by Nalini Singh
Rebel Hard
A Hard Play Novel
Nalini Singh
Contents
1. In Which Our Heroine, Nayna Sharma, Enters the Indian Marriage Mart (and Encounters an Animal of the Asinus Variety)
2. A Bandage Dress and a Good Girl Gone Bad
3. Warning: Collision Imminent
4. Nayna & Raj & Champagne
5. Deliciously Bad Decisions in the Moonlight
6. Reason #1 Why All Naynas Should Invest in Running Shoes
7. Nayna’s Secret Diary (Password: L3tTh3Cr4Z3oUt)
8. No Sex Things
9. Welcome to the Nightmare of Awkwardness
10. Peaches and Scruff and Cold Showers
11. Uh-Oh… and Uh-Oh Again
12. Nayna’s Secret Diary (Angry Red-Ink Day)
13. Someone Is Getting Naked (Oooooooh)
14. Suburban Parks Are a Hotbed of Sin
15. The Male Point of View
16. Playing Dirty
17. Neck Kisses and the Abs of Nayna’s Downfall
18. Raj Discovers Sexting Is A Thing
19. Half-Naked Raj (No Further Enticement Required)
20. The Construction Workers’ Book Club
21. Happy New Year
22. The Role of the Dastardly Villain Is Now Taken
23. Everything’s Better with TEQUILA!!!
24. (very quiet whispers only please)
25. Raj Declares an Ab Moratorium
26. Aunties in the Pharmacy when You’re Buying CERTAIN THINGS
27. Heat Wave at the Glacier
28. The Woman with No Panties
29. Nayna Sharma, the T-Shirt Thief
30. True Love Hurts
31. Wedding Bells Ringing
32. Extreme Danger Warning: Duck for Cover
33. Shilpa Sharma Is Not Joking
34. Dreams, Beer, and Ice Cream (Not in That Order)
35. Nayna Unbuttons Her Shirt
36. Aji Interference Is Good Interference
37. A Kiss under Starlight
38. Son of an Owl
39. Broken Hearts Can Be Mended
40. A Scene Fit for Bollywood
41. Aditi Speaks the Truth
42. The Boss’s Girl
43. Avocado-Green Walls & the Time of Disco
44. Oh, Madhuri. How Could You?
45. Seagrass Tears
46. The Villainess Strikes
47. Love. Love. Love
48. Vanquish Your Foes (Use Blackmail as Required)
49. We Told You So (and Two Weddings)
50. Husband and Wife
51. Seven Years Later
About the Author
Other Books by Nalini Singh
This one’s for Kay.
Chocolate brownies, terrifying rappels into underground caves, endless laughter—our friendship is one of the joys of my life.
1
In Which Our Heroine, Nayna Sharma, Enters the Indian Marriage Mart (and Encounters an Animal of the Asinus Variety)
The arranged-marriage mart got off to an inauspicious start.
The prospective groom and his parents were late because their Jaguar’d had a flat tire. Nayna knew their car was a Jaguar because they mentioned it approximately five times in the first ten minutes. The rest of the time, they spoke about how their one and only child, their “ek lota beta,” was a prodigy at his job as a lawyer and would “surely, surely” be partner in only two or three years.
“You mark my words,” Mrs. Kapoor said with a wave of a hand bejeweled to within an inch of its life, “my Dilip will be winning all the cases at his firm. He’s smarter than the partners, but you know the politics. He has to spend time as a junior.”
While Nayna’s parents tried to get a word in edgewise, Nayna glanced at Dilip Kapoor. She expected to see a familiar, embarrassed look on his face. Parental bragging was pretty much status quo when Indian families got together. The children generally grimaced and bore it while exchanging “I can’t stop them” shrugs and commiserating grins with one another. With this being an arranged-marriage introduction, the stakes were even higher.
However, the man who’d ended up Nayna’s first introduction—courtesy of a few words dropped in Nayna’s parents’ ears by a helpful auntie—was smiling with the kind of smarmy self-appreciation Nayna had previously only seen on the faces of Bollywood movie villains.
Not only was he not embarrassed, he broke into the conversation to say, “The senior partners come to me for advice. Everyone knows it, but…” He tapped the side of his nose while braying out a laugh that grated like nails on a chalkboard.
Nayna sat back in the sofa. As far as possible. Any farther and she’d be in the kitchen.
Beside her, her grandmother murmured near silently, “Nayna, bitia, if you accept this donkey, I’ll have to disown you.”
Nayna barely stopped herself from snorting out a laugh. She couldn’t look at her aji or she knew she’d lose it. Barely holding herself together, she poured more chai for Mrs. Kapoor when the woman imperiously held out her cup for a refill.
“We’re really looking for someone fairer for Dilip,” Mrs. Kapoor was saying. “But with your daughter being an accountant, we thought we should give her a chance.” Her tone was magnanimous.
Other women might’ve been insulted, but Nayna was overjoyed. Her college-professor father adored his own dark-skinned bride and would allow no disrespect. Which meant she wouldn’t have to come up with reasons to reject this match on the horrific chance that her parents liked him. Or were desperate enough to grab at any opportunity.
