by Sonali Dev
When he pulled into a parking spot on a street just a block from the ballroom, she was still asleep.
“Dr. Raje,” he said softly.
When she didn’t so much as budge, he gave her shoulder a gentle nudge.
Her large, heavy-lidded eyes blinked open, the soft amber limpid and sleep soaked. For a second they stared at each other, the mix of the heat from the sun radiating through the windshield and the cool from the air vents hitting their faces at once. A car honked as it drove by and she jolted to full wakefulness. Realization dawned in her eyes, like flames catching from a spark, and turned to shock and then . . . was that fear?
He pulled away and she scampered back in her seat. She pressed a hand on her heart and he imagined it slamming in her chest.
“We’re here.” He pushed himself farther back and away from her.
Mortification colored her cheeks. One would think he had walked in on her in the shower. Falling asleep around a virtual stranger was obviously not something she did often.
“How long have I been out?” she said, her tone harsh beneath the huskiness of her sleep-drenched voice, and dabbed tentative fingers around her mouth, checking in horror to see if she had drooled. She had.
He let himself out of the car, his own heartbeat too fast and stuttering. “It took us about an hour to get here.” No stranger had ever fallen asleep around him; he most certainly had never done it. He didn’t know what the protocol was either.
She flipped the visor down and started to check herself in the mirror. He turned away to give her some privacy.
“You should have woken me up,” she said from inside the car, her tone accusatory.
“I just did.”
“After an hour of watching me sleep?”
What the hell was that supposed to mean? “You seemed tired. And I usually watch the road when I drive.” There it was again, the hard slam of his heart that went with the rage she made him feel, and now there was the added thump of feeling like a prized knob for letting his guard down. “I’ll see you inside.” He retrieved his briefcase from the boot of the car and strode off toward the Astoria without waiting for her.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Despite how it had started out, DJ was amazed at how well their visit to the ballroom was going. The Astoria was a perfect venue. To be able to serve food on the terrace overlooking the bay with a clear view of the Golden Gate—it was an honor. DJ was already tweaking the menu in his head to suit the ambience.
Trisha was leaning over the Italian villa–style concrete railing, her long limbs at once gangly and graceful and entirely at home in this place that was designed with only one aim—to unabashedly showcase wealth and exclusivity.
They had barely spoken to each other over the past half hour as the Astoria’s event manager, the very aptly named Mr. Mantis, had given them the tour. A few minutes ago some sort of emergency had cropped up and Mantis had effusively apologized before excusing himself and left them to enjoy the magnificent mosaic-tiled terrace while he took care of things.
“It’s lovely, isn’t it?” Trisha said, tentatively studying him over her shoulder.
DJ nodded. He still didn’t know what had happened in the car, didn’t know what she had accused him of. But when she had walked in on Mantis giving him the stiff treatment about being late, she had taken the blame—which was indeed hers—and made it clear to Mantis that his insolence would not be tolerated. For the past hour the man had been bowing and scraping to make up for his misstep.
“It is lovely,” he said, breaking his silence because this inexplicable roller coaster of emotions she seemed to strap him into couldn’t get in the way of the excitement fizzing through him about this job. The menu he had laid out was going to have Yash Raje’s supporters eating out of his hands. The ballroom was DJ’s playground and he was positively bursting out of his skin to conquer it.
Standing there on that terrace, she was lovely, too. The thought popped into his head out of nowhere. The no-nonsense white linen shirt she was wearing over jeans softened her usual prickly countenance. It should have made her look like any other girl, out to run an errand for her family, but nothing about her was common. Every inch of her spoke of perfection without struggle.
Maybe it was the expanse of blue sky and blue sea that framed her that did it, maybe it was the low sun that tinted her chocolate hair coppery as it flew about her face, but in that moment, he knew exactly how he felt about her, how he would feel until the day he died.
He hated her. Hated that there were people in the world who had what she had and didn’t even know it. Or knew it but thought they somehow deserved it. Simply by being born.
