RAFIQ AL-QADIM climbed out of the back of a chauffeur-driven limousine and strode through the plate-glass doors that guarded the International Bank of Rahman. In the clenched fist of one hand he held a rolled-up newspaper, in his eyes glowed a look that foretold of hell to pay for some poor fool. Hurrying behind him, his newly appointed aide, Kadir Al-Kadir, was wearing an expression that suggested he might be that very unfortunate person.

As Rafiq struck a direct line for the row of steel lifts set into a wall of grey marble, people in his path took one look at him and began backing away to give the big man an uninterrupted passage to his target. He didn’t notice; he was too consumed by the blinding fury that carried his intimidating six-foot-four-inch frame into the nearest vacant lift. A dark-suited arm shot out; a decidedly murderous finger stabbed at the button for the top floor. The lift doors shut out Kadir Al-Kadir and the sea of stunned faces. No one who’d had any dealings with Rafiq Al-Qadim had ever seen him appear anything but formidably controlled.

But he was not in control. Rafiq had never been so angry. Rage was literally bouncing inside him, fighting to get out and vent itself. The lift took less than fifteen seconds to reach its destination. The doors opened; he strode out. Nadia, his secretary, took one look at his face, paled and shot to her feet.

‘Good morning, sir,’ she greeted warily. ‘There have been several messages for you and your first appointment arrives in—’

‘No calls. Nothing.’ He cut right across her and kept on walking, each of his powerfully constructed, sleekly toned muscles moving him with stallion-like grace to behind his office door, leaving Nadia staring after him in a state of near shock, for she too had never known Mr Rafiq to be anything but staunchly even-tempered and rigidly polite.

Rafiq’s private office was a statement in architectural drama. High ceilings, marble floors, a window that was a wall of glass, in front of which a large slab of grey marble rested on legs of forged steel. As he moved across to it the pale sunlight of a London winter morning shot shards of cold steel through his black hair and added a sharpened cast to his lean dark profile that spoke of his ruthless Arab heritage.

Stepping around the edges of the slab of marble, he slammed the newspaper down on its smooth grey top. It unfurled on impact, showing him the inner-page headline that his aide had helpfully presented to him. It was Kadir’s job to scour the world’s newspapers, his job to mark those items he believed would be of interest to the acting head of the International Bank of Rahman. But Kadir would not be making the same mistake again very quickly, Rafiq mused as he glared at the reason for all of his anger. He had been duped, he’d been betrayed, he had been taken for a fool by a woman. And there it was, splashed all over the page of a Spanish tabloid: his private life uncovered, picked over and mocked at.

‘SHOCK ANNOUNCEMENT,’ block capitals proclaimed. ‘SERENA CORDERO DROPS BILLIONAIRE SHEIKH TO MARRY HER DANCE PARTNER, CARLOS MONTEZ.’

His skin began prickling against his clothing, sharp white teeth setting behind the grim line of his mouth. Only two months ago she had been clinging to him like a limpet, adoring him, begging him, telling him she could never love anyone else.

The liar, the cheat, the unfaithful little slut. As far back as six months ago his brother Hassan had warned him about Serena and Carlos Montez. Rafiq had dismissed those rumours as mere publicity to add spice to the current world tour the two flamenco dancers were embarked upon. Now he knew the truth and he could taste the bitterness of his own conceit and arrogance at having believed that Serena could not have wanted another man while she could have had him. Only twice before in his life had he ever been betrayed by a woman: once by his mother, and once by the only woman he had ever let himself love. After that last bitter experience he had vowed he would never be betrayed like that again.

Yet here he stood, pulled into the betrayal trap by yet another woman, and he was so angry he could spit nails into the half-page picture of the beautiful Serena, smiling into her new husband’s handsome face.

His mobile phone began to ring; dragging it out of his pocket he put it to his ear.

‘Querida, please don’t hang up. I need you to listen to me!’

His face, like his height and the tough, muscled build of his body, made no compromises at the best of times but the low dark sensual tones that hit his ear made his face take on properties as cold as the marble and steel that surrounded him.

‘The tour is in trouble. We needed a sensation to put our names on people’s lips. I love you, Rafiq. You know I do. But marriage between us was never a possibility. Can you not accept this situation for what it is?’

‘You are someone else’s wife. Do not call me again,’ he incised, and broke the connection before tossing the phone from him as if it was contaminated.

Silence arrived, buzzing in his ears like a thousand wasp wings. In front of him lay the discarded phone and the damning newspaper. Behind him lay the rest of the world who would now be laughing at him. He was an Arab in every way you wished to look at him. Make an Arab look a fool and you win yourself a life-long enemy.

