Turkish Delights Series (6 page)

“Levent, my brother, my brother, this is it! We’ve done it!” Burak had clapped him on the back and poured him a stiff shot of
Raki
from the small kitchen counter. “We have arrived! We have the money together. They are ready for us as partners.”

Levent had grinned at his friend’s excitement. This and the big general contract he was about to get on the new Hilton hotel project would seal his fate—fulfill the dream he’d worked so hard to achieve for so long. This would make him able to speak to Vivian’s father. Until then, their future did not exist. Now, perhaps it did. He and Burak had met in the military, become fast friends, talking late into the night about their goals and dreams. But now, Vivian consumed him. His need to have her, be with her, gain her father’s approval, nearly choked him.

He started to get frantic, realizing he’d lost sight of her. She’d probably escaped through one of the makeshift doorways in the fencing. “
Bok
.” He muttered under his breath. The day his life started to take shape, he had managed to infuriate the woman he’d been dreaming about for years. He caught a glimpse of her brown hair and dark skirt a few yards ahead and pressed between two men carrying piles of freshly baked bread on their heads. As she started to disappear into the next throng of men, he grabbed her arm and yanked her back to his side.

“Put this on and don’t speak,” he muttered between clenched teeth, handing her the silk scarf. She tied it under her chin but wouldn’t look at him. “Come. My home is just around this corner. Keep your eyes down.” She stared right at him, her eyes brimming with unshed tears of anger. Dear God but she was the most beautiful creature in the universe.

“
Pic
.” She whispered. He frowned and kept a tight grip on her upper arm, reminding himself that he had taught her how to say “bastard” in Turkish.

When they arrived at his shabby door, he pushed her inside, glancing around to make sure no one observed him taking a foreign woman into his bachelor’s building. She resisted about a second, before he gave her a shove out of the line of sight of the street. She stayed silent, following him upstairs and to the door of his flat. This unbelievably inappropriate moment, her being here, had his head buzzing with possibility. He could get in real trouble. He ignored her and flipped on the kettle for tea.

“Who can we call to come and get you? From the Consulate?” He stood, trying not to get pulled into her amazing orbit. If he got too close, he’d be gone. The powerful need to sweep her up, plop her on his couch and…. He shook his head to clear it. “Well?”

She glared at him. The kettle whistled so he got busy making them tea so she wouldn’t see how his hands shook. When he turned around, she had the scarf off and stood entirely too close. He side-stepped her, but her perfume invaded his nose, making him shut his eyes briefly to regain his composure opening them again to speak to her.

“Please,
Guzelim
, who can we call? We must get you home.”

She sighed and took the tea glass he offered then looked up when a loud pounding sounded at his door. Levent frowned.

“Levent! Brother! It’s me…let me in!” Burak rattled the doorknob and let himself in. Levent watched the other man’s smile freeze at the sight of the woman in his kitchen. He groaned. This was not good. “Well, hello, lovely lady.” Burak smiled. Vivian held out her hand, and he made a great show of kissing it. Levent rolled his eyes.

“Back off, brother.” He stepped between them. A strange possessiveness stole over him, made him want to punch his good friend right in the eye. “We’re calling her driver. It’s not what you think.”

Burak raised an eyebrow. “Oh, I’m quite sure that it’s not. My brother has a way with women you know. There’s always one up here, keeping him…company.”

“Shut up, you idiot.” Levent growled. Vivian stared at him then at his friend.

“Brother? I thought….”

“No, no, my beautiful one.” Burak put an arm around Vivian’s shoulders, effectively shutting Levent out. “Brothers in blood. Not name.” Levent shot him a murderous look. “And never fear, he may have his finger in many pies, but his true heart will only belong to one. Ow!” Burak rubbed his head where Levent cuffed him.

Vivian smiled over her shoulder at him, and his heart zinged. Then she turned back to Burak. “What is your name, handsome?”

Burak grinned at her and walked her to the phone. “My name is Burak Ozdemir, and I am ever at your service. Shall I dial? Who are we calling?” Levent watched as his friend flirted and laughed with his heart’s desire. Leave it to that scoundrel to get the number out of her. She spoke softly into the phone as Burak poured himself a glass of tea. He looked at Levent, eyebrows raised. Levent shrugged.

