One Night Of Consequences Collection. Annie West

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СКАЧАТЬ business proposal to reinvent the Bakaani banking system I’d like to remind you that I do have an international business to run,’ Nadir grouched good-naturedly. Despite the fact that they were only half-brothers, Zachim was the only person Nadir would call a true friend and they caught up whenever their work paths crossed.

      ‘I wish it was only that.’ His brother’s tone was grim. ‘You need to get back here right away.’

      ‘Ten hours in that place was ten hours too long,’ Nadir drawled. Before that he hadn’t been back to Bakaan for twenty years and he’d be happy to make it another twenty. The memories his homeland conjured up in him were better left buried and it had been more of a battle to keep them at bay yesterday than he’d be willing to share with anyone. In fact the only way he’d succeeded was to call up images of that exotic dancer and he hadn’t much liked thinking about her either. Especially with the way things had ended between them. And here he was thinking about her again. He scrubbed a hand across his freshly shaven jaw.

      ‘Yeah, well, you hotfooted it out of here before you heard the news,’ his brother said.

      Nadir lounged in his seat with a relaxed feline grace and propped his feet on his desk. ‘What news?’

      ‘Father named you the next in line to the throne. You’re to be King and you better get your sorry arse back here quick smart. Some of the insurgent mountain tribes are making moves to cause instability in the region and Bakaan needs a show of leadership.’

      ‘Hold up.’ Nadir’s chair slammed forward as his feet dropped to the floor. ‘Father named you the heir.’

      ‘Verbally.’ The frustration in Zach’s voice was clear. ‘It seems that doesn’t hold much sway with the council.’

      ‘That’s ridiculous.’

      ‘That’s what happens when you die of a heart attack without putting the paperwork in order.’

      Nadir forced himself to relax and sucked in a deep breath. ‘You know it makes sense that you become the next Sultan. Not only do you run the army but you’ve lived there most of your life.’

      He heard his brother’s weary sigh and hoped another lecture wasn’t coming about how Nadir was the oldest and how it was his birthright. They’d discussed this ad nauseam for years but it was only yesterday that he’d realised Zach had always believed that he’d one day return to Bakaan and take over. ‘I think you’re making a mistake but you’ll need to officially renounce your position to the council.’

      ‘Fine. I’ll send them an email.’

      ‘In person.’

      Nadir swore. ‘That’s ridiculous. This is the twenty-first century.’

      ‘And, as you know, Bakaan is labouring somewhere around the mid-nineteenth.’

      Nadir ground his jaw and picked up the stress ball on his desk, tossing it through the basketball hoop set up beside the Matisse on his wall. His father might not have planned to die when he had but he would have known the succession protocol. Was this his way of trying to control him from the grave? If it was, it wouldn’t work. Once, when Nadir was a child, they might have had a close relationship but that had ended when Nadir realised how manipulative and self-centred his father was. ‘Set it up for tomorrow.’

      ‘Will do.’

      He rang off and stared into space. That was what you got for not tying up loose ends at the right time. Twenty years ago he’d left Bakaan after his father had refused to give his mother and twin sister a state funeral after a fatal car accident. They had shamed him, his father had said, when they had tried to flee the country to start a new life. It didn’t matter to his father that they had not lived as man and wife for years or that his mother and sister were desperately unhappy with their exiled life in Bakaan. It only mattered that they continued to live where his father had placed them. When Nadir had stood up for their honour his father had basically said it was either his way or the highway.

      So Nadir had chosen the highway and his father had disowned him. It was one of his old man’s specialities—turning his back on anyone who displeased him—and Nadir had said sayonara and left to make his own way in the world. And it had been a relief because it helped him forget the role he’d inadvertently played in his mother and sister’s deaths. It was also the last time he’d let his father manipulate him. Nadir had no doubt that not changing his will to reflect Zachim as the next leader had been a deliberate move on his father’s part. But he wouldn’t win.

      Memories surged and Nadir cursed and rocked to his feet. He stared out of the window as a stream of sunlight broke through the clouds, casting a golden hue on the Houses of Parliament. The colour reminded him of Imogen Reid’s long silky hair and his mood headed further south as he thought of her once more. She was another loose end he had yet to tie up, but at least with that one he had tried.

      Frustrated with the way the day was turning out, Nadir thumbed through the messages his PA had sent to his palm pilot, his eyes snagging on one from his head of security.

      A sixth sense—or more a sick sense—told him his day was not about to take an upward swing just yet.

      ‘Bjorn.’

      ‘Boss-man.’ His head of security spoke in a soft Bostonian drawl. ‘You know that woman you asked me to track down fourteen months ago?’

      Damn, he’d been right and every muscle in his body tensed. ‘Yes.’

      ‘I’m pretty sure we found her. I’ve just sent through an image to your handheld for you to check.’

      Gut churning, Nadir pulled the phone from his ear and watched as the face of the beautiful Australian dancer who had haunted his thoughts for fourteen long months materialised on the screen. Fifteen months ago he’d met her at the Moulin Rouge after he and Zach had found themselves in Paris at the same time.

      His brother had claimed he could do with seeing something pretty so they’d headed to the famous dance hall as a lark. Nadir had taken one look at the statuesque dancer with hair the colour of wheat and eyes the colour of a freshly mown lawn on a summer day and four hours later he’d had her up against the wall in his Parisian apartment with her incredible legs tightly wrapped around his lean hips. Then he’d had her on his dining room table, under his shower, and eventually in his bed. Their affair had been as hot as the Bakaani sun in August. Passionate. Intense. All-consuming.

      He’d never felt such a strong pull to a woman before and even though his brain had warned him to back away he’d still made four consecutive unscheduled weekend trips to Paris just to be with her. Right then he should have known that she was trouble. That their affair was unlikely to end well. Little had he known it would end with him finding out she was pregnant and her claiming the child was his. Little did he know that she would then disappear before he’d have a chance to do anything about it.

      Likely she’d disappeared because she hadn’t been carrying his baby at all but still, the thought that he had fathered a child somewhere out in the world and didn’t know about it ate away at him. A flush of heat stole over him. He didn’t know what her game had been back then but there was no question that she had played him. He just wanted to know how much—and why. ‘That’s her. Where is she?’ he bit out harshly.

      ‘Turns out she’s in London. Been here the whole time.’

      ‘Any sign of СКАЧАТЬ