Bella and the Merciless Sheikh

‘Your mother died when you were a baby.’

‘Yeah—’ Bella’s voice was husky and she cleared her throat. ‘All I had was a memory and that’s not looking too good right now.’

‘Your mother must have been an extremely beautiful woman and extreme beauty often brings complications,’ Zafiq said quietly, and Bella flushed slightly, wishing she wasn’t so aware of everything he said and did.

‘Well, her beauty obviously didn’t make her happy. And that’s because she was stupid enough to marry a man she didn’t love.’

‘Like most women, you insist on linking marriage with romance.’

‘With good reason!’ Bella walked over to Amira and buried her face in the mare’s neck, seeking comfort. She felt angry with her mother, angry with her father and angry with herself. ‘My father thought she was in love with him, but she wasn’t. She just wanted the Balfour name and the money. If you don’t care about a person, you shouldn’t get married.’

Her hand still on Amira’s back, Bella turned to look at him. ‘It’s inevitable, isn’t it? If you marry someone you don’t love, at some point you’re going to meet someone you do love. You’re going to meet someone who makes you feel something you didn’t know it was possible to feel. And you’re going to realise that feeling is more important to you than money or status. And it isn’t going to matter that the relationship isn’t possible or that you’re totally unsuited—because once you realise you’re in love, you’ve basically got two choices. You go for it, and you wreck loads of lives along the way, or you decide you’re going to do the “right thing” and stay, making yourself and everyone around you miserable in the process because you know you’ve missed your one chance of happiness. So either way, getting married when you’re not in love means you’re going to wind up miserable.’

Zafiq said nothing and Bella turned back to the horse.

‘The funny thing was—there wasn’t any money.’ Her voice was muffled against the mare’s smooth coat. ‘It had all gone and getting everything back became an obsession for my father. And my mother hated that obsession. She hated everything Balfour. So she had an affair. And she died giving birth to that child. My little sister, Zoe. The one I messed up just before I came here.’ Crying now, Bella hugged Amira, past caring that she was making a fool of herself. ‘Do you believe in justice, Zafiq? Is that why she died?’

‘Are you crying for your mother or your sister?’ Strong hands prised her away from the horse. ‘You are torturing yourself—’ Without allowing her to resist, he pulled her into his arms, hugging her tightly, and it felt so good to be held that for a moment Bella just stood there, breathing in his masculine scent, revelling in the feeling of being close to him again.

But it wasn’t real, was it?

Until she’d started crying, he hadn’t touched her. It wasn’t personal.

It was time she learned to stand on her own two feet.

‘Let me go, Zafiq,’ she muttered. ‘I know you hate crying women. Sahra told me.’

‘That is because Sahra uses tears like currency—she trades them for whatever she wants.’ Zafiq stroked her hair away from her face, forcing her to look at him. ‘Is this why you were in the Retreat? Escaping from the scandal?’

It horrified her that he’d obviously read what had been written about her. ‘Which headline did you like best? Blue Blood Turns Bad? Illegitimate Daughter Revealed at Balfour Ball?’ The headlines were engraved in her brain and she squirmed as she remembered the salacious, vindictive things that had been printed. ‘Balfour Family in Ruins was quite a juicy one.’