A Mediterranean Marriage

In fact it was an education for Rauf to watch every man in her vicinity swivel to watch her move past and note how she affected not to notice the stir she caused. But no woman blessed with her perfect features could remain unaware of the gifts she had been born with. Had he not let himself be fooled by that same air of innocence, had he just taken her to his bed and enjoyed her body, he would surely have realised then that she was not only nothing that special, but also a practised little tart.

As Lily headed in the direction that the desk clerk had indicated her heart started to beat very, very fast, indeed so fast that she could hardly catch her breath. She still could not believe that she was about to see Rauf Kasabian again. But then across the wide empty space that separated them she actually saw Rauf rise from his table. Her whole body leapt with almost painful tension and she froze, paralysed to the spot by that first glimpse of him.

He was so very tall. He stood six feet four inches with the wide shoulders, narrow hips and lithe, muscular build of a male in the peak of physical condition. And gorgeous did not begin to describe that lean, bronzed face, Lily conceded in dazed acknowledgement. Rauf was so startlingly handsome that even on the crowded streets of London women had noticed him and turned their heads to stare. Lustrous, luxuriant black hair was cropped to his proud head. He had a riveting bone structure overlaid with vibrant skin and tawny eyes that could be dark as bitter chocolate or as pure a gold as the sinking sun.

Her legs behaved like sticks without the ability to bend as she forced herself to move towards him. Her colour was high at the lowering awareness that she had stopped dead to look at him like an impressionable schoolgirl. He did not make the moment easier for her by striding forward to meet her halfway. Instead he stayed where he was, making her come to him. How had she forgotten how he dominated everything around him? How he could entrap her with one mesmerising look from those thick-lashed, brilliant eyes?

Rauf watched her approach. She was a perfect doll, dainty and exquisite as a Meissen ornament. On even that very basic level she had once appealed to every masculine protective instinct he possessed. Rauf drew in a stark short breath. Memory hadn’t lied, memory had only dimmed his recollection of her wonderful skin, not to mention those deep blue eyes wide as a child’s and fringed by soft brown lashes a baby deer would have envied. The cool intellect that outright rejected the temptation she presented warred with the much more primitive urges of his all-too-male body. When lust triumphed, stirring him into aching sexual tension, Rauf was infuriated by his own weakness.

Lily hovered several feet away, alarmed by the jangling state of her nerves, the terrifying blankness of her mind and the even more demeaning truth that she could not drag her attention from him. ‘It’s been a long time,’ she said breathlessly, almost wincing at the nervous sound of her own voice.

‘Yes. Would you like something to drink?’

‘Er…pure orange, please.’

Rauf passed on the order to the waiter nearby and turned back to her. ‘Let’s get down to business, then,’ he drawled with intimidating cool. ‘I don’t have much time to spare.’

CHAPTER TWO

TAKEN aback by the coldness of that greeting, Lily was grateful for the small hiatus created by the waiter, who stepped forward to swing out a high-backed armchair for her occupation. ‘Thank you.’

‘My pleasure, hanim,’ the young man asserted with an admiring smile until a cool word of Turkish uttered by Rauf sent him into hasty retreat.

‘You may have noticed that my countrymen go for English blondes in a big way,’ Rauf remarked in his dark, deep drawl.

‘Yes,’ Lily confided ruefully, thinking of the taxi driver who had tried to chat her up and all the discomfiting male attention that she had attracted since her recent arrival.

Yet she was conscious of Rauf’s masculine proximity with every fibre of her being and even more aware of the weird tight little knot low in her pelvis of something that felt dangerously like suppressed excitement. Her tension increased for she was as unsettled by her own reactions as she had been at twenty-one, because no other man had ever had that effect on her.

Rauf lifted a broad shoulder in a casual shrug. ‘Here, I’m afraid, and in certain other resorts, British female tourists have the reputation of being the easiest to bed in the shortest possible space of time.’

Lily’s face flamed. ‘I beg your pardon?’

Rauf dealt her a cool golden glance laden with mockery. Being downright offensive was not the norm for him but he was determined to blow her I’m-so-sweet-and-shockable front right out of the water. ‘Some Englishwomen go mad for Turkish men, so don’t blame the guys for hassling you.’

