Romantic Comedy Box Set (Helen Grey Series Books 1 & 2)

by Hodge, Sibel

  Kalem appeared at my side as the President strolled leisurely around the rest of the festival. ‘Did you give him a note?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I had to give the stall holder two hundred lira not to come back.’

  ‘I had to write on a toilet roll,’ I groaned with all the ferociousness of a wounded zebra.

  ‘What? You gave the President a toilet roll?’

  ‘It was a lucky toilet roll!’ I cried.

  ‘Why is it lucky?’

  ‘I don’t know. I just made that up, so he’d take it. And there wasn’t anything else to write on. Do you think he’ll read it?’

  Kalem looked doubtful. ‘Would you?’

  I carried on watching as the President made his way back to his Range Rover.

  Look at the toilet roll! Look at the toilet roll!

  The bodyguard, still holding the toilet roll in one hand, opened the door to the Range Rover with the other, and the President slid in the back seat.

  I sent him silent open it! open it! signals as the Range Rover slowly rolled away.

  My gaze followed the Range Rover as it went further down the hill.

  Its brake lights came on. Then it stopped. Its reverse lights illuminated as it slowly came back up the hill. My stomach bounced up to my throat. This was it! He must’ve read the note. He was going to come back and talk to us. I clutched my chest with relief.

  The Range Rover screeched to a stop, and slowly the car door opened. Then Grumpy threw the toilet roll in a roadside rubbish bin, and they pulled away again into the starry night.

  All the blood in my body seemed to rush to my head, making me dizzy. I launched my arms around Kalem’s neck to steady myself and burst into tears, my nerves bristling with the hopelessness of our situation and my failure to make someone listen to us. It wasn’t as if I’d asked for all this to happen. I didn’t exactly have a choice in the matter, and I was trying my hardest to make someone listen. It’s just that my hardest didn’t seem to be good enough.

  He crushed me in his arms as my shoulders heaved, my nose blocked up, and Kalem ended up with a big, watery mascara patch on his shirt.

  Slowly, the sobs turned to deep sighs, and I struggled to catch my breath. ‘What…are…we going…to…do…now?’ I wailed in between sniffs. ‘I don’t want to go back to the hotel. I can’t face telling everyone that we failed again.’

  He grabbed my hand. ‘Come on. I’m taking you to the beach. We’ll think of something.’

  ‘The beach?’ I wailed, slightly louder this time.

  ‘It’s getting late. We can’t do anything now. We’ve still got three days to think of another plan before the opening night. But now we need some us time. And I need to cheer you up.’

  We grabbed a bottle of wine and some plastic glasses from the village shop and headed to the nearby beach.

  Even though it was nine o’clock at night, the sand still warmed the soles of my feet as I slipped off my flip-flops. No one else was around. Just Kalem, me, and the gently rolling waves of the sea – oh, and a couple of crabs.

  I looked up at the sky. It felt like the clear, black expanse was giving us our own personal light show. Thousands of stars, sparkling up above, winking at us. I could make out the Plough and Orion’s belt, and – oh! A shooting star!

  I quickly made a wish. Please let me have the perfect wedding, save the statue and Ibrahim Kaya, and live to tell the tale. OK, those were three wishes, but I said it really quickly so maybe the star fairies would only think it was one.

  Kalem placed a beach towel from the Land Rover on the cushiony sand, and we sat down.

  ‘This is beautiful,’ I said.

  He unscrewed the wine and poured out a couple of glasses. Handing me one, he said, ‘To us.’

  ‘To us.’ I lifted the glass to my lips and paused, gazing at him over the rim, the full moon casting a silvery glow over his face. ‘What are we going to do now?’ I sniffed through my blocked up nose. ‘No one wants to listen to us.’

  Kalem sipped his wine, staring out to the ocean. ‘We need to find Ferret Face.’

  ‘And then what? Tie him up? Shoot him? Tar and feather him?’ I sloshed wine around my mouth for a moment, thinking.

  ‘Actually, I wouldn’t mind shooting him myself at this point.’

  I swallowed. ‘Even if we could find out where he is, and he could be anywhere, I think someone in the police must be involved in all this. Why else would he have been talking to that officer at the police station? So if we find him, what do we do then? It doesn’t seem like anyone actually wants to help us.’ I glugged down my wine and poured another.