“I have to take a picture of this view for Nisha.” She felt her pocket for a few seconds. “Shoot, I left my phone in your car.”
“I’ll go get it,” he said and then kicked himself for always being so damn accommodating. But Mum had been brutal in her expectation of manners. Manners aren’t about appearance at all, she had loved to say, they are about kindness. You put the other person’s comfort before yours, that’s good breeding.
Ammaji had had no concept of any formal English rules of etiquette. She’d never set a table the proper way or even used a fork and knife to eat, but she’d taught DJ the exact same lesson. No one is so special that they can’t exert themselves a little for others.
He’d never had a hard time with politeness until he had met this woman. With her he had to pull on every bit of protocol to keep from going head-to-head with her about everything. Unsuccessfully.
“No, you stay and finish the tour of the kitchen. And I . . . um . . . kitchens aren’t my favorite place,” Trisha said, looking faintly traumatized. “I . . . I was burned as a child. When my aji was teaching me how to cook.”
Well, that explained a lot. Before he could ask her about it, the unusually tall and sullen Mr. Mantis reappeared on the terrace.
“Ready to get started again, Dr. Raje?”
She gave the manager a smile that managed to be both gracious and distant. “Mr. Caine will do the tour of the kitchens without me. I have to run to the car. Is there anything else?”
Mantis assured her there wasn’t, and if she wanted him to wait, it would be his pleasure, no no, his honor, to wait until she returned. His time was hers, etc., etc.
DJ manufactured an obliging smile to match Mantis’s and made all the right sounds: He was at their disposal. Whatever they wanted, etc., etc.
She studied his face. He didn’t care what she saw. All he cared about was the kitchen Mantis was about to show him, the place where he was going to make magic.
“Sorry,” she said directly to DJ. “Go ahead and finish up. I’ll see you in the car.” She attempted a smile. “It’s not like you need me.”
Oh, she couldn’t be more right about that. “Don’t give it another thought.” He dropped the keys on her palm and followed the manager into the area where the supplies would be stocked.
The amenities were perfect. The kitchen was every chef’s dream brought to life in quartz and steel. Familiarizing himself with all of it took a good half hour more.
After Dr. Raje’s departure, all the pleasant subservience disappeared rather quickly from Mantis’s demeanor. “So this is your first time catering at the Astoria,” he stated rather than asked.
“It is. And it’s an honor,” DJ said as pleasantly as he could. At least that wasn’t a lie.
“Our own restaurant has a Michelin star and all the private chefs we allow to cater here are trained under star chefs, if not star chefs themselves.”
“That’s impressive,” DJ said. Andre had two Michelin stars, but DJ didn’t feel like mentioning that fact. Maybe because, in a perverse way, he needed to see this side of the manager. It kept DJ’s view of the world firmly grounded.
“The Rajes are a very generous family. So gracious. So open-minded,” Mantis said pointedly, as though the fact that the Rajes were actually allowing him to cater for them was somehow “gracious.
”
“We did their older daughter’s wedding here. It was in Architectural Digest and People magazine. I was the resident event manager on that, too.” Evidently Nisha’s wedding had been one of the highlights of Mantis’s career because he spent the next five minutes waxing eloquent about all the details and pulling up the magazine articles on his phone.
DJ presented him with a sufficiently impressed smile. He really shouldn’t judge. Catering a fund-raiser for Yash Raje was definitely the highlight of his own career, no point pretending like it wasn’t.
“Do you know the family?” Mantis asked, encouraged into expanding their conversation into the personal realm by DJ’s show of interest in his chatter.