‘I wasn’t aware that I was blaming anybody.’ Lily’s fingers tightened round the document case on her lap. She just could not credit that he was talking to her in such a way and, bewildered by the antagonism she sensed, she allowed her scrutiny to linger on the scornful slant to his beautifully shaped mouth.

Without the slightest warning, she found herself remembering the wicked, unforgettable excitement of those firm, hard male lips on her own. A deep inner quiver slivered through her slight frame and her skin heated. Mortified by the intimate nature of her wandering thoughts, she could not even recall what they had been talking about. Forcing her head up, she encountered intent tawny eyes and stopped breathing altogether.

His lush black lashes dipped to a slumbrous level over his stunning gaze and she shifted on her seat, every muscle tightening, every nerve-ending flaring with agonising immediacy into sensitised awareness. Desperate to break free of the raw magnetic power he exerted over her and shattered that she could still be susceptible to a male who had once rejected her, she tore her eyes from him and muttered with an abruptness that only increased her discomfiture, ‘You said that you didn’t have much time…so can we discuss this misunderstanding over the contract that you agreed with my father?’

Rauf’s shimmering golden scrutiny rested on her evasive gaze with grim amusement and no small amount of satisfaction. So she did want him and that, at least, had not been a total lie like all the rest. He elevated a challenging black brow. ‘There is no misunderstanding.’

‘There has to be.’ With hands that were betraying a dismaying tendency to tremble, Lily dug into the document case and dragged out the sheaf of papers that Hilary had put together.

Wondering what on earth she could hope to achieve by going to such pointless lengths in an effort to convince him that his highly qualified investment consultant was incapable of spotting a rip-off when he came across one, Rauf released his breath in an impatient hiss. ‘I have no intention of studying those documents. By failing to make the agreed sharing of annual profits your father has been in breach of our contract for more than two years. That’s the base line and the only one that counts.’

‘Dad would never default on any contract.’ Alarm gripping her at Rauf’s stubborn refusal even to direct his attention at the papers that she had set on the table, Lily leant forward, frantically swept up the first sheet and extended it herself. ‘This is last year’s account-book entry. A sizeable sum of money was wire-transferred to an account known as Marmaris Media Incorporated at your Turkish bank in London. I have every identifying detail of that transfer. For goodness’ sake, if that’s not proof that a major misunderstanding has occurred, what is?’

His interest now fully engaged by what she had said, for he did not use a Turkish bank in London, but making no attempt to accept the proffered document, Rauf gazed at her flushed and anxious face. ‘This sounds remarkably like a misunderstanding destined to end up in the hands of an international fraud squad.’

Her natural colour draining away, her blue eyes rounding, Lily let the sheet of paper drop back on the pile and gasped, ‘What on earth are you trying to suggest?’

‘That it seems very suspicious that the trading name Marmaris Media Incorporated should bear such a very close resemblance to the name under which my own companies operate—’

‘Which is MMI…Marmaris Media Incorporated!’ Lily argued in bewilderment.

‘No, I rather think that you must know that that is untrue,’ Rauf countered with sardonic cool, for he was now convinced that she was attempting to mount some kind of clumsy belated cover-up. ‘MMI stands for Marmaris Media International and no part of my holdings trades under any similar name. Any cash paid into an account in the name of Marmaris Media Incorporated has nothing to do with me.’

‘Then the money must still be there in that wretched account!’ Lily exclaimed, immediately believing that she had found out where a fatal error might have occurred in Harris Travel’s dealings with Rauf. ‘Don’t you see? Nobody at Harris Travel realised they’d got the name wrong and the payments have gone into someone else’s account…oh, my goodness, suppose they’ve spent it?’

Against his own volition, Rauf was becoming more entertained with every second he spent listening to her spiel. She looked like a live angel and, had he not known what he did know about her, the appeal in her beautiful eyes might have penetrated even his armour-plated cynicism. He lowered his dense black lashes over his appreciative gaze. She ought to be on television creating kiddy-orientated whodunnits of shattering simplicity. That climax of a punchline, ‘Suppose they’ve spent it?’ was priceless and he would long cherish its utterance for he had an excellent, if dark, sense of humour.

