Prince Nadir's Secret Heir. Michelle Conder
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know she’s a she?’ Imogen hedged.
‘I don’t think it’s customary to dress a boy in a pink sunhat.’
‘Maybe I’m just bucking the trend.’
His hissed breath held a wealth of reaching-the-end-of-his-tether impatience. ‘How. Old. Is. She?’
Completely unprepared for both his anger and his relentless questioning, Imogen was at a loss as to how to follow the advice of her inner voice that warned her to tread cautiously and found herself blurting out the truth. ‘Five months.’
He rocked back on his heels, his hands going to his waist and pushing his jacket back to reveal his broad chest. ‘Then our affair did result in a child.’
Their affair? Talk about clarifying how he had felt about her back then... ‘I didn’t say that,’ she retorted forcefully.
The words came out rushed and his eyebrows shot up. ‘Then you were sleeping with someone else while we were together.’ His voice held the tenor of a wounded bull, which didn’t impress her at all.
‘Trust you to take that line of thinking,’ she said scathingly, remembering how he had basically accused her of the same thing their last night together in Paris. ‘And it’s none of your business.’
‘If she’s not mine then whose is she?’ His gaze once again narrowed in on Nadeena.
‘Mine,’ she countered evenly.
Nadir’s lips turned up into a snarl. ‘Do you really think you can fob me off with semantics?’
Imogen felt a dull pain tweak behind her right eyebrow. After the way he had treated the news of her pregnancy, she wanted to know his current motivation before blurting out any more home truths. ‘Look, Nadir—’
He said something in Arabic, cutting her off, and stepped closer to her, his wide shoulders blocking out all the natural light behind him. Imogen felt the cool glass of the shop window at her back and briefly closed her eyes to try and steady her racing heartbeat, only to snap them open again when Nadir’s voice sounded way too close to her ear. ‘Dammit, you’re not going to faint, are you?’
Faint? Faint? She stared up at him and then darted her eyes to the side. No, she wasn’t going to faint. But she did want to run. Fast.
‘Uh-uh.’ As if reading her thoughts, Nadir shook his head. ‘You’re not going to run again, Imogen, my sweet.’
Again? What was he talking about—again?
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about but I really need to go. I’m working another shift tonight.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘Just so we’re clear, habibi,’ he grated silkily, ‘I have not searched for you for the past fourteen months to be given the runaround now.’
Imogen immediately felt hot and cold and then hot again and, just like the first time she had laid eyes on him, all the oxygen went out of the air—something that had almost been disastrous at the time as she’d been in the middle of performing the can-can in front of a full house. She’d noticed Nadir watching her almost straight away. He’d been sitting at a small front table with his brother—she’d later found out—but she had only had eyes for Nadir. And he for her, right up until the moment he’d found out she was enceinte.
As if sensing her distress, Nadeena stirred and shifted against her chest and Imogen tried to calm her nerves, if for no other reason than to keep Nadeena asleep.
Her first priority was to keep her daughter safe.
Secure.
Not that she expected Nadir to hurt her physically. No, what she feared was his power to hurt her emotionally, which was often much worse because most bruises healed while mental scars remained for ever. Imogen knew because she had spent many years trying, and failing, to win her father’s love and she wasn’t about to condemn Nadeena to the same fate.
A picture of the secret service type in the café came to her on a rush just as she caught sight of him standing a little way off to the side. Had Nadir been looking for her all this time? It seemed impossible.
Her troubled eyes flew to Nadir and her ripple of unease ratcheted up to dread. ‘Fourteen months? What are you talking about?’
* * *
Noting the deep groove between Imogen’s beautiful green eyes, Nadir instantly regretted his emotionally ragged outburst. What he needed to be right now was cool and controlled. Finding her with a child strapped to her body challenged that considerably. As did her evasive attitude, which implied that she had something to hide.
‘We will not discuss this any further on the street,’ he decided. Apart from the fact that Imogen looked uncomfortably hot, it was also far too public a place for this type of discussion. ‘Come.’
‘No.’
Haughty as ever, Nadir noted as he turned back to her. He’d been attracted to that regal aspect of her nature when they’d met. Now the trait annoyed him. As did her wide-eyed ingénue look.
Back when he’d first noticed her she’d seemed different from the other women who had adorned his life from time to time. Less artificial. More sincere. More genuine. Hell, he could laugh at that now. Imogen Reid had turned out to be as genuine as a whore with a hundred euros in her hand.
He glanced at the baby sleeping in her arms. Everything inside him said that she was his child and he wondered how much longer Imogen would have waited before turning up ‘ta-da’ style on his doorstep and demanding maintenance payments worthy of a queen. Not that it mattered. He had found her and that definitely gave him the upper hand.
And it mattered even less that her complexion had leached of all colour. These past months of not knowing if she had given birth to the child she had claimed was his, if she was okay, if the baby was okay, hell, if either one of them was even alive had eaten away at him. When she’d sent him a text telling him she had ‘taken care of everything’ he’d assumed she’d terminated the pregnancy. He’d felt sick at the thought but then knowing he’d got her pregnant in the first place hadn’t exactly made him feel like dancing around a room.
Fatherhood wasn’t something he’d ever contemplated before. Now it seemed that the fates had other ideas and if this woman had kept his child from him...deliberately... Callously...
He glanced at her. He didn’t think he could like a person less if he tried.
‘Nadir, please, if I...’ She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. ‘If I tell you that you’re the father can we just leave it at that? Can we just...can we just part as friends?’
Nadir reeled. Was she serious? Because she couldn’t possibly expect him to walk away from her after basically admitting the child was his with little more than Have a nice life. In fact, if he discovered that this child really was his then he wouldn’t be walking away at all.
He stared down at her and noticed she had the look of a frightened mouse that had just been caught in a very large inescapable trap.
Apt, he thought—very apt. From the minute he’d laid eyes on her, his first instinct had been primal. He’d wanted to wrap her up and keep her. He’d wanted to brand her as his own. Disconcertingly, that urge was just as strong as ever.
He tugged on the collar of his shirt. Somehow, in the time between meeting her and now, he had lost his equilibrium and he wanted it back. Not even the thought of having to renounce the throne tomorrow affected him as deeply. Or maybe it was the combination of the two. ‘I don’t think you could have ever called us friends, Imogen.’ Bed partners. Lovers. Now those fitted. Friends, not so much.
She looked up at him as if he’d just kicked a puppy. ‘Good to know,’ she said flatly, her ponytail swinging around her shoulders as she made to move past him. ‘Frankly, I don’t know why you’re even