Disconcerted, Lily muttered, ‘Mr Godian, your last accountant…the one who came over to England to check out Harris Travel three years ago?’
‘Tecer was an astute man. That last day that I stayed at your home, you said you had to go into the travel agency to help out because an employee was ill. Tecer was there checking the accounts and so were you and Brett. Even though Tecer saw nothing that he could quite put his finger on, he saw enough to rouse his concern—’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Tecer had no idea that I was personally involved with you. Later that same morning, he said to me, “The son-in-law, Brett…and Lily, the wife’s little sister, there’s something wrong and disturbing about that relationship. They don’t behave like normal family members do with each other.”’
At that revelation, Lily tensed with surprise. Had Tecer Godian noted her fear and nervous tension at being alone, as she had initially believed, with her brother-in-law in the front office? Her considerable relief when she had first registered that the older man was in the back room going over the accounts and her chattiness once Brett had mercifully gone out? Yes, as Rauf so rightly said, Tecer had been a shrewd man, as an outsider seeing what those more closely involved did not see. But Rauf had taken those astute warning words and put them into a very different context.
‘I paid no heed, asked no questions, but I understood what Tecer meant all right after I had waited in that car park until you finally emerged from that hotel with Gilman!’ Rauf grated in contemptuous condemnation. ‘Even though you refuse to admit it, all along you were in love with your sister’s husband—’
‘That’s not what the man saw between Brett and I,’ Lily argued with furious emphasis. ‘It’s a pity that you never asked Tecer to explain what he meant—’
‘Do you think that I would’ve lowered myself to the level of discussing you with a man who was not only my employee, but also a family friend?’ Rauf scorned.
‘You might have saved us both a lot of unhappiness if you had,’ Lily condemned with angry reproach, finally understanding what had first made Rauf suspect the nature of her relationship with her sister’s ex-husband. ‘But perhaps you took out of his words what you wanted to believe—’
‘And what the hell is that supposed to mean? We’re straying too far from the main issue here,’ Rauf condemned with brooding force, shimmering golden eyes pinned to the flushed, taut oval of her face. ‘My every worst suspicion about your integrity has been proved correct.’
‘And that’s a relief for you, isn’t it?’ Lily studied him with wondering eyes, bitter anger of a strength she had never before experienced building even higher inside her. ‘To believe that I loved Brett, that I only took you home so that you could invest in Harris Travel and that all the time my sole motivation was to enrich Brett and get my own greedy hands on your wretched money?’
His aggressive jawline clenched, for it infuriated him that, even when he set the evidence before her, she was still striving to portray herself as a poor little victim. ‘Yes…that is what I must believe.’
Lily loosed a jagged little laugh. ‘Then I’m sure this can’t come as a surprise to you either…I very much regret getting married to you yesterday!’
‘Like hell you do!’ Rauf countered in a lion’s roar of rebuttal that shook her where she stood. ‘If you weren’t my wife, I’d be handing you straight over to the police!’
‘Hopefully they would be a little better at investigating crime than you are…then that’s their job,’ Lily traded with dulcet sweetness of tone, her powerful sense of injustice mounting as she had considered all the sins that he seemed to believe her capable of committing. ‘So go ahead and hand me over because I don’t ever want to have anything more to do with you!’
‘Let me tell you, after a few nights in a prison cell you wouldn’t be half so bloody impertinent!’ Rauf launched back at her, incensed by what he interpreted as a ridiculous declaration. ‘And what’s more, you married me knowing that you were protecting yourself from any threat of imprisonment—’
‘My goodness…’ Lily trilled, burning spots of furious colour now highlighting her cheekbones. ‘I ought to write a book about my life as a wicked, unscrupulous adventuress…only I don’t seem to have been a very successful one, do I?’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Rauf demanded.
‘Well, according to you, I loved Brett and cheated, lied and stole for him, but somehow never had the guts to be wicked enough to sleep with him,’ Lily recounted with wide, questioning eyes. ‘Then there’s also the small fact that I’m virtually broke until my next month’s salary arrives, so I appear to have been a total loser as an embezzler as well. And, lastly, my crowning error seems to have been to marry the guy I robbed…which hardly promises me the happiest of secure futures…does it?’
His devastatingly handsome features clenched hard. ‘If I receive one more facetious response from you—’
‘You’ll what…divorce me?’ Lily slung at him bitterly. ‘Well, I’m ahead of you there…I want a divorce!’
Rauf went rigid at that threat and instantly asserted, ‘You can forget that as an option—’
‘And you can keep your lousy money too. I’ll think myself lucky just to be free from the nightmare of being tied to a guy who has no faith in me at all!’
‘You’re married to me and, I’m afraid, there’s no escape clause in this lifetime,’ Rauf heard himself launch back at her in an even blacker rage.
‘I’d rather take my chances with the police…I’ll hand myself over, get this sorted out,’ Lily declared again, her chin taking on a defiant tilt.
‘Don’t be stupid!’ Rauf seethed, out of all patience with her.
‘I did not put my name on that bank account—’
‘Stop lying to me! Gilman needed your name on the account because you’re a director in Harris Travel, which means that he can lie and say he opened up that account as an employee at your request! As a director, you can be held liable for the disappearance of the funds I invested in the firm!’
Without warning, Lily’s knees betrayed a lowering need to knock together in fright and she sank down into a seat on the other side of the cabin. She had not realised that the awarding of that directorship by her father from which she had yet to earn a single penny meant that she could be put in such a position. Now at last she understood why Brett had smugly informed her that she
would have to protect him. Very probably, Brett had put her name on the account with his own for the reasons that Rauf had just defined, and no wonder her sister’s ex-husband had crowed when she had announced that she and Rauf had just got married! Brett would also have foreseen the unlikelihood of Rauf choosing to press charges over the stolen cash when to do so would cast doubt on his own wife’s honesty. But Lily could not abide even the idea of Brett Gilman escaping his just deserts!