Manhattan's Most Scandalous Reunion--An Uplifting International Romance

by Dani Collins

  He wasn’t in the mood for whatever rebukes Vijay wanted to spit at him. Reve’s past was stinking up all of their lives, he knew that. That’s why he was leaving—to mitigate the damage.

  It bothered him that he was losing Vijay’s respect, though. Friendships of any kind had always eluded him, but he and Vijay had fallen into a comfortable camaraderie. This whole experience of watching Nina meld with her sister’s world had drawn Reve into believing he was part of that thing she was forming. The f-word. Family.

  He wasn’t meant to have such a thing, though. He was alone and always would be.

  His phone was still faceup, so he saw the text from Vijay as it arrived.

  You tool. Do you think you’re the only one with dirt in his past? We’re both under attack. If you care about Nina at all, you’ll come back and fight with us.

  “Sir?” A woman appeared beside him. “I can show you to your plane now.”

  * * *

  “Why is this man intent on destroying my family?” Jalil lamented. He sat between Nina and Oriel, one of their hands in each of his. Vijay’s sister, Kiran, was clattering away on her laptop, and Vijay was in the loft, issuing sharp orders in Hindi into his phone.

  Jalil’s lawyer continued issuing advice over video chat.

  Nina shouldn’t have tuned it out, but she was one raw, exposed nerve, throbbing with agony. Empty. It was all she could do to reassure Jalil that she didn’t blame him for Reve leaving. It wasn’t his fault that Gouresh Bakshi was lashing out.

  The truth was that she and Reve had always been unsustainable. She had wanted to believe her love was strong enough to carry their relationship, but she realized that the mightiest bridge did nothing if the man she extended it to didn’t trust it enough to come across. Although he could say he was leaving to protect her, deep down, he was protecting himself.

  He trusted her, but not enough. And that destroyed her. She didn’t know how she would survive losing him this time, she really didn’t.

  Their discussions were disrupted by a sharp knock on the door.

  They all went silent and looked at it.

  Vijay came to the rail of the loft. “No one should be able to get up the elevator.”

  “Maybe it’s—” Oriel glanced hesitantly at Nina.

  “Should we guess? Or look?” Kiran rolled her wheelchair across the room and turned the latch. As she pulled the door open, she said, “It’s about time you came back. Oh. You’ve brought a friend. Hello.”

  She rolled back far enough to let Reve in. He was accompanied by a blond, white man, tall and thin like a marathon runner, maybe in his early thirties.

  Nina barely noticed the other man. She slapped her hand over a heart that had begun to pound. Her vision blurred as hot tears arrived in her eyes. He came back.

  “Pascal Hansen,” Reve said with a nod, his gaze not leaving hers. “He was arguing with the doorman in the lobby when I came though, trying to get them to call up and tell you he was here.”

  “I haven’t had any luck with leaving messages,” Pascal said, rubbing his hands on the seams of his jeans. “I, um—goodness!” He looked between Oriel and Nina. His bemused smile revealed a small overbite very similar to Nina’s.

  She started to feel dizzy and clutched Jalil’s hand even harder.

  “I found a letter in my father’s things when he passed five years ago,” Pascal said. “I knew he’d had an affair when I was young and that I had a sister in India, but... I guess I have two?”

  * * *

  “You should get some rest,” Reve said when he finally got Nina back to their apartment. She looked more emotionally drained and subdued than he’d ever seen her—which was saying something, considering she’d been riding one crisis after another for weeks.

  He hoped the resolution they’d arrived at today would finally put the worst of that behind her. Through the afternoon and evening, everyone had been on calls with lawyers, putting pressure on Gouresh Bakshi from all sides.

  Reve had spared nothing in his threats to sue the man into oblivion for defamation. Vijay had made similar threats. There was an element of bluff in both of them since they each had a muddy past, but the cost of defending himself was an expense Bakshi hadn’t wanted to take on.

