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Her fingers moved to her stomach and she felt something pinch inside her—that same pang of regret and loss that punctuated her day like a clock marking the hours.
She lifted her chin and met his gaze. ‘I don’t play games. Don’t sit down,’ she snapped.
But it was too late. Omar had already dropped into the seat opposite her, stretching out his long legs so that she would have to climb over him to make her escape.
‘No, you just sneak away when no one’s around.’
He pushed the bottle of water towards her across the table. She stopped it with her hand.
‘I didn’t sneak anywhere. I didn’t want to see you.’
‘Or you send them on a fool’s errand,’ he continued, ignoring her remark.
‘If the cap fits...’ she said coolly.
A muscle twitched in his cheek, and he jerked his hand away from the bottle.
She felt a flicker of triumph, but it was swiftly extinguished as he leaned back in his seat and her eyes felt suddenly as if they were on the end of a fishing hook, reeled in inexorably by the tightening of fabric around smooth, toned muscle.
He looked good in a suit. Good out of one too, she conceded, her breath quickening as, against her will, she found herself remembering every centimetre of his superb body in glorious detail.
As if he could read her thoughts, Omar looked at her across the sticky table.
‘It doesn’t.’ His gaze was steady and unwavering. ‘You see, you don’t fool me, Delphi. How could you? I mean, you can’t even fool yourself.’
Suddenly she was fighting the wild beating of her heart. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she said stiffly, her fingers thick and clumsy around the neck of the bottle.
But she did. She could feel it now, one beat behind her pulse. A longing that had nothing to do with logic. A need that was like an itch beneath the skin. Impossible to scratch no matter how much you twisted and squirmed.
A slow smile tugged at the corners of his mouth and the table seemed to shrink. Around them the bar lost shape, the hunched drinkers and the barmaid blurring into one another so that there was just her and him. Omar Al Majid, the man with eyes that could hold her fast in a hurricane.
‘Sure you do.’ He dismissed her statement with a careless lift of his broad shoulders. ‘You just have trouble admitting it. You always have. That’s why you ran away, and why you’re hiding in some downtown bar in a two-bit town. But there are some truths you can’t run from.’
She shivered all the way through, the air leaving her body as he leaned forward. And she wanted to run then—run from the dark heat in his gaze and from the memory of his body flexing beneath hers as he held her waist and thrust up into her—
Breathing in sharply, she pressed her legs together beneath the table, trying to deny the pulse beating between her thighs. How could she feel like this? After everything he had done and failed to do, it was crazy of her body to behave this way—not to say treacherous.
Then again, what did all this heat and twitchiness amount to? It was just sex. Bodies. Biology.
Legally, Omar might still be her husband, but their marriage was null and void. Anything else was just wishful thinking on her part. A stupid, irrational hope that she could outrun her past, outrun the twisting helix of her DNA. Only how could you ever outrun something that was a part of you?
And it was all immaterial now, anyway. She was over him. Clearly. Why else would she file for divorce? It was so she could be free of him...free to get on with her life.
‘I’m not running. I’m sitting down, waiting for my drink to arrive so I can celebrate my imminent independence from you. But why wait?’ She snatched up the bottle of water and twisted off the top. ‘Here’s to single life.’
The cold water burned her throat as his beautiful eyes narrowed. ‘I know what you’re trying to do, Delphi. I wonder, though, do you?’
She could feel her pulse thudding beneath the thin fabric of her dress. ‘It’s really not that complicated, Omar. I’m trying to get you to leave.’
He stared across the table, that mouth of his curving into a smile that sliced through her skin. ‘Exactly. You’re needling me because there’s nowhere left to run, nowhere left to hide, and you’re scared.’
‘I’m not scared of you.’
She spoke quickly—too quickly.
‘No, you’re scared of us. You’re scared of what “us” means, and how it makes you feel. How I make you feel.’ His eyes shifted pointedly to the dull white of her knuckles, where her hand was clamped to the bottle. ‘It’s what’s always scared you, right from the start. And I know that when it gets too much you do what you did six weeks ago...what you’re doing now. Instead of talking to me, you push me away. You run. You retreat. You overreact.’
Overreact.
