‘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…
CHAPTER THREE
THE summer after she finished her second year at college, Lily had taken a temporary job working as a waitress in a fashionable London bar while she looked for a suitable position as a nursery nurse.
Within the first week, Lily had begun dreading going into work for she hadn’t been able to easily handle the sort of teasing and touching that the other waitresses had withstood from the male customers. However, her salary plus the generous tips she’d received had met the rent on the tiny apartment she’d been sharing and had made it possible for her to avoid having to return home and live under the same roof as Brett.
Rauf had come in with a female in tow one lunchtime.
‘Why are all the really gorgeous men already spoken for?’ Annabel, her flatmate since first year and fellow waitress, lamented while she and Lily waited at the counter for their orders.
‘Who have you noticed now?’ Lily groaned, accustomed to Annabel’s frequent complaints about the extreme rarity of the free and fanciable male.
‘He’s sitting down with the brunette in the sexy white dress.’
Lily glanced over. His commanding height and build, the slashing angle of his high cheekbones, strong nose and wide, passionate male mouth combined with his lustrous black hair made him stand out from the common herd all right. But she would have looked away again had not Rauf thrown his arrogant dark head back as he sat down and let her see his extraordinary eyes. Tawny gold as polished tiger’s-eye stones reflecting the light, riveting, beautiful, utterly hypnotic. Involuntarily she stared, heartbeat kicking up pace, breathing fractured, her whole body tight and tense as if she was waiting for something indescribably exciting to happen. Then his narrowed gaze clashed with hers and it was as if somebody had switched on Christmas lights inside her. Suddenly she was electric, wired, alive for the very first time.
‘And wouldn’t you just know it?’ Annabel muttered resentfully as she watched Rauf appraise Lily’s glowing blonde beauty with predictable male intensity. ‘I might as well be invisible but he’s yours for the asking. You should wear a little “I’m gay” badge, Lily…at least it would stop the guys wasting their time and let the rest of us get a look-in!’
Aghast at the startling content of that disgruntled little speech, Lily shot her attention back to Annabel. ‘Say that again?’
Annabel just shrugged. ‘Well, you are, aren’t you? You might still be in the closet but the way you feel about men makes it pretty obvious. I guessed ages ago.’
‘I’m not gay…’ Lily countered in whispered but emphatic denial as Annabel lifted her laden tray.
‘Look, it’s none of my business.’ Annabel grimaced. ‘I was only being a jealous cow about your looks.’
Shaken that someone she had known for two years could have got her so wrong, Lily went to serve Rauf. Not once did she look directly at him or his companion but, even in the ennervated state she was in, she noted his rich, dark drawl and the faint exotic accent that edged his excellent English. Disaster only struck when she delivered their drinks. As she tried to set the glass of red wine down the brunette made a sudden snatch at it mid-air and their hands collided. The glass fell, spilling a cascade of ruby-red liquid down onto the woman’s lap.
‘You stupid girl!’ the irate brunette screeched, behaving as though she had been subjected to a deliberate assault. ‘Wasn’t coming on to my man enough for you? Did you have to ruin my dress too?’
As Lily’s boss hurried to the scene and Lily proffered napkins and apologies that were ignored while really wanting to sink through the floor in chagrin, Rauf dropped a banknote on the table and herded his hysterical lunch date out at speed. Lily didn’t expect ever to see him again. But the next day when she turned up for her shift a beautiful bouquet was waiting for her along with a card.
‘Sorry that you were embarrassed yesterday. Rauf’
‘When a bloke spends about a hundred quid on flowers, it certainly tells me who was coming on to who,’ her female boss quipped with considerable amusement.
Emerging from the powerful pull of the past, Lily needed enormous effort to shut down the surging tide of memory keeping her awake. What did it say about her that she should still be so obsessed with a relationship that Rauf had long since left behind him? Angry at her lack of self-discipline, Lily told herself to grow up.
The next morning, Rauf flew in on a sleek private jet half an hour after Lily arrived at the airport. In the brilliant sunlight of midday, she watched him emerge and descend the steps with the fluid, measured pace of a very self-assured male. Sheathed in a beautifully tailored dove-grey business suit, he looked stunningly handsome and, even at a distance, his bold bronzed features emanated all the decisive authority of his forceful personality. Exchanging a laughing word with the official waiting to greet him, he paused, lean, strong face settling back into striking gravity again as he aimed a cool-eyed glance at Lily where she waited just inside the building.
‘You can go through now, Miss Harris,’ she was told.
Rauf watched her walk towards him. Clad in a pale blue dress and a cardigan that had to be roasting her alive in the heat of midsummer, golden hair glittering in the bright light, Lily looked apprehensive and very young.
An insane impulse to urge her to turn back and board the first available flight home assailed Rauf. Faint colour demarcating his hard cheekbones, his jawline clenched hard. Had she been a man, he would have harboured no second thoughts. So