by Various
Her limbs aching from another long day, Bella collapsed in the straw that lined Amira’s box.
The mare lowered her head and blew on her gently and Bella gave a groan and closed her eyes. ‘I’m so tired I could die. It’s riding that great brute Batal that finishes me off. He’s all muscle and I’m so worried that someone is going to recognise me that I can’t relax. Every time I ride him out, Hassan has to go and hide. It’s completely ridiculous that I can’t just ride as myself. I shall be glad when this stupid race is over. I’m only doing it for you, you know that, don’t you?’
Clearly oblivious to the enormous sacrifice being made for her, Amira started to munch hay and Bella smiled sleepily.
‘Ungrateful beast.’
She was drifting off when she heard the unmistakable crunch of a footstep in the yard outside.
Her senses on full alert, Bella sat up. Heart pounding, palms sweaty, she reached through the straw and closed her fingers around the heavy stick she’d buried there just in case.
They’d come for Amira.
Where were the guards that Zafiq had posted in the yard?
And then she remembered that the guards at the stables near the Retreat had been paid to be absent at the crucial moment.
Amira continued to eat and Bella stood slowly, holding her breath, careful to make no sound. She looked at the beautiful mare—the horse that meant so much to the people of Al-Rafid—and felt the full force of responsibility.
Once again she was all that stood between Amira and them.
Last time she hadn’t known the risk she was taking. Now she knew, and she was horribly conscious that she was no match for a group of organised criminals.
Reminding herself that she had the element of surprise on her side, she told herself that she had to act quickly. No hesitation.
If someone was going to harm Zafiq’s horse, they were going to have to go through her.
She watched, terrified, as a strong male hand grasped the bolt, shot it back and opened the stable door.
Her heart thundering, Bella grasped the stick with both hands and lifted it, inching to one side so that she could hit the man and not the horse.
In the shadowy light she could see that he was tall and powerfully built and her stomach cramped because her chances of defending Amira against someone as muscular as this man were remote. Swiftly she revised her plan.
As he raised his hand to the horse Bella gave a hiss.
‘Get away from her—slowly. I know exactly who you are and what you’re doing and I have a weapon pointed straight at you. Step away slowly or I will shoot you.’
‘If you know exactly who I am and what I’m doing, then why would you need a weapon? And it’s hard to shoot someone with a stick.’
Recognising Zafiq’s dry, sarcastic drawl, Bella’s knees flooded with relief and she dropped the stick and sagged against the wall. ‘Oh, it’s you!’ She pressed her hand to her chest, feeling her heart banging. ‘You frightened the life out of me!’
‘Is that why you were holding a stick?’ He flashed a torch in her direction and Bella turned her head away, squinting against the light.
‘I thought someone was after Amira.’ She slid back down on the straw, wobbly as a newborn foal. ‘What are you doing here? You wanted to give me a heart attack and finish me off altogether?’ Now that her eyes had adjusted, she could just about make out his features and she wondered why she hadn’t recognised him instantly when every contour of his body was indelibly printed into her brain.
‘I heard a rumour that you were sleeping in the stable.’
‘Why would that bother you?’
‘Party-girl Bella Balfour living in a heap of straw, no hot or cold running water?’
‘I lived in a tent with you for four days,’ she snapped, her body still weak from reaction, ‘and that wasn’t exactly a five-star experience. Where are the guards?’
‘Obviously they know better than to arrest the Sheikh.’
‘I thought they might have been paid off, like last time.’
‘The guards in Al-Rafid are fiercely loyal to me. They cannot be bribed. What is this about, Bella?’ His tone was cold and hard. ‘Rising at five every morning and working until your hands bleed? Sleeping with my horse? It seems you’ve gone out of your way to charm everyone, including my brother. What are you playing at?’
Taken aback by his savage tone and the injustice of what he was saying, Bella glared at him. ‘I’m working, not playing. I’m working a fourteen-hour day and then I’m sleeping here. You think I’m having sex with everyone in your stables, is that what you’re saying?’ Still overwrought from thinking someone was going to steal Amira, her voice was shrill. ‘You think that the only way anyone is ever going to have anything nice to say about me is if they’ve slept with me!’
