A Mediterranean Marriage

by Lynne Graham

  So, she would hand herself over to the police, rather than wait for the police to catch up with her. Had she only fired off threats of divorce at Rauf because she was hurt and angry with him? When it came to crunch time, the thought of being without Rauf was like offering to have her heart removed without an anaesthetic. At the same time, when she thought of how proud Rauf was and how attached he was to his family, she could only cringe about how he must be feeling now at the knowledge that he had married a woman who could well be accused of criminal activity in the near future.

  ‘I don’t blame you for thinking I might be guilty,’ Lily said miserably to Rauf as they walked through the airport at Istanbul. ‘You had grounds—’

  ‘No. No matter what life throws at me, I should always have faith in you—’

  ‘How can you have when I come from a family who harboured Brett for so many years?’ Lily mumbled, sunk in despair. ‘It’s better that we get a divorce and you just don’t mention me to anyone. If your family was unhappy because you’d got married without them present, with a bit of luck they won’t have discussed our marriage with any friends yet and it can all be hushed up.’

  In a sudden move, Rauf closed a lean hand hard over hers as if divorce were so imminent he had to retain a bodily hold on her to prevent it. ‘I’ve upset you a great deal but there is no reason whatsoever for you to be talking about divorce—’

  ‘I don’t think you’ll feel that way if I’m arrested—’

  ‘Should there be the slightest risk of that, I’ll get you out of the country,’ Rauf declared with a lack of hesitation that unnerved Lily, for it seemed to suggest that there was indeed a fair chance of such a situation developing. ‘But as I will not be pressing charges against Gilman for the payments I didn’t receive, that cannot happen—’

  ‘But you really wanted to prosecute him—’

  ‘You matter to me a great deal more than revenge,’ Rauf confessed, brilliant golden eyes clinging to her delicate profile. ‘Your peace of mind is also of paramount importance to me.’

  Unwilling, it seemed, to cede him the ability to have even that amount of tender feeling for her, Lily sighed. ‘Of course, you don’t want to risk this whole horrible mess coming out in public and upsetting your family.’

  In frustration, Rauf herded her into the waiting limousine.

  ‘You can just take me to the police station and I’ll get it all over with,’ Lily muttered as he swung in beside her. ‘It’s not right that Brett should be let off—’

  ‘It’s not right that my wife should talk about divorcing me!’ Rauf bit out rawly, tawny eyes shimmering over her startled face as he closed two strong hands round her tiny waist and propelled her toward him. ‘Or that when you’re innocent you should even consider approaching the police with a very complicated and confusing story which they might not understand as well as I do. Both subjects are closed. For ever closed—’

  Held only inches away from him, Lily quivered, her tense body leaping with wicked immediacy to the proximity of his, her mind a bemused sea of anxious thoughts. ‘But—’

  ‘Turkish wives don’t argue with their men. Ask my great-grandmother, Nelispah,’ Rauf advised silkily. ‘You can try to manipulate me in a thousand much more devious ways…that’s OK, that’s perfectly acceptable and even expected of you. But you never argue outright with me—’

  ‘You quite like it when I argue with you—’

  ‘Not on this issue, güzelim. Take it from me…I know best on this subject—’

  ‘But when the police find out I’m a director in Harris Travel and Brett’s prosecuted for what he did with those villas—’

  ‘You’re Lily Kasabian. You have done nothing wrong, therefore you can have nothing to fear,’ Rauf murmured in a soothing and yet subtle forceful tone, striving to get through to her with every fibre of his extremely determined personality and seeing no reason to concern her with the reality that the police were already aware of her directorship in the firm. ‘As my wife, your place is by my side and if any problems arise you can rest assured that I will move immediately to deal with them on your behalf.’

  ‘I wish life was like that,’ Lily mumbled, almost laughing in spite of her anxiety, for he really, truly believed that there was nothing he could not handle, nothing he could not make right.

