A Mediterranean Marriage

Rauf was offended by that unsought and forbidden image of Lily ornamenting his bed, and his lean, strong face was grim. He could not give credence to the smallest doubt of her guilt now: she had played her part in defrauding him. Once he had assembled the necessary evidence, he would hand her over to the police. He would do what was right and would not be swayed by her desirability or his own lust into compromising either his own ethical code or the honour of the Kasabian family. There should be no distinction between his treatment of Lily and any other wrongdoer. In daring to approach him with her lies and invite his investigation of the facts, she would discover that she had merely precipitated her own punishment and, even worse, had done so in a country with a judicial system far less liberal than that of her own.

That decision etched in stone on his soul, Rauf rose upright, his brilliant dark eyes cool and bright as a mountain spring. ‘I’m afraid I must close our meeting here—I have a lunch engagement to keep.’

Disconcerted by that sudden conclusion to their meeting, Lily scrambled up in even greater haste, but by then she had already lost Rauf’s attention. Following his frowning gaze, she saw a tiny silver-haired old lady with a stick moving towards them, a helpful young man by her side.

Rauf ground his teeth together as his great-grandmother approached with all the unstoppable determination of a stick-propelled missile. One of the hotel staff must have let drop that his appointment was with a young and beautiful foreigner. That exciting disclosure would have been all it would have taken to shoot Nelispah Kasabian into the penthouse lift and down to the ground floor to satisfy her lively curiosity.

‘Mrs Kasabian says…’ The hotel executive acting as Nelispah’s guide and translator skimmed Rauf a strained glance of apology before turning to address Lily. ‘Mrs Kasabian says…what a lovely dress you are wearing!’

Rauf blinked and then scrutinised the billowing folds of Lily’s shroud. Yes, he supposed a dress that only hinted that an actual female body existed beneath it was right down his very modest great-grandmother’s street. The entire family and their staff conspired to ensure that Nelispah’s delicate sensibilities were protected from the shocking moral laxity of a world that would distress her for her heart was weak. Fortunately, she did not watch television or even read the family newspapers because she believed that her late husband would not have approved of her engaging in either activity.

‘I have the honour of introducing you to my great-grandmother, Nelispah Kasabian…Lily Harris.’ Rauf performed the introduction with gritty reluctance but spoke in soft, gentle Turkish to the little woman, who barely reached his chest in height.

‘Please tell her how very happy I am to meet her.’ Lily returned Mrs Kasabian’s big, beaming smile with warm appreciation.

Resting a frail hand on Rauf’s supportive arm, Nelispah chattered on in Turkish while Rauf employed a fast covert signal to send her translator into silenced retreat. ‘Lily hanim has a sweet smile. I like what I see in this young woman’s face,’ his great-grandmother confided with alarming enthusiasm. ‘Would she like to join us for lunch and tell us about herself and her family?’

Striving not to wince at the threat of what might emerge were Lily to come into contact with the matriarchal inter-rogation team, Rauf depressed that hope and, with a quiet word of apology to Lily, he walked the old lady back towards the lift. Seeing the affection that had softened his stunning eyes, Lily glanced away again, pained by that contrast to Rauf’s abrasive treatment of her.

But then this was a business matter, not a personal one, she reminded herself doggedly. Evidently, Harris Travel had messed up big time when it came to that contract. Had Brett been responsible for that? Although Lily loathed her sister’s ex-husband, she knew that both Hilary and her father had been very impressed, not only by the efficient way in which Brett had run the family business, but also by the long hours he had worked. Profits might have sunk to a dismal level but nobody had blamed Brett for that reality. After all, it was hardly his fault that another travel agency had opened up in competition in the same town.

Whatever, Lily was uneasily aware that Rauf had only been willing to relent after she had mentioned the villas that were to be sold. What was going to happen if those payments made into the wrong account could not be tracked down and retrieved? And if the cash from the sale of the villas had to go to Rauf rather than Harris Travel, would Hilary still be able to stay in business? Deciding to wait until she had concrete facts at her disposal before passing on any bad news to her sister, Lily tensed as Rauf returned to her side.