  Pascal’s letter from Lakshmi to his father had secured Bakshi’s final surrender. Lakshmi had laid out everything—how the affair she’d had with Pascal’s father, a Norwegian academic, had resulted in a pregnancy. How she’d been pressured into having the baby far from home and forced by Bakshi to give it up.

  He said our baby would never be accepted because she was mixed race, so I chose a French couple who were also mixed race. I was told the wife was an accomplished singer and the husband a scholar, like you.

  I didn’t get to hold her or even see her. She was gone when I awoke. Perhaps that was for the best, because I don’t think I could have released her if I’d held her.

  I will hate him for the rest of my life, though. There doesn’t seem any point in living if I don’t have you or our child.

  Once those sentiments were conveyed through the lawyers, word came back that Bakshi would make a settlement that included all the rights to Lakshmi’s movies. It was a reclaiming of Lakshmi that meant more to all of them than any financial gain.

  Pascal had a wife and children to get back to so he was returning to Norway, but he promised to bring his family to meet his half sisters very soon.

  Nina called her family, and they were thrilled to hear she had a half brother and even more thrilled to hear that once this final announcement was made, things should finally calm down a little.

  “Nina?” Reve followed her into the kitchen.

  “I want some tea,” she murmured.

  “I can make it. Go sit down.”

  She set the kettle aside without filling it.

  “How long are you back for?” she asked in a choked voice. “Because I can’t keep doing this.”

  “Nina, I was trying to protect you.”

  “You’re doing a terrible job!” she accused, flinging herself around to face him. “Life has run me over again and again and you haven’t stopped any of it. You can’t, Reve. Do you realize that? I mean, I don’t want to sound ungrateful for all the things you’ve provided me.” She sniffed and briefly covered her face as she gathered her composure. She lifted her face. “In some ways you’ve held off the speeding train while I untangled myself from the tracks. I’m grateful for that, but the only thing I have really wanted from you in all of this is you. Your presence next to me. And you left.”

  He pinched the bridge of his nose and moved out of the kitchen, but still feeling claustrophobic as he reached the dimly lit living room with the terrace doors blackened by night.

  He saw Nina’s reflection in the one and glanced over his shoulder to see her leaning her shoulder on the wall, arms crossed. The corners of her mouth were pulled down with despair.

  “I was going to ask you to marry me,” he admitted, and felt the sting of her flinch. “But how the hell does that go? I love you, Nina. Here are all of my worst behaviors making headlines. Please marry that?” he mocked.

  “Okay. I will.”

  “Don’t.” He looked to the ceiling. “I will take you at your word, and I will lock you down for the rest of our lives because I cannot take being apart from you. Not again. Not ever.”

  “Okay.” He sensed her coming toward him and felt her arms come around his waist, but kept his gaze on the ceiling, afraid she would see how wet his eyes were.

  “Don’t forgive me that easily. I know I was a jerk for leaving. I was so...” His arms closed convulsively around her. “I was so happy, beginning to see a future with you. It felt too good to be true, and it was. Gone like a candle being blown out.”

  “You blew it out. You didn’t trust us. It’s not gone, Reve. It’s right here.”

&
nbsp; “I don’t know how to believe this will last, though.”

  “You just do. That’s how this works. You trust my love is there and believe in it and feel it inside you. That’s how I feel. I know you love me. I do.”

  He did let her see into his eyes then, wanting her to know that his love for her was so big inside him, he didn’t know how to contain it.

  She dragged in an emotive breath and set her hand against his face, her eyes filling with tears. “Oh, Reve.”

  “I love you, Nina. Will you marry me?”

  “Yes,” she said with a trembling smile.

  He wanted to kiss her, but he couldn’t see. He scraped the heel of his hand across his wet lashes, then patted his pocket and withdrew the ring. His heart hammered. He kept the ring in his closed fist a final second.

