‘Do you always get what you want?’
‘You were one of my very few failures.’
‘And Kasmet?’ The other woman’s name just leapt off Lily’s tongue before she could prevent it.
At the traffic lights, Rauf turned with a frown to shoot her a piercing dark glance of enquiry. ‘Where did you meet her?’
Lily coloured. ‘She was at the tea party your mother held—’
Rauf grimaced. ‘My father still does business with her father but I’m surprised she had the nerve to attend. None of us like her—’
‘According to her, you’re still madly in love with her.’
Rauf dealt her a thunderstruck appraisal. ‘Eleven years after I caught her in bed with someone else?’ he demanded in disbelief.
‘Then I gather you didn’t have a recent affair with her.’ Lily was amused.
Car horns shrilled behind them as Rauf’s stunned scrutiny flared into outrage. ‘Are you out of your mind? She told you that? Right,’ he ground out, nosing the sleek sports car with aggressive intent into another lane. ‘I’m going over to her home to settle this now—’
‘No…no, please, let’s not do that!’ Lily exclaimed in lively dismay.
‘If she wants to tell lies, she can pay the price of being called on them!’
‘I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction—’
‘Of knowing that you believed every word?’ Rauf slotted in. ‘You’re my wife and I won’t be slandered, nor will I allow anyone to upset you—’
‘I’ll be much more upset if you make a big thing of this!’ Lily warned. ‘I just wondered…that’s all, but now I can accept that Kasmet was simply being spiteful—’
‘After I’ve spoken to her, she won’t indulge that spite around you again,’ Rauf swore, untouched by her efforts to cool him down.
Never had Lily been so relieved as when Rauf hit the bell on a smart townhouse some minutes later and nobody answered the door. Extravagantly handsome features still set with fierce determination, he
swung back into the car.
‘I can’t wait to see the Topkapi Palace…’ Lily murmured placatingly.
Rauf looked at her, beautiful eyes molten gold, and then he leant over her, closed one hand into the silky fall of her pale hair and kissed her with a drugging, possessive fervour that electrified her sensation-starved body. She tipped her head back, heart hammering, heat burning between her slender thighs, opening her mouth to his, trembling at the hungry thrust of his tongue into the tender interior.
With a driven groan, Rauf jerked back from her, dragged in a shuddering breath. ‘You see…I lose it with you. I can’t even keep my hands off you in public places!’
‘So let’s go somewhere private,’ Lily heard herself whisper without even thinking about it.
‘No…no sneaking around,’ Rauf spelt out, shooting the powerful car into reverse without looking back at her.
Lily had flushed to the roots of her hair. ‘We’re married!’
‘We’ve got a lifetime ahead,’ Rauf asserted grittily, resisting temptation with all his might.
An hour later, in the shade of the garden pavilion in the fourth courtyard of the palace, Lily gazed at the spectacular view of the sea but her thoughts were far away. She was thinking of the immediacy with which Rauf had responded to her questions about Kasmet and comparing his blunt honesty with her own secrecy about Brett. Time and time again, she had utilised weak excuses to persuade herself that she need not tell Rauf the unpleasant truth about Brett’s behaviour towards her, but in only telling half of the story she had not been fair to either herself or Rauf.
Drawing in a slow, strengthening breath of the hot, still air, Lily said in sudden decision. ‘I have something I want to tell you…I want you to understand why I’ve always been scared of Brett…. No, please don’t interrupt me!’
In open disconcertion, Rauf made a sudden movement towards her, his frowning dark golden gaze probing her pale, taut face.
In the uneasy silence, Lily jerked a slim shoulder. ‘I suppose it’s an irrational fear but, the trouble is, he got to me when I was too young to know how to handle a bully like him,’ she confided heavily. ‘That first time I saw Brett with another woman and told Dad, Brett realised that it was me who had seen him. He picked me up at school and acted like a madman because he wanted to frighten me. He shouted at me and threatened me and he said if I ever talked about him again, he would tell Hilary that I’d been…you know…er…trying to come on to him…’
As a revealing look of revulsion entered her stricken gaze in remembrance Rauf bit out something savage in his own language and reached for her knotted hands to take them in his. His big, powerful frame was rigid and the pallor of deep shock and anger was visible round the harsh set of his firm mouth.