A Mediterranean Marriage

There was a very long silence. Startled tawny eyes gazed deep into hers. ‘You’re saying you’re a…?’

Hurriedly she nodded, face flaming.

‘I suppose I ought to say that seducing virgins isn’t my style but, to be very frank,’ Rauf husked, those smouldering eyes turning slumbrous with anticipation, ‘I’ve never been in this situation before and the idea of being your first lover just blows my mind!’

That was not the understanding response she had been hoping to receive and she muttered in considerable embarrassment, ‘What I’m trying to say is that I really want to wait until I’m married.’

‘But I’m not looking for a wife. I doubt that I’ll ever marry,’ Rauf informed her steadily. ‘I come from a family where for several generations marriage at a very young age was the norm. I’ve been fending off potential brides since I was eighteen. I like my freedom. So if you want more, I’m the wrong guy.’

She wished he had told her all that on the first date. By then it was too late to stop loving him. But the night died there and at the end of it she told him she didn’t want to see him again. And, even now, she remembered the dark, incredulous fury in his lean, devastating features and the fright it had given her to see what a temper he had. He hadn’t said or done anything to demonstrate that anger but that memory had lingered. For forty-eight hours, he didn’t call and then he turned up at the bar, still furious with her but trying to hide it and, just looking at him, she knew that, even if their relationship had no future, he was still her fate. That same week he found her another job as a receptioni

st in a beauty salon owned by the wife of a friend of his and she was very grateful.

For a few weeks, they had a wonderful time together most of the time. Things only went wrong when sex entered the equation. On three separate occasions, she steeled herself to go back to his hotel with him. The first time, he said to her, ‘You’re not ready for this,’ because when he tried to move beyond kissing she just froze on him. The second time she drank too much in the hope of losing her inhibitions and he took her home in brooding silence. The third time, she told him he made her feel scared sometimes and he looked so shaken she felt the most awful guilt because she knew that she was the one with the problem, not him.

But then, surprisingly, for a while, he just accepted how she was and he was very gentle and caring and she loved him more than ever. Yet when Hilary begged her to bring Rauf home, she continued to make excuses. Then Brett turned up at her student flat one night just before Rauf was due to pick her up.

‘It’s time we buried the hatchet,’ Brett announced with a creepy smile while she shrank behind the door and kept it on the chain. ‘Hilary is gasping to meet this Rauf Kasabian character and I swear I’ll be on my best behaviour if you bring him home for the weekend.’

‘Why? Why would you swear that?’

‘Hilary’s hurt that you hardly ever visit. That makes me feel bad.’

Rauf was amazingly keen to meet her family and, although she was surprised by his interest in investing in Harris Travel, it was a terrific weekend. A week later, they made a second visit because Rauf’s accountant had flown over from Turkey to look at Harris Travel’s accounts and the contract Rauf’s London lawyer had already drawn up in readiness was then signed by Rauf and her father. But during those same forty-eight hours, everything that could go wrong did go wrong…

Lily was very much on edge with the knowledge that Rauf was within days of making a permanent return to Turkey. Her niece, Gemma, was ill when they arrived. Lily had to offer to stand in for a sick member of staff the following day at the travel agency. Then, Gemma was taken into hospital for emergency surgery and Hilary was frantic and unable to contact Brett. Shutting out that unappealing slice of memory, Lily remembered how she had seen Rauf off at the airport that same evening and not one word had he said about seeing her again or not seeing her again or indeed anything else. But that had been the last time she’d seen or heard from him. Once she had called his mobile phone just to check he was still alive and he had answered and she had not had the nerve to speak.

When Rauf strode back into the bedroom, Lily gave him an aghast look for she had lost track of time. Having intended to be dressed and elsewhere by the time he reappeared, she just dived under the sheet like a little kid, leaving nothing but some trailing hair showing.

Rauf was very encouraged by the fact that Lily was still in his bed an hour after the event. In particular, an event that had been a lot less of an event than it should have been. She was still naked too, which meant she was a captive audience.

‘Lily…’

‘Go away…I want to get dressed!’ Lily launched from below the sheet, feeling exceedingly foolish.

Rauf hunkered down by the side of the bed, inched up the sheet about three inches and met frantic blue eyes. ‘I’ve been a total inconsiderate bastard but I do care about you.’

‘Prove it then…go away!’ Lily urged chokily, thinking that that noncommittal word, ‘care’ had always come very readily to Rauf’s lips around her. But that word promised nothing and while she’d waited on a phone that had never rung at the age of twenty-one she had learned the hard way that his concept of ‘caring’ could mean absolutely nothing too.

‘I can’t stand it when you’re upset and you won’t let me hold you!’ Rauf fired back at her in immediate frustration.

At that, Lily lifted her head a little. He sounded so sincere. ‘I just don’t understand you….’

‘Why would you even want to?’ Rauf asked her, gathering strength by the second on that reassuring piece of news. ‘I’m a guy. I’m supposed to be different.’

‘You’re too different,’ Lily told him helplessly. ‘I don’t know where I am with you.’

‘In my bed beneath my sheet and I’m going to rip you out of there if you don’t come out under your own steam,’ Rauf told her steadily.

Fierce resentment hurtled up through Lily. ‘You do that…and I promise you, I’ll thump you!’

Dark golden eyes arrowed over her angry face in astonishment at that threat. ‘I was only teasing…’

No, she knew he hadn’t been. On that level, she knew him well. Ripping off the sheet would not have cost Rauf a second of hesitation. He was a stranger to patience.

Lily shimmied up from under the sheet, carrying it carefully with her until her head hit the pillows again. She didn’t even think about what she was doing because with every moment that passed a far more engrossing conviction had been growing on her. It was as if time had gone into reverse. It was spooky. Somehow, somewhere between vacating the bedroom and returning to it, Rauf had switched back into being the male she remembered him being in London. More relaxed, less abrasive, not a shade of coldness or scorn or reserve about him and there was warmth in his beautiful eyes again. So what had changed? No matter how hard she tried, she could not stop staring at him.

It was a bad move, she conceded dizzily because, as usual, Rauf looked drop-dead gorgeous. Sheathed in black jeans, he could have sold racks of them to besotted women and his grey tee shirt was designer casual and made him seem much more approachable than a business suit did. And then there was him, the guy in the clothes. Black hair still damp from the shower, the riveting attraction of that lean, hard-boned face and the dark, deepset eyes with only a restive glitter of gold pinned to her with an intensity she could feel.