by Sonali Dev
“I do not!” She totally had.
“You thought Ashna and I had something. When clearly we don’t.” Their eyes locked and she felt things melting inside her.
“Okay, I did do that. But it doesn’t mean anything. I . . . I’m not great at relationships.” She laughed like someone who absolutely did not possess a brain. “My siblings call it emotional blindness.” She stood. She had never in her life told that to anyone who wasn’t related to her.
She took another desperate sip of her iced coffee. “I have to go.”
He stood too. “Dr. Raje, are you well?”
No! No, she wasn’t. She hadn’t been well since she had met him, since he had left his life behind to take care of his sick sister, since he had remained unshaken when faced with a gun, since she had taken one bite of his food.
He rubbed the back of his neck, his biceps bulging. Another merciless zing zapped through her. She felt paralyzed. Unable to move away from him.
Nisha was right, she had to do something about it.
She might explode and splatter all over the café if she didn’t.
“Okay, yes, I do that. I imagine everyone wanting to be with you. But do you want to know why that is?” Oh God, she had lost her mind. “No, wait, don’t answer that. I don’t know why I said that.”
“All right.” He stepped back. He’d caught on that she’d lost it.
“But you . . . you noticed it enough to say something about it.”
He didn’t respond. He had gone entirely still.
“What are you thinking?” she wanted to shout. “It’s because . . . because . . .” she said instead. “Because I’m attracted to you.”
Holy shit. She had not just said that out loud.
Instead of responding, he took another step away from her.
She pressed her hand into her belly. The coffee she was holding splashed against her suit, turning the buttercup to khaki in splotches. She put the glass down on the table and resisted the urge to slide under it.
Had she thought she was badass? Turns out she was just a straight-up ass.
He handed her a napkin and she pressed it into her jacket as he stood there silent, unmoving, his chest rising and falling under the fabric stretched across those wide wide shoulders.
Stop staring.
It felt like time had halted. It felt like nothing she’d ever experienced. She was light-headed and queasy and unsteady on her feet. “You didn’t slip something into my food, did you?” she said weakly.
His eyes went cold. Okay, maybe that had been the wrong thing to say.
“I shouldn’t have said that. I was making a joke. A bad one. I . . . I can’t seem to do anything right around you.” Someone help me. “I . . . I swear this doesn’t ever happen to me with anyone else. It’s . . . it’s just you. The way I feel around you . . .” This unbearable, hopeless pull as though the ground beneath her turned into a slope that slid toward him whenever he was near. “I can’t even imagine why, or when it happened or how. I mean . . . look at us! We have absolutely nothing in common. Not one thing.”
His face did not alter at all except for the slightest tightening of his chin that deepened the blasted dimple. And she knew she had said something wrong, something to freeze him even more. She wanted to take her words back, but that train had left the station. All her trains were hurtling off the tracks. They had run amok. She gave up and joined them. “Stop looking at me like that. I thought you valued honesty.”
She loved that he was honest with her, that he didn’t tiptoe around how differently they saw things. But they did see so much so differently. Their worlds were too far apart. “Surely you see why this would be utterly terrifying for me. I’ve never been with someone like you. We . . . us . . . us getting together . . . it would be a total disaster.”
DJ COULD NOT believe this was actually happening. Four days ago this woman had almost caused him to get shot, or at least to get arrested. And now she was propositioning him? Or doing something that seemed oddly like propositioning, but with none of the requisite joy of it.
If he was being honest, she looked like she was having a stroke. Her face had gone all splotchy and her neck was pitched at an awkward angle.
DJ had the strongest urge to pinch himself. “Oh, a disaster is definitely how I would describe it. But do go on.”
The hand she had pressed into her belly turned into a fist. “Do go on . . . see, I think it’s the way you talk. It’s like those historical novels Nisha reads. ‘Do go on,’ drawled the duke . . .” She was babbling, and also doing the worst imitation of British English he’d ever heard.
Suddenly her face collapsed into panic as though she’d just realized she was having a mental episode. “You can’t possibly not see how ridiculous this is. You . . . You . . . I’ve never dated anyone who isn’t a physician . . . let alone someone who hasn’t been to college.” Just saying those words made her look like she was going to burst into tears. “You cook for a living. I’m terrified of kitchens. But I don’t care. I . . . I . . . When I’m with you, I feel, I feel . . . Maybe we should just get this out of our systems.”
Excuse him?
He took another two steps away from her but she followed him. She seemed desperate to get it all out now, this awful affliction that plagued her that was somehow his fault.
“I don’t know . . . I don’t know how to get you out of my mind.” She looked up at him with big limpid eyes that should have melted him. But all he felt was a restlessness to get the hell away from here. “What are we going to do?”
All right then, time to stop this nonsense.
He held out his hand so she wouldn’t get closer to him. “We? We are not going to do anything.” Was she addled? He’d spent the last four days wanting to hunt her down and kill her for almost getting him killed, for the humiliation that hadn’t stopped burning inside him. Not for one sodding moment.
Then there was what Julia had told him—the pain in her eyes when she’d talked about being homeless, like him. Because of her.
