‘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