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Surprise, surprise—that was her fault too.
‘Not based on personal experience. How long did we get in Maui? Two days?’
‘Three,’ he said curtly. ‘And I apologised for that at the time. Just like I apologised for not coming to London with you. I don’t know what else I could have done.’
And that was the problem, Delphi thought, staring at Omar’s handsome, arrogant face. With his tailored suits and Harvard business degree he thought he was such a modern male. But his attitude to relationships might have come straight out of a nineteen-fifties soap opera. For him, an apology was the beginning and the end of his input. That was his part over and done with. Her job was to accept the apology and move on. If she didn’t, then she was the problem.
A heaviness was creeping over her. Like the flu...only not the flu. It was more a sense of sadness and defeat, like before. She felt empty, fragile. Lonely.
But that was one of the consequences of thinking you could trust someone with your happiness. Because you loved them, and you thought they loved you, you gave them power, expecting and believing and hoping they would use it to protect you and cherish you and heal you.
Instead, they hurt you.
And she knew that.
She’d known it when her parents died, and her aunts had fought over her like hyenas with a bone...only the bone had been her trust fund. Later, girls at school and their mothers had seemed so caring and concerned for her—until she’d read about herself online, with quotes from the same ‘concerned’ but anonymous family friends.
It was why she’d held herself apart for so long. Why she worked with horses and not humans. But then she had met Omar and it had been impossible to keep her distance. She had allowed herself to trust him, to need him...
But never again.
She felt that same flatness she had felt after returning from London. Not tiredness, exactly, just a desire to curl up and hide beneath a duvet. There was no point in any of this. He would never understand what he had done. What he had destroyed.
‘Fine. You win,’ she said quickly. ‘I’ll stay here with you.’
His face relaxed a little. But she could already sense him regrouping, planning his strategy for the next battle.
‘Good. Because it might have escaped your attention, but you are being treated with all the respect and consideration afforded to my wife. Which, by the way, is more than you deserve. So perhaps for the remainder of your stay you could try not to make a drama out of every little thing that doesn’t quite meet with your approval.’
She could barely swallow. Heart hammering, she stared at him. ‘Are you being serious?’
‘I could ask you the same question.’ His expression was hard and uncompromising. ‘You know, up until six weeks ago we were sharing more than a living space...we were sharing a bed. Or have you forgotten about that too?’
No, she hadn’t.
His words, and more specifically the memories they evoked, rippled through the taut air and through her. Her body felt suddenly tight and yet loose, hot and cold at the same time, as she tried not to remember Omar’s mouth devouring hers, and the tangle of their limbs as they fought to get past not just clothes but skin and flesh. Tried too to forget how often they had failed to undress or lie down or even make it to the bed.
Shaking inside, she blanked her mind, and looked him straight in the eye. ‘Well, I’m not going to be sharing a bed with you tonight. Or any other night for that matter.’
There was a long, quivering silence, and the already strained tension in the foyer cranked up several notches.
‘Oh, believe me, that won’t be a problem.’
He spoke calmly, but she could sense the anger fizzing beneath his smooth, tanned skin.
‘Do you honestly think I want you in my bed, in my life, after the way you’ve acted? I didn’t come and find you in that hospital or follow you to that seedy little bar to rekindle our relationship, Delphi. I don’t want to fix what you smashed into pieces. In case I didn’t make it clear enough before, you’re here now for one reason and one reason only. For my father, my family.’ His lip curled slowly and deliberately, like a dog confronted by a stranger. ‘And when this is over, we’re done.’
Floored by the hostility in his voice, she took a step back. It hurt more than it should. More than she wanted it to. But she would never let it show. She was done with sharing secrets with this man.
‘Finally, we agree on something.’ Her heart was aching so much that she felt as if she was about to double over. ‘Now, if there’s nothing more, I suggest you tell me wheremy room is.’
