‘I’m still getting acclimatised. Next week, I’m going to sign up for all the trips and see the sights. Hilary’s hoping to organise special tours for the spring…’ Lily said, her voice petering out as Rauf closed his hands round her waist and lifted her up into the helicopter as if she weighed no more than a child. ‘Thanks.’
As he settled in beside her and signalled the pilot, the rotor blades began to whir. Lily struggled to tighten the seat belt, which had been loosened to hold a much larger frame than her own. Rauf leant over to assist and she tensed, soft brown lashes flying up on uncertain blue eyes to connect with reflective gold. Her hands fell from the clasp and let his take over. As he bent his dark head his luxuriant black hair brushed her chin. Breathing in the warm, achingly familiar scent of him, she trembled, feeling her breasts lift and stir beneath her dress and the tender tips swell into prominence, and biting her soft lower lip in an agony of discomfiture.
She wanted to plunge her fingers into his silky black hair and drag his mouth up to hers again and she was shocked rigid by the depth of her own longing. In the midst of such crazy promptings, she didn’t know herself. What was it about him that he could reduce her to such a level without even trying? Mouth bone-dry, her fingers curled in on themselves lest they too developed a will of their own, she only breathed again when he had settled back into his own seat.
For the entire flight, she stared out the window. She had a fantastic view of the bright turquoise sea studded with islands and edged by tall crags and sandy beaches before the helicopter went into a turn and headed inland. When the coastal development was left behind, she saw the ruin of a castle built on bare rock, hazy tracts of soft green pine forest, the occasional dust road leading out miles through tiny cultivated fields and orchards to small clusters of remote dwellings. She remembered Rauf telling her that virtually every family had links with a village and would often maintain contact with their roots there generations after they had taken up residence in a town.
After the tranquil, soothing scenes of beautiful unspoilt countryside, it was something of a surprise to Lily to see a coalmine come into view as the helicopter started to land. Coalmining was a business, she reminded herself, and Rauf had mentioned a stop on the way. Perhaps one of his newspapers or magazines was doing a feature on the mine, she thought dimly.
Springing out of the craft, Rauf swung back to extend a hand to her. Lily stepped out onto waste ground and saw a dust road several yards ahead of them.
Level dark golden eyes zeroed in on her. ‘Do you know where you are?’
Lily shook her golden head and wondered how on earth he could imagine she would know. ‘I haven’t a clue.’
‘I think you’ll solve the mystery soon enough,’ Rauf asserted, leading her across the road towards a steep paved driveway edged with fancy carriage lamps and really the very last kind of opulent entrance one would have expected to see within yards of the fencing that surrounded the mine.
Lily frowned. ‘Is this where you live?’
‘Even the locals don’t live in this neck of the woods. Who wants to look out the windows and see the slagheaps?’ Rauf derided.
Some sixth sense she had finally picked up on the scorn that edged his every sentence, the strange challenge in his watchful gaze. A wave of tension infiltrated her. She stared back at him, her slender body very taut. He withstood that appraisal with unflinching assurance and her cheeks warmed with self-conscious colour, for he might look intimidating in his current mood but he also looked drop-dead gorgeous. Unhappily that reality kept on playing havoc with her concentration.
‘So if you don’t live here, where are we going?’ Lily prompted, dry-mouthed.
‘I decided to surprise you with a flying visit to the villas built by Harris Travel,’ Rauf responded drily.
; Lily blinked and then a startled laugh fell from her lips. ‘Then I’m afraid you’ve got the address wrong. The villas are near Dalyan, which I understand is quite a beauty spot.’
As she came to a halt Rauf closed a hand over hers. Disconcerted by that move, she flexed her fingers in his and then stilled as a sensation of warmth travelled up her arm, making her outrageously aware of him. He drew her on up the long, winding driveway and then came to a halt, releasing her fingers at the same moment. ‘This is the land Brett Gilman bought for a song because nobody else wanted it.’
Closing both of her hands together in front of her, Lily stared at him. ‘It can’t be…for goodness’ sake, this doesn’t even look like a tourist area. I’m telling you this is definitely not where our villas were built—’
‘Since it was my money that financed the project, do you honestly believe I could make such a mistake?’
Lily sucked in a slow, steadying breath of the hot still air and struggled to think straight. ‘You were only a silent partner—’
‘That was my mistake. Had I insisted on tighter control and greater input, what Harris Travel did here would not have happened because I would not have allowed it to happen,’ Rauf spelt out with fulminating emphasis.
‘What do you mean by…“what Harris Travel did here”?’ Lily questioned uneasily, her tension mounting with every second that passed. ‘Why aren’t you listening to me? This isn’t where the villas were built.’
‘Stop feeding me that bull!’ Rauf ground out with raw impatience, lean, powerful face taut and unyielding. ‘I have a copy of the contract that Brett signed with the builders in my pocket and a copy of the land purchase deed as well.’
‘I don’t care if you’ve got your entire filing cabinet in your pocket!’ Lily slung back an entire octave higher, her temper flaring without warning because nothing he had said or done since the helicopter had landed had made sense to her. ‘I have photographs of the villas when they were almost complete and the view from the front of the villas was fantastic…there was no wretched coalmine in it!’
‘You couldn’t possibly have photographs.’ Rauf subjected her to a raking appraisal, furious at her stubborn refusal to stop lying even in the face of the overwhelming evidence confronting her.
The driveway had petered out on the brow of the hill, Lily noted somewhat belatedly. A driveway that led to nowhere and nothing? In the act of fumbling in her bag for the wallet of photos that Hilary had told her Brett had brought back from his final visit to Turkey the previous winter, Lily stilled in momentary bewilderment to scan the empty, overgrown ground surrounding her on all sides.
Suddenly Lily laughed, relief coiling through her. ‘There are no villas here even to make a mistake about! Why won’t you just admit that we’re in the wrong place?’
While Rauf continued to watch her much as though she had made a sudden claim that she could fly without wings, Lily walked over to him with some satisfaction to extend the photos. ‘Our villas, Rauf.’
In seething frustration, Rauf gave the half dozen snaps a cursory appraisal. ‘Which proves what, Lily? That someone with a camera can take pretty pictures of someone else’s building site? Now either you start telling the truth or I let the police handle this investigation.’
Freezing where she stood at that threat, Lily gazed back at him wide-eyed. ‘The…police?’