CHAPTER TWO
OMARLIFTEDA hand and pressed two fingers against his right temple, where his head was starting to pound. His brain, usually so quick and decisive, was struggling to accept what his eyes were showing him.
But maybe he was jumping the gun and she had simply gone outside to get some fresh air.
Turning, he flicked the curtain aside and stalked back across the ER, his eyes scanning the room Terminator-style, looking for a flash of rose-pink among all the blue scrubs.
But with every step he took he knew he was wasting his time. Like the horses she worked with, running away was Delphi’s default response to any kind of confrontation or threat. Especially when she was angry, and she was still angry with him. Still blamed him for what had happened in London. Hence the divorce papers.
He rubbed his fingers against his forehead, trying to relieve the pressure.
Except nothing had actually happened. Okay, it had been upsetting that the paparazzi were hanging around, and frustrating that she hadn’t been able to visit her parents’ graves, but her reaction had felt—still felt—disproportionate. Unreasonable. Unfair.
He’d known Delphi was angry with him for not going to England with her, but he had apologised multiple times. In fact, he seemed to have spent half his married life apologising to Delphi.
And how would it have changed anything even if he had gone with her?
What was more, she had never once admitted the part she’d played. If she had stuck to the original plan he would have been by her side. But she had changed her mind not once but twiceabout going to London, and by then he’d been offered a meeting with Bob Maclean, owner of the biggest cable network in North America.
A meeting like that was not something he could just postpone, and he had tried to explain that to Delphi. But nothing he’d said had consoled her. She had simply blocked each attempt he’d made, silently retreating further and further into herself, so that once again she had become that guarded young woman he had met at the polo a year ago.
His jaw tightened. With hindsight he should have refused to accept her silence. When she had frozen him out in London he should have sat her down and made her talk. Or just taken her to bed and kept her there until the ice had melted.
Maybe if he had they would be in a different place now.
Or maybe they wouldn’t, he thought as he strode towards the exit.
He was well past the point of thinking their marriage could be fixed. Although, as he’d walked into the hospital, a part of him had wondered if she’d had time to think and perhaps regret her actions.
She hadn’t, of course.
Delphi was the most stubborn person he had ever met. And the hardest to pin down.
Apart from Rashid Al Majid.
The doors slid open, and as he walked purposefully into the warm Idaho sunlight he glanced upwards at a sky that was the same faded blue as his father’s eyes. Eyes that were always tracking away from him, seeking something brighter, bigger, shinier—
His shoulders tensed. With sixteen older half-siblings, it was almost impossible for him to offer anything new, anything special or stand-out that might snag Rashid’s attention. But that hadn’t stopped him from trying. On the contrary, he had spent most of his life striving to form a bond with his elusive, uncompromising father by building something he could call his own, something that had nothing to do with his family.
Two birds, one stone. Twin goals. Inseparable and inexorable. Consummate and constant.
But as for marriage...
He had considered it. It had always been more of an assumption that he would marry at some point than an ambition.
Until he’d met Delphi.
And then it had become an obsession. Getting her to trust him had become the plan that had driven everything else from his mind. It had taken the best part of three months to succeed, but he’d done it.
The band of silver on his left hand glinted in the sunlight.
Or rather he’d thought he had. Only apparently, according to Delphi’s ridiculously high and ever-upward-moving bar, he had failed.
Failed.
The word scraped against his skin, drawing blood.
Except this wasn’t his failure. He had gone above and beyond what any other man would have done to prove himself worthy. He had accepted her past unquestioningly, even though it had raised eyebrows among the more conservative members of his family. And not once had he considered walking away.