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‘No.’ She didn’t want to look at him so she turned her face and looked at the kitchen, with its old-fashioned familiarity, and wondered why he didn’t look utterly out of place in here.
‘Why not?’ he challenged, and his voice was like a quiet rumble, vibrating all around her, husky, sexy.
Don’t give in to it, she told herself, then tipped her head back, made contact with eyes like the darkest brown velvet set between ebony lashes. They drew her in as she’d known they would. They sent messages she’d already read via a body language that was threatening to pull her apart inside.
‘I didn’t betray you with Jamie,’ she whispered.
On a growl of anger he swooped with his mouth and captured her throbbing declaration, captured and returned it to her with the furious flick of his tongue. He didn’t believe her. He didn’t want to believe her. Because to believe me
ant he would have to place himself so much in the wrong that his ego wouldn’t cope with what that would brand him.
Bitterness welled again, scouring out the desire that had held her in his arms so long. She broke away from the kiss, moved away from his body, and turned away from the whole tempting package being sold to her.
A man with no mercy. Sex without respect. It hurt. She was never going to repeat that denial, she promised herself grimly as she began picking up plates from the table.
‘Which bedroom did you choose? I need to go and make up the bed.’
There was a silence behind her; it trickled down her spinal cord like the scrape of a fingernail warning her that danger lurked behind.
It took the form of silk-like satire. ‘Our son assures me that all his friends’ parents sleep in the same bed.’
She spun back to find him leaning casually against the sink with his hands resting in his pockets. He was enjoying this, she realised. ‘You’re joking!’ she insisted.
A single eyebrow mocked her horrified look. ‘I was very impressed with his forward thinking,’ Rafiq answered lightly. ‘He gave me a choice. His room or your room. And since his room has only one small single bed in it and yours has a very large divan, I took the advice I was being offered and agreed to share—as parents do.’
‘Well, I don’t share!’ She itched to swipe that mocking smile from his face. ‘Never. Do you understand?’
‘Not even when we are man and wife?’
‘I’ve changed my mind; I don’t want to marry you!’ she said. ‘We—we will have to come to some other arrangement about sharing Robbie.’
‘Now, that is one area in which I don’t share,’ he warned.
‘And I won’t marry a man who feels as bitter about me as I feel about him!’
‘Then we are both on a learning curve.’
‘Don’t talk business-speak to me!’ she snapped out angrily.
He leapt on her like a cat, picked her up and sat her down on the kitchen table, braced his hands beside her legs then pushed his dark face up close. ‘Would you rather I woo you into accepting me?’ he purred.
She stiffened like a cardboard cut-out; if he’d said it to insult her then he had certainly achieved his aim. ‘I’ve been wooed by you before and I would rather have a snake do it.’
‘Remove that ring one more time and you will regret it,’ he warned very, very succinctly.
Melanie looked down and was surprised to find her fingers trying to work the ring loose. The threatened tears came back. ‘I don’t want you here,’ she choked.
He saw the tears, touched a finger to the corner of her eye to capture one. ‘Too late,’ he announced, then stepped back.
He had heard what she had been too busy to hear—their son coming towards the kitchen. She leapt from the table just as Robbie appeared to take Rafiq off to watch his video. Melanie forced herself to tidy the kitchen, then went upstairs to make up the bed in the spare bedroom. It was a cold, dark little room with a cold little bed, and she had to grit her teeth as she made it so she would not let her conscience accept that a man of Rafiq’s size would never be able to sleep in it—or at least he’d freeze trying, she added as she snubbed her nose at the room and walked out.
Robbie kept the atmosphere buoyant right up until she eventually coaxed him into bed. He fell asleep blissful in the knowledge that when he awoke his daddy would still be there.
By the time Melanie trudged back down the stairs she had developed a throbbing headache and was intending to go straight to the kitchen to find some painkillers when she caught sight of Rafiq through the half-open door that led into the living room. He was standing by the fire with a hand thrust into his trouser pocket while the other held a mobile phone to his ear. He was speaking in fluent French. For a few seconds he even looked French, a smooth, sleek and dauntingly sophisticated Frenchman with the language for lovers falling from his lips.
It was not the cleverest of thoughts to have, she realised as her senses rose to the invitation to remember the lover once again. She made herself move on to the kitchen before he caught sight of her standing there looking at him like some sex-obsessed idiot. It had been that kind of day! A day packed full of old obsessions and new raging impulses. Sexual impulses; angry impulses. Her impulse to go and seek him out; his impulse to lay siege and seduce. The shocks, the grip of an old obsessive desire, the excitement in knowing they were both running out of control.
The headache got worse. She took two painkillers and set about preparing a pot of coffee. He was standing in more or less the same place when she carried the coffee tray into the room. He was still on the telephone, speaking in Spanish now, a language she recognised easily because Sophia was half-Spanish and could tumble into the language when she was angry enough to need its extra fire.