  ‘Life with me is and will be like that, I promise you,’ Rauf intoned, golden gaze dropping to her sweet lush mouth, and then he tensed, fighting an almost irresistible urge to kiss her with all the pent-up passion that the mere mention of losing her had roused in him. All you have ever wanted from me is sex, however, was one of those Lily-type accusations calculated, Rauf knew, to come back and haunt him at the worst possible moments. The very last thing he wanted to risk was stoking that impression any higher. Tonight, when they went to bed in his riverside home, he would just hold her, nothing else. Maybe for at least a week he should hold her…

  As if she were being tugged by elastic, Lily leant slowly forward in an inviting way, heart banging hard up against her ribs, lips tingling, but Rauf set her back from him with a preoccupied air. Truly embarrassed by her own disappointed expectations, Lily sank back into the far corner of the seat and endeavoured to concentrate instead on the exotic busy streets of Istanbul. Would everything be all right as he had sworn it would be? Ought she to listen to him? Then there was no point kidding herself that she wanted a divorce, was there?

  Was he obsessed with sex? Rauf was engaged in a rare phase of the uneasy self-examination of the type that only overcame him in Lily’s vicinity. He would have said he was obsessed with her but she had to have worked that out for herself by now. When a man married a woman within the space of four days, it was hardly a sign of sophisticated cool and restraint, was it? Especially when the same guy had spent all of his adult existence swearing that he was never, ever going to get married. Did Lily think sexual restraint was a demonstration of romantic and considerate caring even in marriage? Suddenly sexual restraint was looming on his horizon like a very big black cloud.

  Apprehensive about meeting his family, Lily preceded Rauf into the enormous mansion where three generations of Kasabians lived. ‘I bet you anything they don’t like me—’

  ‘Nelispah liked you on sight and my father will be very grateful that he won’t have to listen ever again to the three of them bewailing the shame of me still being single,’ Rauf informed her cheerfully.

  From the minute the maid opened the door of the big, gracious drawing-room and Rauf’s mother, Seren, a small, rounded brunette in her fifties emerged proffering an animated welcome in English, Lily did not have the time to be nervous. His father, a tall, craggier version of Rauf with greying hair, smiled at her. His grandmother, Manolya, was the quietest of the three older women. Nelispah Kasabian grasped Lily’s hand in her frail fingers and just looked at her with tears in her bright old eyes and nodded to herself with satisfaction.

  ‘You and I are to fly over to England tomorrow,’ Rauf’s father, Ersin, murmured to his son under the cover of the feminine chatter filling the room.

  ‘Say that again,’ Rauf invited.

  ‘This promises to be a very traditional wedding,’ Ersin stressed. ‘We must ask Lily’s father if he will accept you as a bridegroom—’

  ‘He’s already got me whether he likes it or not,’ Rauf pointed out, inflamed by the prospect of being parted from Lily for even a day. On reflection, however, he conceded that he would not have dreamt of marrying one of his own countrywomen without first approaching her family. ‘Yes, you’re right. That is how it should’ve been done—’

  ‘By the time you return alone to your own home this night, you will have discovered one of life’s unhappier truths,’ Ersin contended. ‘Nelispah cannot be fought. She’ll be upset if you argue and distraught if you refuse her expectations and how can you risk that?’

  Rauf frowned. ‘Alone…what are you talking about?’

  ‘If you’re not ready to admit that you are already married, yo
u can hardly be seen to take Lily into your home. I understood that you had agreed to that extraordinary arrangement on the phone last night—’

  ‘Rauf…’ From across the room, his great-grandmother was already stretching out a gnarled hand in greeting.

  Go home alone without his wife? Were they all out of their minds to ask such an outrageous thing of him? That wasn’t a pound of flesh, that was an entire body they were demanding!

  ‘Until we celebrate your wedding, Lily can stay here with us as if we are her family too. That way there will be no gossip,’ the old lady told him happily.

  Faint colour accentuated the tough slant of Rauf’s high cheekbones and his hands clenched. He encountered his mother’s pleading look of appeal and he compressed his lips on a surge of such anger at the idea of being separated from Lily that for an instant he could not trust himself to speak.

  ‘You can visit Lily all the time,’ his grandmother, Manolya, suggested in her usual anxious, placating fashion.

  ‘But Rauf cannot be alone with her…otherwise people will say she is fast and we are too free,’ Nelispah warned.

  ‘Lily is already my wife,’ Rauf said drily.