  She closed her hands over his fist, keeping his fingers folded over it. “You know I only want a future with you, right? A ring isn’t necessary.” She kissed his knuckles.

  “It is to me. I want the whole world to know we’re committed to one another. There’s a wedding band that goes with this, and I’ll wear one, too. I picked it because it looked like it wouldn’t catch when you’re working. You can exchange it if you want to.” He opened his hand and watched her closely.

  “Oh, my God, Reve.” Her eyes bulged, and she brought both hands to her mouth as she took in the square emerald set flat and framed by multiple diamonds adorning the wide band.

  “You like it?”

  “I love it, but...” She saw a shadow come into his eyes. “No ‘but,’” she corrected gently. “I was going to say that you have to stop being so generous, but no. You’re perfect exactly as you are. I love you.”

  Perfect seemed a stretch, but she placed her trembling fingers on his palm, allowing him to thread the ring onto her finger. It caused the most profound feeling within him, as if he was truly joining himself to her in a way that went beyond the physical, material world.

  They were both blinking wet eyes as he brought her knuckles to his lips and kissed her hand. “Be mine always?”

  “Always,” she promised.

  When he drew her close and kissed her, he felt the joyous light of her spill through him, filling him with all those hopes and dreams she had for them. It was thrilling. The possibilities before them were so endless he could hardly catch his breath.

  * * *

  They married in Albuquerque with her “American” family in attendance. While Oriel couldn’t fly because she was nearing her due date, she was very understanding about not being included.

  “It should be about you and Reve, not you and me,” Oriel said, wryly acknowledging that they always became the center of attention when they went anywhere together. “Besides, my mother is planning a wedding reception for Vijay and me for next summer. You and I can celebrate each other’s marriages then.”

  Any initial coolness over the way Reve had broken Nina’s heart was quickly forgotten by her family when they saw how doting he was. Also, as a wedding present, Reve got her sister fast-tracked and financed for one of the top family planning clinics in the country.

  When Angela tried to demure, he asked, “What’s the point in having all this money if I can’t do nice things for Nina and the people she cares about?”

  “I see how confusing he is,” Angela confided when she put the final touches on Nina’s hair. “It feels like he’s buying my good opinion, but also I’m a little bit in love with him for doing something so magnanimous.”

  It was as though Reve had never had people to spend money on before, and now he was determined to spoil rotten everyone close to her. Nina’s father didn’t know it yet, but Reve had paid off his mortgage. Her brother, the real estate agent, was also about to earn a stinking great commission from the house Reve intended to buy so they would have a home to stay in when they visited.

  Nina’s father walked her down the aisle. They were all very weepy for the people who couldn’t be there, but when she arrived to place her hands in Reve’s, her joy was absolute.

  He nearly crushed her hands as he spoke his vows and gave the ring on his finger an extra push to secure it in place, ensuring she knew he was hers. Always.

  They didn’t honeymoon, both too busy with work, but they settled into the New York penthouse with a pleasant sense it was their primary home. Nina and Oriel were making progress on their plans to open a fashion house. Nina found the perfect studio space and was beginning to equip and staff it while coordinating production contacts in India with Oriel.

  In fact, she was so busy, her husband was the one who noticed she’d forgotten something very important.

  “Nina, do you know what day it is?” he asked, coming into the kitchen where she was making their morning coffee. He wore only his pajama pants.

  “Tuesday.”

  “It’s Wednesday, but I was looking for the eye drops and, according to this, you think it’s Sunday.” He held out the blister pack that she kept in the cabinet over the bathroom sink.

  “No!” She snatched it from him and stared in horror. “I always remember.”

  “Except we wound up staying at the hotel on Saturday night after the gala and didn’t come home until afternoon. Then you were up early Monday for that meeting, and Tuesday morning you were talking to Oriel while you got ready for work.”

  “I...” She wanted to say she would have noticed this morning, but they’d had sex before rising and she had honestly completely forgotten. “I didn’t do this on purpose.”

