A Mediterranean Marriage

‘Wedding evening,’ Lily whispered, feeling truly wicked and loving it and so grateful he wasn’t one whit bothered about Brett having called.

CHAPTER EIGHT

SETTING her down beside the bed, Rauf removed Lily’s sun-hat and embarked on the dozen hairgrips she had used to pile most of her glorious mane up out of sight.

Blue eyes bright as jewels, she looked up at him. ‘I’m really happy,’ she told him.

Who was sh

e keenest to convince? Herself? Rauf shut down on that thought as soon as it surfaced but it led right on in to another. Right now, was she trying not to think about Brett? Of course, she was! How could she not be thinking of the bastard after he had just phoned her? He had to get rid of that phone. What had happened once was not going to happen a second time.

Recognising the aggressive thrust of his jawline, troubled by his unusual silence, Lily whispered worriedly, ‘Do you have regrets about marrying me already?’

‘Are you crazy?’ Rauf launched at her with a force of instant rebuttal that struck her as a not quite convincing overreaction.

‘It’s all right to admit it…I’d sooner know…we did go into this a bit fast,’ Lily conceded tightly.

‘I can’t imagine my life without you,’ Rauf breathed tautly.

‘But I’ve only been back in your life four days…’

‘Four days is long enough with a lifetime ahead of us,’ Rauf swore, backing off a step to throw off his jacket and wrench at his silk tie. ‘My great-grandfather asked for Nelispah’s hand in marriage the first day he saw her…’

‘Love at first sight.’ Lily was impressed.

‘Or the fact that the men in her family said he was a dead man if he didn’t marry her,’ Rauf traded with sudden grudging amusement.

‘I don’t believe you…’

‘You should. He was on a walking tour of the mountain villages. Quite by accident he saw Nelispah bathing in a river in her underwear and she liked the look of him so she told her brothers about it. Her brothers liked the look of him too because a Turk prosperous enough to take a holiday seventy-five years ago was a rich man on their terms. So forty days later he came back down the mountain with a wife and said it was love at first sight—’

Lily was fascinated. ‘Why forty days later?’

‘Village weddings used to be extremely lengthy affairs.’

‘And your grandmother…how did she meet your grandfather?’

‘With a great deal of cunning because in those days only parents arranged marriages and daughters were never allowed out without a chaperone. She dropped her scarf in the street, he picked it up and then it was the love-at-first-sight story all over again,’ Rauf delivered cynically. ‘My parents were the same. They got one glimpse of each other at a wedding and my mother went into a decline until my grandfather agreed to her marrying him…at the time he wanted her to marry someone else.’

‘You have a very romantic family tree.’ Lily tried not to say what was on her mind but in the end could not hold her curiosity in. ‘So why did you have to be different?’

‘Because the girl I thought I loved at nineteen was in love with one of my best friends…but she would still have married me because I was a richer catch.’ The minute he’d said it, Rauf admitted that he was irritated with himself, for even his family had no idea how close he had come then to fulfilling their fondest hopes.

‘Oh, no…that must have been awful for you,’ Lily exclaimed with the kind of ready sympathy that made him grit his teeth. ‘How did you find out?’

‘I found them rolling about a bed at a party.’ Rauf shrugged with expressive finality and went back to unbuttoning his shirt. ‘It was no big deal. I got over it. Don’t get the idea that I went off marriage because of that one bad experience.’

‘Of course not…’ Lily swallowed hard but she could imagine how vulnerable he must have been as a teenager, especially after having been raised on a careful diet of romantic love-at-first-sight stories by his shrewd but over-protective family. ‘Was she one of the girls your relatives were hoping you would marry?’

‘Yes. How the hell did we get onto this subject?’ Rauf demanded.

Lily did something she had never done before. Seeing that a distraction was called for, she reached behind herself and undid the zip on her dress. Then she let the sleeves drift down her extended arms and the entire garment finally dropped in a heap round her toes.

The strangest ache stirred in Rauf’s chest. He couldn’t understand why he didn’t laugh when she shimmied out of her dress with that taut, flushed air of daring and stood there revealed in…a full-length white cotton petticoat that revealed very little more than the dress had. ‘Love the frills,’ he breathed huskily.

Lily had forgotten she was wearing the petticoat. ‘That dress is a bit see-through,’ she muttered awkwardly.

‘I wouldn’t have liked that at all,’ Rauf asserted instantly, moving fluidly forward to spin her round and peel her out of the petticoat.