Prince Nadir's Secret Heir(8)

                ‘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?’