Eyes like black opals turned almost silver at the prospect. Picking up the newspaper, he flung it sideways and watched as it landed in the waste-paper bin. Serena Cordero’s name would never reach his eyes again, he vowed as the other telephone sitting on his desk dared to start ringing. Black opals fired as a hand snaked down and long fingers closed round grey plastic as if it was someone’s throat. ‘I thought I said no calls!’ he bit into the mouthpiece.

‘By your tone I presume you have seen the news today,’ a very dry voice drawled into his ear.

His half-brother, Hassan. He should have expected it. He swung himself down into his black leather desk chair. ‘If you have called me to say I told you so, then take my advice and try silence,’ Rafiq returned grimly.

‘May I commiserate?’ Hassan wryly suggested.

‘You may mind your own business,’ he snapped, then added tautly, ‘Does our father know?’

‘You think we swap gossip about your love life?’

‘I don’t have a love life,’ Rafiq hit back with bite. This had been part of the problem with Serena. Finding a time when their busy schedules came to together had been almost impossible. If he had seen her twice in the last few months he could well be exaggerating, for while Serena had been travelling the world in one direction with her flamenco dance troupe he had been travelling in the other direction, attending to business duties that usually belonged to Hassan.

‘How is Father?’ he enquired as one thought led to another.

‘He is well,’ his brother assured him. ‘His blood count is good and his spirit is high. Don’t worry about him, Rafiq,’ Hassan added gently. ‘He means to meet his first grandchild, believe me.’

This time Rafiq’s sigh was heavy. The last six months had been a trial for all of them. The old sheikh’s illness had been long and miserable, spanning years of waste and pain. But six months ago it had almost taken him from them. With thanks to Allah, he had rallied on hearing the news about his coming grandchild. Now the disease was in remission, but no one could say how long it would remain that way. So it had been decided that from then on one of the two brothers must always be at home with their father. He needed the comfort of their presence. They needed to know that one of them would be there if his new-found strength should suddenly fade again. With Hassan’s wife Leona in the latter stages of a much prayed for pregnancy, Hassan had elected to stay at home and deal with internal matters of state while Rafiq did all the travelling, taking care of the family’s international business interests.

‘And Leona?’ he enquired next.

‘Round,’ her husband drawled satirically. But Rafiq could hear the pleasure there, the love and the pride. He wished he knew what those things felt like.

Then, he told himself forcefully, no, he was not going to go down that particularly rocky pathway, and turned the conversation to the less volatile subject of business. But when he rang off he continued to sit there seething and brooding and contrarily wondering why it was that he was so angry.

He had never loved Serena. She had been speaking the truth when she’d said marriage between them had never been a possibility. She was beautiful and hot—the perfect bed partner, in fact—but love had never been the engine that drove them through the passages of pleasure, even if she’d liked to use the word to him. It had been sex, good sex, but just sex for both of them. And sitting here wishing for love like his brother had was a damn fool’s game.

But the small lecture brought him to his feet and sent him to stand staring out of the window. He was remembering a time when he had once thought he had found the kind of love Hassan was enjoying—had believed he held it in his hand like a precious diamond only to discover it was merely paste. Since then he had never looked for love; he had no wish to feel its tortuous grip again, harboured no burning desire to pass on his genetic fingerprint. That delight belonged to Hassan and Leona, both of whom were worthy candidates to make the successful genetic mix. Whereas he…

That muscle within his chest called a heart gave a squeeze and he grimaced at the sensation. Alone. The sensation spoke to him of a bleak dark sense of aloneness that made him envy all of those people he could see moving about in the street below because they probably had good wholesome relationships to go home to at night, while he—

Well, he stood up here in his marble tower, personifying the rich and powerful and enviously privileged, when sometimes, like now, he felt as poor as any beggar you might pick out on any street corner—emotionally anyway.

Serena’s fault? No, not Serena but that other woman, the one with hair with the same golden sheen he could see on the woman standing in the street below. Melanie had ruined him. With a calculation that belied her beauty, her shyness and innocence, she had taken a younger Rafiq, full of confidence and optimism, and had turned him into this hardened cynic he was today.

Where was she now? he found himself pondering sombrely. What had the last eight years done for Melanie? Did she ever think of him and what their affair had done to him? Or had she simply moved on, left him so far behind that she would struggle to remember his name if they had the misfortune to come up against each other again? He guessed the latter—he knew the latter. Melanie might have possessed the face of an angel but she owned the heart of a harlot. Harlots did not remember names; one merged in with the many.

Behind him his mobile phone burst into life again. It would be that other harlot, Serena, he decided. She was not the kind of woman to give up easily. Did he answer? Did he leave it? Had he dropped down so low in his own estimation that he was actually asking himself those questions? His teeth came together, gleaming white against the satin darkness of his olive-toned skin as he let the phone ring and glared down at the street where the woman with the golden hair was still hovering, as if she was unsure what she was doing or where she was going. He understood the feeling, could even sympathise with it.