Nobody with any wit could have been taken in by so unlikely a tale. He was willing to bet a good half of his vast wealth that were he willing to go through the laborious motions she was trying to prompt him into making, willing to act like her trusting ally in pursuit of an unknown criminal, he would find out…guess what? Surprise, surprise, he didn’t think! The fake account called Marmaris Media Incorporated would be as empty as the old lady’s cupboard in the English nursery rhyme. Switching money between accounts to conceal where it was heading next and false entries in the account books were one of the most rudimentary and common methods of concealing fraud.

‘Didn’t you hear what I said?’ Lily prompted, incredulous at his lack of reaction and actually jumping to her feet to stress her enthusiasm for that possible explanation. It seemed obvious that a stupid but simple mistake had sent the payments that Rauf should have received into the wrong bank account. ‘Either all those payments have been piling up in one of those dormant accounts that you read about or someone’s been having a merry old time for the last two years on money that was rightfully yours!’

‘Thankfully it’s not my problem,’ Rauf responded smooth as silk, but he was operating on two levels again, his brain attempting to disengage from his libido as he tensed with growing annoyance. As she automatically angled her slender body towards him he was maddeningly aware of the tantalising thrust of her lush little breasts beneath the shrouding dress and his body hardened on a surge of instant sexual hunger that inflamed his pride.

‘But it’s your money…don’t you care about that?’ Deflated and bemused by his apparent disinterest, Lily dared to look at him direct and clashed with smouldering golden eyes.

Her heart skipped a beat and in the interim she felt her full breasts shift inside her cotton bra, the soft tips pinching into sudden taut sensitivity. Rigid with shamed awareness of what was happening to her, she lowered her head and dropped back down into her seat again at speed. Could he still sense the appalling effect he had on her? A crawling sense of humiliation engulfed her, for she had never dreamt that, three years on, she might still be vulnerable around Rauf Kasabian. After all, she wasn’t in love with him any more, and he might be a good-looking guy—all right a very good-looking guy—but that was no excuse, was it?

Sheer anger having overwhelmed his arousal, Rauf was reminding himself of what a cruel little tease Lily had always been. Once she had drawn him in with the same languishing looks and responsive body language, only to treat him to shrinking reluctance when he had dared to react to those invitations. But her most effective ploy of all had been three quite unforgettable and very clever little words. “You scare me,” she had once confided in a breathy little voice of apparent apology, shocking and shaming him into the kind of total physical restraint that he had never had to practise round any other woman.

Still raw from the memory of that unjust and wounding accusation, Rauf squared his wide shoulders, his formidable intelligence now fully back in the ascendant. ‘Harris Travel would still be in breach of contract and I do wish you luck in pursuing the dormant account scenario. However, all that is owed to me must be repaid—’

Tense as a bowstring, Lily parted dry lips. ‘Yes, of course I accept that, but—’

‘I don’t like being ripped off.’ The chill in Rauf’s hard dark-as-midnight eyes was now pronounced. ‘In fact, with very little encouragement, I can be a total unforgiving bastard.’

‘I’m just asking you to be reasonable and examine these papers and you won’t even do that for me.’ Lily regarded him with reproachful blue eyes. ‘That’s not so much to ask…surely? Why are you treating me like this?’

‘Like…what?’ Rauf asked in the same cool tone.

‘Like we’re enemies or something….’ Lily muttered uneasily.

‘There’s nothing deader than a dead love affair, except perhaps an affair that never was,’ Rauf spelt out with cutting clarity.

Lily went very still and paled as though she had been struck. She stared with strained intensity at the papers he had refused to scrutinise while she fought to hold back the lowering tears stinging the back of her eyes. There it was, confessed in his own words: the truth of why he had lost all interest in her. An affair that never was. It was so belittling to appreciate that what she had believed they’d shared had meant nothing to him without sex. She had always suspected it but that direct confirmation truly hurt. She snatched up her glass of pure orange and took several sips to ease the aching fullness in her throat. Reminding herself that she had much more important matters to concentrate on, she struggled to pull herself back together again.

‘Time’s running out.’ Rauf steeled himself against the artful way she was sitting bolt upright in the chair with the brave but vulnerable aspect of a punished child. As he had already learnt to his cost in the past, she was a very convincing actress and her sole objective then as now had been his wallet, not the wedding ring he had once naively assumed.