‘My limo will take you back to your hotel,’ Rauf imparted, shortening his long, fluid stride to her slower pace to walk her outside.

On the pavement, she hovered and stole a strained glance up at him, intimidated and troubled by his continuing detachment. ‘This business stuff aside…can’t we still be friends?’ she heard herself ask in a rush.

As he met her beautiful blue eyes seething derision at that appeal flamed through Rauf’s big, powerful frame, hardening his superb bone structure, firing his fantastic eyes to raw, shimmering gold. It infuriated him that once upon a time he had swallowed her every mushy sentence. ‘I’m not five years old and neither are you.’

Lily flushed in embarrassment and cringed for her own impulsive tongue.

‘On the other hand, güzelim,’ Rauf growled soft and low as he reached for her with two lean, purposeful hands and pulled her to him on a surge of anger so strong he did not even question what he was doing, ‘I hate to disappoint a woman.’

Pinned into startling connection with six feet four inches of hard, masculine muscle and power, her heart pounding like crazy, Lily gasped, ‘Rauf—?’

His wide, sensual mouth came down on hers with explosive force, all the passion of the volatile nature he usually kept in check powering to the surface to drive that kiss. For an instant Lily froze in total shock and then, without any mental prompting she recognised, she stretched up on tiptoe and wrapped her slim arms round his neck. As the first wild wave of response rocked through her trembling length, she loosed a low moan, angling her head back, letting the erotic plunge of his tongue feed from the sweetness of her mouth.

With an abruptness that left Lily in a turmoil of confusion, Rauf set her free again. A dark line of febrile colour scoring his taut cheekbones, he was appalled both by his own reckless disregard of his surroundings and by her unexpected encouragement. Trust Lily to change her game plan when he could least afford her to do so! Such public displays were frowned on by his people. What the hell had come over him?

Her lush mouth reddened from the fiery imprint of his, Lily focused on Rauf with dazed eyes and a helpless surge of pride in herself. She had stayed in his arms without succumbing to an attack of unreasonable fear. Finally making herself acknowledge those disturbing feelings and openly discuss what had caused them with a counsellor the previous year had worked.

‘That will not be repeated,’ Rauf breathed with icy emphasis, yanking open the door of the long silver limo waiting by the kerb with his own hand. ‘There is nothing between us now.’

Then why had he touched her in the first place? Stiff with hurt bewilderment, Lily climbed into the opulent car. She wished she had pushed him away, indeed done anything other than thrown her arms round him in encouragement. She was furious with herself. Here she was almost twenty-four years old, still a virgin and still, it seemed, as immature as an adolescent. Obviously Rauf had reacted to the willing signals that she must have been putting out! On the strength of that demeaning conviction, Lily stopped being angry and felt that she had asked to be humiliated.

But then who would ever have forecast that she of all women might ever be guilty of forward behaviour around a male of the species? As Rauf’s limousine drove Lily back to her hotel in Gumbet she was pale and taut and already mental miles away from their recent meeting. Memories that she only rarely allowed herself to take out and examine had engulfed her…

Hilary had married Brett when Lily had been only twelve. Delighted to be their bridesmaid, Lily had been thrilled that Hilary had been so much in love and even happier that Brett had been willing to move into their family home rather than take Hilary to live somewhere else. Their father had been equally impressed with Hilary’s bridegroom for Brett had always awarded the older man pronounced respect and deference. A year later, Douglas Harris had signed his house over to his daughter and son-in-law.

Just two years after that, when she’d been only fifteen, Lily had had her first sight of Brett with another woman. Heading home from a friend’s house, she had cut across a car park on the outskirts of town. Seeing Brett’s sports car parked there and the shadow of movement within, she had hurried towards it thinking that she would get a lift with him. Instead she had seen her brother-in-law locked in a passionate embrace with a stranger. Devastated by that sight but grateful that the guilty couple hadn’t noticed her, she had been so upset that she had wandered round town for several hours before she’d been able to face going home.

All her life up until that point, Lily had told Hilary virtually everything. But what she had seen that day had deprived her of her only true confidante for she had been painfully conscious that her big sister had worshipped the ground her handsome husband had walked on and had also been heavily pregnant with their second child. Lily had agonised for weeks over what she ought to have done before finally deciding to confide in her father and put the responsibility of that knowledge in his hands.

