He’d assured me that wasn’t the case. Which meant Naira was simply overwhelmed. She’d been dealing with a lot and was still fragile, I got that. But all sympathy aside, I was past ready to call it a night and to strip down to my bra and panties—it’s how I ate dinner on most nights. I’d had a long day and I needed a bath, some de-stressor sex and at least six hours of sleep so I could tackle tomorrow without falling on my face. But my husband and bestie wouldn’t quit nattering about Michelin-star restaurants and the latest trends in timepieces. I wondered if they’d notice if I left, showered, napped and came back while they discussed world cuisines and gossiped about mutual acquaintances. I stifled a yawn.
Vicious. It had been a vicious day. Unusually so. I wanted to cleanse it off my body.
Sensing my ugh, Neal leaned in to kiss the side of my neck. On cue, Naira blushed and got all flustered and uncomfortable again. I both smirked and sighed. The woman was still violently shy of PDAs. Crazy. The first time I’d brought my fuck buddy to our dorm room, Naira had run from us as if we’d give her rabies. In her family, even married couples didn’t kiss or hold hands openly, much less indicate in any way that they shagged. She’d never seen her father show any kind of affection to her mother. Well, the Judge and Lily hadn’t exactly flirted up a storm in front of me either, but I had been in no doubt of their love for each other or the respect they had for one another. Or, that they’d been quite active in the bedroom right until the week he’d been hospitalized.
I was rather surprised that Naira hadn’t changed at all even after marriage. Come to think of it, I hadn’t seen her kiss her husband. Like, ever. Indian weddings, despite being massive colorful circuses, didn’t have the final you-may-kiss-the-bride act. I’d seen them hold hands though, and flirt. Kaivan had been an intense, even sexy, man. He’d sure known how to make a woman blush.
And, ick. Why was I imagining them being cutesy together? And why did I know just how active the Judge and Lily had been in the bedroom? Now I really needed that shower.
I rolled my neck from side to side, watching Neal take a third helping of the rogan josh and gobble it up. Probably why he didn’t want to talk business yet. His mouth was too full.
Prudery and shyness aside, Naira’s Michelin-star cooking was always a hit with the guys.
My scrambled brain tried to recall the last time I’d seduced Neal through his stomach. Like actually cooking a meal from scratch and not just heating up bakery-bought scones or throwing a bag of salad together or a pasta quick-fix.
Oh, crap. It had been over a year ago at Thanksgiving. And, I’d only cooked that day because we’d been hosting. In fact, it was the last party we’d hosted at home. I’d rebuffed all of Neal’s attempts to entertain since then, claiming it was too much of a hassle or I was too busy with work or lazy or whatever.
Now I felt like a complete ogre. I needed to get my shit together and practice a holistic work-life balance.
I thought that for about half a second. Then, I got pissed off for feeling guilty about not optimally fulfilling my wifely duties. I was giving him a freaking bairn. How’s that for satiating the ultimate wifely duty?
“Oh, wow, how do you know Chandra didi?” Naira’s excitable question pulled me back into their conversation.
Great. One more person they’d found in common to gossip about, and this one apparently deserved the respectful suffix of didi—older sister. I’d heard both Neal and Naira use the term periodically while addressing their sisters.
“I know her from Chandigarh. My family used to spend every summer there at my grandparents’ house while growing up, and so did hers. By the way, your rogan josh is on par with my nanima’s.”
Wow. If Neal was comparing Naira’s cooking to his maternal grandmother’s, she’d truly impressed him.
Neal had adored his maternal grandparents. He’d lost his nanima just months before we’d met at the Right is Might fund-raiser. Sadly, both his grandparents had died within a few weeks of each other. Neal had been extremely close to them and had been devastated by their deaths, especially because he’d missed being by his grandfather and mentor’s deathbed and funeral as he’d been busy getting high at a weeklong rave with his ex and a group of toxic friends in Ibiza. It had been a life-altering moment for him, an epiphany, and he’d cut himself loose from all that toxicity.
We’d both been grieving and lost when we’d first met. It had been only six months since the Judge’s passing for me.
