Tilting her head, she stared up at the Burj, not really seeing the glittering tower anymore. Instead, the lit-up windows reminded her of the keyboard on Omar’s laptop when she used to wake in bed and find him working in the darkness.
He wasn’t a builder, or an architect, but his goal was just as concrete. And she had no doubt that he would succeed in creating the biggest media empire in the world. With both a ruthless singularity of purpose and a relentless ambition that relegated everything outside of work to the outer edges of his life, how could he fail?
Not that she cared any more.
After this weekend, Omar’s obsession would no longer have anything to do with her. What mattered now was getting through the next twenty-four hours.
So don’t make everything about your soon-to-be ex-husband, she told herself. Keep things polite and impersonal. Most important of all, stay away from the past.
She cleared her throat. ‘It’s difficult to believe this was all desert.’
‘The desert is still here.’ His eyes flickered past her to the window. ‘Outside the city it stretches for hundreds of thousands of miles. Up until two hundred years ago all of this...’ he gestured to the gleaming skyscrapers ‘...was covered with sand. The tribes that moved into the region stuck to the coast. They fished and traded with their neighbours, and then they started diving for pearls.’
She was interested despite herself. ‘Pearls?’
He nodded. ‘Saltwater pearls. But they found something even more valuable. They found gold.’
She felt the limo starting to slow. Seconds later, it stopped, but before she had a chance to process the moment of arrival the car door had opened, and she was stepping out into the hot night air.
‘This way.’
Omar was beside her now and, flanked by the two blank-faced bodyguards she had seen at the airport, they made their way to a discreet entrance with a uniformed doorman. Then there was more blissful cool as she followed Omar through a stunning marble foyer into a lift.
The doors closed and her pulse dipped as she suddenly realised that the bodyguards had melted away. For the first time since he had walked into the hospital in Idaho, they were alone. And even though she couldn’t see his eyes, she knew that Omar had registered it too.
She felt a flicker of heat, low in her belly. They were standing so close it would take no effort to lean into the space between them and press her mouth against his. To pull his hard, muscle-bound body against hers and feel his heat radiate through the thin cotton of her dress.
From the corner of her eye she saw him turn towards her and her pulse accelerated. Her face felt as if it was on fire. She needed to step away, but she didn’t dare move.
Polite and impersonal, she reminded herself quickly and, staring straight ahead, said, ‘I didn’t know they’d found gold here.’
Did he sense the tension behind her remark? Could he hear the pounding of her heart, the hum of her blood? It was impossible to say. Knowing Omar...probably. It was not a comforting thought.
‘I was talking about black gold. Oil. People here got very rich, very quickly, and now it’s a city of superlatives.’ He reached up and pressed his palm against a screen. Instantly the lift started to move. ‘The biggest, the tallest, the fastest—’
No wonder, then, that he called it home, she thought.
The powerful muscles of his arm were capturing her gaze and holding it as her heartbeat tripped over itself. Omar was the flesh-and-blood embodiment of all superlatives. Darkest eyes. Softest mouth. Most passionate lover...
She could still remember that first time they’d kissed at her father’s ranch. How much she’d wanted it. How much she’d feared it. Could remember the slowing of her pulse and how his lips had moved over hers, deliberately, thoroughly, and how she had melted into him, her head spinning, her breath fluttering in her throat.
It was dangerous, the effect he had on her. When he was close her brain seemed to short-circuit, Her sense of self-preservation got swamped by his beauty, his assurance, his unfiltered masculinity.
And nothing had changed, she thought, remembering their last kiss—the one that had happened twenty-four hours ago in a field in Idaho.
Her belly clenched and, feeling his eyes on her face, she jerked her gaze away, hating herself, despising the effect even the memory of his mouth had on her body. Hating, too, how, lost in the heat of desire, she had forgotten the most important superlative of all.
The biggest betrayal.
And its aftermath.
All those hours on her own, curled up on the floor of the bathroom, losing the baby she had only just learned was growing inside her.
Her hand moved jerkily to touch her stomach.
She still didn’t know what had prompted her to take a pregnancy test. Had she not done so, she would probably have thought it was just a late period that was heavier than usual. In some ways, she wished she hadn’t ever known. But then she would never have had those few precious days of shock and wonder and hope. Or the chance to say goodbye.
Her breath felt thin and light. Afterwards, she wished she had told Omar about the pregnancy, but it had been too late by then. Too complicated. Too devastating. Too irrelevant. Anything she’d planned to say had been swallowed up by her anger and hurt.