Sheikh's Forbidden Queen: Zarif's Convenient Queen / Gambling with the Crown

A slight noise sent Ella’s head whipping round. Her brother, who had the thickset build of a rugby player and the portly outline of a man who wasted little time keeping fit, stood in the kitchen doorway nursing a glass of whisky. ‘How’s Mother?’ he asked gruffly.

‘Holding her own. The prognosis is good,’ Ella told him quietly and she turned back to the sink, keen to keep busy rather than dwell on the disquieting fact that her brother had neither accompanied her to the hospital nor made the effort to visit their mother since.

‘It’s not my fault she had the heart attack,’ Jason declared in a belligerent tone.

‘I didn’t say it was,’ Ella responded, determined not to get into an argument with her sibling, who even as a child would have argued twenty-four hours straight sooner than yield a point. ‘I’m not looking to blame anyone.’

‘I mean...Mother could’ve had an attack at any time and at least the way it happened we were here to deal with it and ensure she got to hospital quickly,’ Jason pointed out glibly.

‘Yes,’ Ella agreed soothingly for the sake of peace and she paused before continuing, ‘I wanted to ask you...that massive loan that you said you took out three years ago...’

‘What about it?’ Jason prompted with a harshness that suggested that he was in no mood to answer her questions.

‘Which bank was it with?’

‘No bank would’ve given me that amount of cash without collateral,’ Jason countered with a look that scorned her ignorance of such matters. ‘Zarif gave me the money.’

When he spoke that name out loud, the sink brush fell from Ella’s hand as her fingers lost their grip and she whirled round from the sink in shock. ‘Zarif?’ she repeated in disbelief, her voice breaking on the syllables.

‘After I was made redundant at the bank, Zarif offered me the cash to start up my own business. An interest-free loan, no repayments to be made for the first three years,’ Jason explained grudgingly. ‘Only an idiot would have refused to take advantage of such a sweet deal.’

‘That was very...kind of him,’ Ella remarked tightly, her lovely face pale and tight with control while she battled the far more powerful feelings struggling inside her. Reactions she had learned to suppress during three long years of fierce self-discipline, never ever allowing herself to look back to what had been the most agonising experience of her entire life. ‘But you didn’t start up your own business...you became Dad’s partner instead.’

‘Well, home’s where the heart is, or so they say,’ her brother quipped without shame. ‘The family firm was going nowhere until I stepped in.’

Ella bit back an angry rejoinder and compressed her lips in resolute silence. She wished Jason had chosen to set up his own business. Instead he had bankrupted a stable firm that had brought in a good, if not spectacular, income. ‘I can’t believe you accepted money from Zarif.’

‘When a billionaire flashes his cash in my direction, I’d be a fool to do otherwise,’ Jason informed her in a patronising tone. ‘Of course Zarif only offered the loan in the first place because he thought you were going to marry him and an unemployed brother-in-law would have been a serious embarrassment to him.’

The muscles in Ella’s slender back stretched taut as her brother voiced that unsettling claim. ‘If that’s true, you should’ve given the money back to him when we broke up.’

‘You didn’t break up, Ella,’ Jason interrupted scornfully. ‘You inexplicably refused to marry the catch of the century. Zarif was hardly going to come back and visit us after a slap in the face like that. So, if you’re looking for someone to blame for this mess, look at the part you played in setting us all up for this fall!’

Blue eyes flying wide with dismay, her delicate cheekbones flushed, Ella spun round again. ‘Are you trying to suggest that I’m in some way responsible for what’s happened?’

Bitter resentment flared in her brother’s bloodshot blue eyes. ‘You made an entirely selfish decision to reject Zarif, which not only offended him but also destroyed my friendship with him... I mean, he never contacted me again!’

Ella lowered her pounding head, loose waves of thick honey-coloured blonde hair concealing her discomfited face and deeply troubled eyes. Her brother’s friendship with Zarif had to all intents and purposes died the same day that Ella had refused Zarif’s proposal of marriage and she could not deny that fact. ‘I may have turned him down but it wasn’t a selfish decision—we weren’t right for each other,’ she declared awkwardly, staring at a hole in the tiled floor.

