A Mediterranean Marriage

‘No, I’m not,’ Rauf contradicted with cool conviction. ‘I’m just pointing out the facts. At this moment, I have no reason to trust your sister or your father but I’m willing to withhold judgement in the short term. However, if one of you were to tip off Gilman, accidentally or otherwise, he might disappear and I would then have good cause to wonder whether or not he really was the only thief in your family.’

‘Thanks a bundle…’ Lily muttered, flags of chagrined colour blooming across her taut cheekbones as she absorbed that telling speech.

‘You need to know where you stand.’

Between his foot and the ground and in danger of being crushed. Oh, yes, she understood the message she was receiving. Either she left her sister in ignorance or she invited Rauf to suspect either Hilary or their father of having been in league with Brett. ‘Am I your hostage now?’ Lily demanded.

Rauf paused and from below dense black lashes cast her a molten-gold glance that was as erotic as a caress. ‘Would you like to be?’ he asked huskily.

That easily he churned up the atmosphere between them. She was disconcerted and trapped by those stunning eyes of his, and a tiny flame of awareness lit low in Lily’s tummy; it happened so fast it left her breathless. Tearing her gaze in dismay from his, she focused in a daze on the extraordinary house that had come into view. It sat like a fantasy painting surrounded by venerable oak trees and Lily just stared. With a domed roof and an overhanging first floor, it had all the appearance of a medieval building for, unless she was very much mistaken, it also seemed to be made entirely of wood.

‘Sonngul,’ Rauf said with perceptible pride. ‘The Kasabian yali…that means summer home. I had it restored two years ago as a surprise for my great-grandmother.’

A summer home the size of a mansion. Lily breathed in deep.

‘Of course, I also built a large extension at the rear,’ Rauf continued. ‘In the original house, cooking and washing were done in the courtyard. There were no bedrooms either. The family slept in the same areas where they lived by day.’

The arched front door stood wide. It was an airy house of open spaces, tall windows with shutters, soaring ceilings, plays of filtered light and shadow. At the entrance he removed his shoes and a second later she followed suit. Up the sweeping carved staircase on the first floor was a huge room with doorways leading off in several directions and Rauf told her that it was called the basoda. Each corner of the room was a distinct and different area, one furnished for dining, another with bookshelves and a desk. Rauf strode up the single shallow step into the furthest corner and opened a drinks cabinet. There opulent cushioned divans edged the walls and created a charming window-seat into the tall bay that overlooked a tranquil river and the dense woods beyond. Slipping off her cardigan, Lily sat down there, soothed by that beauty and the silence.

Unasked, Rauf brought her a brandy. Lily sipped and grimaced, for she had never liked the taste of alcohol, but the fiery spirit helped to disperse the chilled knot of apprehension still keeping all her muscles taut.

Rauf set his own glass down untouched and studied her with level dark golden eyes. ‘I misjudged you yesterday,’ he murmured with wry honesty. ‘I was also very rude. That is unlike me but the whole time that I was with you, I was angry and I wanted to hurt you.’

Surprised by his candour, Lily nodded jerkily, compressed her lips and then dropped her head because the over-emotional tears were threatening her again. Finally she was getting a glimpse of the male she had once fallen hopelessly in love with. A guy who was incredibly proud and very stubborn but who would acknowledge when he was in the wrong even though it killed him to own up to being anything less than perfect. A passionate and very masculine male, who could be domineering and arrogant but who had still been capable of melting her heart with one rueful charismatic smile. But then mercifully, she thought crazily as she fought the moisture dammed up behind her aching eyes, Rauf had not smiled since her arrival in Turkey.

‘Why would you want to hurt me?’ she muttered unevenly, for she could think of no good reason in the world why he should have experienced such a need. He had been the one to walk out of her life. He had not looked back either, but it had been a very long time before she had answered the phone in her student flat without a prayer in her heart that it would be him calling her. But then wasn’t she forgetting his current suspicions about her, or at least her family, having been involved in Brett’s dishonesty? She shut out that unwelcome recollection for, as matters stood, she had neither control nor influence over the events that would enfold.

Rauf vented a roughened laugh. ‘How can you ask me that?’

Lily looked at him, recognised the raw tension in that lean, strong face that had once haunted her dreams and her heart skipped a beat.

‘You must feel the hunger you rouse in me,’ Rauf breathed with driven emphasis. ‘I neither expected that nor sought its return, but that desire for you is still there inside me just as it was that summer.’

Through the open sash-window behind her, Lily could hear the soft rushing sound of the river flowing and rippling over stones and, in the silence that fell, it seemed to fill her eardrums while she tried to absorb what he had just admitted. Was he saying that he wanted her back? Why else would he admit to still desiring her? Slowly, she lifted her head high, faint pink chasing the pallor from her lovely face, astonished blue eyes finally connecting with his fierce measuring appraisal.

‘Do you always want most what you think you can’t have?’ Lily whispered shakily.

‘Evet…yes,’ Rauf admitted in Turkish with a fatalistic shrug as if that state of affairs went without saying as the norm for him.

‘So I say no and get wanted even more…you shouldn’t have told me that,’ Lily tried to tease, wanting to laugh and cry at the same time, and then the tears pounced when her guard was down and streamed in rivulets down her cheeks, startling her as much as they seemed to startle him.

‘Lily…no…’ After an instant of hesitation, Rauf found himself sinking down by her side to draw her into his arms, only to still the motion when she was mere inches away.

‘I’m s-sorry…’ she gulped, but that confession of his had set free the pent-up tears as nothing else could have done.

‘I’ve been tough on you,’ Rauf conceded, and then he questioned why he had said that, but he did not question why he was holding her for that development struck him as inevitable.

‘It’s hardly your fault that Brett’s a total creep,’ Lily bit out unsteadily, giving way to what every natural sense prompted and pushing forward into the support of his broad muscled chest to bury her damp face in his shoulder. ‘But I don’t want to think about him right now.’

‘I expect not.’ Rauf held her back from him and used one lean hand to tip her lovely face back up to his.

It was the optimum moment to demand answers. His other hand closed into the fall of her hair where a clip held it confined. His intent golden eyes melded with her damp blue gaze for a long, timeless moment while he reminded himself that she had slept with her sister’s husband, that she was an accomplished liar. But still he stared down into those glorious blue eyes that he recognised were the exact same shade he had chosen for the bedroom ceiling in his Istanbul apartment. A what-the-hell feeling that was totally out of character hit Rauf in a raw, energising wave.

‘Why are you looking at me like that?’ Lily whispered half under her breath, for he was so close she could see the gold lights in his amazing eyes and a different tension, an edge-of-seat, thrilling sense of suspense, held her taut.

‘I’m appreciating you.

’ Rauf tilted her back over one strong arm as he freed the clip confining the long, thick fall of her hair and tossed it aside. He made every move with exaggerated slowness, instinctively waiting for her to protest or retreat as she had once done whenever he got too close. Her response in his arms the day before still struck him as unreal, for that was not how he remembered her.