Swallowing hard, Lily lifted her head and breathed in deep. ‘I’m willing to admit that since we last met, Harris Travel may not have been run quite the way it ought to have been. Two years ago, after a spate of ill health, my father retired and Brett took over. Now he’s gone and it’s my sister, Hilary, who is managing the business. You say that the contract has been broken and you won’t allow any leeway for human error. But if you insist on reclaiming your stake in the agency right now, it may well bankrupt it.’

‘Business can be tough. I’m sorry but I’m not prepared to sit through the plucking of a thousand violin strings,’ Rauf said very drily, wondering with revulsion where Brett Gilman had ‘gone’. The grave? To employment elsewhere? He would not allow himself to ask.

‘Brett went off with Hilary’s best friend, Janice,’ Lily extended heavily and he noted that, just as he recalled from the past, even now when she referred to her sister’s husband her eyes were carefully screened in a secretive way. ‘Hilary and Brett are divorced now.’

So that was why Lily had come all the way out to Turkey to beg his indulgence and bat her fawn-like eyelashes in his direction! Smarmy Brett had scarpered with yet another foolish woman. His lean, strong face taut, Rauf’s handsome mouth compressed with distaste. Look beyond the illusory purity of her beauty and Lily was revealed for what she was: an unscrupulous, greedy little schemer, ever ready to tell lies when it suited her to do so. Once, she had been stupid enough to lie to him and in lying had convicted herself with her own tongue.

‘I get this feeling that you’re really not listening to anything that I say, but what I’m saying is so very important,’ Lily emphasised in a low intense plea. ‘If those payments which you say were never made—’

‘I know for a fact that they were never made.’ Rafe’s aggressive jawline squared. ‘Do we have to keep on going over the same ground?’

‘Well, if they weren’t made, then it was a case of a genuine mistake. Surely you have enough understanding and patience to allow Harris Travel to sort it out?’

‘Why should I be patient?’ Rauf dealt her an enquiring glance in which the milk of human kindness was most noticeable by its unapologetic absence. The Turkish builders defrauded by Harris Travel had also practised patience and much good it had done them!

‘I don’t know you like this…’ Lily mumbled sickly, sinking ever deeper into a sense of shock over the extent to which he seemed to have changed. Had Rauf always been so cold, callous and unfeeling? Had she only imagined that she’d seen other finer and more sensitive qualities in him?

She tried afresh to reach him. ‘I’m only asking for some more time—’

‘No.’ Rauf uttered the word in a tone of crushing finality. ‘You’ve wasted enough of my time.’

‘Look, I didn’t come out here prepared for this awful situation!’ Lily protested, her voice rising in spite of her attempt to keep it level, and a flush of embarrassment covered her face as Rauf elevated an ebony brow in meaningful rebuke. ‘Couldn’t you help me with this? I don’t have the resources to check out this bank account mix-up from here.’

Lily down on her knees and begging. Rauf liked the idea even though he knew that he would still pull the plug on the travel agency and cut that last reminder of her out of his life. For his own amusement, would he play along for a little while with her absurd stories and excuses? What would he discover? That she and her family were a set of outright thieves? Reckless thieves too, unable to look ahead and spot the obvious fact that their dishonesty would inevitably be exposed. Then he reminded himself that his own newspapers were full of tales of such foolish fraudsters, who, regardless of the obvious consequences, were quite unable to resist temptation.

Sensing that she finally had his attention, Lily pushed the documents across the table again. ‘Please look these over…and I can offer one concrete promise—whatever happens, you will be compensated. Brett built two luxury villas near Dalyan and I have to arrange for them to be sold. Harris Travel does have some assets,’ she proclaimed in desperation.

But the biggest asset of all was seated just feet away from him, Rauf conceded, looking direct into her pleading violet-blue eyes, a kind of wonderment laced with cold, deep anger rising at volatile force inside him. He could not credit her gall! How dared she feed him such falsehoods? How could she think that he would have agreed to their meeting without having all the facts at his disposal? That Lily should face him with outright lies proved beyond all doubt that she was involved up to her throat in blatant deception! That was the moment that Rauf decided to take a harder line with Lily.