  “I know.” He gave her a perplexed frown. “I just thought you should know.”

  “Okay, but if I miss this many, I’m supposed to throw the package away.” She swallowed. “And we should use condoms for a few weeks until...”

  The coffeemaker hissed behind her. She gave it a distracted look.

  “Until we...um...” She swallowed again. “Until we know whether there’s anything else to, um, worry about.”

  “I’m not worried.”

  “No, Reve. Do you realize what I’m saying? I’m not protected.”

  “Oh, my God, Nina. Yes. I know where babies come from.” He chuckled. “Would you please stop having a panic attack?” He caught her hips to draw her close. “Honestly, this is a conversation I didn’t know how to have, but ever since Angela said their surrogate was pregnant, I’ve been thinking about asking you when you want us to start a family.”

  “Oh.” She pretty much melted into a puddle. “Short answer? From the day I met you.” She stroked her fingertips along the fine hairs against his breastbone. “I’ve always known I wanted you to be the father of my children.”

  “Yeah?” His smile was a slow dawn of self-conscious pleasure. “Well, let’s hope we just got lucky, then.”

  “Oh, I’m already lucky,” she assured him, lifting her smiling mouth for his smiling kiss. “I’m the luckiest woman alive.”

  “And I’m the luckiest man. But just in case...” He tilted his head toward the bedroom. “Should we improve our odds?”

  “Oh, yes. Absolutely we should do that.”

  They did.

  EPILOGUE

  Three years later...

  “DADDY!” MARTI—SHORT for Marta, which was Nina’s grandmother’s name—came running at him the minute he entered Nina’s studio above the showroom for the Lakshmi label.

  Reve caught up his two-year-old and closed his eyes in a moment of deep gratitude as her small arms went tight around his neck, constricting his breathing and filling him with the most incredible sense of wealth.

  “Look.” She showed him her bandaged finger.

  “Did you find one of Mommy’s pins?” No matter how vigilant Nina was, here or at home, their daughter was a magnet for finding them. She never put them in her mouth, always bringing them to the nearest adult, but had pricked herself more than once.

  “She foun
d Mommy’s scissors,” Nina said, her expression appalled. She moved in a slow, heavily pregnant gait, cute as hell when she was all round like this. “I left them there—” She pointed to her worktable, well above what Marti could reach. “She pulled over that chair and stacked those books on it so she could reach. Because she heard me telling Auntie that we would have to cut the order off at ten thousand. So obviously, I needed the scissors.”

  “Mmm...helpful girl.” He kissed Marti’s cheek, proud even when he was daunted by what a resourceful and determined little sprite they had created. “You’re supposed to work at your own table when you visit the studio,” he reminded, and set her in the corner that was fenced in with a countertop over shelves where her baskets of toys and books were stored.

  She couldn’t crawl under it, but immediately stepped on the books she’d left stacked on the floor. She was over it and free in record time.

  “That’s what I’m up against when the nanny drops her off now,” Nina said with a bemused chuckle. “I don’t know whether to be proud or frustrated.”

  “I had the same dilemma when she turned off the power bar under my desk. IT loved me when I dragged them in and that’s all it turned out to be.”

  “No one in the history of having children said it was easy,” she said with a rueful shake of her head. She absently moved his hand on her belly so he could feel their second baby moving. “I wouldn’t have it any other way, though. This is exactly the life I wanted. Messy and confusing and so full of love I can hardly stand it. Thank you.” She looked up at him with the smile that wrapped him up in so much love, his heart could hardly bear the force of it. His knees went weak.

  “It’s the life I didn’t know I could have. Thank you.” He loved her back with everything in him and bent his head to kiss her, wanting her to know it, but he kept one eye on—

  Marti bent and immediately came toddling over. “Here, Mommy.” She held up a pin.

  “Ah. Thank you, baby. Should we go home with Daddy?”