by Trish Morey
Except there would be no pay-out. Because the tour company she’d booked with had lost its accreditation and was no longer recognised and therefore not covered under the terms of her insurance policy.
She should have read the small print, they’d oh, so kindly but belatedly suggested.
So she’d lost her money and there would be no pay-out.
No alternative tour.
Not even an early return home because her travel plans had been stymied.
Which meant just one thing.
Kadar wouldn’t let her out of his sight until her return flights home.
Unless...
* * *
He was hanging up on his own phone call when she headed into the living room. His eyes searched her face. ‘Well?’
She licked her lips and smiled weakly, thinly, knowing it was probably mad but it was a chance because it would solve all their problems. ‘I don’t suppose you might loan me a couple of thousand US dollars?’
He didn’t so much as blink. His gaze didn’t waver. ‘The insurance company offered you no help?’
‘The tour agency lost its accreditation six months ago.’
‘So that’s it?’
‘Yeah, that’s it. And so I thought, maybe you could loan me some money and I’ll sign up for another tour. It’s the low season. Someone is sure to have a space. And I could be off your hands as early as tomorrow.’
‘And this is your solution?’
She shrugged. ‘It would solve a lot of problems for us both. It would get me off your back and I’d see something of the Turkey I came to see.’
‘When I met you, you were about to commit a criminal act. Then your tour company goes bankrupt and now you wish to borrow money from me and disappear. And if that unravels, what then? Can you see why I am not tempted by this proposition?’
‘It was a mistake. An accident! And I could hardly help the tour company going broke.’
‘It would be a risk for one who seems so accident prone. No, I have a better idea. You can come with me. I will show you something of Istanbul and Turkey that isn’t even on the tourist trails, and you will have no need to worry about tour companies going broke or of falling foul of the authorities again. And then I will ensure you are at the airport for your flight home.’
‘You’d do all that out of your overinflated sense of responsibility?
‘Like I said, I take my responsibilities seriously.’
‘And there’s nothing in it for you?’
‘I will have the company of a beautiful—if antagonistic—woman for a few days, certainly.’
‘And a few nights.’
He smiled. ‘As you say.’
‘So this is how I am expected to pay for my private tour, then? On my back?’
‘You said that, not me.’
‘No, you prefer to talk about duty and pleasure. Surely it’s the same thing.’
‘In your mind, perhaps. I’m not going to stand here and lie and pretend that the prospect of you in my bed does not appeal. Can you be as honest? Or are you going to pretend that you did not enjoy last night’s activities and you are not excited by the prospect of being naked with me again?’
‘That’s not the point.’
‘No? What is the point, then, Amber Jones? Because all your smart little mouth is doing to me right now is making me want to shut it up and take you again, right here, right now.’
She looked in shock out of the windows, where ships and tankers dotted the Marmara Sea and if they could see out... ‘It’s broad daylight!’
‘You make me want to get you naked and turn you to the window and together we could watch the ships glide by as I slide into you. Does that excite you?’
‘You’re mad,’ she said, but her voice had lost its conviction because he was right. She was excited. Her senses were buzzing, her breasts were full and hard and there was an aching pulse between her thighs.
‘I know. Would you like to join me in my madness?’
It must have been someone else’s voice that said yes because she sure as hell didn’t recognise it. It was breathy and needy and earned a growl from Kadar that rumbled through her bones.
Slowly he peeled away her clothes. Painfully slowly. Taking his time to worship whatever part of her skin he’d revealed. Her shoulders, her elbows, her breasts.
Shrugging off the shoes from her feet and peeling down the jeans from her legs and pressing his lips to the backs of her knees and her ankle and the sensitive inside of her thighs.
She trembled as he rained kisses down on her body and teased her skin with his hot tongue and the pads of his fingers, the barest heated touch to her nipples, turning the satin of her skin to goosebumps, until every part of her body screamed of one purpose and one need.
Then he turned her, and she braced herself against the window with her elbows. ‘Watch the ships,’ he said as his hands skimmed down her sides and over the cheeks of her behind and between, to find her wet and waiting.
He groaned and she heard the slide of a zip and the tear of a wrapper. ‘Count them,’ he said, his voice husky and thick.
‘What?’
‘Out loud. Count the ships.’
And so Amber started counting. ‘One. Two. Three.’ And felt the nudge of him between her thighs and at her entrance and gasped.
‘Keep counting,’ he said, grinding out the words.
‘Four. Five.’ And angled her hips. ‘Six,’ and felt the long hard slide of him inside until he filled her.
Words failed her, numbers failed her, her energy concentrating on trying to hold him as he slowly withdrew. She closed her eyes because she had no energy to see, only to feel.
‘Count!’
‘Six,’ she managed as he thrust into her again, forcing her eyes wide open again. ‘No. Seven. Eight.’
Oh, God!
