance at him then dragged it away, swallowed, and murmured huskily, ‘M-my son. The trust is to be set up for my son.’

So, the old man had been capable of enjoying the charms of his lovely young bride! Rafiq’s skin began to prickle at the very idea of it. She was now so pale her eyes were bruising. Was it shame? Was she beginning to realise that it was not as easy as she had expected to come in here and admit that she had sold herself for a pot of gold to a man old enough to be her grandfather?

Sickness was suddenly clawing at his stomach, disgust climbing up the walls of his chest, as she stood there staring at him through eyes that seemed to beg him for some kind of understanding. But all he saw was her beautiful, smooth naked form lying beneath a withered old man.

Placing the papers on his desk, he stood up and was amazed at the smoothness of the movement, was impressed by the way his legs carried him around the desk. ‘Come with me,’ he said, and was further impressed by the steadiness of his voice as he gave the instruction.

Melanie was looking slightly bewildered. He had no wish to look into her face any longer so he turned and walked away. As he strode towards the door he could hear her following him. In the outer foyer Nadia was busy at her computer, and Kadir was leaning against her desk while talking on the telephone. He was speaking Arabic, but Rafiq had not a single clue what words were being spoken in his natural tongue.

‘Kadir!’ With a flick of a hand he brought his aide to attention and kept on walking towards the other side of the room, where the lift stood with its doors conveniently open and waiting for them.

Kadir arrived at Rafiq’s side as he was silently indicating to his aide Melanie should precede him. She was frowning as she did so, eyeing Rafiq warily as she passed him by. He ignored her to indicate to Kadir to follow suit. Kadir entered the lift. Rafiq stepped in after them, but only for as long as it took him to hit the ground-floor button. He was taking no chances here.

‘Escort Mrs Portreath off the premises,’ he instructed Kadir. ‘And ensure that she does not gain entrance to this building again.’

With that he walked away, hearing Melanie’s shocked gasp as the lift doors put solid steel between them. As he strode past Nadia’s workstation he ignored his secretary’s stunned expression. With the easy flow of a man completely in control of his own actions, he stepped back into his office and closed the door.

Melanie was staring at the walls of her steel prison. Shock was holding her silent and still. Beside her, the dark-haired young Arab called Kadir was almost as frozen.

She found her voice. ‘What happened?’ she whispered.

He offered her a very formal bow. ‘I’m afraid I do not know.’

Then, before either could say anything else, the doors were opening onto the ground-floor foyer and Kadir was politely carrying out his master’s wishes by escorting her all the way to the giant glass doors and even beyond. In a daze of bewilderment Melanie found herself being offered another polite bow before the young man turned and retreated through the doors again, leaving her standing there in a state of utter disabling shock at the slick smooth way Rafiq had just executed his revenge on her—if revenge was what it had all been about. She didn’t know, didn’t care. He had thrown her out—publicly. In all her life she’d never felt so humiliated.

Stunned beyond being able to function sensibly, she began moving and almost fell beneath the wheels of a passing car. The car horn sounded; she just stood watching as it brushed by within inches.

Up high, in his marble tower, Rafiq viewed her near-death experience through black eyes and with bone-crackingly clenched teeth. It was only as he stood there fighting a battle between fear for her life and a wish never to lay eyes on her again that he made the connection between Melanie and the golden-haired woman he had watched hovering in the street before.

If he had known then what he knew now she would not have got beyond the building’s entrance doors, saving them both a lot of trouble.

The liar, the cheat, the little slut, he seethed in ice-cold silence. And he’d had the pleasure of experiencing two of her kind in a single day! All he needed now was for his mother to rise up from the grave and tell him exactly how much money she had squeezed out of his father before she’d agreed to carry his child full term.

Money. It always came down to money with women, he concluded, as he turned away from the window after watching one of their number safely cross the road. His mobile phone began to ring. Striding over to his desk, he picked it up, opened the back, removed the SIM card, then discarded the lot into the waste-paper bin where today’s Spanish newspaper was already showing yesterday’s news.