‘Ashamed?’ Lily studied him in shaken disbelief.
‘But my love is yours, for what it is worth, and it always has been,’ Rauf proclaimed tautly, lodged by the French windows that opened out onto a deck festooned with tubs of beautiful flowers.
>
‘Always has been…’ Lily parrotted, mesmerised by the sight of Rauf struggling to find words that were so obviously difficult for him to speak, scarcely able to even think about what he was telling her.
‘At nineteen, I was infatuated with Kasmet, but I never knew love until I met you. She only hurt my pride and gave me an excuse to say marriage wasn’t for me,’ Rauf murmured grimly. ‘You know, I’m still very angry about her telling you those ridiculous lies this week.’
‘Forget about that. She was just envious and wanting to spoil my happiness,’ Lily said dismissively, far more interested in what he had admitted just a minute earlier.
‘Three years ago, when we first met, I was a slick operator or, at least, I thought I was.’ His wide, sensual mouth twisted with a derision directed at himself. ‘I wanted you on my terms and you were worthy of much more, but success with too many other women had made me arrogant and selfish. My obstinate belief that I would never marry almost destroyed our relationship—’
‘You still bought that diamond ring I wear back then,’ Lily reminded him gently, her blue eyes soft with love.
Dark colour accentuated his fabulous cheekbones. ‘I was still immature. The ring would have been given then with a certain amount of resentment that I could win you no other way,’ he admitted heavily. ‘That is nothing to be proud of either. But this time around, from the outset of our first meeting, I was even worse—’
‘How?’
‘I was just eaten by jealousy of Gilman. I thought you were only in Turkey because he had taken off with another woman. When I realised you were a virgin, I was shattered, but that bitter jealousy was so ingrained in me after three years that I just moved on to suspecting that, even though you hadn’t had an affair with him, you had loved him. Those first couple of days we were together, I acted like a guy with only one not very reliable brain cell.’
‘You were jealous of Brett—?’
‘And then when I heard you on the phone to him, I suffered the tortures of feeling second-best all over again. I needed to hear nothing suspect in the conversation to torment myself even more.’ Rauf groaned.
‘Yet, in spite of all that, you still wanted to marry me and you knew that you loved me.’ Lily worked out those facts for herself with immense satisfaction, for that was a level of love she had never dreamt a male with his fierce pride could feel for her. That was love in block capitals, a love big enough and generous enough to overcome every obstacle and his pride as well.
‘Then I blew it again on our flight to Istanbul over your name being on that bank account and there was nothing more sobering than realising that I was losing you altogether.’ Rauf swore and spread speaking hands expressively wide.
‘I’m not so easy to lose,’ Lily confided.
‘My pride made me persuade myself three years ago that my love for you had died,’ he confessed tautly. ‘But I know now that you genuinely cared for me in those days and that I must have hurt you a great deal…’
‘Yes…you hurt me terribly,’ Lily told him honestly.
Rauf paled but reacted much as if he had expected to have that confirmed.
‘One minute you were there and the next it was like you’d never existed and I started to believe that I’d just imagined that we’d ever shared anything worth holding onto,’ Lily continued. ‘I decided it could only have been a casual thing for you—’
‘Casual?’ Rauf loosed a bitter laugh of disagreement. ‘It was six months before I could even catch sight of a blonde head in the street without secretly, crazily hoping it would somehow be you. I worked myself into the ground that entire year, because at least when I was working it took my mind off you for a while. I never believed in love like that until I was without you and the hardest thing for me to accept now is that I deserved to be miserable.’
Lily was over the moon to learn that Rauf had had such a hard time getting by without her, but thought it tactful to conceal a delight that struck her as a little cruel. At the same time she was now quietly rejoicing in his staggering assurance that his love was hers and always had been. ‘I wasn’t exactly happy myself. Tell me, when did you decide that you were still in love with me?’
‘I always knew it was there deep down inside me…lurking…’ Rauf expelled a heavy sigh. ‘But I didn’t ever think about it after the first year we were apart. I just shut it out until I saw you again. I went haywire and made appallingly bad decisions—’
‘Such as?’ Lily probed in growing fascination as she tried to think of love as something that ‘lurked’ like a secret, dreadful threat.
‘I told myself that I was taking revenge when I took you to Sonngul to stay with me but, in truth, I was only snatching at the first possible excuse to be with you again. I didn’t know what I was doing…not really doing until it was too late. But I knew I loved you at the civil ceremony—’
‘So why didn’t you mention it…why wait until now?’
‘I had treated you with dishonour and that shamed me. I had not valued you as I should have done. I had even less right to be talking about love. All I had done was cause you more distress and I regret that most of all.’
‘But I brought a lot of that on myself,’ Lily countered guiltily. ‘I couldn’t make myself tell you what I’d had to put up with from Brett—’
‘I could see that you were hiding something from me. You’re not a very good dissembler,’ Rauf told her gently. ‘Once I knew that there was a secret, my suspicions about the nature of your relationship with him refused to die. Yet the moment I heard the truth that was the end of them.’
Lily flushed. ‘Honesty pays,’ she muttered in discomfiture.