But in no way had Douglas Harris reacted as his teenage daughter had imagined he might have done. ‘You were mistaken,’ her father told her in instant angry rebuttal.

‘But I saw them…it was Brett and it was his car!’ Lily protested.

‘Don’t you ever mention this again and don’t you breathe a word of this nonsense to your sister!’ the older man censured in even greater fury. ‘Brett and Hilary have a very happy marriage. What’s got into you that you can make up such a wicked and dangerous story about your own brother-in-law?’

In her turn, Lily was shattered that her usually mild-mannered father could react in such a disbelieving and unjust way to her trusting confession. She had to get older before she could appreciate that her unfortunate parent had too much invested in the stability of Hilary’s marriage to easily face the threat that Brett might not be the fine, upstanding young man he had believed him to be. And how could she have foreseen that worry over what she had told him would eventually drive her father to make the very great mistake of warning Brett that he had been seen in that car park?

Faster than the speed of light, for there was nothing slow about Brett’s survival instincts, Brett added two and two together and worked out who had seen him. That same afternoon he picked Lily up from school and frightened the living daylights out of her with his rage and his threats. Then and there Lily’s happy home life and her faith in the adults around her came to a harsh and final end.

‘You sneaky little bitch!’ Brett roared at her, after shooting his car into the same car park in an act of intimidation that she soon learned was pure Brett Gilman. ‘From here on in, you’d better mind your own bloody business. Haven’t you ever heard of the three wise monkeys? Speak no evil, hear no evil and see no evil. Tell tales on me again and you won’t have a home any more…I’ll tell Hilary that her precocious little sister has been trying it on with me and she’ll believe me long before she’ll believe you!’

Lily then learnt what it was to live in fear. Resenting her, and determined to punish her for exposing his womanising ways to Douglas Harris, Brett gloried in his power over Lily and soon worked out the kind of treatment that would make her feel most threatened. Out of her sister’s sight and hearing, he began to look at Lily’s developing curves in a way that made her skin crawl and taunt her with crude familiar comments. He never actually touched her but she lived in terror that some day he might.

By the time Lily escaped her home to start her teacher-training course at a college a long way away, Brett had turned Lily into a silent, secretive and timid teenager, who covered every possible inch of her body and who went in genuine fear of male aggression and sexuality.

Surfacing from her recollections of that traumatic period of her life, Lily found a sheen of perspiration on her skin. When she went for a shower in her room, she reminded herself that that nightmare was in the past. Yet her most bitter regret was still that the damage Brett had inflicted had almost inevitably destroyed any hope of her having a normal relationship with Rauf Kasabian when she had first met him.

Three years on, Rauf was hostile, cold and detached in a way that Lily had never dreamt he could be and she was much too vulnerable. Lily recognised with shamed self-honesty that she would still do just about anything to get a second chance with Rauf. But he had made it clear that he had no intention of getting involved with her again.

Could she even blame him for that? Lily asked herself as she lay in bed that night. If anything, Rauf had been kind when he’d described what they had had as the affair that never was. With pained hindsight, Lily knew that Rauf might have utilised more hurtful candour. He might have told her that blowing hot and cold with a man was a huge turn-off and that treating a decent guy like a ravenous sex beast was an even less enthralling experience…

CHAPTER THREE

THE summer after she finished her second year at college, Lily had taken a temporary job working as a waitress in a fashionable London bar while she looked for a suitable position as a nursery nurse.

Within the first week, Lily had begun dreading going into work for she hadn’t been able to easily handle the sort of teasing and touching that the other waitresses had withstood from the male customers. However, her salary plus the generous tips she’d received had met the rent on the tiny apartment she’d been sharing and had made it possible for her to avoid having to return home and live under the same roof as Brett.

Rauf had come in with a female in tow one lunchtime.

‘Why are all the really gorgeous men already spoken for?’ Annabel, her flatmate since first year and fellow waitress, lamented while she and Lily waited at the counter for their orders.