  ‘You will have her all your life…but this is the time of betrothal, courting and bridal visits.’ Nelispah spoke as though the entire process were on a calendar written in stone and ignored his reference to the civil ceremony. ‘You will not want it said that you valued your bride so little that you would not follow custom or convention.’

  Rauf breathed in very deep. ‘What was customary over seventy years ago is—’

  ‘The forty days and the forty nights,’ his great-grandmother slotted in, making him turn pale. ‘But we do not live in a village and, although I think it is sad that weddings must now be rushed affairs with less honour, I know a week must suffice.’

  Even relieved of the threat of the forty days and nights, Rauf swallowed hard. A week. A week; seven days without Lily. He was aghast. But he looked down into the old lady’s trusting, hopeful dark eyes and he knew that he had brought the situation on himself and that he could not, must not, hurt her any more than he already had with a blunt refusal. He jerked his proud dark head in grim acknowledgement and agreement. Ninety-nine per cent of the anguished tension holding the rest of his relatives rigid vanished at that point.

  ‘I must explain this to Lily…in private,’ Rauf murmured flatly.

  ‘Leave the door open…’ Nelispah urged after frowning over that request.

  Lily had absorbed the byplay of that curious little scene without the remotest understanding of what was happening. Rauf’s mother had kept on talking to her while watching Rauf with a wary air of pronounced strain. But now everyone but Rauf seemed happy and relaxed. His lean, strong features were brooding and taut.

  Extending a lean hand to Lily in silent invitation, he led her into the room next door. ‘What’s wrong?’ Lily hissed in an urgent whisper.

  Rauf growled something raw in Turkish under his breath and strode over to the tall windows, wide shoulders emanating wrathful tension. ‘I’ve been stitched up by a ninety-two-year-old punishment professional!’

  ‘Sorry?’

  Rauf expelled his breath. ‘Last night, I heard you talking to Brett on the phone—’

  ‘You…did?’ Lily exclaimed, trying to recall what she had said, belatedly grasping yet another unfortunate factor that might well have contributed to the angry distrust with which Rauf had reacted to the discovery that her name was on that bank account set up by the other man.

  ‘While I was thinking about that…the matriarchs phoned me and I may…I really don’t remember…have given Nelispah the impression that I was willing to go through with another more traditional wedding to soothe the feelings I had offended,’ Rauf advanced. ‘She is refusing to acknowledge the civil ceremony, which means that she expects us to behave as if we are still single.’

  Lily frowned in bewilderment.

  ‘Which entails you remaining here under this roof without me until we are married for a second time,’ Rauf extended grittily.

  ‘Oh…oh!’ Lily gasped. ‘But that’s ten days away—’

  ‘A week—’

  ‘No, your mother was quite clear about the date.’

  ‘Nelispah is behaving as though our marriage in the civil ceremony was an elopement…ayip…something shameful!’ Rauf ground out.

  ‘I don’t think so. She’s very accepting of me and I’d hate to cause her pain.’

  Rauf explained that he was flying over to her home the following day to visit her family.

  ‘Oh, no…Hilary hates you!’ Lily exclaimed in dismay.

  Rauf watched Lily pin an embarrassed hand to her parted lips as she appreciated what she had let drop and he squared his big shoulders, brilliant golden eyes shimmering.

  ‘Because of the way you dumped me three years ago,’ she added with a rueful grimace.

  Every sin he had ever committed was now coming back to haunt him, Rauf reflected with a fatalistic feeling.

  ‘What about the villas…and all that?’ Lily prompted worriedly. ‘Hilary and Dad need to be told.’

  ‘Yes,’ Rauf acknowledged. ‘I’ll take care of that—’

  ‘I should phone her—’

  ‘Yes, but only tell your sister that we’ve got married—’

  ‘But—’

  ‘I’ll handle the bad stuff with tact. I’m family now too.’ His lean, gorgeous face serious, Rauf reached for her hands and drew her close. ‘When I get back, I’ll take you out on that tourist trail you were supposed to be following and nobody can argue about that. That’s your duty to your sister, who sent you over here, and a business necessity.’ A slumbrous smile of satisfaction slashed Rauf’s handsome mouth as he came up with those indisputable facts, calculated to impress even his great-grandmother, who would be unable to even conceive that Lily might either travel round alone or fail to fulfil a family obligation.

