‘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.
It was dreadful. Say something, she wanted to beg him. Shout at me, if you like! But I need to know what you think of this beautiful child we made together. I need—
His hands came out and took back the brush and pan. As her breathy gasp filtered through the air she watched him lay them carefully aside. She didn’t know what was coming—was afraid of what was coming. Especially when long lean fingers curled around her upper arms and began drawing her to her feet. She felt small suddenly, overwhelmed by his superior height and size. He was standing too close, his touch achingly gentle yet frighteningly disturbing. The heat of his breath was on her face and his thighs were touching hers. Her arms felt soft and frail beneath the controlled power in his imprisoning fingers, and her breasts were tingling at the nearness of his chest.
Wary, she lifted her eyes to his, and the breath shivered from her lips at what she saw written in the dark glitter of his eyes.
No, she wanted to protest, but the denial just wouldn’t come, and it would have been too late anyway because his dark head lowered and he was kissing her, though not hard or hotly as he had this morning. Nor even because he felt driven by a simple need to make physical contact with another human being right now. He was kissing her with reverence, gently crushing her against him, gently crushing her mouth with his.
Then he released her and turned away, dark head slightly lowered, wide shoulders set. He picked up his jacket, then just walked out of the room and, seconds later, out of the house, leaving Melanie standing right where he had left her, with the warmth of his kiss still pulsing against her lips and what she’d seen in his eyes before he turned away, quietly tearing her apart.
Tears, she’d seen the hot black glint of tears in the eyes of a man who’d gone way beyond the point of being able to contain the power of what it was he had been forced to deal with today.
She had done that. With her little plots and shock strategies she had managed to reduce a proud man to tears in front of her. She had never felt so ashamed of herself.
Rafiq sat in his office staring down at the neatly processed, finely detailed document he had spent the whole night working on. He was good at this, he acknowledged with absolutely no sense of pleasure. Concentrating his talents on the detached and inanimate was most definitely his forte. Money instead of emotions. The planning and arranging of someone else’s finances instead of allowing himself to lie in his bed crucifying himself with his inadequacies as a fully paid up member of the human race.
The phone on his desk began to ring, halting the urge to put his head back and close his sleep-starved eyes. It was Randal Soames. ‘Are you sure you want this?’ the lawyer asked him.
‘Exactly as I have set it out,’ he confirmed.
He sounded dubious. ‘You might marry some day, have more children.’
Not this man, Rafiq thought bleakly. ‘Have you spoken to Melanie?’
Swift change of subject. He could almost hear Randal thinking it. ‘She isn’t there. There is some kind of function on at the boy’s school, I seem to recall. I’ll try again later.’
The boy’s school. Some kind of function. Just two more things about his son he had no knowledge of.
Oh, damn. He got up and swung away from his chair, shoved his hands into his trouser pockets, then stood staring out of the window at a cold grey day. It had now begun to pour with rain.
Safely slotted into his wallet rested a miniature image of himself at the age of seven. Similar hair, similar eyes, similar slightly rueful expression which hid the same vulnerability he had suffered at the same age. He felt as if he knew this child of his inside out, yet he could not say which school his dark red uniform represented, nor what the boy ate for breakfast each morning.
His son even had his skin shading. So where were Melanie’s genes? Where was his French blood? Where was there anything in the photograph to say that his son had not been cloned on a scientist’s bench instead of conceived during the act of love?
Love. He cursed the word, hated it—despised it—and felt it grinding against his every muscle like a physical torture set up to make him accept that love could beat the hell out of any man’s wish to feeling nothing.
He was in love with his son, but had made no attempt to go anywhere near him. He loved his father, his brother, and Hassan’s lovely wife, Leona—but differently. With them he felt safe to love; with the boy he did not. Which was why he was standing here preferring to stare at the rain than take the bull by the horns and face uncertainty.
As for Melanie…
A sigh shot from him at this other reason why he had spent the past two days simmering in his own confusion. He had loved Melanie when they had conceived their son, but he would prefer not to be reminded of it. Now, what came next? Where were they supposed to go? Into one of those awful situations he had witnessed amongst so many friends with broken relationships, where they shared the children by cool agreement—when there was nothing damn cool about a child’s feelings?
A knock sounded on his door; he swung round to watch Kadir walk in the room. As his aide offered a bow of apology for intruding Rafiq caught the sparkle of raindrops on the shoulders of his neat grey jacket. ‘Been out in this filthy weather, Kadir?’ he quizzed.
‘Yes, sir.’ Rafiq received another bow. ‘A note has just arrived for you,’ Kadir explained, and walked forward to hold it out to him.
Rafiq looked down at it without attempting to take it, wearily wondering, What now? Because this was no formal business note. The envelope was small and square, and its sender female, by the neatly scripted way his name had been written upon it. No address or postage stamp, which said it had been hand-delivered.
‘Who is it from?’
Kadir cleared his throat. ‘It arrived in another envelope addressed to me. This is all I know.’
All he knew. Frowning, Rafiq pulled his hands out of his pockets and accepted the letter, then he broke the glued seal. Still frowning, he took out the single sheet of paper and read the two short sentences written upon it. ‘Can I come up? I’m standing across the street.’