  I wasn’t cut out for this. I was a wedding photographer, for God’s sake, not a bloody spy who’s trained in international crime solving. I didn’t even watch CSI. How was I supposed to know how to save an ugly statue and catch bad guys? I might have watched Miss Marple and Poirot a few times, but, to be honest, I think I fell asleep, so I hadn’t even learned any useful tips on how to solve a crime. In fact, everything I knew about crime solving could be written on a flea’s big toe.

  ‘We have to take things into our own hands.’ Kalem looked up at the stars. ‘If we find him, we have to stop him from turning up at the opening at all. The statue will be going back to Ibrahim’s private art collection afterwards, anyway, so I doubt if Ferret Face will have the opportunity to steal it again. And if he’s incapacitated somehow, and he can’t turn up, then he won’t be able to assassinate Kaya either.’

  ‘OK, we could try to find him and stop him going to the opening, but he could always try and kill Ibrahim Kaya another time after that. How can we stop that? We can’t get to the President to tell him, we can’t tell the police if we don’t know who’s involved there, and we haven’t been able to get hold of Ibrahim Kaya himself.’ I picked up handfuls of sand, letting it sift through my fingers absent-mindedly

  We both thought about that in silence for a while until Kalem’s voice interrupted the noise of the surf. ‘I don’t know. We’ve still got three days to find him before the opening night. I guess we’ll have to take it one step at a time.’

  But it all seemed so hopeless.

  ‘Hang on a minute!’ I clutched Kalem’s arm. ‘I’ve just had a thought.’

  ‘Oh, God, I hate it when you do that. It’s dangerous.’ He grinned at me.

  ‘OK, Ferret Face had floor plans of the hotel and casino in his case. But the other night when we saw him there, he looked like he was checking out the casino. Perhaps he’d already been around the rest of the hotel too. We also saw him in the bar at the Plaza afterwards.’

  ‘Maybe he wanted to make sure the place was laid out exactly according to the floor plans.’

  ‘Yes, if you’re going to steal a priceless statue and try to kill someone, you would have to make damned sure that your sniper view of Kaya and your escape route was exactly as you’d planned it according to the floor plans, wouldn’t you?’

  Kalem nodded.

  ‘And if you wanted to surreptitiously check out the Plaza to make sure, you’d want to blend in, wouldn’t you?’ I asked.

  Vigorous nod.

  ‘So the best way to blend in is to actually be a guest there. The staff wouldn’t bat an eyelid at a guest roaming around.’

  His eyes lit up. ‘Yes! So we just have to scour the Plaza and find him.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, although I didn’t exactly relish the prospect of coming face to face with Ferret Face, but what other choice did we have? ‘Well you can’t look for him. He’ll recognize you. I’ll have to do it.’ I took a deep breath, trying to psych myself up for such a horrible job. ‘But there’s something else as well. If Ferret Face is going to assassinate Ibrahim Kaya at the opening night, then someone else must be involved in actually stealing the statue. He can’t do two things at once.’

  ‘The assassination attempt must be a distraction so his accomplice can steal the statue.’

  ‘Who would want Kaya dead?’

  Kalem s
hrugged. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know enough about him. We need to try and get more evidence. Then Erol will have to take us seriously.’

  ‘Even if we get more evidence, Erol won’t want to investigate because it will mean giving up the money. It looks like the only option we’ve got is to try and stop Ferret Face and his accomplice ourselves.’ I swirled the wine round in my glass thoughtfully, worrying about the enormity of such a task. I looked up at the stars, hoping they would miraculously give me some kind of answer. They didn’t.

  ‘Our container is arriving at your parents’ house tomorrow morning. So we have to be there then. Straight afterwards we can put Operation Find Ferret Face into action. Let’s try and forget about everything for a while and concentrate on what we were supposed to be doing this week: having some relaxing, pre-wedding couple time.’ Kalem took my glass and set it down on the sand.

  Yes, he was right, of course. We couldn’t do anything else tonight, and I seriously needed some kind of distraction from it all. ‘Ooh. And what did you have in mind?’ I giggled.

