Zarif's Convenient Queen

‘I completely understand how you feel,’ she whispered and she honestly did. He had lost his infant son and her talk of divorce had made him feel threatened and, of course, if she were to take their child back to the UK, he would see little of him or her, so his concern and fear on that score were perfectly understandable.

‘Then understand that I will not let you go,’ Zarif repeated doggedly. ‘We will stay married and, if need be, we will work at staying married.’

Ella lost colour, wondering if he would need to work that hard to live with her as his wife. Would he be constantly wishing she were Azel? Wishing she were a woman from his own culture? Longing for a break from her? Wishing he could occasionally ring the changes by taking another woman to his bed?

Exactly how would it feel to be granted the status of being a for-ever wife purely and simply because she had given birth to his baby? She believed that the burden of being essentially unwanted would crush her spirit. She wanted him to want her, didn’t she? She always had. She thought of her clumsy seduction attempt the night before when she had been thrilled by his response and her face burned hot. Sadly, Zarif was not saying anything she wanted to hear and he never would, would he?

He hadn’t wanted or planned a child with her. He hadn’t chosen her as the mother of his child. He had chosen her to share his bed, to provide light entertainment and sexual satisfaction within the respectable guise of marriage. But he hadn’t ever wanted a real marriage with her, had he? And why did that hurt so much? Why did all her emotions feel raw-edged? Why did she feel so desperate and despairing?

Because she wanted more from him, had always wanted more from the instant she looked at him at the tender age of seventeen and fell head over heels in love for the one and only time in her life. And now she was looking at Zarif afresh and with much greater maturity and the sudden sinking acknowledgement that she still loved Zarif al-Rastani with all her heart and her soul. No other man had ever stirred her brain or her body the way he did, no other man could hurt her so easily. Pride had made her tell herself that she had got over him but she had been lying to herself all along. Unrequited love could have tremendous sticking power.

‘What I don’t understand,’ Ella admitted thinly, ‘is that three years ago you wanted to marry me and yet now you’re behaving like you’ve been trapped by some designing hussy! What changed?’

‘You said no,’ Zarif growled like a grizzly bear.

A great storm of fiery emotion engulfed Ella, who was thoroughly sick of his inability to work out the obvious. ‘Of course I said no. I was madly in love with you and then you told me you still loved Azel and that she was irreplaceable—’

His brilliant dark eyes narrowed as he stared back at her in evident bewilderment. ‘I’m sure I did not say that.’

‘You did say it. You said she would always be in your heart and only a total madwoman would have married you after being told that!’

‘You said you were madly in love with me...’ he breathed uncertainly.

‘Three years ago...before I wised up and realised that you were a lost cause better left lost in the past!’ Ella parried with hot cheeks and acid bite as she stalked past him.

Zarif was frozen in the centre of the room trying to recall saying what she had flung at him. Had his guilty conscience stirred him into making that claim? Could he really have been that crass that day? Was it possible that Ella had loved him then? A flicker of gold burned in his abstracted gaze as he mulled that idea over until it burst like a rainbow on a sunny day over his every thought. Inshallah, he had been blessed by the gift of another child and the perfect excuse to keep the woman of his dreams. Did he really need that excuse? What had he been agonising about? And why had he driven her away?

Even his uncle had urged him to move on and recognise that this was a fresh start. But he hadn’t moved on, had he? He had allowed his guilt and regret from the past to wall him off from the infinitely more promising present. It was time to tell her the truth even if that threatened to change her view of him in a way that he dreaded. Swallowing hard, Zarif headed to his office safe. Pride was all very well but his marriage was on the line and he did not think he was in a strong enough position to keep secrets.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

ELLA WAS SO angry and wounded that she wanted to scream her hurt to the rooftops. Zarif wanted the baby but he didn’t want her.

Ella would only be tolerated and accepted as a wife because she was the baby’s mother. Zarif would continue to view Azel as the perfect matchless partner even while Ella lay in his bed and gave birth to his child. It wa

sn’t fair, it simply wasn’t fair, she thought with ferocious resentment even though she knew that life was frequently unfair. She could not face leading such a life with Zarif even for the sake of their unborn child. Such a marriage could not possibly be happy and their child would be damaged by the strife between them. He had to divorce her. Somehow she had to persuade him that a divorce that would grant him liberal access to their child was the best solution for all of them.

Of course, she could do something scandalous, which would make it much easier for him to accede to a divorce, she conceded, her brain roving off on a tangent as she descended a rear set of stairs in search of fresh air. She was desperate to escape the palace and leave behind the hothouse tension of her row with Zarif. It was running away and she knew it was running away but she couldn’t face another session with Zarif, particularly not after having exposed herself to the extent that she had. Why had she told him that she had been madly in love with him three years earlier? What had she hoped to achieve with that admission? In retrospect she felt humiliated but knew she had brought it on herself.

As the heat engulfed her in an area not cooled by fans, Ella longed for a breeze and thought nostalgically back to the occasion when her father had taken her mother and her out for a drive in an open-topped sports car. Of course, if she wanted to scandalise the populace she could go for a drive now, she thought suddenly, thinking of the vast basement of high-performance cars she had viewed only the week before when she was exploring the palace. Zarif might rarely drive himself anywhere but he had a fabulous collection of vehicles. Her chin rising at a combative angle, Ella crossed the courtyard to the garage block.

It was the work of a moment to indicate which car she wanted brought out to the two men engaged in lovingly polishing one. Naturally they didn’t question the command: she was Zarif’s queen and they undoubtedly assumed that he or someone else would be driving her.

Within minutes, the fire-engine-red Ferrari was parked out on the forecourt, paintwork gleaming in the hot sunlight. Ella breathed in deep and slow and got behind the wheel. It was a very powerful car. As she drove towards the gates she travelled slowly while she familiarised herself with the steering and the controls. There was no way she would take it into the city centre, she conceded, shrinking from the prospect of all that traffic, but she could certainly take it for a spin on the desert highway that encircled the walls of the old city.

The gate guards made no attempt to hide their shock when they saw her seated behind the wheel driving and without a team of bodyguards in tow. Obedience, however, was engrained in the royal staff and they opened the gates, although she had not the smallest doubt that the minute she drove out the guards would be on the phone informing the powers-that-be that she had left the grounds and, even worse, was breaking the law by driving herself. Indeed she had only travelled a couple of hundred yards before she glanced in her rear-view mirror and saw two army vehicles hurtling out onto the road behind her. The sight made her foot press down on the accelerator.

* * *

‘Your wife has just driven out of the gates in your Ferrari!’ Hamid informed Zarif, huffing and puffing and red-faced from the speed with which he had mounted the stairs to deliver that explosive news.

Cold sweat drenched Zarif at the thought of Ella behind the wheel of so powerful a car. He closed his eyes and for a split second he prayed, warding off the images of the aftermath of Azel’s fatal crash, the wreckage scattered across the road, the poignant sight of his son’s tiny jacket lying by the roadside covered in sand.

‘I must follow her.’

‘I have put the army in pursuit.’

Zarif spun in disbelief. ‘Are you crazy? I don’t want anyone chasing her, panicking her into crashing!’ he exclaimed in horror. ‘Tell them to keep their distance from her and not to try to stop her because I don’t want her speeding up to escape them.’