At twenty-eight and unmarried, Nayna was a cause of constant despair to her family.
“I thought you were intelligent people,” her father said with his usual brusqueness when someone annoyed him. “But clearly I was wrong if you’re clinging to outdated standards of beauty seeded in our culture by colonialism. As I have no desire for idiotic grandchildren, let us end this meeting now.”
Mrs. Kapoor stared at him with her cup halfway to her mouth. Mr. Kapoor blinked and looked straight ahead—Nayna had the feeling he didn’t much talk.
Dilip Kapoor ate a third samosa, the crumbs from the first two littering his shirt, then let out another bray. “Good one, Mr. Sharma.”
“Young man, you should see an ear, nose, and throat surgeon as soon as possible. That doesn’t sound healthy.”
Nayna had to hold her breath to fight the laughter and the tears.
It turned out Mr. and Mrs. Kapoor weren’t as dense as their genius son. With a “Come on, Dilip!” they got up in a huff—or at least Mrs. Kapoor did. Mr. Kapoor followed with a weak smile aimed at no one in particular. “We have another meeting tonight anyway. We were only stopping here as a favor to Babita.”
Nayna’s aji waited until after her father had closed the door on the Kapoor family to say, “I’m sorry, Nayna. Such a disappointment to you. No little donkeys running around.”
Nayna lost it.
2
A Bandage Dress and a Good Girl Gone Bad
Three weeks after the night formally referred to as the Donkey Incident in the Sharma household and Nayna was no longer laughing. Four more introductions later and the reality of her situation had hit home.
Ass number 1 had been followed by Asses 2 to 5, but her parents weren’t giving up the hunt. She’d crossed her fingers behind her back and hoped they’d surrender, but Gaurav and Shilpa Sharma weren’t the giving-up type. And they had something to prove. One daughter might’ve run off with a boy from college and brought shame on the family, but by God, their other daughter would do everything exactly right.
Education. A good job. Marriage. Grandchildren. The end.
Travel? P
fft. Do that on your honeymoon.
Adventure? Humph. You’ll have plenty of adventure once your first baby comes.
Love? Oho! You young people, always talking about love-schlove. Love comes after marriage, with your husband.
Telling herself to breathe, that the cage doors hadn’t shut quite yet, Nayna smoothed her hands over the dress she’d bought in a fit of Madhuri-induced insanity. Her scandalous older sister, young divorcée and all-around gorgeous glamour-puss, had dropped by for a visit the previous Sunday while Nayna was preparing a traditional meal for lunch for her parents and grandmother.
At the time, Nayna had been wearing old sweatpants and an equally old T-shirt stained with ink from the time she’d broken a fountain pen and sprayed herself a beautiful shade of aqua blue. She’d been perspiring from working at the stove, her infuriatingly straight hair pulled loosely back into a bun that had begun to fall apart.
Madhuri had been curled and perfumed and vivacious.
She’d hugged Nayna and told her she had to look after herself or she’d never find a man to marry. “You think I wake up like this?” A perfectly manicured hand indicating her va-va-voom curvy body in its fitted dress of delicate green lace. “It takes work, Ninu. I woke up at eight to give myself a facial and do my hair.” Then she’d hopped up on a breakfast stool and begun to touch up her lipstick while asking Nayna if she minded making her a cup of coffee.
Nayna loved her sister, and she was beyond happy that Madhuri was no longer estranged from the family, but sometimes she had to fight the compulsion to strangle her. Surely the judge would rule it justifiable homicide? Or maybe she could use the insanity defense? Speaking of which…
“You must’ve lost your mind,” she muttered, running her hands over the dress again.
It looked like she’d wrapped a wide and lightly shimmering black bandage around herself and called it done. There were even slivers of flesh visible where the bandage crisscrossed her body. Not that it covered much of the rest of her either—the so-called dress stopped high up on her thighs, leaving far more of her legs visible than she’d ever before shown in public.
She ran her hands nervously over her not-va-va-voom hips—which the dress managed to make look hot—and felt the heavy line of her panties. She’d already gotten rid of her bra after it proved impossible to either hide it or make it look like she was showing her bra on purpose. It helped that she had small breasts and the dress was tight.
Sad as it was, she didn’t have a jiggle problem.
Angling her body, she examined her butt in the mirror. “Damn it.” The panties were obvious, and they ruined the line of the dress.
She glanced at the door to her room even though she’d locked it herself. Then she bit down on her lower lip and took off the expensive scrap of nothing she’d bought specifically because it was meant to be “invisible” under clothing. “I want my thirty dollars back,” she groused as she got them off over her feet.
To make sure she wouldn’t lose her nerve, she threw the panties in with the dirty clothes she’d put in the little laundry basket she kept in her room; she’d chuck it all into the wash tomorrow.
Then she looked at her butt again.
The dress skimmed over her body like a lover’s hand—not that Nayna would know anything about that. High school had been a washout. Nerds with flat chests didn’t get much action. University had been… strange, her parents jumpy every time she left for a class, always worried she’d randomly decide to run off with a boy.