He was across the stable before she could move, his hands lifting her in a single powerful movement, his body pressing hers against the wall. ‘I want to know how far it’s gone with my brother. Rachid is very young and he has no experience of women like you—’
Overtired, shocked to see him again and bitterly hurt by his cynical view of her, Bella exploded. ‘I can’t win, can I? I’ve been working myself to the bone to make sure no one could complain about me! I don’t have a single decent nail left, I haven’t washed my hair for a week and I’m covered in bruises from—’ She was about to say your stallion, but just stopped herself in time. ‘Frankly I wouldn’t have the energy for sex even if the opportunity presented itself so you can take your jealousy elsewhere!’
‘I’m not jealous.’ His thickened tone cut through the tense atmosphere and his hands tightened on her shoulders. ‘And your morals are your own business.’
‘Then why are you so angry? If you don’t care, why are you standing there yelling at me?’
‘Because Rachid can’t cope with a woman like you.’
‘Rachid can cope with a great deal more than you think.’ She thought back to the numerous conversations she’d had with the prince since that first day. ‘He wants more responsibility, Zafiq, but the problem is you’re so brilliant at everything he feels daunted! You need to praise him, make him feel good about himself! Not everyone is as confident as you are—being given responsibility helps confidence.’
‘What do you know about responsibility?’
It was a fair comment, but Bella was too wound up to be reasonable. ‘I know how it feels never to be given any! Your siblings aren’t children any more. Take a tip from me—if you believe someone will always screw up, then they probably will. Why don’t you try showing some faith in people and see what happens? You can practise on me for a start! I’ve been busting a gut here to make sure I don’t put a foot wrong and you haven’t once bothered to come down and say I’m doing well. You told me I’d last a day, and I’ve been here a month so stick that in your…your…Bedouin tea and drink it,’ she finished lamely.
He released her so suddenly that she staggered and Bella rubbed her hands down her arms, not because he’d hurt her but because being held by him had felt unbelievably good after all these weeks without him. She’d been in a different sort of desert, she thought miserably. A barren wilderness without Zafiq.
‘You seem to know a great deal about my family. You will tell me who has been gossiping about Rachid.’
‘No one has been gossiping! I’ve talked to him in person. Believe it or not, we have quite a lot in common! I know what it’s like to have a glamorous, high-spending mother. And I know how it feels to hear everyone around you criticising the person you were raised to love.’
Amira shifted in the box and Zafiq put out a hand to calm the animal. ‘Our family situation is extremely complicated—’
‘Don’t talk to me about complicated!’ Bella erupted, and suddenly all the emotions she’d been bottling up exploded to the surface, refusing to be contained. ‘Six weeks ago I discovered that my younger sister—my sister who I’ve lived with all my life, my sister who I went to school with an
d played with—isn’t my father’s child and that my mother wasn’t the saintly person I always thought she was. My father hates me, the whole world hates me, my younger sister hates me and even my twin has turned her back on me, so don’t talk to me about complicated!’
Damn, damn, damn.
Why couldn’t she be icily calm? Why couldn’t she ever keep herself together when she needed to?
Her outburst was greeted by a prolonged silence and then he raked his fingers through his hair, his own control clearly challenged.
‘You are so emotional. I am quite sure your father does not hate you,’ Zafiq breathed, ‘and perhaps it would be wise to consider the possibility that your sister has not turned her back on you, but been unable to get in touch. You’ve been marooned in the desert. And as for the world—the world’s opinion doesn’t matter.’
‘Try seeing your face splashed over every newspaper before you say that.’ Bella gave an undignified sniff and wiped her eyes on her T-shirt, furious with herself for crying. ‘And maybe my father doesn’t exactly hate me, but he certainly can’t bear to look at me because I remind him of my mother, and that’s pretty hurtful, I can tell you.’
‘Your mother died when you were a baby.’