Vivian’s voice broke the quiet. “All right, Lillian’s driver is coming for me. He’s going to send someone to the construction site. My, um, driver is probably still there, waiting for me.”

Levent groaned. “Dear God, Vivian, you left him there? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because, Levent, you grabbed me and yanked me here, remember?”

Burak snorted into his tea glass. “Ever the knight in shining armor, our Levent.” They sat, the silence oozing awkwardly around the room. Levent wished that his friend would disappear. He watched Vivian stare out the window, worrying her lower lip with her teeth—a nervous gesture he’d come to know very well, once upon a time. Every nerve ending in his body twitched at her nearness. He had never in his life wanted anything so badly as he did her right at that moment.

***

Vivian let the tears she’d been holding back trickle down her cheeks and drop onto her hands, clutched tight together in her lap. The Istanbul night whooshed by her window as Lillian’s driver spirited her home and Lillian kept talking. She tried to shut the girl’s infernal yapping out. To concentrate on Levent’s dark, handsome face.

“Wow, that was one good looking guy.” Lillian kept insisting as she twirled her blonde curly hair around one finger. “That wasn’t the guy from the Dungeon though, was it Viv? Viv?” Vivian startled when Lillian snapped her fingers under her nose.

“Huh? Oh, no. He’s a friend of that guy. Of Levent’s.”

“You and your friends.” Lillian sighed and leaned her head back. “I’ll walk with you to the door so we can pretend we’ve been together all this time.”

Vivian sighed. “That’s fine. If you want. But I can handle it.”

“No, dear.” Lillian patted her knee. “I’ve convinced my driver to tell yours that you got confused about where I lived. But you know the servants’ gossip. Goodness knows what they’re saying about us.”

“I don’t care.” Vivian leaned her chin on her hand and watched the large American consulate residence loom on the horizon. “That stupid place. It’s like my prison.”

By the time she reached the door, her whole body shook with anger, tinged with a small lick of terror that she’d never see him again. She knew that was a very real possibility. At that realization—that Levent had been taken from her life yet again thanks to her own stupid behavior—she stopped caring about whatever awaited her behind the large wooden door to the consul’s residence. The sounds of servants shuffling around greeted her. A fire snapped in the large study’s grate. Vivian hesitated for a second. It seemed that once again, no one gave a rip about her. No one waited up to see if she was okay, alive, dead, or otherwise.

“Vivian.” Her father’s voice echoed through the large entry hall. “Please join me in the study.”

She rolled her eyes but obeyed him, staying inside the room’s large doorway, unwilling to commit to going inside. He stood, his tall frame bent slightly as he gazed into the fire. He held a book in one hand. As he turned, Vivian’s heart leapt into her throat when she recognized her journal dangling from his fingers. He flipped it open and gazed at a page. She stood up straighter, determined to stay strong—to get her property back into her hands, her pictures of Levent.

“So, I see you’ve been drawing.” He licked his finger and turned a page. She stayed silent. She’d had a few years to get used to his hypothetical one-sided conversations. “This animal.” He indicated her drawing of Suleyman the cat. “I’ve disposed of it. We found it on your bed, and its fleas had already spread. I found some on your brother’s bedding.”

“I don’t have a brother.” Vivian attempted to keep her voice even. “What do you mean disposed of?”

“Cats are useless creatures. It’s at the bottom of the Bosporus.”

She stifled the gasp that rose, not willing to give him the satisfaction. He looked up from his perusal of her journal, his eyes sharp with anger. “This. This is that boy, isn’t it? The one you asked me about.” He showed her the pictures she’d drawn. She continued to stare at him. He knew the answer already. Without another look at her, he tossed the entire book onto the flame. She took a step forward, biting her lip, but stopped.

“You have no right to do that.” She kept the tears at bay. Let anger fuel her.

“That is where you are mistaken. I have every right, young lady. And I also have the right to tell you this: next weekend, you will attend the Marine ball with Ronald Harrison. And you will go with him to Ankara next month. I want you out of this house, out of this city. Away from all the bad influences here.”

Her mouth dropped open. Making her go to a fancy dance party was one thing. “You can’t banish me. I’m an adult.”