Anxiety holding her taut, Lily noted how very still Rauf had become and her attention lingered on the semi-screened shimmer of his unreadable gaze. Then even as she watched Rauf reached out and swept up the Harris Travel documents he had earlier disdained, sending a surge of hope travelling through her. ‘I’m not making any promises,’ he asserted in a dark, deep, honeyed drawl that sent the oddest little shiver down her spine.

‘Oh, no, of course not…I wouldn’t expect that at this point,’ Lily hastened to assure him, almost sick with relief at his change of heart and certain that he would be more sympathetic once he had gone over those papers.

‘But the amount of time that this tangled affair will consume only comes at a price.’ Rauf moved in for the kill, knowing just how much he would revel in making Lily dance to his tune while he kept her in suspense. Hadn’t she once done the same to him in a much more primitive way? With raw contempt, he recalled the pseudo-nervous squeaks he had been made to suffer that summer while she had swerved between brief bouts of melting enthusiasm to keep him hooked and sudden attacks of timidity. She had played him like a violin virtuoso, convincing him one hundred per cent that he’d been dealing with a very nervous virgin. But on this occasion, he had the whip hand.

‘A…price?’ In confusion, Lily frowned, her heart hammering as she noted the gleam of gold in his arresting gaze.

Rauf angled his arrogant dark head back with the measured and confident timing of a hunter about to spring a trap. ‘In this world everything comes at a price…haven’t you learnt that yet?’

‘I’m not sure I follow…’ Her oval face taut, a frown marked her smooth brow.

A faint sardonic smile lightened Rauf’s lean, dark features. ‘It’s very simple. If I have to go through these documents in detail, I need your help.’

Her frown evaporating at that statement, Lily sat forward with an air of eagerness, soft blue eyes brightening. ‘Certainly…that’s not a problem. How could you think it would be?’

‘I’m only here in Bodrum for a few hours. Since I have a board meeting in Istanbul tomorrow, I’ll be flying back there this evening. Later tomorrow, however, I’m going to my country estate and I suggest that you join me there and stay for a few days,’ Rauf murmured levelly. ‘It would be more convenient to have you on hand to answer any queries I might have and assist in my inquiries.’

As Rauf delivered that bombshell Lily had parted her lips several times as if she’d been about to speak, but on each occasion caution had made her bite her tongue. She was unnerved by the prospect of staying as a guest in Rauf’s country home. However, in the circumstances, his request was a reasonable one. She could hardly expect him to fly back to the coast just for her benefit.

‘Yes, all right,’ Lily conceded tautly.

Rauf had had no doubt that she would agree and her obvious discomfiture surprised him not at all. Naturally, she could not refuse the opportunity to keep an eye on the course of his inquiries because she would be afraid that he might turn up evidence that would incriminate her and might even be hoping for the chance to bury it again. At the same time, however, she had to continue to play the innocent. Before he took her to Sonngul, he would ensure that they made an unannounced detour to view the ‘villas’ she had proffered as assets. Even the cleverest liar could not hope to lie her way out of what he intended to confront her with!

‘When would you like me to come to your home?’ Lily prompted uncomfortably. ‘Is it far from here?’

‘Quite some distance. I’ll make arrangements for you to be picked up at your hotel tomorrow morning at eleven. I’ll meet you at the airport, so that we can travel on to Sonngul together.’ Studying the soft pink fullness of her lips, Rauf was picturing her splayed like a wanton temptress across his magnificent bed at the old house where he had, out of respect for his family, never taken a woman. Would he…or wouldn’t he take advantage of her present eagerness to please? No, he decided with fierce determination, he would not. He would take no woman to his bed on such sordid terms.

‘Thank you. I appreciate your kindness in making time for this.’ Lily felt her lips tingle from his glinting scrutiny and a wave of slow, painful colour warmed her fair complexion. In the pulsing atmosphere, her mouth ran dry and her breathing pattern quickened. She recognised her own excitement, her longing for him to touch her, was shamed by it but not to the degree she had once been when her own contrary physical responses had scared and confused her. But that had not been Rauf’s fault or, indeed, even her own fault, she conceded with pained regret.