Zarif's Convenient Queen

‘I should have told you how happy I am about the baby,’ Zarif replied instantly, resting tawny eyes on her with extraordinary intensity. ‘Yes, I was shocked but I do very much want our child.’

Ella sighed. ‘I never doubted that, Zarif.’

‘But you do doubt that I want to retain you as my wife. And yet I have always wanted you, habibti.’ Zarif withdrew the object she had assumed was a book from below his arm and set it on the coffee table where she could see that it was a leather-bound photo album. ‘It shames me to show you this but I hope that revealing one of my biggest secrets to you will persuade you that I am te

lling you the truth.’

Ella was frowning. ‘What secret?’ she questioned.

Zarif bent down and flipped open the photo album at random and she stood up to approach, recognising even from a distance of several feet that she was looking at a photograph of her younger self. She was wearing jeans and a sweater, walking along the street beside Cathy. ‘Who took that and when?’ she demanded in bewilderment.

‘I paid someone to take a collection of discreet photos of you when you were eighteen. It was...my secret stash. I could not have you—you were too young for me. I needed something and the photos were the only consolation I dared to take,’ he framed with a ragged edge to his deep drawl. ‘The first time I saw you was the first weekend Jason brought me to your home with him. You were seventeen and in the garden with your mother. You were wearing shorts and a pink top and you were laughing and you were literally the most beautiful sight I had ever seen. I was obsessed from that moment on...’

Ella was stunned by that speech. ‘I don’t believe you,’ she told him bluntly even though she remembered that same first meeting. He might have said she was a beautiful sight but her memory was different. She had been mortified that a very hot and fanciable male should see her in shorts that she was convinced showed far too much of her chubby thighs and bottom. She reached for the album and flicked through it, finding photo after photo taken without her awareness. She was shocked, disbelieving.

‘Let’s face it—I behaved like a stalker,’ Zarif breathed, dark blood lining his spectacular cheekbones. ‘I have no excuse.’

‘But you never showed the slightest interest in me!’ Ella reminded him helplessly.

‘I couldn’t. You were still at school when we first met. I had to wait for you to grow up and exist on very occasional glimpses of you,’ Zarif countered grimly. ‘It was an obsession that didn’t fade. I didn’t want any other woman. I waited for you.’

Ella viewed him wide-eyed. ‘You waited four blasted years for me to grow up?’ she prompted. ‘Were you crazy? I wanted you too! Eighteen would have been fine!’

‘No. I wanted a woman, not a child, which is why I waited. I didn’t want to take advantage of your inexperience. I didn’t want hero worship. I didn’t want to turn your head with my money. I just wanted you,’ Zarif breathed emotively. ‘But what I didn’t appreciate then, because I had never felt that way before, was that I was not simply attracted you, I was in love with you.’

‘Oh, no, please don’t tell me that now three years too late!’ Ella suddenly framed in anguished reproach. ‘If you loved me when you proposed and I turned you down it will break my heart because I loved you too.’

‘But it was my fault. I screwed up back then. And even after demanding this second chance with you I screwed up again so badly that I honestly didn’t know how to convince you of the duration and strength of my feelings for you without showing you that embarrassing album of stolen photos,’ Zarif told her in a hoarse undertone. ‘I felt such guilt that I was unable to love Azel. How could I admit that within two years of her death I took one look at a seventeen-year-old girl and fell in love with her?’

‘You loved me and you lied about it, you idiot!’ the woman of Zarif’s dreams hurled at him in a tone of tragedy.

‘Yes, habibti...when it comes to the love stuff, I’m pretty useless,’ Zarif was willing to admit because it gave him the chance to sweep her up into his arms and hold her so close that she could barely breathe. ‘But I do love you. I love you so much that I don’t think I could live without you now.’

‘But you said—’ Ella began.

‘No, don’t remind me. We both said lots of things that day—like you telling me that women in Vashir are treated like second-class citizens.’

Ella reddened. ‘It was the driving-ban thing. I didn’t know what it was really like until I lived here. I didn’t mean to insult you. I was just trying to think up excuses. I couldn’t tell you the truth and you seemed to feel nothing at all for me—you were so cold, so emotional.’

‘I was very upset. I was genuinely expecting you to say yes. That was arrogant of me. But then I didn’t know how I really felt about you until you told me about the baby and suddenly I realised that I was glad of any excuse to keep you.’

‘An excuse?’ she gasped.

‘And then I asked myself why I needed an excuse to do what I wanted to do, which was keep you for ever,’ Zarif extended abstractedly, studying her lovely face with warm dark golden eyes of appreciation. ‘And that’s what I intend to do if you’ll let me...keep you for ever.’

‘I can’t believe that you’ve loved me all this time,’ Ella admitted apologetically.

‘I will teach you to believe it, habibti,’ Zarif swore as he carried her up the narrow staircase and across a wide landing into a shaded bedroom. ‘But first, since there should be no more secrets between us, there are some other things I must talk about.’

He loved her? Could she believe that? She could certainly understand his guilt over his inability to love the first wife who had patently loved him. She could understand why he had been unable to admit that and why it would have been much easier for him to credit that his reaction to Ella was simple lust. ‘Am I the only person you’ve ever been in love with?’

‘Yes, habibti.’

‘That’s unusual,’ she pronounced, trying to take a sensible attitude as he set her down on a bed made up with snowy white linen. ‘Although you’re the only person I’ve ever been in love with as well.’

‘As my grandmother would have said were she here now, we’re a match made in heaven, habibti,’ Zarif declared with tender amusement. ‘You came back into my life to save me from a lifetime of regret, and loneliness.’

‘No,’ Ella corrected. ‘I came back into your life to ask you for a favour—’