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A muscle flickered along his jawline. ‘That’s not possible.’
Her eyes found his. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Omar. They can’t all be fully booked.’
‘I wouldn’t imagine so, no.’ His tone was cool and hard. ‘But it’s not appropriate.’
She stared at him, trying to breathe normally, stunned by his response. ‘For a woman to stay in a hotel on her own?’ The intensity of his focus was making her skin prickle.
‘In this situation, you’re not just a woman. You’re my wife, and the daughter-in-law of Rashid Al Majid—so, yes, it would be inappropriate for you to stay at a hotel on your own. Besides, why would you want to when we have a perfectly good apartment of our own?’
Did he have no understanding of what it was doing to her, being here with him? And what was it going to be like, having to pretend to his entire family that they were still in love?
She looked up at him, disbelief vying with fury. ‘You really want me to answer that?’
‘Obviously,’ he said, breaking the taut silence. ‘That’s what husbands and wives do. They have conversations. Discussions. But, as we both know, I’d have better luck squeezing blood from a stone than getting you to answer a question about yourself.’
Her eyes widened. ‘That’s not true. Or fair.’
‘Fair?’
His voice scraped against her skin like the heat-charged air.
‘You walked out on our marriage. No note. No forwarding address. Tell me, how does that equate to being fair?’
The injustice of his words almost knocked her off her feet. It hadn’t been about fairness...just survival. And she wanted to throw the truth in his face. But where would hurling accusations at him take her? She felt her stomach lurch. She knew where. It would take her back to a place she never wanted to revisit. Back to the past...back to her parents’ last row.
She took a deep breath, bit back the comment she wanted to make, and made herself speak calmly. ‘I didn’t come here to talk about our marriage, Omar. I came here to go to your father’s birthday party.’
‘You mean the party you forgot about?’
She hated him then. Hated how he twisted everything. In Omar’s world he was never wrong. She was wrong for not opening up more to him. She was to blame for not simply accepting that his work took priority over everything else in his life. For not accepting his apologies and forgiving him. And now she was at fault for not remembering his father’s party.
Her heart was beating out of time. ‘At least I only forgot a party. You forgot you had a wife.’
‘Not this again.’
Her pupils flared. ‘Yes, this again.’
He stared at her for a long moment, and she sensed that he was battling to control his temper.
‘If you’re talking about my working hours, you knew who I was when you married me. I don’t just have some little nine to five office job. I run a global business. I’m responsible for thousands of people. So, yes, I work late, and I travel often. And if you’re talking about London, I didn’t forget you, Delphi. You changed the plan. Twice. And I understood why that happened—why you needed the time and space to get things straight in your head. But you didn’t extend to me the same courtesy. You refused to understand why I couldn’t just ditch my plans. You didn’t even try. You just did what you always do: deflected everything I said and threw up more barriers between us.’
She could feel his frustration, his bafflement that he hadn’t been able to stop that from happening. But it wasn’t the same, she thought, replaying the twisting, conflicted process of her thoughts at that time. She had been confused and scared about going back to England. It was her birthplace, but it was also the scene of so much pain and loss. And then she had found out she was pregnant, and that had added in an extra layer of complication, a sudden and unexpected hope, clear and bright like a flame.
Only the last thing she needed right now was to think about that. She was suddenly furious with herself for picking at a scar that needed to be left well alone.
‘There was nothing to understand,’ she said flatly. ‘It was just another business meeting.’
He shook his head. ‘It was a once-in-a-lifetime business meeting. If I hadn’t had that conversation with Bob Maclean, he would have had it with someone else. And I would have missed my chance.’
Her hands curled into fists, her nails scoring the palms. He was impossible. Impossibly stubborn and self-righteous and blinkered. How could she have let him kiss her again? Worse, how could she have liked it so much?
She took a breath. ‘Which would have been annoying, but I’m sure you would have got over it.’
His dark gaze tore into her. ‘It wasn’t just about me. I was doing it for us. For our future.’
Something in his words made her stomach curl in on itself. ‘We don’t have a future. We just have a brief, unhappy past and a truly dysfunctional present.’
‘Because you expected marriage to be one long honeymoon.’
