Married for One Reason Only

by Dani Collins

  Reve Weston was handsome, rich. At home. Smug.

  “Vijay!” Oriel leaped to her feet.

  Reve stepped aside, and Vijay saw Oriel’s double stand and smile in a tentative greeting.

  The resemblance was eerie and an easy mistake in a photo. In person he knew immediately which one was his wife. There were small, obvious differences. Nina’s teeth were not quite perfect, and was that a streak of pink in her hair? She was a tiny bit shorter, but she was every bit as beautiful as Oriel.

  Even so, rather than inciting a spark of sexual attraction in him, he only felt endeared toward her for her close resemblance to someone he loved. He didn’t feel a gut-deep hunger and overwhelming need to connect or a stark, protective urgency to touch and reclaim intimate space the way he did toward Oriel.

  “This is a plot twist, isn’t it?” He moved into the sitting area and greeted Oriel with a light kiss on her cheek.

  When in France, he conveyed when her lashes flicked up at him.

  He hovered close enough to inhale her scent and absorb the light brush of her body against his.

  She dipped her chin and rolled her lips together, indicating their conflicts were not resolved, but she stayed in the arm he looped around her waist. Her gaze up at him was not hostile, merely vulnerable and deeply uncertain.

  He had hurt her. The knowledge squeezed his guts in a cruel fist.

  “Vijay, this is Reve Weston and Nina Menendez.” He heard the catch in her voice. Her joy was so visceral, it cracked something open in him. “My twin.”

  “That’s what the birth records would suggest, at least,” Nina said with shaken laughter as she took his hand.

  “And anyone with eyes,” Reve drawled.

  “Still.” Nina glanced back at him. “I imagine Lakshmi’s family has been inundated with people claiming to be her daughter. I’m happy to do a DNA test.”

  “It looks like it will be redundant, but I’ve already connected with the lab we use here,” Vijay said. “They have someone who can take the samples and rush the results. I’ll make that call shortly, but...” He looked at Oriel, and whatever was in his face made her pupils expand and her lips tremble. “I need to speak with my wife.”

  “You should speak to your family, Nina. Things are going to get very chaotic when the jackals at the door downstairs realize there are two of you.” Reve sounded grim enough that Vijay was put on high alert to threats he couldn’t see.

  Nina bit her lip and nodded with agreement, maybe remorse, but she smiled as she reached for Oriel. “I didn’t mean to impersonate you. I’ve been trying to stay under the radar, but they’re relentless.”

  “Vijay, you should arrange protection for her,” Oriel said, looking to him.

  “Already in the works,” he assured her.

  Reve shot him a glare that warned him to stay in his lane.

  Vijay didn’t flinch, and only said, “Do you think I’m going to let anything happen to my wife’s sister?” He reached for his phone. “I’ll have one of my guys lead you out through the maintenance entrance that I used to come in. Tell your car to meet you on the south side.”

  While he and Reve exchanged information, Nina asked, “Will you come for dinner? Now that I’ve found you, I don’t want to miss another minute.”

  “Me, either,” Oriel said emotively, but she looked to Vijay as if she knew they had things to talk out, too. “I’ll text you in a little bit?”

  “Perfect.” They hugged each other so tightly, it added another layer of ignominy to Vijay’s guilt over suspecting she’d lied to him.

  The pair left, and Oriel stayed at the closed door, chewing her bottom lip as she regarded him. The space between them was a cavern of vipers and land mines, and the valentines of love she had sent him, which he had crumpled and stepped on.

  “I apologize,” he said sincerely. “I should have trusted you. I knew you wouldn’t hurt me like that. In here I knew it.” He tapped his chest. “Up here...” He tapped his temple. “But I won’t let that happen again. I love you, Oriel.”

  He saw her jerk and heard her breath hiss in, but her expression only grew more anguished. His heart lurched as he realized he might have done irreparable damage to something that was becoming increasingly precious to him.

  He took a step toward her, and she put up a hand.

  “I’ll give you a pass because there’s no way you could have known I had a twin, but the fact is, you don’t trust me, Vijay. And I can’t fix that.” She shrugged with despair. “And I can’t spend my life worried about how you’ll interpret everything I do, especially when there are people out there who will use my image and cast doubts and—”

  “Shh. Stop.”

  He came forward a few more steps, but she kept her hand up to hold him off.

  “I promised to come back and I will. Look around. I’m packing!” She waved at the full boxes on the floor, and at the bare walls. “I’m selling this flat. I’m going to live with the father of my child. I hope we can repair this marriage of ours, but you didn’t even trust me to come back. Instead you’ve chased me here, and what did you think when Reve opened the door? That he’d just left my bed?”

  “I thought I should have been here,” he said fervently. “Because I made a promise to you when we learned you were pregnant that I would be here for you through all of this. I meant all of it. Not just the baby, but this. Learning who you are. You told me once that you always wished for a sibling. The minute I realized that’s who she was, I knew you would be so excited, but also rocked to the core. I have questions, Oriel. You must be...”

  His heart hurt for her, for all the anger and confusion she must feel at having been torn from the woman who gave birth to her and the sibling she should have had in her life all this time.