‘When I accepted that money from Zarif, I naturally assumed you were going to marry him and I had no worries about repaying it,’ Jason argued vehemently, tossing back another unappreciative slug of his father’s best whisky. ‘Obviously it’s your fault that we’re in trouble now. After all you’ve had your share of Zarif’s money too!’

Ella frowned, sharply disconcerted by that sudden accusation coming at her out of nowhere. ‘What money? I never touched Zarif’s money.’

‘Oh, yes, you did,’ Jason told her with galling satisfaction. ‘When you needed the cash to go into partnership with Cathy on the shop, where do you think I got it from?’

Ella studied her big brother in horror. ‘You told me it was your money, your savings!’ she protested strickenly. ‘Are you saying that the money came from Zarif’s loan?’

‘Where would I have got savings from?’ Jason demanded with vicious derision. ‘I was in debt to my eyeballs when I was made redundant. I had car loans, bank loans, a massive mortgage on my apartment...’

Ella was stunned by that blunt admission. After finishing college, she and her friend Cathy had opened a bookshop with a coffee area in the market town where they lived. Ella had borrowed from Jason to make her share of the investment and she made heavy monthly repayments to her brother in return for that initial financing. In fact, two and a half years on she was still as poor as a church mouse and couldn’t afford to move out of her parents’ house or run a car on her current share of the takings from the shop. The shop was doing well though, just not well enough to put icing on Ella’s cake and offer her any luxuries. Cathy, the only child of affluent parents who owned a chain of nursing homes, was in a much more comfortable position because the shop was not her only means of support.

‘You deliberately misled me,’ Ella condemned shakily. ‘I would never have accepted that money had I known it came from Zarif and you know it.’

‘Beggars can’t be choosers. You were glad enough to get the money at the time.’

‘If it’s true that my share of the shop investment came from Zarif’s loan, then obviously I’m more involved than I appreciated.’ On weak legs, Ella made that grudging concession before she sank down heavily in a chair by the kitchen table. ‘But you can’t seriously blame me for the fact that you’ve spent such a huge amount of that cash on silly superficial things like new offices and the like, and now can’t repay it.’

Jason sent her a withering look of pure dislike that made her pale. ‘Can’t I? When I first got that money, I never expected to have to pay any of it back!’ he told her bluntly. ‘Naturally I assumed you’d marry Zarif, and if you had married him Zarif would never have expected me to repay the loan! If you must know, I blame you for this whole bloody nightmare. If you hadn’t played ducks and drakes with Zarif and thrown his proposal back in his royal teeth, we wouldn’t be in this situation now!’

Her teeth gritted, Ella jumped back out of her seat in a temper. ‘That’s not fair. From the moment you got that loan, you have been totally dishonest and criminally extravagant. You broke the law when you forged Mum and Dad’s signatures to remortgage this house, you deceived all of us about what was really happening with the firm... Don’t you dare try and make out that any of this is my fault!’ she slung back at him in angry self-defence.

‘You’re so selfish and short-sighted!’ Jason condemned, his face reddening with fury and his fists clenching. ‘You’re the one who wrecked Zarif’s friendship with this family and put us into this humiliating position, so you should be the one to go and see him now and ask him to give us the time to sort this out.’

‘See him?’ Ella repeated half an octave higher, her consternation at that suggestion unhidden. ‘You want me to go and actually see Zarif?’

‘Who better?’ Jason queried with a curled lip. ‘Men are always inclined to be more understanding when a beautiful woman asks them for a favour and Zarif wouldn’t be human if the sight of a woman begging didn’t give him a kick.’

Ella flushed to the roots of her hair and studied the surface of the table. Her heightened colour slowly receded while she contemplated the prospect of meeting Zarif again and her pallor was soon matched by a rolling tide of nauseous recoil from the image of begging Zarif for anything. ‘I can’t do it. I can’t bear to see him again,’ she framed between gritted teeth, ashamed that she was being forced to admit to such a weakness, such a lingering sensitivity towards something that had happened so long ago.

