Sliding that ring on to her finger in Vegas, he’d thought—hoped—he’d done enough.
Some hope.
She’d been so insecure, so certain that he would let her down. It had been almost as if she was waiting for it to happen...looking for it to happen. Maybe that was what their marriage had been about? Not love. Not him. But proving herself right.
Why else would she refuse to give him—give them—a second chance? She had deemed him deficient, unnecessary, and cut him out of her life with the ruthless, dispassionate precision of a surgeon removing a ruptured appendix.
His fingers twitched against the warm metal.
Not completely dispassionate, he thought, remembering how she had softened against him back in Idaho.
In the weeks after she’d left, he had imagined a life without her. He had told himself that she was a burden, an impossible weight to carry. But in those few shimmering, electric moments, he had forgotten all that. Suddenly there had been no barriers between them, physical or otherwise. Her body had fitted against him seamlessly, as it had so many times before, and he would have held her close like that until the end of time if those actual real-life fireworks hadn’t broken the spell.
He ran his hand over his face, wishing he could as easily erase the memory of Delphi’s mouth on his.
But it was going to stay a memory, he told himself grimly. Once upon a time he might have believed he was strong and sane enough for both of them—not anymore. He was done with trying to make sense of what went on inside that beautiful head of hers.
Bracing himself against the ache in his groin, he stared up at the moon. Here in Dubai, and in most of the Arab world, the moon was an important symbol. There were lots of documented reasons for that. His favourite was the story his mother had used to tell him when he was a child, of how, to avoid the heat of the day, his ancestors had used to travel by night along the desert trade routes, and therefore their navigation had been dependent upon the position of the moon and stars.
If only the moon could guide him through the next twenty-four hours... Truthfully, it couldn’t make a bigger mess of things than he and Delphi had, he thought sourly, yanking off his T-shirt as he walked back into the bedroom.
Staring out of the window at the blue-black sky, Delphi felt her stomach tighten. Although she wasn’t quite sure why, given that this was the third time in as many days that she had found herself sitting reluctantly in the back of an oversized car with her estranged husband. This time, they were en route to her father-in-law’s residence in the exclusive Emirates Hills suburb of the city.
Then again, she was just about to meet Omar’s entire family for the first time.
And the last.
And if that wasn’t enough of a reason to make the butterflies in her stomach go into a tailspin, Omar was wearing a black kandura—the traditional robe worn by men throughout the Gulf States.
She glanced over to where he was sitting, his long legs stretched out casually, his dark-eyed profile fixed on the phone in his hand. Her pulse twitched. He looked good in a suit; in a kandura he looked sublime. There was something about the austere collarless robe which emphasised the raw, uncompromising masculine beauty of the man wearing it.
Her eyes snagged on the phone in his hand. Pity about his choice of accessory. Of course you could take the man out of the boardroom, but you couldn’t stop him doing business. Not if that man was Omar Al Majid, anyway.
As if sensing her focus, Omar looked up and across the car. Suddenly finding herself the object of his hard, steady gaze, she felt her skin begin to sting. She swallowed, her mouth dry and tight. Only he had this way of skewering her with his eyes—but how? And why did he still have the power to reach inside her and make her body hum with nervous energy?
It was a strangely intimate moment in a day during which he had barely spoken to her. Waking mid-morning, she had showered and dressed, but it had been Samir who greeted her. And Samir who had shown her around the apartment, which was as large and well-appointed as Omar had told her it was.
Of Omar there had been no sign. Her mouth thinned. Actually, that wasn’t quite true. There had been the usual familiar laptop left open on a table with a bowl of dates and a cup of strong, black coffee cooling beside it, but the man himself was, according to Samir, tied up on important calls.
No change there, then. Not that it was any of her business any more. She was just here to show her face at the party.
Suddenly she was trembling inside, and in an effort to calm herself she smoothed out an imaginary crease in her skirt.
Maha, the stylist Omar had provided, had chosen it for her. She had arrived after lunch, with rails full of beautiful dresses in every colour imaginable, and Delphi was intensely grateful that it hadn’t been left to her to choose. Dressing up was not her thing. Day to day, she lived in jeans, T-shirts, and boots. She’d had to borrow a dress and those unbelievably painful sandals from Ashley to go to the barbecue. Even on her wedding day she had kept it low-key, choosing to wear a cream cashmere sweater with a pair of matching tailored shorts.
She glanced down, her heart bumping against her ribs. This dress, though, was anything but low-key.
Made of sunset-gold iridescent sequins, it was a one-of-a-kind couture piece—two pieces, actually. A bandeau top with a tulle overlay and fitted sleeves, and a shamelessly over-the-top full skirt.
‘Don’t you think it’s a bit much?’ she had asked Maha.
Maha had shaken her head vigorously, her glossy ponytail flicking from side to side like a cheerleader’s hair at a football match. ‘Just because we have a modest dress code it doesn’t mean you need to be invisible.’ She smiled. ‘I know you’re worried because it’s your father-in-law’s birthday party, and he is a very important man. But people here are proud about who they are and what they’ve achieved. Trust me—if all eyes are on you, that is a good thing.’
In other words, go big or go home.
‘Going big’ was not something that came naturally to her. When she was a child, Ianthe and Dylan had used her as an accessory, taking her to movie premieres and concerts and once, famously—and to the disapproval of parents all over the world—to a nightclub.
As far as she was concerned, all eyes being on her was very bad. She hated the flashing cameras, the strangers calling out her name and telling her to smile. At least she wouldn’t have to worry about that at the party. The Al Majid name didn’t just open doors: it closed them. There would be no press or curious members of the public craning their necks to see what the orphaned daughter of Ianthe Reynolds and Dylan Wright looked like now.