  “Somewhere in there, you’re wondering if you should have known that Nina was out there, aren’t you? You think you should have found her long ago, on instinct or something.”

  “I think she knew before I did, but she didn’t reach out. She said it was because she thought I wouldn’t believe her, but...”

  “I know.” He came close enough to gather her in. “You feel cheated. And also guilty for wishing you’d had that other life where you grew up with her and Lakshmi.”

  She nodded while tears tracked down her cheeks.

  “See? I know you, Oriel. More importantly, I love you. It kills me that I hurt you so badly, you felt you had to come here and face this alone.”

  Her eyes were leaking more tears. “I’m used to doing things on my own. I’ve told myself it was the way I liked it, but from the moment I left Mumbai, I’ve been thinking that I want you here with me, even though you can’t do anything.”

  “I can do this.” He folded his arms around her and held her, just held her and rubbed her back as she trembled.

  Slowly she wound her arms around his waist and leaned on him, sighing out a lifetime of pent-up grief. He closed his eyes in gratitude.

  “I love you, Oriel. I should have said it the first time you did. I’ve been sick with myself that I didn’t. I know my heart is safe with you. I know that. It wasn’t you I didn’t trust. It was love. It hurts to love. It bloody hurts to love someone this hard. But I forgot that it heals, too. It gives a reason to hope and to push on when the rest of life is too bleak to face.”

  * * *

  Vijay’s hand stroked her hair, and his stubbled jaw rested against her cheekbone. A bubble of hope was trying to crack open her breastbone.

  “Can I also say,” his voice rumbled next to her ear, “that even though I understand your sense of urgency to meet Nina, and that you were hurt and angry with me, if you had trusted me just a tiny little bit more, you might have held the plane and let me come with you?”

  She sniffled back her tears and looked up at him, chagrined. “Guilty.”

  “You probably would have
had more faith in me if I’d told you I love you.” He slid her hair behind her ear. “I do. So much.” He looked at her as though he was beholding something magical. “I’ve had to beat and claw my way into the life I have. It didn’t seem like being this happy should be this easy, but I won’t give you a reason to doubt my feelings again.”

  “Me, either.”

  He touched her chin, and their mouths flowed together in the simple, inevitable way they had between them. Perfect and tender and now an expression of that wider, deeper, heart-expanding emotion.

  He took great care as he tightened his arms and swept his mouth across hers, but his love was so tangible in that kiss, she shook under the force of it.

  “Come,” she invited him, taking his hand and drawing him into her bedroom.

  They settled on the bed fully clothed, sharing soft, soothing kisses that held no urgency because this was love in its purest form. It was touch and acceptance of their human flaws and celebration of their perfection. Of their divine connection.

  They were a special combination, though. One that couldn’t help but create passion when they were together. Soon it was snapping like flames around them, burning away a fold of collar so kisses could extend down a throat. Demanding layers be removed so they could rub their bodies together in the exquisite friction of animal desire.

  But even when he slid into her with a carnal groan and her body responded with a sensual clench, their coupling was imbued with the intense love that emanated from their pores. She petted his spine and he sucked on her earlobe, but sweet light shone behind her eyes. His voice was hoarse with joy as he moved, telling her raggedly, “I love you. We belong like this. Always. Together.”

  That was how they crested the final peak. Together. Shattering in unison. Destroyed, yet rebuilt with pieces of the other embedded within their souls.

  EPILOGUE

  “I LOVE THAT she thinks I’m you, but she’s hungry, so...” Nina spoke ruefully as she handed Lakshmi, whom they all called “Lucky,” to Oriel.

  The six-month-old began to nuzzle and root at Oriel’s cheek. Thankfully, Oriel’s sister, the genius designer, had been immersing herself in their roots by studying the construction of traditional Indian clothing. She had sewn Oriel’s celebratory saree and included nursing snaps in the blouse. Oriel adjusted her pallu and settled her squirming daughter to latch on.

  “Also, I have somewhere to be.”

  “Oh?” Oriel was teasing her, and Nina knew it. Her sister was an open book at the best of times, but they had a wonderful ability to read each other very well.

  “Don’t ask me,” Nina pleaded with exasperation and beckoned someone from across the marquee tent.

  Oriel chuckled. “Don’t worry. I don’t know what Maman has planned, only that it will be spectacular.”

  For anyone else, the bringing together of all these people for Oriel and Vijay’s wedding reception would have been enough, but Madam Estelle was determined to outdo herself and make it a memory that would be talked about for years. Nina’s family were here, along with Jalil and Kiran and other treasured connections from around the globe, all dressed in a mix of Western and Indian garb.

  The courses of French and Indian cuisine had been amazing, and the tribute to Lakshmi had been heart-wrenchingly sweet. The marquee was draped in silk and strings of flowers. Everywhere there were tropical plants, a wild abundance of color, and spices lending fragrance to the air. There had been speeches, a song from Estelle, and a toast from Oriel’s father that would live in Oriel’s heart forever.

  It was already a night of pure enchantment.

  “Did you need me?” Vijay asked, his warm hand descending on her shoulder.