“All summer, we slept on the terrace, under the stars, with our bellies stuffed with food and mischief. Dozens of mattresses would be rolled out as all our neighborhood friends would sleep over. We played cards all night, did daft things, anything to keep from sleeping. Who wants to sleep when there was so much life to live, aye? We’d stuff our faces all day and gorge on tubs of fresh biscuits and fruit and sweets at night.”
My husband could mesmerize you with words. He strung them together like diamonds on a gold chain, shiny and eye-catching.
“One summer, I pestered Nanima to teach me how to cook.” He shot me a thoroughly cheeky grin then, and said, “Because that summer, a bonny wee lass had moved into the house right next to ours.”
Neal laughed, his blue-blue eyes traveling far away from me, to a time and a place beyond my reach. I took his hand, anchoring him to me.
“Ye should have seen what happened to us then, to the lads. We were ten of us—ten boys counting me and Dev, and we went berserk after Pudgy.”
“Wait!” I had to interrupt him. “Pudgy?” I didn’t even know this girl, this phantom rival of my husband’s affections, and yet I was offended on her behalf.
Neal squeezed my hand. “Nothing to do with her weight, hen. Dinna get yer panties in a twist. She was as skinny as a scarecrow. I’ve no idea why her family called her that, but they did. And I never bothered to find out her real name. Not then.”
“Of course not. One Pudgy is the same as another, right?” I said pointedly.
Neal didn’t even try to argue down to a misdemeanor. He proceeded to give us a ridiculous account of his first foray into the matters of the heart. He’d wanted to impress the lass by baking her a cake in the shape of a heart. Love’s labor, if you please. I rolled my eyes, not at all taken in by the charlatan I’d married. But I could see Naira was fooled. She was hanging on to his every word. He had her eating out of his hands and he hadn’t even cooked!
Neal toiled day and night in Nanima’s kitchen until he mastered the art of cake making. Then, late one night, after his siblings and mates were deep in their slumber, he jumped from his terrace to hers with his heart and his heart-shaped chocolate cake in his hands. It seemed the houses were built close enough together that he could leap from terrace to terrace easily. He crept into his wee love’s home—into her room like some creepy stalker dude, I corrected, but he ignored me—only to find Tommy, one of the neighborhood lads, already there and with his hand down Pudgy’s pajama top, no less.
We were wiping tears from our eyes by then.
“It taught me a valuable lesson, aye?”
I snorted with laughter. “Enlighten us, please.”
“I spent half the summer trying to impress the lass with a cake. If I’d just told her of my interest from the start, it might have changed the outcome, maybe?” He shrugged grandly, not in the least bit upset about his epic fail. Not now. His gorgeous blue eyes fixed on mine, shining with promises that would last a million years. “Now, I go after what I want from the start.”
I wondered what my wily husband intended with his story or if he intended anything by it at all.
“Cute. Did we make enough small talk? Can we get down to business now?” I asked.
We got down to business. Just not the one either Naira or I were expecting.
“How set are ye on a solo operation?” Neal asked.
“What do you mean? Paris will be a sleeping partner.
And I can’t afford to hire anyone else. Not at first,” said Naira.
“Nay, lass. What I mean is do ye want to open yer own shop at all? Because my company has plans underway to launch its first concept store—Fraser Bespoke. Fashion, art, home design, luxury goods, all of it consolidated under one brand, but individualized to the client’s tastes and requirements. We launch in Edinburgh at Christmas and in Dubai by spring of next year. Eventually, London, Paris, New York and...we’ll see where else. The website is being designed, but we’ve run into snafus already. Yer website and your understanding of social media, of lifestyle is impressive, Naira. I’d like ye to consider working for Fraser Bespoke.”
* * *
“What was that?” I was still disoriented by the surprise proposal Neal had thrown at dinner.
A stunned Naira had gone home after promising to sleep on the tentative job offer, and a second promise to cook a full Marwari meal for us the next time. Naira was a Marwari, which was a community of people who hailed from several regions in the northwest of India. Their special cuisine and their language was also called Marwari.