‘Yeah—’ Bella’s voice was husky and she cleared her throat. ‘All I had was a memory and that’s not looking too good right now.’
‘Your mother must have been an extremely beautiful woman and extreme beauty often brings complications,’ Zafiq said quietly, and Bella flushed slightly, wishing she wasn’t so aware of everything he said and did.
‘Well, her beauty obviously didn’t make her happy. And that’s because she was stupid enough to marry a man she didn’t love.’
‘Like most women, you insist on linking marriage with romance.’
‘With good reason!’ Bella walked over to Amira and buried her face in the mare’s neck, seeking comfort. She felt angry with her mother, angry with her father and angry with herself. ‘My father thought she was in love with him, but she wasn’t. She just wanted the Balfour name and the money. If you don’t care about a person, you shouldn’t get married.’
Her hand still on Amira’s back, Bella turned to look at him. ‘It’s inevitable, isn’t it? If you marry someone you don’t love, at some point you’re going to meet someone you do love. You’re going to meet someone who makes you feel something you didn’t know it was possible to feel. And you’re going to realise that feeling is more important to you than money or status. And it isn’t going to matter that the relationship isn’t possible or that you’re totally unsuited—because once you realise you’re in love, you’ve basically got two choices. You go for it, and you wreck loads of lives along the way, or you decide you’re going to do the “right thing” and stay, making yourself and everyone around you miserable in the process because you know you’ve missed your one chance of happiness. So either way, getting married when you’re not in love means you’re going to wind up miserable.’
Zafiq said nothing and Bella turned back to the horse.
‘The funny thing was—there wasn’t any money.’ Her voice was muffled against the mare’s smooth coat. ‘It had all gone and getting everything back became an obsession for my father. And my mother hated that obsession. She hated everything Balfour. So she had an affair. And she died giving birth to that child. My little sister, Zoe. The one I messed up just before I came here.’ Crying now, Bella hugged Amira, past caring that she was making a fool of herself. ‘Do you believe in justice, Zafiq? Is that why she died?’
‘Are you crying for your mother or your sister?’ Strong hands prised her away from the horse. ‘You are torturing yourself—’ Without allowing her to resist, he pulled her into his arms, hugging her tightly, and it felt so good to be held that for a moment Bella just stood there, breathing in his masculine scent, revelling in the feeling of being close to him again.
But it wasn’t real, was it?
Until she’d started crying, he hadn’t touched her. It wasn’t personal.
It was time she learned to stand on her own two feet.
‘Let me go, Zafiq,’ she muttered. ‘I know you hate crying women. Sahra told me.’
‘That is because Sahra uses tears like currency—she trades them for whatever she wants.’ Zafiq stroked her hair away from her face, forcing her to look at him. ‘Is this why you were in the Retreat? Escaping from the scandal?’
It horrified her that he’d obviously read what had been written about her. ‘Which headline did you like best? Blue Blood Turns Bad? Illegitimate Daughter Revealed at Balfour Ball?’ The headlines were engraved in her brain and she squirmed as she remembered the salacious, vindictive things that had been printed. ‘Balfour Family in Ruins was quite a juicy one.’
‘Stop pretending you don’t care.’
‘I shouldn’t care. I’ve had it for most of my life. I’ve been the “bad twin” since I was packed off to boarding school. I even lived up to the nickname the press gave me.’
He gave a sardonic smile. ‘Did it work?’
‘Did what work?’
‘The attention-seeking behaviour?’
‘No. To get attention, there has to be someone around to give you attention.’ Bella sniffed. ‘My mother died, stepmother number one dumped me in boarding school and left me to fend for myself and then a few months ago—’ she swallowed ‘—my second stepmother, Lillian, died. I didn’t spend much time with her but she was a good person. And she didn’t deserve my father. So you can see that it’s pretty hard being saintly in our family, with him as an example. And pretty hard being told to mend your ways by someone like him.’ She tried to pull away but Zafiq was still holding her firmly, his eyes fixed on hers as he prised the truth from her.