  In the moonlight I saw his eyebrow lift slowly. ‘How about skinny dipping, for starters.’ He took my hand and pulled me up, then quickly stripped off his cotton shorts and shirt. ‘You coming?’

  I didn’t need asking twice. I yanked my sundress over my head and threw it on the towel, quickly followed by my knickers.

  ‘Oh, wait!’ I folded my knickers inside my dress. ‘I don’t want to catch crabs.’

  We slipped into the warm water, hand in hand.

  ‘It’s like a bath.’ I wrapped my legs round his waist and slid my fingertips over his back.

  Kalem groaned in the silent air, his shoulders tensing as he held me close. ‘You look even more beautiful in the moonlight.’ He murmured into the curve of my neck. ‘So beautiful.’ His lips brushed against my neck, my ear, my collar bone, my chin, the edge of my mouth.

  ‘Mmm.’ God, did he know how to work his lips. I shivered with delight.

  Slow, erotic nips against my lips turned into sensual kisses, his mouth gliding against mine, his tongue sensually teasing me.

  ‘I love you.’ I ran my hands up and down his spine, sighing in ecstasy before he silenced me with a kiss.

  An explosion of pulses swept through my body like a tsunami. I gripped his buttocks, pulling him closer, licking, tasting, stroking.

  He plunged his hands in my hair. ‘Maybe we should get out.’ His voice was throaty as he suddenly drew back, cupping my face in his hands.

  His eyes were intense and dark, like coal shimmering in the moonlight. He nodded towards the towel on the beach.

  Well, I didn’t need asking twice.

  We hurriedly slipped from the sea, our bodies shiny and wet with salt. Lying down on the towel, entangled in each other’s limbs, I was aware of only the heat from his body against mine as we moved to the rhythm of the tide.

  Later, as we lay facing each other, his fingertips tracing a line up and down my hip, and mine gently stroking his thigh, I heard a noise a little further up the beach. It sounded like something was moving along the sand.

  I turned my head to get a better look and saw the most amazing thing. Clutching Kalem’s arm, I pointed in the direction of the noise.

  A turtle dragged itself over the bumpy mounds of sand, etching a trail along the beach. It looked huge, probably a metre long. In the moonlight you could see a greenish tinge to its mottled shell.

  ‘It’s a green turtle,’ Kalem whispered to me. ‘She’s come up to nest on the beach. We need to be really quiet until she starts to lay her eggs. Otherwise we’ll disturb her.’

  ‘She’s gorgeous.’ I stared at her, slack-jawed in amazement, knowing I was about to watch something that I’d only ever seen on TV before. How cool was this? To watch a turtle laying its eggs a short distance away. Wow.

  We dressed silently as she wandered up the beach for a while, then seemed to think better of it and changed her mind, coming closer towards us again.

  ‘They go into a trance when they lay their eggs, and we’ll be able to get right up close to watch it.’ Kalem grinned at me. ‘I thought nothing could be as fantastic as making love on a deserted starlit beach, but this is just amazing.’

  After a few more trails up and down the beach, the majestic beauty seemed to decide on the right spot and started digging. Her flippers dug slowly, flicking the sand away from her body with force, so that it flew in the air and landed way behind her. She carried on for what seemed like an hour, stopping now and then for a rest. Dig, dig. Stop. Breathe. Dig, dig. She carried on until the hole was a deep bowl shape. And finally, when she seemed satisfied, she stopped, face turned up to the sky.

  Kalem grabbed my hand, and we padded silently towards her. I held my breath, just in case she could hear me. She didn’t seem to notice us as she started to lay large clumps of eggs into the nest, plopping into the cavity at speed.

  We stared on in awe, not daring to move a muscle. It was the most spectacular thing I’d ever seen.

  ‘When will they hatch?’ I whispered.

  ‘In about two months. They have a Turtle Project here every summer to aid conservation. Students from all over the world come and scour the beaches during the laying season so they can put protective covers over the nests once they’ve laid their eggs. It stops wild dogs and other creatures digging them up and ensures the maximum number of baby turtles hatch.’

  When she finally finished, she had the mammoth task of refilling the nest chamber with sand. The poor thing looked exhausted. The muscles in the back of my neck started to ache as we stood for probably another hour, watching her cover up the nest.