And though Neal was only half Sikh, he’d gone full desi man on me tonight, lording it over the dinner table while his belly was being catered to.
I brought his lordship down to size by making him load the dishwasher while I put the kitchen to rights. If I’d been alone, I’d have left the entire mess for the cleaning service to deal with; they were due to come on Wednesday. But Neal wouldn’t be able to sleep until everything was spotless again. And if he woke to a dirty kitchen, he’d be moody for the rest of the day.
And good luck to him when we had to deal with the fakakta baby bottles, baby toys and baby poop every day.
“The bonny, clever lass is exactly who Dev’s been looking for. And she dropped right into my lap.” Neal pressed a rough, happy kiss on my lips. “Thanks to my brilliant wife.”
I didn’t feel particularly brilliant just then. What I felt was blindsided. This was not how I’d expected this dinner to end.
“Back up a bit, hon. How did we go from advising Naira on her business plan to offering her a job?”
“Wasn’t that a stroke of genius? When she comes on board with Fraser Bespoke, the rest will fall into place. We take care of our clan, aye?” He shut the loaded dishwasher and started it.
When, not if. Sir Galahad had retired to bed without me. Neal, the bloody business shark, had come out to play as soon as he’d smelled fresh blood. God help us all.
I left the kitchen towel flat on the countertop so it would dry, and went into the bedroom. I needed to think this through.
“I didn’t know Fraser Global was branching out into concept stores.” I opened a drawer, took out a sleep shirt.
Neal raised his eyebrows meaningfully as he stepped into the walk-in closet behind me. “Since when are ye interested in Fraser business?”
Ouch. That certainly put me in my place.
It was true that I wasn’t interested. Didn’t mean I was ignorant. On his father’s side, Neal descended from a line of soldiers and sheep farmers. His great-great-great-grandfather had branched out and become a tailor in Inverness. His son had expanded the home tailoring shop into a clothing store. Every generation had added something to the enterprise until Fraser Global now comprised of several department stores in Scotland, massive amounts of farmland and a whisky distillery or two. Then there was Neal’s maternal family, the Singhs, who’d once been jewelers to kings.
“What does this expansion mean for you, Neal? More travel? More events? What?” I addressed the biggest part that was bothering me about this new development.
Here, I’d been worrying about what an awful wife I was, and there he was planning on being an absentee husband. I couldn’t deal with a baby if he wasn’t going to shoulder the bulk of the responsibility. It just wasn’t happening.
“No more than usual.” He stripped out of his shirt. Paused after he’d flicked open the first button on his jeans as if he’d realized how brisk he sounded. “Do ye wish to know about it?”
I didn’t. Not really. I was tired. I didn’t even have the energy to stand under a shower anymore. But I still said, “Yes, if you don’t mind.”
I had to understand what was going on before I either went ahead with the surrogacy or scrapped it.
The concept store would be a one-stop shop for a certain category of clients. Helen’s fashions, Neal’s jewelry, stylized home decor, art, maybe even cars and boats and planes—any luxury one could possibly want in life tailored to them. This was a huge leap from the department stores that mainly sold woolens, tartans and things made in sterling silver.
“Dev’s been planning it for two years. He beta tested the website a while ago, but we ran into a few snags. We canna figure out what’s not working, and that’s where Naira comes in, hopefully.”
“What are you doing?” My eyes widened as Neal plucked his phone out of his back pocket.
“Calling Dev. He’s in Mumbai. It’s midmorning there so he should be awake. He’ll want to interview Naira as soon as possible.”
Wait. Just wait. This was moving way too fast.
Deven was head of operations for the Fraser businesses since he was the Fraser with a business degree. Sometimes, when he and Neal talked shop, it sounded like gibberish. As my husband said, I wasn’t interested in Fraser Global, and understood SEO and such terms even less. All I knew was that Neal’s money allowed me to do what I loved because I didn’t have to worry about paying bills. I didn’t have to contribute to our home fund, Neal took care of it all. He even encouraged me to invest my money or use it as I pleased. While an ADA’s salary wasn’t fantastic—I’d made way more at Smith, Stone and Smith as a paralegal—and though my little office often felt claustrophobic, the perks and benefits I received as a civil servant boosted my paycheck nicely. But Neal’s financial clout allowed me to be more than an avenger in a courtroom. It let me be magnanimous beyond my wildest dreams. I wasn’t a gold digger, but Neal’s background had factored into my decision to marry him. And yes, I did take advantage of his money and his nature to ease my conscience.