Even if he did have feelings for her—and thank the good Lord that he wasn’t that much of an arse—he wasn’t quite reckless enough to put himself in the path of the kind of callous destruction Julia had experienced.
“I have absolutely no interest in you, Dr. Raje,” he said, meeting the wild plea in her eyes.
Her hand went to her mouth in disbelief, and she made a sound somewhere between “Why?” and “How?”
It hadn’t struck her for one moment that he might not lap up her proposition, or whatever this was.
“This might baffle you, but despite not being a physician, I do have some pride. Although most certainly not enough to withstand the kind of beating you’re capable of dealing it. The kind of beating you’ve repeatedly dealt it from the first time we’ve met. You’re right, I value honesty, so I’ll tell you that I make it a practice not to find women who insult me at every opportunity attractive.”
Color flooded her cheeks and traveled down her neck. Finally, she stepped away from him, too, and found the back of a chair to clutch. She looked entirely devastated. Had no one ever denied her anything? He hated the hurt in her eyes. But it was done now.
“How is telling you I’m attracted to you an insult?”
He pressed the back of his hand into his forehead. It made him feel like a drama queen in some sort of musical farce. Which this had to be. “Telling me how unworthy I am of your attraction, that’s the insulting part. And, no, that’s not all it is. Even if you hadn’t told me at every opportunity how inferior to you I am . . . how all I do is cook . . . every assumption you’ve made about me is insulting. Culinary school is definitely college. And Le Cordon Bleu is one of the most competitive institutions in the world. The fact that that’s so wholly incomprehensible to you . . . that’s the insulting part. And it wasn’t thrown in my overly privileged lap either. I had to work my bottom off to make it in.”
Ammaji had sold her dowry jewels to pay for his application,
something her family would have thrown her out on the street for had they found out.
Trisha squared her shoulders, the devastation draining fast from her face, leaving behind the self-possession he was so much more used to. And the speed with which she gathered herself shook something inside him. “I might not do what you see as important work, but I work hard at being a decent human being, and I would need anyone I’m with to be that first and foremost. Even if I didn’t find snobbery in general incredibly unattractive, I would never go anywhere near a person as self-absorbed and arrogant as you, Dr. Raje. I would have to be insane to subject myself to your view of me and the world.”
“Wow.” She was panting, or maybe it was him. He couldn’t be sure.
“You wanted honesty. I’m sorry if I hurt you.”
She cleared her throat. “I’m surprised you think someone as . . . as . . . self-absorbed and arrogant as me is even capable of being hurt.” With trembling hands, she picked up the bag of muffins Naomi had left on her table, but she looked too unsteady on her feet to move. He reached out to steady her, but this time she stepped away and clutched the brown paper to her stomach. “I’m the one who’s sorry. Sorry that I asked for your honesty. What you just said to me wasn’t just hurtful, it was judgmental. Honesty, I now realize, only has value when it goes with fairness.”
He had to laugh at that. “And honesty is only fair when it reinforces your own high opinion of yourself?”
“Which you’ve made crystal clear you do not share.” She turned to leave, then turned back. “I would never have imagined you as someone who came with such a truckload of preconceived notions and prejudices.”
“Are you bloody joking? You did not just pull the ‘reverse prejudice is real’ thing on me.”
“I’m not trying to pull anything on you. From what I just heard, my greatest fault is that I dare to take pride in my work, in knowing I’m excellent at it.” The brown paper crumpled tighter in her hands. “How is that snobbery?”
“Of course being excellent at your work and knowing it isn’t snobbery. But believing that you are somehow unique in excelling at your work while looking down on what others do—that’s the snobbish part. Especially given the life you were born into.”
She paled at that. “I’m not going to apologize for the life I was born into. Which, by the way, I have never taken for granted or misused for one moment. Tell me, if I were a man, would you see my confidence in my work and my pride in where I come from as arrogance?”
“This gets better and better. As you pointed out, so disdainfully, I cook for a living. Nurturing people, nourishing them holds incredible meaning to me. You cannot pull the gender-role card on me. Plus, I have a vested interest in you being good at your work. My issue is with how you think it absolves you from treating those around you with consideration and respect. Cooking for a living is something I happen to be incredibly proud of.”
“As you should be. You’re amazing at it.” That of all things made her voice crack. She threw a look of such longing at the two empty bowls on the table that despite his anger pride swelled inside him.
It was followed by a sense of hypocrisy that he pushed away. “Yes, I am, and I don’t appreciate when someone treats me like a servant for doing it.”
She looked horrified. Obviously, she didn’t even remember calling him the hired help. Which made it that much worse.
“Then there’s the offhanded way in which you negate everything that isn’t your personal experience. Thanks to you, I had a cop pull a gun on me. Certainly not conducive to feelings of attraction. Oh, then there’s the way you treat people less fortunate than you. I know what you did to your college roommate. You’re not emotionally blind, Dr. Raje; you are too focused on yourself to take the time to think about anyone else. That’s not an affliction, it’s a choice.”
She blinked. Color flooded her face again. What he had said had to be painful. But returning a blow with a blow felt so bloody good. It felt like taking off a straitjacket that was crushing his lungs, and he refused to feel guilty about it.
