He nodded as if this was normal. As if she hadn’t dreamt of him and wished in her darkest moments that he wouldn’t come for her. Tell her that he missed her. Tell her that he loved her. Tell her that he couldn’t live without her. Dreams not worth the sleep they had interrupted.
‘A child deserves to be raised by both parents.’ He regarded her steadily. ‘Or are you going to argue with me about that too?’
‘Only if both parents love and want her.’
‘I agree.’
Imogen clamped her mouth mutinously closed and turned her attention to the intricate patterns on the Persian rug at her feet before she said something she’d truly regret.
Nadir sighed. ‘Believe it or not, Imogen, I only have Nadeena’s best interests at heart.’
‘Do you?’
‘Yes.’ She heard a hardness enter his voice at her scepticism.
She looked at him and all the fight left her and a great sense of doom pervaded her limbs. ‘And what if a marriage between us is the worst thing for her?’
He looked genuinely perplexed by her question. ‘I don’t see how it could be.’
‘Because it would be nothing but a marriage of convenience.’
‘I don’t see it that way.’
She blew out a frustrated breath. ‘How can you not?’
He stepped in front of her, breathing as hard as she was. ‘Because there’s nothing remotely convenient about marriage and ours will be real.’
Real? Imogen swallowed heavily and lost her breath. ‘I hope you don’t mean what I think you mean.’
‘We will be man and wife in every sense of the word, habibi,’ he said softly with the same confidence she had once loved.
Imogen’s chin jutted forward. ‘I didn’t think you were into force.’
She knew that if she revealed just how badly he affected her it would be akin to lying down and waving a white flag. So she held her breath as his eyes ran over her face and down over her throat and willed herself not to move, silently urging her racing heartbeat to slow to a moderate gallop.
As if he couldn’t help himself, he raised his hand and brushed his thumb across her lips in a whisper-soft caress that made every one of her nerve endings tingle. For a long moment they just stared at each other and then he ruined the moment by speaking. ‘Force, habibi?’
The gentle words mocked her and she jerked back and stepped away from him, doing her best to ignore the way the blood pounded heavily through her body and highlighted her inability to control her attraction to him. No man had ever affected her so deeply that she forgot who she was and where she was and she refused to give him that kind of power over her again. It made her feel helpless to follow her own will. It made her hungry to taste him. It made her willing to risk everything. Almost...
Forcing herself to take another slow step backwards, she banked her confused emotions as best she could and reached down deep for reason. ‘Be serious, Nadir. A child will completely cramp your lifestyle. They’re inconvenient and messy and exhausting and...and...’ Wonderful and joyous and funny and loving... She swallowed. ‘And smelly. Really smelly at times.’
Nadir paced away from her and then turned sharply on his heel. ‘I don’t understand you. Most women would be jumping for joy at the prospect of having a rich man take care of her and her child.’
‘Except I’m not most women and I know this is a mistake. My parents married because my mother was pregnant with me and it was a miserable affair for everyone. They stayed together even though my father was seeing another woman because my mother believed a child should be raised by two parents. My father resented being tied to us and after a while I stopped wishing he would pay me attention.’
‘I won’t resent you.’
Embarrassed at having revealed her deepest wounds to him, Imogen scoffed. ‘How can you say that? You have a reputation of being the unobtainable playboy that spans continents.’
His lips thinned into a flat line. ‘People see what they want to see. But if you think love is some sort of guarantee of a happy union , it isn’t. My parents were the poster children for that particular misconception and they didn’t last.’
Imogen frowned. ‘I find that hard to believe if it was true love,’ she said huskily.
‘Believe it. They separated when my father took a second wife and—’
‘Took a second wife!’
‘Yes, it is the custom that men in Bakaan can take more than one wife.’
‘You can definitely forget marriage then.’
He smiled wearily. ‘Don’t worry. I am not a masochist.’