“Somewhat,” DJ said, picking out his favorite word for stopping conversations of this nature in their tracks. Of course he knew where the man was going with this. Mantis’s curiosity—which was really incredulousness in disguise—had little to do with getting to know DJ, and more to do with the color of DJ’s skin, which was, unlike the Rajes’, not rendered irrelevant by wealth. The syntax of prejudice—threaded into conversation with the perfect pauses and facial expressions—was like ciphers and spy codes. The meaning clear to those it was meant for. To everyone else, it was harmless scribbles. Easy enough to deny.
“I’d better be getting back to Dr. Raje,” DJ said finally, jotting down a last note on his tablet.
Extracting his phone out of his pocket, he tried to call her but she didn’t answer. He texted her, but there was no response to that, either.
He tamped down on his usual worry reflex. She didn’t need his worry. Maybe she’d fallen asleep again now that he wasn’t there to watch her.
“I think I have all the information I need. I’ll call you if I have questions.”
“Call my assistant,” Mantis said with a stiff smile. “And please let Dr. Raje know it was a pleasure meeting her.”
Despite himself, DJ gave the bastard an amused look. He retrieved his briefcase and it was a good thing that he had the iPad he’d been using to take notes in the other hand, because the idea of shaking the man’s hand was not an appealing one. Nonetheless, he thanked him before heading for the exit. Being angry at people like Mantis was an utter waste of his time. He could deal with them in his sleep. He was an acrobat, a ringmaster, anger his pet beast, the practice of his art so deeply ingrained that the rage barely even registered. Actually, that wasn’t true. It registered well enough. He had just lost his ability to let it transfer into temper.
Unless of course he was dealing with a certain long-legged snob.
He sent up a prayer that they would get through the drive back without any more eruptions or any more heart-to-hearts. He didn’t know which was worse. He was barely halfway to the car when he saw her hurrying toward him. One look at him and she jumped. He had never met anyone who acted quite so shocked every single time they saw him. One would think he arrived places by teleportation.
She held up what looked like a straightened wire hanger, her expression apologetic. “I’m really sorry, but I left your keys inside your car.”
“I beg your pardon?”
She blinked as though he had said something entirely unexpected, then she shook her head. “I grabbed my phone and I thought I’d come back to the ballroom. I realized it wasn’t fair to leave you to suffer Praying Mantis by yourself. I swear I thought I had the keys in my hand, but when I got there I realized that they were missing. I went back to look for them and they’re in the car. It’s the twenty-first century! Who makes cars that let you lock your keys inside?”
“It’s a 1980 Nine Eleven,” he said, feeling, among other things, the need to make a case for Betsy’s beauty.
His indignation was entirely lost on her. “AAA can’t get here for another hour, they’re backed up. And I need to get back to take Nisha to the doctor.” That last part made a panicked look cross her face, but she pulled herself together and pointed the wire at the car. “Let’s hurry.”
He followed her across the street, easily matching her stride. “What’s the hanger for?” And why were they hurrying?
“To slide through the window to open the door,” she said as though it made perfect sense. “The windows are not all the way up.”
He stopped in his tracks. “You’re planning to break into the car?”
She held the hanger out to him. “Actually, I was hoping you would do it.”
He massaged his temples, anger collecting inside him so fast his fingers shook. “Is there a reason why you believe that I can break into cars?”
“What? No! You jump to the most absurd conclusions, you know that?”
“Not that I think I need to say this, but I’ve never broken into a car or stolen anything in my life.”
“I know that! But you seem to know about cars. That’s all I meant.”
He studied her. Even if she hadn’t meant to imply that he was somehow adept at breaking into cars, she had to be crazy not to see the obvious flaw with her plan. “Do you realize what it would look like if someone saw me breaking into a Porsche on these streets?” He wasn’t from around here, but he did watch the bloody news. Didn’t she?
She had the gall to look amused. “Come on. Seriously? You think someone would think you—dressed in that two-hundred-dollar shirt and with that choirboy face—that you would be stealing a car? You need to chill out. This is California!”
Was she for real? That out-of-control roller coaster he’d been riding all afternoon crashed right back into anger. “Has no one ever looked at you and seen nothing but the color of your skin? What the hell is wrong with you? How can you act so . . . so white?”
