A Mediterranean Marriage. Lynne Graham

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      With an abruptness that left Lily in a turmoil of confusion, Rauf set her free again. A dark line of febrile colour scoring his taut cheekbones, he was appalled both by his own reckless disregard of his surroundings and by her unexpected encouragement. Trust Lily to change her game plan when he could least afford her to do so! Such public displays were frowned on by his people. What the hell had come over him?

      Her lush mouth reddened from the fiery imprint of his, Lily focused on Rauf with dazed eyes and a helpless surge of pride in herself. She had stayed in his arms without succumbing to an attack of unreasonable fear. Finally making herself acknowledge those disturbing feelings and openly discuss what had caused them with a counsellor the previous year had worked.

      ‘That will not be repeated,’ Rauf breathed with icy emphasis, yanking open the door of the long silver limo waiting by the kerb with his own hand. ‘There is nothing between us now.’

      Then why had he touched her in the first place? Stiff with hurt bewilderment, Lily climbed into the opulent car. She wished she had pushed him away, indeed done anything other than thrown her arms round him in encouragement. She was furious with herself. Here she was almost twenty-four years old, still a virgin and still, it seemed, as immature as an adolescent. Obviously Rauf had reacted to the willing signals that she must have been putting out! On the strength of that demeaning conviction, Lily stopped being angry and felt that she had asked to be humiliated.

      But then who would ever have forecast that she of all women might ever be guilty of forward behaviour around a male of the species? As Rauf’s limousine drove Lily back to her hotel in Gumbet she was pale and taut and already mental miles away from their recent meeting. Memories that she only rarely allowed herself to take out and examine had engulfed her…

      Hilary had married Brett when Lily had been only twelve. Delighted to be their bridesmaid, Lily had been thrilled that Hilary had been so much in love and even happier that Brett had been willing to move into their family home rather than take Hilary to live somewhere else. Their father had been equally impressed with Hilary’s bridegroom for Brett had always awarded the older man pronounced respect and deference. A year later, Douglas Harris had signed his house over to his daughter and son-in-law.

      Just two years after that, when she’d been only fifteen, Lily had had her first sight of Brett with another woman. Heading home from a friend’s house, she had cut across a car park on the outskirts of town. Seeing Brett’s sports car parked there and the shadow of movement within, she had hurried towards it thinking that she would get a lift with him. Instead she had seen her brother-in-law locked in a passionate embrace with a stranger. Devastated by that sight but grateful that the guilty couple hadn’t noticed her, she had been so upset that she had wandered round town for several hours before she’d been able to face going home.

      All her life up until that point, Lily had told Hilary virtually everything. But what she had seen that day had deprived her of her only true confidante for she had been painfully conscious that her big sister had worshipped the ground her handsome husband had walked on and had also been heavily pregnant with their second child. Lily had agonised for weeks over what she ought to have done before finally deciding to confide in her father and put the responsibility of that knowledge in his hands.

      But in no way had Douglas Harris reacted as his teenage daughter had imagined he might have done. ‘You were mistaken,’ her father told her in instant angry rebuttal.

      ‘But I saw them…it was Brett and it was his car!’ Lily protested.

      ‘Don’t you ever mention this again and don’t you breathe a word of this nonsense to your sister!’ the older man censured in even greater fury. ‘Brett and Hilary have a very happy marriage. What’s got into you that you can make up such a wicked and dangerous story about your own brother-in-law?’

      In her turn, Lily was shattered that her usually mild-mannered father could react in such a disbelieving and unjust way to her trusting confession. She had to get older before she could appreciate that her unfortunate parent had too much invested in the stability of Hilary’s marriage to easily face the threat that Brett might not be the fine, upstanding young man he had believed him to be. And how could she have foreseen that worry over what she had told him would eventually drive her father to make the very great mistake of warning Brett that he had been seen in that car park?

      Faster than the speed of light, for there was nothing slow about Brett’s survival instincts, Brett added two and two together and worked out who had seen him. That same afternoon he picked Lily up from school and frightened the living daylights out of her with his rage and his threats. Then and there Lily’s happy home life and her faith in the adults around her came to a harsh and final end.

      ‘You sneaky little bitch!’ Brett roared at her, after shooting his car into the same car park in an act of intimidation that she soon learned was pure Brett Gilman. ‘From here on in, you’d better mind your own bloody business. Haven’t you ever heard of the three wise monkeys? Speak no evil, hear no evil and see no evil. Tell tales on me again and you won’t have a home any more…I’ll tell Hilary that her precocious little sister has been trying it on with me and she’ll believe me long before she’ll believe you!’

      Lily then learnt what it was to live in fear. Resenting her, and determined to punish her for exposing his womanising ways to Douglas Harris, Brett gloried in his power over Lily and soon worked out the kind of treatment that would make her feel most threatened. Out of her sister’s sight and hearing, he began to look at Lily’s developing curves in a way that made her skin crawl and taunt her with crude familiar comments. He never actually touched her but she lived in terror that some day he might.

      By the time Lily escaped her home to start her teacher-training course at a college a long way away, Brett had turned Lily into a silent, secretive and timid teenager, who covered every possible inch of her body and who went in genuine fear of male aggression and sexuality.

      Surfacing from her recollections of that traumatic period of her life, Lily found a sheen of perspiration on her skin. When she went for a shower in her room, she reminded herself that that nightmare was in the past. Yet her most bitter regret was still that the damage Brett had inflicted had almost inevitably destroyed any hope of her having a normal relationship with Rauf Kasabian when she had first met him.

      Three years on, Rauf was hostile, cold and detached in a way that Lily had never dreamt he could be and she was much too vulnerable. Lily recognised with shamed self-honesty that she would still do just about anything to get a second chance with Rauf. But he had made it clear that he had no intention of getting involved with her again.

      Could she even blame him for that? Lily asked herself as she lay in bed that night. If anything, Rauf had been kind when he’d described what they had had as the affair that never was. With pained hindsight, Lily knew that Rauf might have utilised more hurtful candour. He might have told her that blowing hot and cold with a man was a huge turn-off and that treating a decent guy like a ravenous sex beast was an even less enthralling experience…

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