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‘That way’ turned out to be on to a Main Street straight out of a theme park. There were a couple of banks and some small, shabby-looking shops, all closed for the holiday, and a barber’s, also closed. In both the two restaurants staff were wiping down the tables. He scanned the street. Everywhere was either shut or closing up for the day.
Every place except one.
Dark eyes narrowing, Omar crossed the road.
Sliding into a booth in the corner of the Iron Mule Tavern, Delphi breathed out shakily. She had virtually sprinted away from the hospital, and now her lungs were burning and the ache in her wrist had returned.
She hadn’t planned to run. Or maybe she had subconsciously. Because that had been the first thought that had popped into her head when Omar strode away.
Run. Run as fast as you can.
And she had. Blindly, unthinkingly, like an animal seeking a place to hide from a predator. And now, thankfully, she was safe. She could stop running, relax. Celebrate, even. Her own personal day of independence. Except she didn’t feel much like celebrating.
Clearly she had come to the right place, she thought, glancing across the room to where a barmaid was standing listlessly behind a sticky-looking counter. Opposite her sat six men, all old, hunched over their glasses, eyes glued to the television mounted on the wall. None of them had even looked over when she’d walked in, which was just the way she liked it.
‘What can I get you?’
The barmaid had made her way over and was standing next to the table, a bored expression on her face.
‘Vodka, please,’ Delphi said quickly.
Behind them, the door to the bar banged open and she jerked round, her body humming with panic. But it was just another old man, with sparse straw-coloured hair and vein-hatched cheeks.
She swallowed. ‘Make it a double.’
The barmaid nodded, still bored.
Watching her walk away, Delphi leaned back against the faux leather, her body buckling. She needed something a lot stronger than water to blunt the emotions raging inside her. And not just because of Omar’s sudden unwelcome reappearance in her life.
Throat tightening, she moved her hand protectively to her wrist. It was such a stupid thing to have let happen, and it shouldn’t have happened. Like everybody else in her family she was a careful driver, never taking risks or cutting corners. Because, like them, she understood the consequences could be devastating.
Fatal.
Her breath caught as it always did when she thought about the accident.
To her, Ianthe Reynolds and Dylan Wright had just been Mummy and Daddy. But to the rest of the world the peroxide blonde actress and the pouting up-and-coming pop star had been an ‘it’ couple. Their affair had been chronicled with voyeuristic frenzy in the tabloids, starting when Ianthe had left Dan Howard, her husband of fourteen years, for her much younger lover, and ending when the car Ianthe had been driving had spun off the road, killing them both.
And just like that Delphi had become an orphan.
She was four years old.
It would be wrong to say that she could remember those first few hours after the crash. Mostly what she remembered was just a blur of people coming in and out of the house. And lights...lots of flashing lights.
The door to the bar banged open again. This time she didn’t turn her head. She couldn’t look away from the lights in her memory. Red and blue for the police. Then, later, white forthe paparazzi, who had joined the TV camera crews treading on the fragile heads of the tulips she and her father had planted in December. She could still hear their voices, seeping through the walls and echoing down the pipes...still picture their faces flushed with greedy excitement.
A shiver ran over her skin and she felt an almost imperceptible change in air pressure, like the tremble of debris at the mouth of a subway tunnel before a train arrived. And then—
‘There you are, darling.’
She jumped as a bottle of water was slammed down onto the table.
‘Sorry it took so long. I didn’t realise we were playing hide and seek. Again.’
Delphi felt her stomach drop. Her heart squeezed as if she was having a seizure. Looking as out of place in the dusty bar as a peacock in a pigeon loft, Omar Al Majid was staring down at her, his beautiful sexy mouth set in a grim line.
‘But I suppose I should have guessed. It is your favourite game.’
Her pulse scuttled. He had been angry before, but now she could almost see the fury and frustration shimmering around his body like a heat haze in the desert. But he could be as angry as he liked. It wouldn’t change anything. Certainly not the past. Or the future. And after what had happened in London she knew they had no future.