She balked at that, shock sharpening her features. “I don’t act white. I don’t act anything.”
All he could do was throw up his hands. It was not his job to set every numbskull straight. It was definitely not his job to set some clueless, overprivileged brown girl who had no idea she was brown straight. “I’m just going to wait for the mechanic to get here, if you don’t mind.” He leaned against the car’s bonnet and crossed his arms.
The sun was still high and hot in the sky, and the air was suffused with the smell of the bay mixed with the garlic and soy aroma from the Chinese restaurant behind them.
Her phone buzzed and she looked at the text that had just come through. “It’s Nisha,” she said. “I really have to get home.”
He didn’t care. He wasn’t stupid enough to care.
“Fine.” She slid the hanger through the open gap in the window. “But it’s broad daylight. Nothing is going to happen.” Her eyes narrowed in concentration over the gleaming yellow top of the car.
Being arrogant and feeling as entitled as the bloody Queen was all good and dandy, but he had never expected her to be ignorant, of all things. He watched as she fiddled with the hanger. This was such a bad idea. “Where did you manage to get that from?”
Her focus stayed on the task at hand but she flicked her head at the street. “There’s a laundry up that hill. I saw it in a movie once. With this kind of old car, you can pop the lock right up.”
An ache was starting in his temples. He threw a look up and down the street. “It’s a friend’s car. We can’t damage it.”
“I won’t damage anything.” There wasn’t a whit of doubt in her voice. He tried not to think about how much repairing a Porsche might cost. Well, if she damaged it, she was bloody well paying for it. “Seriously, relax.”
It must be nice to be her. To live in a world where you felt this invincible. He glanced up and down the street again. A man on a bicycle was riding downhill and a woman was running uphill. She threw DJ a suspicious look as she sped by and reached for her phone.
Oblivious to the world around her, Trisha continued to twist away at the metal with remarkable strength and deftness. It was obvious that she was good at using her hands.
“Ow!” A squeak emitted from her. She grabbed one hand with the other without letting the hanger go. “Damn it, I cut myself!�
�� The sharp end of the wire had nicked her skin.
Bloody hell. So much for being good at using her hands. He pushed off the car and walked to her.
There was a small cut at the center of her palm.
“It’s nothing,” she said. But it was bleeding and tiny dots of blood were sprinkled on the cuffs of her white shirt. He reached into his bag, extracted some tissues, and held them out. At least they could stop this nonsense now.
“Thanks,” she said as she tried to pull the wire out. “Shit, it’s stuck.” She let the wire go but it stayed there jammed in the window.
He pressed the tissue to her palm as she watched him.
“It’s just a surface cut.” She pulled away and went back to trying to pry it out. But the thing wouldn’t budge. She was going to wreck Betsy’s car.
He moved her out of the way and took the end of the wire from her and started working it to wiggle it free. But it was well and truly jammed in place. He put all his strength into the next pull and heard the lock pop open.
Just as he felt the touch of a baton on his shoulder.
Her gasp reached him from a distance. Everything slowed to a stop. He closed his eyes, breathing through the hard clench of panic in his belly.
“Put your hands up and turn around.”
He did as he was told and turned around to face the cop, another lanky white man who looked uncannily like Mr. Mantis. His hand was on his holster.
“My hands are in the air, mate, you don’t have to reach for your gun.” To one side of him he heard a movement. God, please don’t let her do something stupid.
“Please don’t tell me how to do my job, sir.”
He said nothing more. Head down. Mouth shut. The blast of terror that had sparked in his belly for a moment, gone. Everything numb, cold. The flash of anger that had erupted as though it had a right to, dead. He focused his energy on not reliving the shit from years ago, on not feeling the cop’s hand on his head as he pushed him into the squad car, on not seeing the metal grid separating him from the driver’s seat as it blurred through tears.