Zarif's Convenient Queen

A gleam of surprise lightened Zarif’s spectacular eyes for it had been a very long time since anyone had addressed him with such a pronounced lack of respect. Indeed the last to do so had probably been her and he was both aggravated and yet strangely entertained by her boldness. It was a complete novelty in his world, where almost every word addressed to him was wrapped in flattery and a desire to ingratiate and please. His jaw line squared. ‘I was not aware that your parents were involved in this debacle.’

‘They were very much involved the moment Jason became a partner in Dad’s firm. My father was so proud that his son was joining the family business that he gave Jason a completely free hand,’ Ella explained heavily.

‘My business manager has already presented me with a file covering his investigation into how the loan was utilised,’ Zarif revealed gently.

‘So, really it wasn’t very nice of you to ask how you might be of assistance when I arrived!’ Ella shot back at him with spirit. ‘You were being facetious at my expense.’

‘Was I?’ Zarif quipped, scanning the animated expressiveness of her exquisite face, which openly brandished every emotion she experienced. He was convinced he could now read her like a children’s book and recognise her angry resentment and mortification that she should be put in the position of pleading her unworthy brother’s cause.

Zarif, in point of fact, had very few illusions about his former friend’s character. Long ago, Zarif had slowly been repelled by the traits he saw in Jason and would have dropped the friendship much sooner had it not been for the draw of Ella’s presence in the same house. His dark gaze hardened when he thought of the day it had all ended and the persistent bite of his indignation and dissatisfaction stung his ferocious pride afresh, tensing his spectacular bone structure and settling the charismatic curve of his mouth into a hard stubborn line. She had humiliated him, insulted his country and his people and outraged him beyond forgiveness but torture would not have persuaded him to admit that reality.

‘I think so,’ Ella told him squarely, noting the way his long dark lashes shadowed his cheekbones when he glanced down at her, seeing his handsome dark head take on a familiar angle, recalling how he had once listened to her with just that attitude. Unnerved by the memory and the overpowering urge to stare and eat up his hea

rtbreaking gorgeousness without restraint, Ella glanced furiously in the direction of the window like someone calculating the chances of her escape.

Unbelievable as it now seemed, she had once loved Zarif with her whole heart and soul, she recalled painfully. She would have done absolutely anything for him and in return he had hurt her very badly, inflicting a wound and an insecurity that even the passage of three long years had failed to eradicate. Even so, it had been a novel experience to discover that a marriage proposal could actually be wielded like an offensive weapon.

‘When I gave that loan to Jason, it was in the true spirit of generosity,’ Zarif countered with quiet assurance. ‘He was devastated by the loss of his employment and your parents were equally upset on his behalf. I genuinely wanted to help your family.’

‘That may be so,’ Ella conceded uncomfortably, because he seemed sincere, ‘but nothing is ever that simple. Jason needed another job more than he needed that cash. The loan just tempted him into dangerous fantasies about building his own business empire.’

‘As well as the settling of his personal debts, which was dishonest and in direct conflict with the terms on which the loan was made,’ Zarif sliced in calmly, cold censure of such behaviour etched in his lean bronzed features. ‘Your brother squandered the bulk of the money on frivolous purchases, which included a new Porsche and a personalised Range Rover. I will not write off the debt and forgive it. It would be against my principles to overlook what amounts to fraudulent behaviour.’

‘That is all very well, but what about my parents’ position in all this?’ Ella demanded emotively. ‘Do they deserve to suffer for Jason’s mistakes?’

‘That is not for me to answer,’ Zarif responded without expression. ‘They raised Jason, taught him their values. They must know their son best.’

‘No.’ Ella challenged that view with vehement force. ‘They only know the man they wanted him to be, not the man he actually is! At this moment, my mother and father are distraught at what Jason’s done.’

An untimely knock on the door at that instant of high tension heralded the appearance of a waiter with a tray. Ella closed her lips and breathed in deep to master her tumultuous emotions. Coffee was served in fine china cups, cakes proffered. Any appetite Ella might have had following her scratch meals in recent days had been killed stone dead by her ever-growing sense of dread of what the future might yet visit on her parents. In the lingering silence while the waiter walked to the door to leave, she searched Zarif’s extravagantly handsome features, cursing his inscrutability, desperate to see some sign of a softer response to her appeal on her parents’ behalf.