  ‘I’m still going to miss you,’ Lily confided unevenly.

  Rauf suppressed a groan. ‘I should be back within forty-eight hours…but all of a sudden that seems a long way away…why is that?’

  Lily wrapped her arms round his neck and pressed into connection with his lithe, powerful frame. In the very act of claiming her lush mouth with hungry heat, Rauf heard a slight cough sound from the hall and he yanked his dark head up again, eyes a blaze of smouldering gold. ‘The second wedding can’t come fast enough for me, güzelim.’

  The next twenty-four hours were very busy for Lily. When she phoned her sister, Hilary was stunned to be told that Lily was already married to Rauf, but mollified by the discovery that there was a second, more formal wedding yet to come. ‘Of course, we’ll come over for it. With a little luck, Rauf will send his private jet to fetch us and we’ll save on the fares,’ Hilary teased with considerable amusement. ‘In return, I will desist from calling him a rat and endeavour to like him.’

  Lily got on like a house on fire with Rauf’s relatives and she was warmed by their affectionate lack of reserve with her. A large ceremonial tea party was held that afternoon and every female acquaintance of the Kasabian family appeared to be on the guest list. Lily was the centre of an admiring and curious throng. When Nelispah Kasabian became tired, Lily accompanied the old lady into another room where she lay down on a couch to rest for a while.

  As Lily emerged again a beautiful brunette, garbed in an elegant white trouser suit, intercepted her to introduce herself. ‘I’m Kasmet. I’ve known Rauf almost all my life…’

  Lily smiled.

  ‘But I was very surprised to hear that he was getting married,’ Kasmet continued, sultry dark eyes bright with scorn. ‘After all, he’s still in love with me!’

  Lily blinked in bemusement. ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Of course, Rauf would never admit that…even when we had an affair earlier this year. He’s too stubborn and proud,’ the other woman informed Lily, her ripe mouth setting into a thinned line. ‘But I want you
to know it. I want you to know that you’re second-best. He fell for me when we were teenagers and he never got over me.’

  Blue eyes wide with astonishment, Lily spoke her own first thought out loud without meaning to do so. ‘You must be the girl he caught with one of his friends!’

  Infuriated coins of scarlet bloomed over Kasmet’s cheeks.

  ‘I’m sorry…I didn’t mean to say that,’ Lily mumbled, shaken by the other woman’s spite, but also rather embarrassed by her own rejoinder.

  Unexpectedly, Kasmet loosed a bitter laugh. ‘I had too much to drink and I was foolish. I didn’t love my late husband but because I lost Rauf, I married him. Could you really imagine my preferring any other man to Rauf?’

  After that revealing little speech, Lily was pale and, reluctant to listen to any further revelations from the aggressive brunette, she murmured, ‘Please excuse me…’

  The afternoon continued but, from that point on, Lily was challenged to play the part of the happy bride-to-be. Her mind was in turmoil. Oh, yes, she knew Kasmet had been angry and resentful and keen to cause trouble and pain. She wasn’t stupid, was she? But the problem was that Lily also knew Rauf and the darker side of his forceful character. No, not even if he had expected to love Kasmet to the end of his natural life would Rauf have forgiven her infidelity. For that reason, Kasmet’s assurance that she had had a recent affair with Rauf had upset Lily the most. For why would Rauf have got involved again with a woman who had once betrayed him? The answer to that question could only be that Rauf must still have had strong feelings for Kasmet.

  For the very first time ever, it occurred to Lily that there might actually be a very good reason why Rauf had only ever talked of ‘caring’ for herself: if all along he had loved another woman. A woman he wouldn’t marry. Although he had had an affair with Kasmet, he had ended that relationship as well. He had succumbed to temptation and then fought temptation off again, which was exactly how Lily could picture him behaving: at war with himself from start to finish. Her own heart had sunk to the soles of her feet. Somehow she had contrived to come to terms with the idea that Rauf didn’t love her, but the wounding suspicion that he might feel much more for another woman savaged her.