One dark eyebrow rose. ‘You gave her an Arabic name.’
‘Nadeena was a great-aunt of mine.’
‘And you’re proving to be a terrible liar. Which is in your favour.’
‘I don’t understand this at all.’ She threw her arms up in front of her. ‘You don’t even want children. Why would you want us to go with you?’
He widened his stance and her eyes couldn’t help but notice his strong legs and lean torso. God, did he have to be quite so damned virile?
‘How do you know that?’
Gossip, mainly. She lifted her chin and focused on his hard face, which wasn’t much better. ‘Well, do you?’ she asked coolly.
‘I’d say that’s a moot point now, wouldn’t you?’
‘No, I most definitely would not. I’d say it’s very relevant considering the way you’re behaving.’
‘Sometimes, Imogen, life throws us curve balls but that doesn’t mean we have to drop them. I don’t need a DNA test to confirm that I have a child.’
Frustration made her voice sharper than usual. ‘Of course you need to do a DNA test. What kind of crazy talk is that? No rich man in his right mind would take on a child as his own without doing a DNA test.’
Nadir laughed and this time it rang with genuine amusement. ‘You always were just that little bit different from the pack, habibi.’ His voice, so gentle and deep, brought a rush of memories back into her dizzy brain. ‘But you need not worry. I plan to do my duty by her.’
His duty?
A sense of terror entered her heart. Was that what he meant by saying he’d be claiming what was his? She didn’t want to know. Not right now. ‘I don’t need you to do the right thing by Nadeena.’ She’d been looking out for herself for a long time now and she could look out for her child as well.
Nadir raked an impatient hand through his hair. ‘Nevertheless, I will.’ His striking eyes narrowed. ‘Now quit arguing and give me a list of things you will need for our flight to Bakaan.’
Striving for calm, Imogen tried to slow down her heart that was banging away inside her chest so loudly he must surely be able to hear it. Right now she felt as if she was trying to survive a fierce gale that was corralling her towards the edge of a very high cliff. Then a horrible thought froze the blood inside her veins. ‘I won’t let you take my baby, Nadir.’ She hated that her voice rang with fear. ‘If that’s your plan.’ She’d never even considered it before but now that she had she couldn’t push it from her mind.
He glanced at her impatiently. ‘If I wanted that then you couldn’t stop me.’
‘I could. I’d...’ Panic clawed inside her throat. ‘I’ll...’
‘But I don’t want that.’ He made an impatient gesture with his hands. ‘I am not so callous that I don’t realise that a baby needs its mother. That is why I plan to marry you.’
Marry her!
She shook her head, biting back a rising sense of hysteria. She needed time to make sense of everything that was happening and she couldn’t because her mind didn’t know which way to turn.
‘Breathe, Imogen.’ Nadir went to put his hands on her shoulders and she jerked back, wondering how he had got so close to her without her being aware of it.
Imogen shook her head, fear spiking inside her like a flash of lightning. ‘You’re crazy to think that I’d marry you after the way you treated me.’
Nadir’s mouth thinned and he stepped closer to her, contained anger emanating from every taut line of his body. ‘I can assure you that I’m not. I’ve had a lot of time to review my options while you were in hiding and this is non-negotiable.’
Imogen tried to still the trembling inside her body. ‘I was not hiding.’
‘It’s irrelevant now.’
She laughed. What else could she do? ‘You can’t just come back into my life and think you can do whatever you want.’ Her father had behaved that way. Coming and going as he pleased with little concern for either her or her mother. As if she’d shackle her and her daughter to a man cut from the same cloth. ‘I’ll fight you.’
‘What with?’ She hadn’t realised that her hands had balled into tight white fists until Nadir’s mocking gaze drew hers to them. He reached out and raised them in front of her, enclosing them inside his much larger grip. ‘With these, hmm? I have to confess that, as aggressive as you can be in bed, I didn’t take you for the violent type.’
She wouldn’t have before today either. ‘Nadir, we had an affair,’ she cried, throwing his earlier words back in his face and tugging at his implacable hold. ‘We only had sex a...a...a couple of times.’