Should that count for something now? he pondered grimly. In his own country it would count for everything. They would have been man and wife on the strength of that one night alone. Indeed, his sense of honour had already made that decision before he had claimed his exquisite prize. It was a prize that still held a power over him as he sat here in the present listening to one woman beg for his passion while the other aroused him without having to try. He recalled a single afternoon spent upon an old-fashioned feather mattress beneath an eiderdown when her arms had clung to him and her body had accepted him with small soft gasps that had rolled his heart around. He had felt the barrier, could still feel it tempting the proud crown of his sex. ‘Yes,’ she had said in that soft breathy whisper, and it had stirred him beyond anything he could ever remember.
He was in agony, he noted ruefully. But while he sat here struggling with his own discomfort, he also had the satisfaction of seeing Melanie’s cheeks grow warm and her eyelashes flicker in a way that placed a wry smile on his lips. She knew what he was thinking and was unable to look at him because she was feeling the effects of those memories just as strongly as he was.
It was sex, nothing more. He could deal with sex—as the beautiful Serena would agree.
If he didn’t stop undressing her with his eyes she would change her mind and leave, Melanie decided as she sank down into the chair by the desk. He was daring to sit there looking as laid back as a man could look while listening to a telephone conversation, but his hooded eyes were burning through her clothing. Did he think she was too dense to know what he was doing?
A wry smile twitched his mouth. It was a mouth that should have looked mean and cold, but by some quirk of fate looked anything but. She sighed, dropped her eyes away from him and wished his expression did not reminded her of sex. One man, one afternoon, only that one experience to call upon—and she was certainly able to call upon it, she noted helplessly. All it had taken was a knowing glint in those eyes and she could see the man in all his naked glory. The breadth of his wide bronzed shoulders and long muscular torso peppered with soft dark hair and—no, stop right there.
Who was on the other end of the phone that could hold him in silence for so long? she wondered as she shifted restlessly on the chair. She wished he would speak, if only to break this terrible tension that was eddying in the air.
Sexual tension. The man had always had the power to turn her inside out with that heavy-lashed, steady stare. Perhaps he knew it, perhaps the call had finished ages ago but he was stretching out the silence on purpose just to extend the agony. Could he be that calculating?
Yes, she decided, of course he could. He had made it very clear that he didn’t want her here, but then for some baffling reason had decided to give her a chance to say what she’d come to say. Perhaps she’d touched a nerve when she’d challenged his status as a human being, and this was his idea of payback. Rafiq had pride enough for ten men. He had an ego as big as…other parts.
Oh, stop it! she railed at herself as a second wave of heat crawled up her cheeks.
Rafiq saw the blush and was reminded of the first time he’d seen her, at a friend’s country estate. He had been there as a weekend guest and Melanie had been one of the paid staff. She’d served him throughout dinner, quiet, shy, and wearing a perpetual blush to her cheeks. Every time she’d leant over his shoulder to serve him he’d inhaled the scent of her delicate perfume, had felt the soft brush of her breath and her silk hair brushing his cheek. Electric, clinging…He stopped breathing for a moment in dark recollection. Twice she’d caught his shoulder with a serving dish and had almost died with embarrassment. Twice he’d found himself making a joke about his own size in an attempt to deflect the wrath of his hostess.
‘She’s new—temporary,’ Sally Maitland had explained with the condescending tone of someone who had lived her whole life being served only by the best. ‘Leave it, Melanie!’ she had snapped in annoyance while Melanie valiantly tried to remove spilled sauce from where it had landed on the tablecloth by Rafiq’s plate. Her hand had been trembling, the heat from her cheeks hot enough to heat his own cheek as she leant across him. ‘You just can’t get the staff these days. Melanie is more used to feeding chickens than people.’
He smiled at the memory, though it was more like a grimace. Melanie had fed him a lot that weekend. She’d fed his mind and his senses by being everywhere he’d happened to be. Her perfume had lingered in his bedroom whenever he’d walked back into it after she’d been there tidying the bed; her shyly lowered eyes had followed him whenever she’d had the misfortune to be serving food. If they’d met on the stairs she’d blush like mad and scurry hastily away from him; if they’d brushed arms or shoulders she’d jump like a startled kitten and refuse, though he’d tried, to utter a single word to him. Nods and shakes had been all he’d got for his trouble.
Nods and shakes that had almost driven him out of his mind.
‘Come on, querida. Forgive me and let us put this behind us. Carlos is not expecting fidelity from me and I—’
With a flick of the hand he cut the connection. Melanie lifted her face. ‘You didn’t speak a single word,’ she said, almost accusingly.
‘No words were required,’ he drawled lazily, and smiled the kind of smile that made her feel threatened and edgy and eager to get out of here.
‘About William,’ she said firmly, ‘I think I should start by—’
‘Lunch,’ he inserted.
‘Lunch?’ Melanie offered him a perfectly blank stare.
He offered a smile to her. ‘I think we will take this conversation away from the business environment and place it in a more…congenial setting.’
‘But you have another appointment waiting outside!’
His answer to that was to reach out and pick up the other phone. Several smooth words spoken in Arabic and as far as Melanie was concerned the problem of his next appointment had been consigned to the archives. The phone went back on its rest.
‘Problem solved,’ he murmured with lying smoothness.
‘I really do prefer to deal with this right here.’ It was almost a desperate little plea.
‘Oh, come.’ He stood up. ‘Here I am attempting to show you my human side by offering to listen to you, and you throw this gesture back in my face?’
If he thought listening to her talk over lunch was going to be pleasant then he was in for a surprise, Melanie thought ruefully. And why did she feel as if she’d just come face to face with a slippery snake?
She watched him warily as he walked around the marble slab. The dig about his human side hadn’t passed her by either, nor the fact that in the space of a one-way conversation with his mobile phone his whole manner towards her had taken a complete reversal. He arrived at the side of her chair. The hairs on the back of her neck began to stand on end. He was waiting for her to give in and stand up, but her eyes were level with a certain part of his anatomy and what she could see happening there sent a wave of shocked heat sweeping down her front.
This had nothing to do with lunch, or talking, or even him showing his human side! It was to do with sex. Let-me-rumble-you-on-the-nearest-bed kind of sex—for old times’ sake.
‘Stop