And Nayna, so fiercely determined to reunite her fragmented family that she’d focused all her energy on that. She’d succeeded in her second year as a university student, brought Madhuri back into the fold—and spent the rest of the time trying to make sure they’d never break again. Following rules listed and unspoken. Not doing anything to hurt her parents.
For a long time, that had been enough. She’d been so happy to have her entire family around the table at birthdays and on Diwali and during all the moments small and big that were vitally important in life. It hadn’t mattered that she’d traded in her own dreams to glue her family back together. Even to the extent of agreeing to marry a man her parents would choose.
Madhuri was the scandalous one, the gorgeous flirt, Nayna her far more boring shadow. The good girl making up for the sins of the bad girl.
“Not tonight,” she vowed to the mirror. “Tonight you’re going to be the bad girl. And you’re going to break all the rules.” Nayna had plans to find some gorgeous man and do all the things she’d never done because she’d been so busy following the rules so her family wouldn’t fall apart—because the cracks? They were still there.
But even prisoners got time off for good behavior.
Nayna deserved this night, and she was taking it.
Swiveling away from the mirror on that silent vow, she stuffed her feet into the comfortable professional heels she wore to work every day. Then she pulled on a coat that covered up the dress. She made sure it was buttoned up to the throat and that the lower half didn’t split so high as to expose her bare thighs.
She checked herself in the mirror one final time before picking up her small evening purse—that, she could get away with—and unlocking her bedroom door. The sounds of the TV reached her the second she stepped out into the hallway of her childhood home. Her parents were watching their favorite Indian soap opera. From memory, the evil sister-in-law was currently trying to break up the hero and heroine—said heroine was, of course, all things sweet and kind and bashfully lovely.
Nayna’s mother liked to relate the ongoing storyline to her.
Walking over to stand in the doorway of the living room, she waited until a dramatic statement that shocked all the characters onscreen—she now had at least half a minute while the reaction shots went on.
“I’m off,” she said in Hindi. “I’ll be late coming home.” She crossed her toes inside her shoes. “Ísa and I are thinking of catching a midnight movie.”
Her father frowned through his spectacles. “What about work?”
“Tomorrow’s Sunday.” Even Nayna drew the line at going in to work on a Sunday.
Grunting, her father settled back down in his prized recliner. After ten years of constant use, it was shaped to his tall and lanky form. As always, he had a half-open book on his lap. Nayna’s first memory of her father was of sitting in his lap while he read to her.
“You make sure and say hello to Ísa from us,” her mother said with a smile as she rose to kiss Nayna on the cheek. “Have fun.”
“Where’s Aji?” Nayna’s grandmother was usually ensconced in an armchair by the old-fashioned hearth on the far side of the living room at this time of night. She’d read or work on her knitting while offering sharp commentary on the soap opera. She had been known to say that the meek and sweet heroine would probably turn out to be secretly more evil than the evil sister-in-law.
Nayna had a feeling her grandmother was hoping for just such a twist.
“She’s making herself a cup of tea.” Her mother lowered the volume of her voice. “I wish she’d let me do it.”
“You know she likes to make it her way.” With milk in the saucepan and plenty of cardamom and sugar. “I’ll go say bye to her.”
“Shilpa.”
Her mother hurried back to her seat at Nayna’s father’s forewarning. The reaction shots were over, the drama back on. At moments like this, Nayna’s heart grew tight. Her parents were such different people—her father curt and intellectual and used to getting his own way, her mother gentle and a little dreamy and kind—but then she’d see them watching this show—or catch them discussing it with utmost seriousness—and she’d see a glimmer of why their marriage had lasted.
It probably helped that Shilpa Sharma believed absolutely that the husband was the head of the household. Nayna had never seen her mother oppose her father on anything that mattered. Shilpa always bent while Gaurav got his way. Nayna had been only fourteen when nineteen-year-old Madhuri elo
ped with her now ex-husband, but she had no memory of her mother fighting her husband even to see her elder daughter.
Good thing Nayna wasn’t planning to ask her mother’s help with tonight’s rebellion.
Moving from the doorway with an inward sigh of relief at having sold her cover story, she walked back down the hall to the kitchen. Her favorite person in all the world stood in front of the stove, watching a saucepan of chai as she brought it up to a boil. Beside the saucepan was a small frypan on which sizzled wide semicircles of taro, each slice about a quarter of an inch in thickness.
“Nayna, beta.” A luminous smile accompanied the affectionate address.
“Aji.” Walking over, Nayna hugged her grandmother’s soft form. For the longest time, her grandmother had worn a white sari. For her, it hadn’t been a simple acknowledgment of her widowhood but a symbol of how much she’d loved her husband and how deeply she missed him. But these days she was starting to change it up.
“I like this tracksuit,” Nayna told her. A vivid pink with white stripes down the sides, it was full-on velour and sparkle. “You look like you’re about to go break dancing.”
Her grandmother wiggled her hips. “I can dance in the rain same as any of those Bollywood heroines. No see-through sari though. Who wants to get pneumonia?”