“All I asked you to do was give her some advice. You should have consulted with me before offering her a job.”
Neal pressed the phone to his ear. “And why would I do that? Ye asked me to fix her problem. So I did.”
Aargh. He’d just un-fixed everything! “This is stupid. I asked you to offer her a solution.”
“Ye said—” he began but I cut him off.
“She’s barely landed in New York and you’re already planning to ship her off. I need her here, Neal. Don’t you get it?”
He stilled, his focus suddenly arrowing right at me. His phone crackled and I could hear Dev’s “Hello” even from several feet away.
“I’ll call ye back,” Neal said and dropped his hand to his side. “What’s this about, then?”
I think he knew, deep down. But he wanted me to say it out loud.
“I was going to ask her to be our surrogate. Once you’d helped her open her shop, Atelier...whatever the fuck it’s called, in New York.”
“Are ye daft, woman?” he growled out in a half shout when it finally sank in that I wasn’t joking about Naira being our surrogate.
“Woman, is it? Not love or hen?” I raised my voice too. “And you are daft if you think I’d rather trust a complete stranger over my best friend to have our kid.”
“The lass is troubled. Anyone can see that. Ye canna impose on her like that.”
I set my hands on my hips. “If she’s so troubled why did you offer her a job?”
“That’s different.” He scowled.
“Really.” I raised my eyebrows. “How? This is the second time you’ve met her, and already you trust her enough to offer her a job at Fraser Bespoke? Your gut knows what kind of a woman she is—unless you’re confessing th
at your gut was seduced by her cooking skills.”
“Her résumé speaks for itself.”
I stopped him right there. “Our friendship speaks even more loudly. I’ve known Naira for ten years, Neal. She knows me. I know her. I trust her...with my life. With yours. With the child’s.” I knew this was the right thing to do. I knew it in my gut.
But Neal didn’t sway. “She’s emotionally unstable. Ye saw it.”
“That’s just bullshit. Just because she cried? If you think she’s messed up, then what the fuck am I?” I stepped closer to him and touched his chest, felt his heart thump solidly against my palm. “She’s one of the strongest, smartest women I know. She comes from a very conservative family, Neal. You know that type of situation much better than me. You know how much she’s had to fight to get here. She’s not messed up. She’s just lost and frightened and grieving.”
I told him how sweet and full of hope Naira used to be. How simple her dreams had been.
“She’s dreamed of having children for as long as I’ve known her. She’s a baby magnet just like you. Now she believes she can’t ever be a mother because of her circumstances—of someone else’s making, mind you—and it’s not fair, is it? She’s hurting, Neal. You and I, we can fix that,” I pleaded softly.
Neal didn’t respond for a long, long time. We stood there, staring broodily into each other’s eyes until finally, he took a gargantuan breath and whooshed it out.
“Jesus, Paris. You dinna make things easy, do ye?”
But I was. I was giving all three of us our heart’s desires.
“By the way, I haven’t asked her yet. So it’s quite possible this whole discussion was pointless. And it’ll be back to fighting between California and Connecticut for us, mate.” Then I gave him a sweet thank-you kiss on the lips and went into the bathroom to brush my teeth.
Over the buzz of my electric toothbrush, I heard the faint rumble of Neal’s baritone as he chatted with his brother about Naira. Now that the Big Idea was out of the bag, I didn’t feel any pressing need to micromanage the conversation. Neal knew what I was about, and I trusted him not to jeopardize our best surrogacy option by handing Naira over to Deven, the slave driver. We’d never see her during daylight office hours ever again if Deven got his hands on her.
The Object of Your Affections Page 12