‘Who have you noticed now?’ Lily groaned, accustomed to Annabel’s frequent complaints about the extreme rarity of the free and fanciable male.

‘He’s sitting down with the brunette in the sexy white dress.’

Lily glanced over. His commanding height and build, the slashing angle of his high cheekbones, strong nose and wide, passionate male mouth combined with his lustrous black hair made him stand out from the common herd all right. But she would have looked away again had not Rauf thrown his arrogant dark head back as he sat down and let her see his extraordinary eyes. Tawny gold as polished tiger’s-eye stones reflecting the light, riveting, beautiful, utterly hypnotic. Involuntarily she stared, heartbeat kicking up pace, breathing fractured, her whole body tight and tense as if she was waiting for something indescribably exciting to happen. Then his narrowed gaze clashed with hers and it was as if somebody had switched on Christmas lights inside her. Suddenly she was electric, wired, alive for the very first time.

‘And wouldn’t you just know it?’ Annabel muttered resentfully as she watched Rauf appraise Lily’s glowing blonde beauty with predictable male intensity. ‘I might as well be invisible but he’s yours for the asking. You should wear a little “I’m gay” badge, Lily…at least it would stop the guys wasting their time and let the rest of us get a look-in!’

Aghast at the startling content of that disgruntled little speech, Lily shot her attention back to Annabel. ‘Say that again?’

Annabel just shrugged. ‘Well, you are, aren’t you? You might still be in the closet but the way you feel about men makes it pretty obvious. I guessed ages ago.’

‘I’m not gay…’ Lily countered in whispered but emphatic denial as Annabel lifted her laden tray.

‘Look, it’s none of my business.’ Annabel grimaced. ‘I was only being a jealous cow about your looks.’

Shaken that someone she had known for two years could have got her so wrong, Lily went to serve Rauf. Not once did she look directly at him or his companion but, even in the ennervated state she was in, she noted his rich, dark drawl and the faint exotic accent that edged his excellent English. Disaster only struck when she delivered their drinks. As she tried to set the glass of red wine down the brunette made a sudden snatch at it mid-air and their hands collided. The glass fell, spilling a cascade of ruby-red liquid down onto the woman’s lap.

‘You stupid girl!’ the irate brunette screeched, behaving as though she had been subjected to a deliberate assault. ‘Wasn’t coming on to my man enough for you? Did you have to ruin my dress too?’

As Lily’s boss hurried to the scene and Lily proffered napkins and apologies that were ignored while really wanting to sink through the floor in chagrin, Rauf dropped a banknote on the table and herded his hysterical lunch date out at speed. Lily didn’t expect ever to see him again. But the next day when she turned up for her shift a beautiful bouquet was waiting for her along with a card.

‘Sorry that you were embarrassed yesterday. Rauf’

‘When a bloke spends about a hundred quid on flowers, it certainly tells me who was coming on to who,’ her female boss quipped with considerable amusement.

Emerging from the powerful pull of the past, Lily needed enormous effort to shut down the surging tide of memory keeping her awake. What did it say about her that she should still be so obsessed with a relationship that Rauf had long since left behind him? Angry at her lack of self-discipline, Lily told herself to grow up.

The next morning, Rauf flew in on a sleek private jet half an hour after Lily arrived at the airport. In the brilliant sunlight of midday, she watched him emerge and descend the steps with the fluid, measured pace of a very self-assured male. Sheathed in a beautifully tailored dove-grey business suit, he looked stunningly handsome and, even at a distance, his bold bronzed features emanated all the decisive authority of his forceful personality. Exchanging a laughing word with the official waiting to greet him, he paused, lean, strong face settling back into striking gravity again as he aimed a cool-eyed glance at Lily where she waited just inside the building.

‘You can go through now, Miss Harris,’ she was told.

Rauf watched her walk towards him. Clad in a pale blue dress and a cardigan that had to be roasting her alive in the heat of midsummer, golden hair glittering in the bright light, Lily looked apprehensive and very young.

An insane impulse to urge her to turn back and board the first available flight home assailed Rauf. Faint colour demarcating his hard cheekbones, his jawline clenched hard. Had she been a man, he would have harboured no second thoughts. So who was being sexist? He was only doing to her what she had once done to him: luring her down a path that would look safe until the very last moment. How would she react when she found herself staring into the abyss with the police waiting to make an arrest on the other side?