His rhythm built. The ships moved and she lost track of which she’d counted as he moved inside her, and numbers tumbled from her lips. Numbers without rhyme or reason or an end to them because there were too many ships and remembering which number came next was too hard when all there was room for was sensation.
Nothing but sensation building upon sensation. Until he cried out behind her and with one dizzying thrust sent her hurtling, coming apart until the pieces of her shattered soul sparkled like the sun on the blue sea.
And maybe she was fickle and weak and too easily swayed by the pleasures of the flesh, but there could be worse ways to spend your days and nights, she figured as her breath steamed against the sheet of glass on her way back down to earth.
There could be much worse ways to spend your time than as a captive of Kadar.
* * *
He made good on his promise to show her Istanbul. He took her to Topkapi Palace, the old Ottoman palace, and then to Dohlmabahce Palace on the European side of the Bosphorus. She was fascinated by everything, lapping up the details and the history from the personal guides he had arranged. She oohed and aahed at the beautiful Izmir tiles of the old palace and the magnificent crystal chandeliers of the new. Like most women, she seemed fascinated by the details of the harem, but it was to the glass display cabinets that her eye was drawn and where it lingered longest.
She was like a magpie. She liked the pretty things, spending an inordinate amount of time in front of the displays, in the Treasury rooms at Topkapi Palace, and then again at Dohlmabahce, examining every coloured brooch, every jewelled scabbard and reading every typed description, a slight frown tugging her brows together.
‘What are you looking for?’ he asked, at one stage.
‘Nothing,’ she said, hastily, ‘it’s all just so beautiful.’ He wasn’t convinced by her answer. She was a woman who’d already shown herself to be partial to souvenirs and who had scant knowledge of
or regard for Turkey’s laws against removing antiquities. He’d like to think she wasn’t so stupid as to think she could get away with spiriting anything like this home, but given how little he really knew of her and her motivations, how could he be sure? Given her interest, it was just as well everything was behind locked glass set with security alarms.
‘I’m sure there are some replicas for sale in the museum shop, if you’re that taken by anything.’
She gave him a tight-lipped smile. ‘I’ll take a look.’
It took hours to wend their way through the two palaces, so that the evening was already gathering, rain showers sending up the dark umbrellas, the street lighting sending ribbons of colour along the damp grey streets.
For Kadar and Amber, there was no lining up for tour buses to take them back to their hotels. Kadar’s driver arrived with his car to whisk them away no more than a moment after they’d emerged from the gates of the palace.
But while Amber’s feet were ready to fall off by the time they were through, and she’d never been more grateful than for a private car ride back to Kadar’s apartment, her mind was in overdrive.
For her great-great-great-grandmother had turned twenty and left home on her adventures in eighteen fifty-six, the same year Dohlmabahce Palace had been completed, before she had seemingly disappeared off the face of the earth for five years.
What had happened to her all those missing years in a foreign country so far from home? Had she wandered the rooms of the harem as her hushed family lore liked to hint? And had her eyes witnessed any of the wonders that her descendant of five generations had witnessed today?
It was intoxicating to imagine they had. A century and a half meant nothing in the scope of such historic places.
‘You seem deep in thought.’
She looked over at him and found a smile. She might be stuck with him, but he really was trying to make up for her lost tour. ‘It was a fabulous day, thank you.’
‘You appeared to be very taken by the jewels.’
The warm bubble of gratefulness she’d been feeling burst right then and there. There was something unsaid in his words that she didn’t like. A warning.
But then, it was the jewellery that had been niggling at her. And her bracelet in particular. She’d never seen jewellery or treasures that reminded her so much of the style of her bracelet. She’d imagined it must be cheap, because it featured so many different colours all together in the one piece. But so much of what she’d seen today was strikingly similar. Different coloured gems sitting alongside each other, all of them beautiful in their own right, but together an ostentatious display of wealth.
It still didn’t mean it wasn’t a cheap replica Amber had bought in a market at the time though, just that she had been jolted by the similarity in design.
And really, the more she thought about it, the more it made sense that it was an early knock off. It was too ridiculous for words to think that something genuine could have been sitting wrapped in oilskins along with what was left of Amber’s diary, in her gran’s attic in a tiny hamlet in rural Hertfordshire for so many years.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘who wouldn’t be impressed? It was a spectacular display.’
‘It was. Turkey is very proud of its heritage.’
Another message. Another thinly veiled warning? She was sure of it.
And for a moment she toyed with the idea of telling him about her intrepid forebear, whose diary and bracelet she’d found, and who’d ventured to Turkey all those years ago, inspired by the adventures of trail-blazing women like Jane Digby who’d gone before in following their heart rather than settling into the constraints and expectations of English society.
But would he even believe her? Doubtful, given the way he appeared too willing to want to believe the worst of her.
He already thought she was a thief. If she told him now about the bracelet, and it did turn out to be anything other than a cheap copy, then he’d only ask where she’d stolen it from. And given it was old, even if it was a cheap copy back then, it was bound to be worth something now, even as a collector’s item.