‘Well, he’s unlikely to want to see me in the circumstances but curiosity alone is sure to gain you an entry to the royal presence,’ Jason forecast with soaring confidence. ‘And you don’t even have to go to that godforsaken country of his to do it. He’s endowing some fancy science building at Oxford University and making a speech there the day after tomorrow.’

Her lovely face was pale and tight with strain. ‘It hardly matters because I don’t want to see or speak to Zarif again.’

‘Not even to rescue Mummy and Daddy from this nightmare?’ Jason chided unpleasantly. ‘Let’s face it—you’re our only hope right now. And I can only hope that Zarif has a sentimental streak hidden somewhere behind that stiff upper lip of his.’

‘I’m not responsible for the loan or the mortgaging of this house behind Mum and Dad’s back,’ Ella stated curtly while secretly wondering whether she was being selfish and feeling tortured by her brother’s insistence that only she could help her parents in their current plight.

Was Jason only trying to manipulate her to save his own hide? Making a last-ditch suggestion that would mortify her pride but that would ultimately make no difference to the situation? Did he really think that Zarif would listen to her? Certainly, Zarif had liked and respected her mother and father and probably had no idea that Jason’s mishandling of the loan had destroyed her parents’ security as well as his own.

‘Have you no idea how valuable so rich a friend can be? Have you no concept of what you did to my hopes and dreams when you turned him down?’ Jason demanded with stinging bitterness. ‘I could’ve been flying high again on the back of Zarif’s support.’

‘But not on the strength of your own efforts,’ Ella muttered in disgust half under her breath.

‘What did you say?’ Jason shot at her accusingly, striding forward, red-faced rage ready to consume him.

Ella slid out of her seat and carefully avoided his aggressive stance on her passage to the door. ‘Nothing...I said nothing,’ she lied unsteadily. ‘We’re both too tired and stressed for this discussion. I’m going to bed.’

‘You’re a selfish, stupid little bitch, Ella!’ Jason snarled furiously behind her. ‘You could have had it all and instead what have you got? A half share in a bookshop the size of a cupboard!’

Her spine stiffened and she slowly turned. ‘I also have my integrity,’ she declared, lifting her chin while trying not to think about the source of the loan that had helped her to buy into the shop. But it was a thought she could not evade while she went through the motions of washing and getting into bed with the slow, heavy movements of a woman moving on automatic pilot. Exhaustion was finally overcoming her.

But even as her weary body lay heavy as lead on the mattress her thoughts marched on. Whether she liked it or not she was much more personally involved in her family’s financial crash than she had thought she was. As she could not afford to pay the money back in its entirety, Zarif literally owned her half of the shop, not that she thought there was any imminent risk of a billionaire putting in a claim on a share of the venture.

Jason’s other allegations had hit home even harder. It was unquestionably her fault that Zarif had withdrawn his friendship from the Gilchrist family. Ella’s rejection had stunned and angered him and quite understandably he had never visited her home or her family again. For the very first time, Ella felt guilty about that reality. She was equally willing to credit that Jason had never expected to be forced to repay Zarif’s loan because he had assumed that Ella would say ‘yes’ if Zarif proposed. Evidently he had guessed long before Ella had that Zarif had serious intentions towards his sister and Jason had made his plans accordingly. Had her brother spent that money recklessly because he assumed he could afford to do whatever he liked with it and would never be called to account for his behaviour?

Reluctantly, Ella acknowledged that three years earlier with his expectations of advancement soaring on the idea of Zarif marrying his sister that had most likely been Jason’s outlook. In the darkness she winced, shrinking from the daunting sense of responsibility now assailing her. She was not the innocent bystander she had assumed she was in the mess that her brother had created, she conceded painfully. Her relationship with Zarif had almost certainly influenced Jason’s attitude to that loan and what he subsequently chose to do with the money.

She recalled that the new offices chosen for her father’s accountancy firm and the hiring of extra staff had taken place while she was still dating Zarif, which meant that Jason did have some excuse for his assumption that he would never be expected to repay the money he had borrowed.