With another blink, she blanked out all feeling from her eyes and he hated that he saw what it cost her to do it.
“At least there’s no doubt that my feelings are not reciprocated. I’m sorry I put you in this position. I don’t know what came over me. I was trying to be someone I’m not.” She gave an embarrassed little laugh, and it made him feel two inches tall. “I do have one question. Are you this angry with me about the cop because I’m brown and I still didn’t expect it? Would you have been less angry if I had been white, instead of just ‘acting white,’ as you called it?”
He would not dignify that with an answer.
The breath she took made her lips tremble. “As for the lies Julia Wickham has been filling your head with, I might’ve wondered why you’ve believed them so easily, but I know only too well what a skilled liar Julia is.” Grabbing her coat off the back of a chair, she slung it over her arm. The top half of the brown paper bag had been crushed beyond recognition. “If my family ever finds out that you’re in any way associated with her, there will be no chance of them ever working with you. That’s not a threat. It’s simply the truth.” With that she walked out the door, her head held high but her legs unsteady.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Trying to combat instant regret with instant gratification wasn’t working. Trisha took another bite of Naomi’s blueberry muffin straight out of the bag. She had torn off the crushed upper part of it so the muffins sat on her lap, exposed. A mangled mess of discarded muffin paper and crumbs peeked up from the carnage. When she stopped at a light, she would look down and count how many she had eaten.
Stuffing muffins into her face to keep from sobbing was just making the muffins salty. Which was tragic. They were the taste of her childhood and now all she tasted was the salt of her tears and the desperation of swallowing them down in great gulps.
I make it a practice not to find women who insult me at every opportunity attractive.
When had she insulted him? When had she looked down on what he did? When? She’d lost all her dignity over his food, salivated over it. She’d salivated over him! And shown it, which made her want to die. All her inhibitions, all her reservations, she had put them away and been honest with him. That was insulting?
I would never go anywhere near a person as self-absorbed and arrogant as you.
That . . . that was insulting.
Self-absorbed?
She had just driven eighty miles to meet with an artist on the off chance that she might help Emma choose to have the surgery. Eighty miles! She pressed a fist into her chest. Who would have thought it could hurt so damn much?
He thought she’d never worked for anything in her life? That it had all fallen in her lap? She did not remember sleeping more than four hours a night since high school. Her siblings were the ones who had made good grades effortlessly. She’d thrown up before every exam—in the school bathroom so no one at home would know. Her anxiety had been that brutal. She’d spent so much time staring at textbooks she couldn’t see without her glasses—a surgeon who performed microscopic surgery and was practically blind, with weird eye curvature so that no contacts ever fit right. Not one single school dance. Not one relationship that meant anything. Because all she had done all her life was work.
He thought she didn’t know what it was to want something? To work for it? She pulled a tissue from the box and blew into it. This man was not worth the mess she was letting herself become right now.
A huge crusty crumb poked at her breast. It must have fallen down her suit and into her bra when she was shoving a muffin into her mouth. She reached into her bra and grabbed it, then popped it in her mouth.
She’d had to remove her contact lenses and put on her glasses because tears made her contacts slide out of place. But she never let anyone see her in glasses. They magnified her eyes and made her look bug-eyed. She pulled into the parking lot. Good thing she was done crying. Done. Fo
rcing her contacts back in, she tucked her glasses away and recited both the periodic table and some of the Sanskrit shlokas Aji had taught her to center herself. She would not be walking into her meeting with Jane Liu looking like a watering can.
The building where the institute was housed was beautiful, with a glass-and-steel facade and an ambience so cozy and whimsical it lifted Trisha’s distraught spirits. If her heart didn’t hurt so much, it might even have sung with hope.
And when she met Jane, the singing-with-hope option no longer seemed like such an impossibility. Jane was one of those people who carried within her a deep sense of her own human perfection. She emanated peace, the kind that was born from self-assurance. Not only had she worked tirelessly for the past two decades for the rights of people with visual impairment, but she herself was an artist of amazing skill who had started painting as a child by using her hands to see objects and then transferring them onto sketchbooks with crayons and paints.
For years she had worked with oil pastels, clay, and acrylics but now she had discovered tactile art, which was a sculptural medium and allowed artists with visual impairment to interact with their work at a more intimate level.
Jane let Trisha play with her pieces, which was how they were meant to be “viewed” anyway. Trisha stroked and caressed the metal wires, knotted ropes, and blown glass all mixed up together to form a symphony of textures as they discussed the several brain studies Jane had participated in to explore how brain chemistry altered physically when a blind artist perceived objects and tried to transmit them into art.
After spending two hours with her, Trisha felt she had never before met another person whose brain functioned so similarly to her own. Methodical and analytical to a fault but also entirely too easily tired of frills and artifice.
Jane promised to speak to Emma, and Trisha had that sense she always had when something she had been trying to solve for a long time finally fell into place. The kind of relief that was all the more special because the resolution had taken so much faith and had been just out of reach for so long. Meeting Jane Liu had been just the thing she had needed today.