She might as well save herself the grief.
Besides, why should she bare her all when he had his own secrets? He already knew more about her than most people did, courtesy of of the fact he’d been there when she’d been interviewed by the polis. But what did she really know about him? Nothing. So why should she tell him any more about herself?
So she simply said, ‘Turkey has every right to be proud of its heritage.’ And smiled. Let him build a case against her out of that.
And when he’d turned, stony faced, away, as if she hadn’t given him what he’d been hoping for, she asked the question she’d been meaning to ever since their visit to the old man and had forgotten in the excitement of today’s adventures. ‘Tell me about Mehmet.’
His head swung back around. ‘What about him?’
‘Who is he?’
‘An old friend. Why?’
‘Just curious. How old is he, do you know?’
Alongside her Kadar shrugged. ‘At least, ninety. Probably closer to ninety-five.’
‘How do you know him? Through your family?’
He looked out of his window. ‘No.’
‘Then—’
He turned back. ‘What is this?’
‘I’m just making conversation. What was the Pavilion of the Moon he mentioned? I haven’t read about that anywhere.’
‘You’re not making conversation. You’re prying.’
‘So, I’m curious. Or is being curious a crime here, too?’
He gave an impatient flick of his head and she pushed herself deeper into the plush leather of her seat. He could keep his damned secrets if they were that special. She turned her attention out of the window and watched the late afternoon traffic jostling for position on the busy highway, the coloured street lights making patterns on the slick roads.
‘You heard today about the sultans and the harem of the Ottoman empire.’
She looked around, surprised. ‘Yes.’
‘When the empire came to an end in the early twentieth century, and the Sultan exiled, palace life, as it had been for centuries, came to an end. The women and the men were freed from service.
‘Mehmet’s mother was one of the women of the palace, from the harem. His adopted father, one of the Sultan’s vizier’s. His many years of service meant he could buy a house and they set up home together, two displaced souls in a world that had moved on. In addition, there was a small palace he had been gifted for his faithful service previously.’
‘The Pavilion of the Moon.’
Kadar nodded and stretched out his arm along the back of the seat, his fingers draping over her shoulder, his thumb making lazy sweeps of her arm. She was sure he had not a clue he was doing it. ‘It was a folly constructed by an earlier sultan, some say as an escape from the hothouse atmosphere of palace life here. A place to be more normal.’ He shrugged. ‘Of course, a sultan could never live a normal life. It is Mehmet’s to use until his death, though it was always to be returned to the state. Already there are steps under way to turn it into a museum, and then you will see it listed on your tourist trails.’
Amber wondered. Mehmet was more than just an old man. He was a link joining the present to the past. But something niggled.
‘You said Mehmet’s father adopted him?’
‘Yes. He was already an old man when the empire crumbled, but he could not have had children of his own anyway. He was a eunuch, of course.’
‘Oh.’
His fingers stilled. ‘Does that shock you?’
‘No. It’s just—’ There was a flip side to the jewels and the rich costumes and a lifestyle of luxury and indulgence, Amber realised, a flip side to chandeliers and staircases made all of crystal,
to the gilt ceilings and the romanticism of what life in the palace must have been like. And it was the stark truth that the Sultan and what was his had to be protected, and by men who could be trusted.
And she thought about Kadar, masculine and virile, and shuddered when she thought what a waste of a man that would be. ‘It just seems so cruel.’
‘Life can be cruel. But he led a good life—pampered, many would say, and then he lived out his life with the woman he took as his wife and brought Mehmet up as his own son.’
As Mehmet had done with him, Kadar thought uneasily. Paying it forward. Giving a child a father when he had none. A semblance of family where his had been cruelly ripped away.
A lump formed in the back of his throat.
He owed the old man everything. But he already knew that. He didn’t have to tell this woman about him to appreciate how much the old man had done for him.
Maddening.
That was what she was.
* * *
They ate that night at a restaurant near the fish markets of Kumkapi on the Sea of Marmara, where the fish were displayed in patterns on trays like works of art, and where locals and tourists alike mixed to enjoy the atmosphere and the freshest catches from the sea, and afterwards they made love long into the night.
And the next day he escorted her around the Grand Bazaar before he surprised her by taking her on the Bosphorus cruise she’d missed.
Amber was beyond excited. The day was mostly clear, and seeing Istanbul from the water gave the city another dimension. They sat on the deck of the boat protected from the breeze and with the thin winter sun shining down on them and cruised down the waterway that separated two continents, sea birds wheeling behind them, hoping to be thrown a crust of bread.
They sailed past palaces and ancient fortresses, apartment buildings marching up the sides of the hills and quaint timber houses alike. A huge container ship heading from the Black Sea passed them by as they sailed under the Bosphorus bridge that joined Europe to Asia within the one country.