swore under his breath, a ferocious sound.
‘What’s this about, Nadir? As I recall you were the one who left town the morning after you found out I was pregnant. Are you now saying you tried to contact me?’ She tried to stifle a small thrill inside, wondering if perhaps he had been worried about her. That perhaps he had cared for her after all... Another more skeptical voice reminded her of the horrible text he’d sent her but still some deeply buried hope wriggled its way to the surface.
‘I had an emergency in New York and by the time I got back to Paris you had disappeared as if you’d never existed,’ Nadir grated. ‘The Ottoman Empire would have benefited from your stealth.’
Resenting his sarcasm, she stiffened. ‘I did not disappear. I left.’
‘Without a trace. No one had any idea where you had gone.’
That was most likely because the only person who knew had been Minh’s sister, Caro, and she had been leaving to go travelling at the same time. Imogen had meant to keep in touch with some of the other girls but she hadn’t counted on feeling sick and sorry for herself during her pregnancy and she hadn’t had time since then.
‘Nor did you give your employer a forwarding address or email.’
‘I didn’t?’ She blinked. ‘I wasn’t exactly thinking straight at the time.’ And since her pay went directly into her bank account, she hadn’t even realised. ‘I’m surprised you didn’t check my bank records.’
His look said that he had. ‘False names tend to hinder that kind of search.’
‘I told you that wasn’t deliberate.’ She took a deep breath and tried to keep a lid on her emotions so she could think rationally. ‘Why were you looking for me, anyway?’
‘Because before you ran you were supposedly pregnant with my child.’
‘I did not run,’ she bit out tensely. ‘Why would I when you had made it abundantly clear you didn’t want anything to do with me any more?’
She heard the challenge in her voice and knew it was because some part of her was hoping he would refute her statement.
‘I texted you from New York.’
Her top lip curled with distaste. That horrible text was still etched into her brain as if it had been carved there. ‘Oh, please,’ she scoffed, ‘let’s not talk about your lovely text.’
‘Or your response,’ he grated. ‘Telling me that you had taken care of everything.’
Imogen tossed her ponytail over her shoulder, careful not to awaken Nadeena, who had dropped into another exhausted sleep. ‘I did take care of it,’ she said softly, her arms tightening around Nadeena.
‘Yes, but not in the way I expected.’
Hoped, his tone seemed to imply. And there was the reason he’d been looking for her. He’d wanted to make sure she’d done what he expected.
Imogen felt that small spark of hope that she’d been wrong about him completely wither and die and she felt angry with herself for succumbing to it in the first place. Had she not learned anything from his treatment of her in the past?
Caro’s words of warning came back to her. ‘Be careful, Imogen. Any man who takes off like that without a word and accuses you of sleeping around is likely to insist on an abortion if he ever comes back.’ At the time Imogen had thought her friend had been overreacting. Now she knew that she hadn’t been and she felt physically ill.
‘And now you’ll have to deal with the consequences,’ he grated, staring at her as if she was somehow to blame for everything that was wrong in the world.
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