In fact, the golden-haired stranger had more chance of getting him to answer her call than Serena did, was his final thought on the subject of female betrayal.

Standing on the pavement outside the imposing marble, glass and forged-steel frontage of the International Bank of Rahman, Melanie tried very hard to convince herself that she was doing the right thing by coming here. The building was big, and it was bold; it spoke of no compromises when she knew she desperately needed many compromises if her plan was to succeed.

Could it succeed? Was she wasting her time by coming here to see a man she knew from experience held no respect for her at all? Remember what he said, remember what he did, a small voice in her head cautioned. Turn around, Melanie, and walk away.

But walking away was the easy option. And easy options had never come to her. It was either do this or go home and tell Robbie nothing, she determined. And if those two options were not the same as being caught between a rock and a hard place, then she didn’t know what was.

So, think of Robbie, she told herself firmly, and set her reluctant feet moving towards a giant pair of plate-glass doors reinforced by solid-steel tubing that defended the entrance to one of the most prestigious investment banks in the world. As she approached she glimpsed her own reflection in the polished glass doors and didn’t much like what she saw: a too-slender woman with pale hair caught into a neat little topknot and an even paler complexion touched by strain. Her eyes looked too big, her mouth too vulnerable. Overall she looked just too darn fragile to be taking on an arrogant giant like Rafiq Al-Qadim. He’ll step on you and not even notice, she warned her reflection. He’ll do what he did to you the last time and freeze you out with his black opal stare.

No, he won’t because you just won’t let him, she told herself forcefully, and kept her feet moving as the pair of doors slid open with a stealthy silence that made her insides curl.

Like its exterior, the International Bank of Rahman’s inside was a cavern of more glass, marble and steel. Glass walls for three floors gave her glimpses of open-plan office spaces flickering with busy computer screens and even busier people. Here in the foyer a marble fountain pushed moisture into the air while tall exotic plants tried and failed to soften the cold, cold atmosphere. People wearing statutory grey or black moved about with the confidence of those who knew exactly what they were doing here and where they were going.

It was sharp, it was sophisticated—it was everything she wasn’t. A point that would have made her smile at any other time, because she knew who she was and she liked that person. The cut-throat world of high finance held no fascination for her. Never had, never would. But as she stood looking around she was forced to accept the grim truth that, hate all this though she might do, she had still dressed for the occasion in a sharp black suit that blended in perfectly here.

Deliberate? Yes, it had been deliberate. She answered her own question as her high-heeled shoes took her across the busy foyer towards the line of steel-faced lifts. She had dressed to impress, to make him stop and think twice before he tried throwing her out again. Melanie Leggett in jeans had never managed to do that, but Melanie Portreath in a designer suit might.

A stainless-steel plaque set between two of the lifts listed the names of the departments and the floor on which each was situated. She hovered for a moment or two, unsure as to which department she should be making for, then realised that it could only be on the top floor, because high-powered executives liked to keep their minions firmly beneath them.

As she should know, having been there once upon a long time ago. She’d played the worshipping minion to a superior ego and had learned the hard way what it was like be walked all over. It wasn’t the best memory she could have picked to take with her into the lift, Melanie realised as her heart began to pump unevenly. Pressing the top-floor button, she barely felt the lift move it was so efficient, so nerves were putting that sinking feeling in her stomach, she determined. Nerves and just the teeniest hint of excitement about what she was about to do.

Face the truth, an eight-year-old truth, a dark and potentially dangerous truth. The lift doors opened, her knees began to shake as she stepped out into yet another foyer; this one was much smaller and bore the refined trappings of luxury in the soft carpet covering the floor. A steel-framed desk stood in front of a floor-to-ceiling stretch of glass covered by vertical blinds. A dark-haired woman sat working at the desk. She glanced up at Melanie’s approach, came to her feet and smiled.

‘Mrs Portreath? How nice to meet you.’ Her voice, like her smile, was warm and pleasant, the slight accent falling in with her dark and gentle Arabian looks. Coming out from behind her workstation, she presented Melanie with a hand. ‘My name is Nadia,’ she announced. ‘I am Mr Al-Qadim’s secretary. I am afraid Mr Al-Qadim is running a little late this morning,’ she went on apologetically. ‘And the information your lawyer sent ahead of you arrived on my desk only five minutes ago. Please…’ she indicated towards several soft-leather chairs ‘…make yourself comfortable while I check if Mr Al-Qadim is ready for you.’

Not for me, he isn’t, Melanie thought as she watched Nadia walk towards another giant pair of doors, made of solid wood this time. The secretary paused, seeming to need a moment to gather herself before she knocked rather tentatively on the door, opened it, stepped through and closed it behind her.