‘I’m afraid I don’t understand what you want from me,’ Zarif murmured half under his breath, his temperature rising as she sat forward, inadvertently revealing the shadowy valley between her full rounded breasts. There was a bitter irony to his response for he knew in that moment of fierce driving desire that what he wanted from her was exactly what he was convinced he could have had for the asking three years earlier.

Back then he had been no sophisticate, having never slept with anyone other than the wife he had married at the age of eighteen. He had wanted Ella and she had wanted him but he had believed it would be dishonourable to become intimate with her before he married her. Thanks to Ella’s rejection, he was no longer that innocent, he reflected with a bitterness that was laced with regret for past mistakes. His wide sensual mouth narrowed and compressed while he wondered if she was deliberately playing the temptress as women so often did with him in an effort to divert and attract him.

‘No, you are not that stupid,’ Ella flung back at him feelingly, pushing her slender hands down on the arms of the chair to rise upright and confront him. ‘You know very well I’m asking you to show some compassion for my parents’ predicament.’

The swishing luxuriance of her golden hair as it swung round her shoulders engaged his scrutiny, which lingered to take in the rosy colour warming her delicate features, serving only to accentuate the sapphire brilliance of her eyes. ‘In what way? And what are you offering me in return?’ Zarif murmured very drily. ‘Do you not think that in the complete loss of that loan, I have already paid dearly for my act of generosity towards your family?’

Confronted with that blunt question, Ella felt her face burn as though he had slapped it hard because that was not an angle she could take into account when she was asking him for yet another favour. ‘Yes, you have paid dearly...we all have, but I do genuinely believe that you should have thought about what you were doing when you offered Jason that loan in the first place.’

‘Before you start blaming me for your brother’s dishonesty and awakening my anger,’ Zarif purred like a jungle cat, shimmering dark golden eyes settling on her with predatory force and shocking her into sudden silence, ‘think about what you are saying and what you are asking me for. Some form of forgiveness which, as I have already stated, is out of the question in this case? Or are you asking me to throw away more money on your family?’

Standing there, Ella turned very pale, shame and anxiety combining to stir nausea in her tummy. Her tongue was glued to the roof of her mouth. She absolutely got his point and she could not bring herself to outright ask him for money to aid her parents because that seemed so very wrong, indeed quite outrageous in the circumstances. For the first time she questioned why she had approached him in the first place and why she had allowed Jason to influence her attitude. Surely, had she taken the time to think things through, she would have recognised that to ask Zarif for further financial help would be indefensible?

‘I’m just asking you to show some compassion, not for Jason or me but for my parents,’ she completed limply, too mortified to even make an attempt to meet his slashing gaze, knowing that it would only intensify her awareness of the weak and humiliating role she had allowed her brother to browbeat her into accepting. For an instant, she almost burst into speech about her parents’ current health problems, but compressed her lips on the conviction that playing a thousand violins to invite Zarif’s pity would only shame her and her family more.

‘Nicely put,’ Zarif countered with sardonic bite, his dark eyes glittering like jet knives, so shrewd was the stab of his incisive gaze. ‘You know how wealthy I am and like many other people I have met you expect me to come to the rescue. And I would have to ask you, especially when you have the audacity to ask me to go against my principles, what am I to receive in payment?’

The suffocating tension was convulsing Ella’s dry throat. She turned away, dropped down into her seat again and lifted her coffee cup like a tiny shield. ‘In payment? Anything I can offer,’ she muttered unevenly, knowing she had nothing to offer but gratitude and seriously embarrassed by that reality.

‘Are you offering me sex?’ Zarif enquired lazily.

And for a split second in receipt of that shocking question Ella wondered if she would agree to such a belittling act of intimacy if it could magically return her parents’ lives to normal. The answer came fast and forthright in her mind. And colour surged across her cheeks and ran up in a tide of pink to her hairline while her coffee cup rattled on the saucer as her hand trembled.

‘I can get sex anywhere whenever I want,’ Zarif derided.

‘I wasn’t going to offer it,’ Ella told him with as much dignity as she could muster, her teeth gritting on his arrogant self-assurance. Nevertheless, she suspected that he was simply stating the situation as it was. He was exceptionally good-looking and shockingly rich even without considering the kick it would give some women to bed a reigning king. She was quite sure that willing women formed queues for the privilege of getting him into bed and her staunch conviction that he was a virtually irresistible package only incensed her more.