‘You’re not going back to your hotel,’ he informed her, still inflamed that she could even have considered that as an option.
‘But I ought to…’ Lily groaned.
‘To some degree, I’m also to blame for the freedom with which Gilman was able to steal from all of us.’
Lily frowned. ‘How?’
‘My last accountant was a family friend. I should’ve suggested that he retire much sooner than I did,’ Rauf explained ruefully. ‘His health was failing and the job was too demanding but still he clung to it. The very first contract payment that failed to arrive from Harris Travel should’ve been noted and questioned, but it wasn’t.’
‘That was unfortunate,’ Lily conceded as Rauf walked her back indoors.
‘That oversight must’ve encouraged Gilman to believe that he could get away with a lot more.’
Lily smothered a guilty yawn. She was so tired she might have been moving in a dream. All the unsettling events of the past forty-eight hours were weighing in on her at once.
‘You’re totally exhausted.’ With a rueful laugh, Rauf swept her slight body up into his arms and carried her back to his bedroom, where he laid her on the bed.
The internal house phone rang and he answered it. The news that a senior officer from the jandarma, the section of the army responsible for law enforcement in rural areas, had driven over to Sonngul to request a meeting with him focused Rauf’s thoughts fast…
CHAPTER SIX
THE older man introduced himself as Talip Hajjar and greeted Rauf with a polite apology for his intrusion.
Talip was the superior officer of the gendarme, who had prepared the file on Brett Gilman’s dealings with the builders contracted to work on his villa project. From him, Rauf learned that the builders involved, having received what was owing to them from Rauf’s representative, now wished to drop the charges they had laid.
‘Although I understand that you have only just learned of this unpleasant business, you came forward immediately to compensate those defrauded by the Englishman. In doing so and in acknowledging your own interest in the firm who employed him, you have behaved with honour in every way. I doubt that we would ever have discovered that connection without your frank admission of it,’ Talip Hajjar admitted with wry honesty. ‘However, I also believe that it would be wrong to allow this dishonest foreigner to benefit from your acceptance of responsibility and escape the prosecution he deserves.’
‘It is not and never was my wish that that should be the result either,’ Rauf agreed with considerable gravity.
The older man regarded him with approval. ‘Then I must ask you to persuade the victims of his crime to let those charges stand. They only wish to drop them out of respect for the Kasabian name. But in such circumstances, a businessman of your standing and reputation can have nothing to hide or fear.’
Unhappily, Rauf could not feel that, while he had Lily lying in his bed, an as yet unacknowledged director of Harris Travel, that was quite true and, in instant defiance of a disturbing urge to keep quiet about her presence as a guest in his home, he offered the older man çay.
Over the tea that was brought, Rauf sat down to tell the gendarme officer the rest of the story. Having explained Lily’s presence in Turkey, he went on to vouch for her complete ignorance of her former brother-in-law’s unscrupulous activities as well as describing what her relatives had already endured at Gilman’s hands.
‘Her own family will face bankruptcy through this,’ Rauf concluded ruefully. ‘It was a sorry day indeed for the Harris family when Lily’s sister married her toy-boy charmer.’
‘Even their home taken from them! In placing so much trust in a son-in-law the father was sadly at fault,’ Talip Hajjar contended with a grimacing shake of his head. ‘And yet, which of us do not wish to place total faith in a family member?’
‘If you wish to interview Lily, I would ask you to wait until tomorrow. She has already retired for the night.’
‘The young woman must be very distressed at what she has discovered since her arrival. At present, I see no reason to trouble her with an official interview. However, should that situation change, I will know where to find her.’
When the officer had departed, Rauf strode back to his bedroom where he found Lily fast asleep, one hand tucked beneath the pillow, her lovely face serene above the lace neckline of the nightdress she wore. Had he not been so conscious of the faint purple shadows that lay beneath her eyes, however, he might have been tempted to waken her again. He had put his own honour on the line in standing as her character witness in an effort to shield her from being associated in any way with her corrupt former brother-in-law. He had done so gladly. But enough was enough, he told himself with decision. In turn, it was only right that Lily should explain what she had been doing at that hotel with Gilman three years earlier and, most of all, why she should’ve chosen to lie about it. He needed to have that last tiny shadow of doubt in her cleared away.
Around dawn after a long and restful sleep, Lily opened her eyes and focused on the light filtering in. One of the bay-window shutters had been drawn back. Rauf was sprawled along the window-seat, one powerful jean-clad thigh lifted, his attention on her as she sat up with a start.
‘What’s wrong?’ she whispered, instantly aware of his brooding tension.
‘I couldn’t sleep. There’s something on my mind, something I’ve always wanted to ask you about…’
As Rauf sprang off the seat and strolled across to the foot of the bed like a prowling lion ready to spring on the unwary, intent golden eyes zeroing in on her, Lily snatched in an anxious breath. ‘I haven’t quite woken up yet…but go ahead.’
‘On the last occasion that I stayed at your home in England…I saw you leaving a hotel with your sister’s husband.’
In stark disconcertion at that announcement, Lily lost colour and stiffened, her memory throwing her back in time to a very unpleasant experience. ‘But how could you have seen me?’
‘My accountant was staying at the same hotel that weekend and I had just dropped him off. I was in the car park. I watched you go in and I waited for you to come out again—’