‘Are you telling me he sent you alone to the Retreat just after discovering that your sister was the child of another man and that your mother had an affair?’
‘I was supposed to think about my behaviour and memorise my Balfour rule. Dignity—’ She imitated her father’s voice perfectly. “‘A Balfour must strive never to bring the family name into disrepute through unbecoming conduct, criminal activity or disrespectful attitudes towards others.’”
‘You are supposed to follow that rule?’
‘Until I stole Amira I’ve never indulged in criminal activity,’ Bella muttered, ‘but I guess I’ve pretty much ticked all the boxes now. Still, I’ve made the newspapers a fortune.’
‘Your father was wrong to send you away with no support.’
Bella’s eyes burned but she felt a stab of guilt. ‘Actually, it was my fault,’ she whispered. ‘I behaved horribly.’
Zafiq curved his hands over her shoulders and she shivered because it felt so good to be touched by him.
Too good…
‘It was the afternoon before the ball.’ Anticipating rejection, Bella pulled away from him, rubbing her fingers over her face to clear the tears. ‘My father holds this charity ball every year, you know the sort of thing—glitz and glamour. Anyway, Olivia and I decided to go through our mother’s things. There were boxes of books, jewellery, ball gowns—I found a diary.’ She dug a tissue out of her pocket and blew her nose. Who would have thought he was capable of being such a good listener? ‘Being stupid, we read the diary.’
‘That’s how you discovered your mother’s affair?’
‘Yes. And immediately it all made sense. I was always proud that I looked like my mother. It was as if there was that special link between us—as if when I looked in the mirror, I was seeing a bit of her reflected there.’ Bella fiddled with a strand of her blonde hair. ‘But suddenly I discovered why my father can’t even bear to look at me. Every time he looks at me, he thinks of her betrayal.’
Zafiq inhaled sharply. ‘Bella—’
‘Well, obviously it wasn’t a great thing to find out. I wanted to keep the whole thing a secret—I didn’t want to tell anyone. Especially not Zoe—that’s my sister. I thought that would be a hideous, horrible thing to di
scover about yourself.’ She pushed the tissue back into her pocket. ‘Why stir up stuff that no one needs to hear?’
‘But your twin disagreed?’
‘Morally upstanding Olivia—always has to do the “right thing” even when the right thing is going to create carnage. You’d get on well with her. She’s big on duty and responsibility. Goes without saying we’re non-identical. Anyway, we had a terrible row.’ She rubbed her fingers across her forehead. ‘Olivia said we should tell Zoe the truth. I pointed out that telling Zoe meant telling everyone—I mean, our mother kept it a secret, I wasn’t sure it was our business to blurt it all out. You have no idea what a mess it was. Olivia said I was like our mother—’ the breath hitched in her throat, remembering just how badly that accusation had hurt her ‘—and I…I slapped her.’
‘You hit your sister?’
‘Shocking, isn’t it?’ Bella whispered, lifting her hand to her mouth. ‘I even shocked myself with that one. I’ve wanted to call her but I don’t know if she’ll even speak to me.’
Zafiq sighed. ‘You were upset, Bella—’
‘That’s no excuse. Basically, I blew it. And the worst of it was, some paparazzi low life had wormed his way into the party and was standing outside the door. So the next day it was all over the tabloids, and that’s how Zoe found out.’ The guilt was like a heavy weight, crushing her, and her hands were shaking as she forced herself to confront the issues she’d been avoiding for weeks. ‘I didn’t want her to know at all, and in the end she found out in the worst possible way. Because of me. I’ll never forgive myself for that.’
‘It wasn’t your fault that the press had gained access to a private party—’
‘It was my fault.’ The tears scalded her throat. ‘I know what the press are like. Better than anyone. They’ve followed me since I was a child. If I’d been more guarded—but I’m not. I find it impossible not to just say what I’m thinking and I gave them what they wanted. I gave them the shots and I gave them the stories. And this was the story of the decade. My father thought I’d done it on purpose for the attention. That’s why he banished me.’