year...’ Zarif murmured, disconcerted by the speed with which that time period had suggested itself to him and wondering where that idea had come from. After all, he had never kept a single mistress for as long as a year. His interest in a woman faded within the first few weeks of bedding her even though he saw comparatively little of his lovers. At the same time he tried and failed to picture Ella in the Dubai apartment while wondering if word of an Englishwoman’s presence there would be more likely to be leaked to the press. Just as quickly, he realised that the Dubai option would be a very bad idea. And that indeed he had a much better idea in the offing and one indeed that would make the punishment fit the crime.
‘For the sake of appearances, we will get married,’ Zarif decreed without hesitation.
‘Married?’ Ella exclaimed with stark incredulity.
‘I don’t want a scandal and if I marry you, even when it ends in divorce after a year, it will be a safer and more acceptable option to my people. Marriage would also have the advantage of allowing me to see as much of you as I want to,’ Zarif completed smoothly, his mind made up, the stirrings of his conscience magically washed away. If he married her, after all, he wouldn’t be breaking any rules or taking advantage of her. It was wonderful, he thought with a rare lightness of heart, what a little thinking outside the box could achieve.
Feeling rather as though she had gone ten rounds with a champion boxer, Ella stood up and set down her coffee cup. Marry Zarif? Embrace all that she had rejected three years earlier? Her entire being shrank from such a challenge. ‘I couldn’t do it...I couldn’t marry you.’
Raw anger roared like a hurricane through Zarif’s lean powerful frame and gleamed pure, startlingly bright gold in his tawny eyes. ‘You have twelve hours in which to consider that position,’ he breathed in a raw-edged undertone. ‘If you don’t phone me within that period, I will assume that the negative answer stands.’
Ella’s feet were locked to the carpet, her eyes flying wide on his hard, darkly handsome features. Dismay was piercing her with little warning stabs and reminding her that rejecting her parents’ only rescue option was not a good idea. ‘Twelve hours is ridiculous,’ she said nonetheless, playing for time.
‘It is more than generous,’ Zarif contradicted.
Ella was pale as a white sheet. ‘Even when you know you’ve already won?’ she whispered, because all the pros and cons were piling up like an avalanche inside her brain and she could not evade the obvious answer.
Zarif could turn the clock back for her parents, returning their lives to the safe cosy routine that had been theirs before Jason’s interference. Zarif was the only person with the power to do that. Her father’s staff would also be protected from unemployment. How could she possibly turn her back on such important results and walk away, leaving her parents and everybody else concerned to sink or swim? All the cons, after all, would be on her side of the fence, making the payment one of personal sacrifice.
Zarif stalked closer with all the grace of a prowling black panther. ‘Have I won?’
‘How could I turn down an offer like that?’ Ella asked shakily. ‘My parents don’t deserve what they’re going through right now. It’s bad enough for them to be forced to face the kind of person Jason really is without facing financial ruin at the same time.’
Zarif stretched out a slim tanned hand and closed it round hers to tug her closer. ‘So, you will marry me?’
‘But it won’t work...even for only a year,’ Ella protested weakly. ‘I won’t fit in.’
Eyes golden as the heart of a fire flamed over her troubled face. ‘You will fit in my bed to perfection,’ Zarif assured her and as panic and sexual awareness clenched her every muscle with raw tension Ella registered that that was really the only thought in his mind.
She stared up at him, almost mesmerised by his stunning gaze, and he lowered his head. His wide sensual mouth nuzzled against the corner of hers and she shivered, suddenly hot and cold inside her skin while little tingles of sexual awareness snaked through the lower part of her body. The scent of him was in her nostrils, a hint of some exotic spice overlaid with clean, husky male that was both familiar and dangerously welcome. His wide mobile mouth drifted across hers, his tongue breaking the seal of her lips and darting within, plunging deep in a single measured stab of eroticism before he pressed his hard mouth urgently to hers. That kiss was like being hit with white lightning, desire exploding within her like a fire ball, fiery tendrils of heat reaching low in her belly, and her knees trembled, her breasts swelling and nipples pinching tight.
Zarif lifted his handsome dark head and slowly drew in a deep breath to look down at her with hot possessive appreciation blazing in his golden eyes. ‘Yes, you will fit into my bed as though you were born to be there.’
In the aftermath, rage gripped Ella and she wanted to smack him across the face. For a split second she had lost control, indeed lost sight of everything because he had thrown her straight into that disturbing world of exciting sensation that she had almost forgotten. And she could have wept at that knowledge for she had diligently dated more than one attractive man over the past three years and not one of them had made her heart leap and her body tremble with a single kiss. At the same time she had no doubt that that brief embrace had affected Zarif on a much less high-flown level.
‘No, I wasn’t born to be in your bed... Azel was,’ Ella murmured flatly.
Disconcerted by the mere mention of Azel’s name, Zarif froze and shot an icy look of censure down at her. ‘You will not mention the name of my late wife or that of our child ever again,’ he warned her forbiddingly.
Well, at least she didn’t need to have any doubts about exactly where she stood in her future husband’s affections, Ella reflected grimly. But then that had been exactly why she didn’t marry the man she had once loved. Even seven years after her passing, Azel still ruled Zarif’s heart.
‘NO,’ ELLA TOLD her brother with quiet determination. ‘If you want to ask Zarif anything, you go and see him.’
‘And what use is that going to be? For goodness’ sake, you’re marrying the guy!’ Jason reminded her angrily. ‘Obviously you’ve got more sway with him than anyone else. Mum and Dad are over the moon and everything in everybody’s garden but mine is coming up roses. What about me?’
Ella studiously averted her gaze from her sibling’s furious face. Over the past three weeks everything had changed within the family circle. Once her father had heard his daughter’s news, he had made a steady recovery and had gratefully accepted Zarif’s contention that he could hardly let his future wife’s family either go bankrupt or lose their home. Zarif’s business manager, Yaman, had booked into a local hotel and the two men had worked out a viable rescue plan for the ailing firm. But right from that first day, all financial assistance on offer had been subject to the assurance that Jason would resign from the partnership and that her father would promise not to hire him again in any capacity. Gerald Gilchrist had duly given those guarantees and Jason had now officially left the firm. Her father had also insisted that Zarif’s aid be given in the form of a loan, which he intended to start repaying as soon as he could.
‘I’m sorry, Jason,’ Ella breathed uncomfortably. ‘Zarif isn’t a forgiving person.’
‘I’m out of a job and Dad thinks it would be easier all round if I move out of this house before your bloody ridiculous wedding!’