“You.” He leveled his stare at her. “Are a girl. Unmarried, still living with her father. I can do whatever I like. And you will obey me.” He pointed a long finger at her. She tried very hard to quell the urge to bite it. “As liberated as you like to think you are, Vivian, you miss the real point. In your world, I still call the shots. That is until your husband takes over.” Her fists were so tightly clenched she thought she might have drawn blood with her nails. She summoned Levent’s voice, his face, his smile, anything to calm herself, to ease the screaming in her head that she refused to allow her father to hear.

But then she remembered. Levent didn’t want her. He’d sent her away. Her knees gave out, and she slid to the floor. Her father simply watched her, arms crossed over his chest. “I take care of you, daughter. I put a roof over your head, clothes on your back, place any and all manner of distractions at your disposal. You will not thank me by turning into a common, Turkish peasant whore.”

Vivian let the breath she didn’t know she’d been holding out with a loud bark of laughter. “A whore? Seriously, Father, language. You might blight the baby’s ears.” She stood, fury giving her strength. “For your information, I was with him.” She pointed at her journal that was being slowly consumed by licking flames. “Tonight. But you don’t have anything worry about. It seems the only man in my immediate universe who wants anything to do with me is the chosen one, Ron.” She held back tears.

He sat, and took a sip of his drink. The heavy crystal glass gave a satisfying clunk when he set it on the ornate Ottoman style table at his elbow. “As long as we’re clear who is in charge, then you are dismissed.”

Without a word, she ascended the stairs, her mind whirling with the words and images from the past days. The memory of Levent’s full lips on hers, his strong hands on her back, holding her close, forced her to close her eyes and pause halfway up the steps. By the time she reached her suite on the top floor of the ornate residence, she could no longer hold back the sobs that choked her. She would never be able to make her own choices. Her father had handily reminded her of that. All the sneaking around, illicit drinking and stolen kisses in the world would never change it. She ripped off her skirt, stockings, prim and proper blouse, the ghost of Levent’s essence permeating her every pore. It was too much. All of it. The screams of agony were shocking, even to her own ears. When she realized they came from her throat, it was too late to stop them.

Standing in her bra and panties, chest heaving from the efforts to yell, cry and pound the marble top of her vanity table, Vivian stared at herself in the large mirror. She ran her hands over the tops of her breasts, down the sides of her waist, spanned her stomach, to her full hips, and down her thighs. Why didn’t he want her? Why did she care so much? Would it ever stop hurting? A yawning, empty ache had sprung up in the middle of her chest that had replaced the hard core of anger she’d carried around with her since returning to live under her father’s roof. It made for an unpleasant trade off.

Her hands made their way up to her long thick brown hair that tumbled down her back. As if in a daze, she found the scissors a seamstress had left in her room the prior week. They’d been lying on her desk, amongst the scattered remains of homework and random drawings she’d been working on before she’d laid eyes on him last week. She brought the sharp blades to her face, traced a line down her cheek with the point, just hard enough to form a pink line along their trajectory. Finally, she grasped a hunk of her hair, put the shears to it, and cut.

It took all of ten minutes to make a pile at her feet and leave her staring at the newly revealed large brown eyes and high cheekbones. Her hair barely brushed her jaw line, and it was positively liberating to feel the air on her neck without having to use anything to pull the heavy stuff up. Her tear-streaked face was tight and hot. The scissors joined the pile of hair at her feet, and she stepped away from it, taking her one pair of denim pants out of a bottom drawer. Yanking them on, she found a plain polo-style shirt she used when she went riding. It smelled vaguely of horse, but she didn’t care.

“
Allah
!”

Vivian whirled around to see the girl, who cleaned her room, with her hand over her mouth. “Missus! What is…?” She pointed to the mess in front of the vanity table. Vivian put a self-conscious hand to her neck. The girl looked up at her, and her eyes widened. “You are.” The girl touched her own long hair piled under a scarf. “So
guzel
, beautiful.”

Vivian rolled her eyes and sat on the bed. She found her plain white tennis shoes and tied them quickly. Unwilling to engage in conversation with anyone, especially as it related to the fact she was bloody well going back out into the warm Istanbul night, alone, and planned to stay out for a long time, she stood and smiled at the girl.