  Then she slowly lumbered back towards the sea and slipped into the moonlit water, her job done.

  ‘That was absolutely unbelievable.’ My smile felt like it stretched from ear to ear.

  Kalem looked deep into my eyes. ‘It was magical. You see, this is what I’ve been trying to tell you. This is exactly what the simple life is all about. Getting to experience nature and life in a way that we can’t in the UK. God, Helen, I really want to stay here. I know my dream job has disappeared, but this is priceless. Sitting on a star-packed beach, just us; watching the stars with a bottle of wine, making love on the sand, and seeing a turtle lay her eggs. We’re so lucky to be here. To be experiencing this. I don’t care if I’ve got to take a less exciting job, we’re going to stay.’ He picked me up and spun me around.

  Chapter 10

  To say that things were not exactly going too well at this point would be a slight understatement. To be more precise, in spite of the spectacular evening on the beach, I’d had a stressed out, stomach-churning, shit-heap few days.

  I wasn’t exactly looking forward to having our container arrive at Yasmin and Deniz’s house either. Partly because I wanted to get on with Operation Find Ferret Face. Now we had some kind of a plan to find him, I wanted to hurry up and get on with it. Also, partly because having all of our possessions arrive meant that we would definitely have to stay here. And the hard thing was that I really didn’t know whether I could stay here after all that had happened so far. Never mind the fact that I would hardly ever see Ayshe again, the lack of shopping, and the crazy extended family who had a sniffer sheep as a pet, our arrival here had been tainted and cursed since the very beginning. And that, like some kind of domino effect, seemed to be spiralling my doubts about living the simple life here out of control. But Kalem so badly wanted to stay, that I couldn’t tell him how I was feeling, could I? No, it wouldn’t be fair to him. Yet with the container arriving, it felt like some sort of finality, and it looked like moving abroad was beginning to be the worst mistake of my life. I’d also now developed some sort of peculiar phobia about customs men, and guess who was accompanying the container to fill out all the paperwork?

  I felt horribly sick and overwhelmingly depressed. This was supposed to be the most important week of my life, but all I wanted to do was curl up under the sheets and never come out again.
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br />   The only spot of good news in all of it, I supposed, was that at least all my other clothes and shoes would arrive in the container, since I was rapidly running out of things to wear.

  ‘We’d better go and see your mum and dad.’ I forked in my last mouthful of breakfast in the dining room and pushed away my plate. ‘See if they’re getting over the food poisoning yet.’

  Kalem nodded.

  Ayshe blew on a cup of steaming herbal tea. ‘Not only is Dad obsessed with the condoms, he’s now really into Cosmopolitan magazine. So be warned.’

  ‘What’s wrong with that? I love Cosmo.’ Charlie dabbed at his lips with a napkin.

  ‘Yes, but you’re not normal.’ I chuckled.

  ‘Where’s Atila gone?’ I asked Ayshe.

  ‘He’s another one that’s acting strange. He was having a really weird dream last night, mumbling something about place settings and illuminated menus. And he keeps getting calls at all hours from the manager of his restaurant in London. Maybe the manager can’t cope without Atila there to sort things out.’ She shrugged. ‘I don’t know, but something strange is going on. I’m sure of it.’

  ‘Well, maybe he’s just worried about leaving it,’ I said. ‘This is the first time he’s actually left control of it to a manager, isn’t it? He’s bound to be a bit worried. You know what a stressy perfectionist he is in the kitchen.’ I thought about how Gordon Ramsayish he gets in the kitchen, barking out sweary orders to his staff, which was a complete contrast to his normal, laid-back self.

  ‘Yes, but he whispers down the phone like something top secret is going on. Maybe it is the heat, it’s certainly having an effect on me.’ She fanned at her flushed face with a napkin. ‘Ah! Maybe he’s having an affair.’ She stopped fanning abruptly. ‘Do you think that’s it? Maybe it’s not the restaurant manager phoning him at all. Maybe it’s his bit on the side!’

  I stood up and enveloped her in a hug. ‘Of course not. That’s just ridiculous. He loves you to bits. No.’ I shook my head firmly. ‘There is absolutely no way he’s having an affair.’