  “No, I—”

  “Yes,” Nina corrected her. “Sit.” She nodded at the spot on the love seat that had been Vijay’s for most of the evening. Nina had stolen it when he had moved to the bar with Reve.

  “She’s more and more like my sister every day,” Vijay remarked to Oriel as he retook his seat and brushed a light greeting across their daughter’s curled fist.

  Nina laughed, then poked her tongue out at him before she disappeared.

  “What’s happening?” Vijay asked.

  “I have no idea, but I suspect we’ll need...”

  He was already fishing into the diaper pack for the baby earmuffs. He slipped them onto Lucky’s head as the lights began to swerve all over the tent, gathering everyone’s attention.

  A firm thump-thump sounded on a tabla drum. A flute and sitar strings drew people in colorful sarees from all sides of the tent.

  As Madam Estelle began to sing in Hindi, the dancers settled into a precise formation on the dance floor, beginning a slow, undulating walk. They were Oriel’s cousins and Nina with her sisters, and there was Kiran among them, spinning her chair and raising her arms in a graceful ballet, giving her shoulders a shimmy before clapping her hands to pick up the tempo.

  Vijay’s arm closed around Oriel’s shoulders, and he drew her tight into his side. She felt his chest expanding with laughing emotion, but they both had tears in their eyes.

  “I could not feel more loved,” he told her sincerely.

  “Me, either,” she admitted, deeply touched that her mother would go to all this trouble to celebrate this side of her daughter’s life.

  The energy picked up, and the dancers moved into more of a hip-hop style until the music abruptly cut off with a group clap.

  A dozen people in suits abruptly stood. They wore serious expressions as they popped their collars, then pretended to spit on their palms before they smoothed their hair back on both sides. The music resumed in plucked strings as they sidled onto the dance floor.

  “Will there be a rain machine?” Vijay asked.

  “Don’t put it past her.”

  It was a dance-off between gowns and suits, full of push and pull, defiant head tosses and waved scarves, straight out of a Bollywood musical.

  Dying with delight, Oriel fell into her husband. “This is too much, but I never want it to end.”

  “It won’t,” he promised her. “The credits will roll, but we’ll continue to live happily ever after.”

  “Promise?”

  “I do.”

  She believed him.

  * * *

  Couldn’t get enough of Married for One Reason Only?

  Make sure to watch out for the next installment in The Secret Sisters duet—Manhattan’s Most Scandalous Reunion

  In the meantime, why not also get lost in these other stories by Dani Collins?

  Confessions of an Italian Marriage

  Innocent in the Sheikh’s Palace

  What the Greek’s Wife Needs

  Ways to Ruin a Royal Reputation

  Her Impossible Baby Bombshell

  Available now!

  Keep reading for an excerpt from The Secret Behind the Greek’s Return by Michelle Smart.

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  The Secret Behind the Greek’s Return

  by Michelle Smart

  CHAPTER ONE

  NIKOS MANOLAS SAT in his car shaded beneath the orange trees lining the quiet Valencian suburban street, elbow resting against the window, fist tucked under his chin. On the other side of the road ran an imposingly high fence the length of the pavement and beyond. Small intermittent signs warned trespassers against breaching it.

  Nikos’s narrowed gaze rested on the gate ten metres away that admitted people onto the land behind the fence. He’d watched the gate for two minutes and knew he should move on before he attracted the attention
of the armed guards on the other side of it.

  He’d wanted one last look. He’d had it. Time to go.

  He switched the engine on and put the car into gear. Before he could make his intended U-turn, the gates opened.

  He put the gearstick back into neutral. A Mercedes built like a tank slowly nosed its way through the gates and pulled onto the road. He held his breath as it passed him. The tinting of the car’s windows made it impossible to identify the driver.

  In his rear-view mirror he watched the Mercedes shrink into the distance and take a right at the end of the street.

  Nikos rubbed his chin and then, with a burst of adrenaline, put his foot on the accelerator and spun his Porsche around.

  The road the Mercedes had joined was quiet this hot mid-morning, making it easy to keep tabs. When it joined the V-21, he made sure to keep three cars between them. The deeper into the city they drove, the thicker the traffic.

  It had been over eighteen months since Nikos had been in the heart of Valencia. Much of the architecture was medieval, the roads and streets narrow, but modern developments had their place too, and as he drove past the majestic Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia with its sweeping roof like a feather plume, he blinked away memories of the evening he’d taken Marisa there to watch Tristan and Isolde. If he’d known the so-called ‘Most revolutionary opera’ had been, in its essence, a romance, he’d have made his excuses and begged off. Nikos liked his entertainment to be like his affairs; frenetic and forgettable.

  Not that he’d enjoyed any form of entertainment in recent times. For the past year and a half he’d lived the life of a hermit in the Alaskan wilderness, residing in a log cabin accessible only by small plane.

  Readjusting to society was proving harder than he’d envisaged. He’d imagined himself returning to civilisation with a bang and throwing himself back into the old party lifestyle but in the two weeks since he’d emerged from his self-imposed exile, he’d found himself reluctant to return to the spotlight. He supposed he’d become used to isolation.