One Night Of Consequences Collection. Annie West
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you are?’ Nadir’s question came out as if he’d just asked Minh if he had any last requests.
‘Imogen’s friend.’
‘I suggest you back off, Imogen’s friend.’ Nadir’s lip curled into a sneer. ‘This is not your business.’ Then he turned the full force of his attention back to her and Imogen really wished that he hadn’t. ‘Well?’
How could he make one word sound so powerful?
‘Sorry, but I don’t like your attitude, chief.’ Minh puffed out his chest and Imogen groaned. ‘You need to dial it down a little.’
‘It’s okay, Minh.’ She gave his arm a squeeze, only just realising that her arm was still linked with his. ‘I know him.’
Nadir pinned her with a patronising look. ‘That’s putting it mildly, habibi.’
His meaning was clear and Imogen felt a flush rise up her neck.
‘I don’t like him,’ Minh said softly.
Neither did she but she drew on all her training as a performer and gave him a smile worthy of an award. ‘It’s okay. Really. Why don’t you head home? I can take care of this.’
‘You’re sure?’ Minh looked dubious.
‘She just said she was, didn’t she?’
Imogen only just managed to prevent Minh from trying to stand up to Nadir again and patted a sleepy Nadeena, who had grown restless. ‘Go. Really. We’ll be fine.’
‘Call me if you need me,’ Minh ordered, reluctantly heading towards Green Park tube station.
As soon as he was out of sight she let out a relieved breath. One hardcore male was better than two, wasn’t it?
Reluctantly turning back, she calmed her breathing and faced Nadir. ‘What’s this about, Nadir?’
‘What do you think?’
She tried to pull off a nonchalant shrug but her movements felt stiff and disjointed. He’d walked away from her fourteen months ago so she had no idea. ‘If I knew I wouldn’t ask,’ she countered, slightly annoyed herself now.
His silvery gaze transmitted how unimpressed he was with her response. ‘How old is she?’
‘How do you 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