As yet, he hadn’t called in the police, hadn’t identified her to them. But the gendarme in the village where the villa project had misfired already had a file prepared on the case. Furthermore, Lily, Rauf had discovered, was now listed as a director of Harris Travel on the firm notepaper and as such could be held liable. But what Rauf wanted most of all was Brett Gilman’s head on a plate.

‘It’s hot,’ Lily murmured as she drew level with him.

‘And likely to get hotter,’ Rauf imparted in his distinctive drawl, a light hand touching her spine just enough to turn her in the direction of the helicopter sitting parked.

‘Will it be a long flight?’

‘About an hour or so in all. We’re making a stop on the way.’ Without hesitation, Rauf made a smooth change of subject. ‘How are you enjoying your stay so far?’

‘I’m still getting acclimatised. Next week, I’m going to sign up for all the trips and see the sights. Hilary’s hoping to organise special tours for the spring…’ Lily said, her voice petering out as Rauf closed his hands round her waist and lifted her up into the helicopter as if she weighed no more than a child. ‘Thanks.’

As he settled in beside her and signalled the pilot, the rotor blades began to whir. Lily struggled to tighten the seat belt, which had been loosened to hold a much larger frame than her own. Rauf leant over to assist and she tensed, soft brown lashes flying up on uncertain blue eyes to connect with reflective gold. Her hands fell from the clasp and let his take over. As he bent his dark head his luxuriant black hair brushed her chin. Breathing in the warm, achingly familiar scent of him, she trembled, feeling her breasts lift and stir beneath her dress and the tender tips swell into prominence, and biting her soft lower lip in an agony of discomfiture.

She wanted to plunge her fingers into his silky black hair and drag his mouth up to hers again and she was shocked rigid by the depth of her own longing. In the midst of such crazy promptings, she didn’t know herself. What was it about him that he could reduce her to such a level without even trying? Mouth bone-dry, her fingers curled in on themselves lest they too developed a will of their own, she only breathed again when he had settled back into his own seat.

For the entire flight, she stared out the window. She had a fantastic view of the bright turquoise sea studded with islands and edged by tall crags and sandy beaches before the helicopter went into a turn and headed inland. When the coastal development was left behind, she saw the ruin of a castle built on bare rock, hazy tracts of soft green pine forest, the occasional dust road leading out miles through tiny cultivated fields and orchards to small clusters of remote dwellings. She remembered Rauf telling her that virtually every family had links with a village and would often maintain contact with their roots there generations after they had taken up residence in a town.

After the tranquil, soothing scenes of beautiful unspoilt countryside, it was something of a surprise to Lily to see a coalmine come into view as the helicopter started to land. Coalmining was a business, she reminded herself, and Rauf had mentioned a stop on the way. Perhaps one of his newspapers or magazines was doing a feature on the mine, she thought dimly.

Springing out of the craft, Rauf swung back to extend a hand to her. Lily stepped out onto waste ground and saw a dust road several yards ahead of them.

Level dark golden eyes zeroed in on her. ‘Do you know where you are?’

Lily shook her golden head and wondered how on earth he could imagine she would know. ‘I haven’t a clue.’

‘I think you’ll solve the mystery soon enough,’ Rauf asserted, leading her across the road towards a steep paved driveway edged with fancy carriage lamps and really the very last kind of opulent entrance one would have expected to see within yards of the fencing that surrounded the mine.

Lily frowned. ‘Is this where you live?’

‘Even the locals don’t live in this neck of the woods. Who wants to look out the windows and see the slagheaps?’ Rauf derided.

Some sixth sense she had finally picked up on the scorn that edged his every sentence, the strange challenge in his watchful gaze. A wave of tension infiltrated her. She stared back at him, her slender body very taut. He withstood that appraisal with unflinching assurance and her cheeks warmed with self-conscious colour, for he might look intimidating in his current mood but he also looked drop-dead gorgeous. Unhappily that reality kept on playing havoc with her concentration.