That small hesitation left Melanie standing there having to deal with the next rush of uncertainty that attacked her resolve. Rafiq was on the other side of that door, and if his secretary had to steel herself to go anywhere near him then what chance did she have of meeting a sane and sensible man?

Arrogance; she was suddenly remembering the hardened arrogance that could add such cold condemnation to his lean face. He was a man who could freeze out the world by just standing in silence, a man who could shatter a person with just two small words: ‘Get out.’

Her stomach muscles collapsed on the crippling memory. In the space of six short weeks he had wooed her into loving him. He had asked her to marry him and promised her the earth. He had told her that no one could ever love her as much as he did, then he had taken her to bed and wooed her of her innocence. Then, on the evidence of one cleverly constructed scene, he had simply turned his back on her with those now immortal words, ‘Get out,’ and had never looked at her again.

Did she really want to subject herself to that kind of humiliation again? she asked herself. Was she crazy to risk exposing Robbie to the same?

The urge to change her mind and just walk away while she still had the chance rose up to grab at her again; panic of the sort she hadn’t experienced in a long time actually set her feet swivelling towards escape.

The door behind her opened. ‘Mrs Portreath?’ his secretary’s smooth voice prompted.

Melanie froze—utterly. She couldn’t move, not a muscle; she couldn’t even bring herself to draw in breath. It was awful. For a horrible moment she wondered if she was going to faint.

‘Mrs Portreath…?’

Remember why you are doing this, she tried telling herself. Think of Robbie. He loves you and he’s suffering right now, feeling the vulnerability of his own mortality and, more significantly, yours. Rafiq does not know what he turned his back on eight years ago. He deserves this chance to know about Robbie, just as Robbie deserves this chance to know him.

But she was scared of what it was going to mean to all of them. Rafiq was from a different race and culture. He viewed things through different eyes than she did. He might not want to know about Robbie. He might fling this chance right back at her and…

‘Mrs Portreath? Mr Al-Qadim will see you now.’

Mr Al-Qadim will see you, she repeated anxiously. Did it matter if he did toss Robbie aside? It would be his loss if he did. Robbie never needed to know about this visit, but if you’d asked him outright, he would say it was worth any risk. So do this one small thing for him and you might start to sleep nights.

Small. She almost laughed, because this was no small thing. It was huge, colossal, as big and unpredictable as the big man himself.

‘Get out’ her head echoed. What did those two cold words do but expose a man who was unwilling to face up to his responsibilities? Let him use them again, she decided as her chin lifted. She could take the rejection for Robbie. She had done it before, after all. Her conscience could be cleared and she could then walk away to get on with the rest of her life, and more importantly Robbie’s life, knowing she had at least tried.

‘Yes, thank you,’ she heard herself murmur, and by the time she turned to face Rafiq’s secretary she was back in control again, with her eyes clear and her slender shoulders set into a determined line. One of the doors to the office stood open. Nadia stood to one side of it, waiting for Melanie to step by. With only the smallest increase in her pulse-rate she walked towards that open doorway and through it, with her smile fixed and ready to meet fate full-on.

The room was just another play on steel and marble. It was huge, with high ceilings and wall-to-wall glass that framed a desk built of marble and steel. In front of the desk and standing slightly side-on stood Rafiq Al-Qadim. He was wearing a dark grey suit and was leaning over slightly with one big hand braced on the desk while he read the set of papers in front of him.

Her papers, Melanie recognised. Her requirements. Her nerves began to flutter. Had he seen? Did he know yet? A clammy sweat broke out on her skin as she stood just inside the door and waited for him to lift and turn his dark head so she could make that first stunning impact on eyes that, even after eight long years, still visited her in her dreams.

Rafiq was being deliberately slow in straightening to acknowledge Mrs Portreath. He was wishing he hadn’t agreed to this meeting. The woman might have inherited the Portreath fortune, but even her healthy millions were small fry to an investment bank like this. Randal Soames, the executor of the Portreath estate, had talked him into this interview. He was doing it as a favour to Randal because the woman herself was being so stubborn about wanting to use the services of the bank and, more significantly, she had insisted on seeing Rafiq. In his mind, if she’d managed to get the hard-edged Randal Soames to go against his own better judgement it made her one very manipulative woman.

He despised that kind of woman. Was learning to despise the whole female sex with each betrayal they hung upon him. If he had a choice he would have them all locked up in harems to use only when necessary. They called them the weaker sex, the vulnerable sex, when really they were stronger and more dangerous than a whole army of men.

‘Mrs Portreath to see you, sir,’ Nadia prompted. It was a brave thing to do when his secretary was already aware that his mood was about as volatile as an active volcano.

But it also meant that he had taken too long to lift up his head. So, gritting his teeth together behind the flat-lined set of his lips, he attempted 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?’

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The Arabian Love-Child

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The Arabian Love-Child

Michelle Reid

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

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