by Nalini Singh
Frantic to stop him talking because with each word he spoke, he became ever more attractive, she kissed him. Desperate and needy and wanting him to be hers for this one night.
But Raj was like a force of nature. He took the kiss, stroked his hand back down her body to grip her under one thigh, and said, “Do you like Egypt?”
“What?” Nayna couldn’t think when he had his hand that close to her naked core—a couple more inches and he’d discover her lack of panties. “Egypt?”
He began to move one finger in a stroking movement so close to the crease of her thigh that she held her breath, waiting for him to discover that she was his for the taking. But he stopped. When she opened her eyes, she was caught once again by the dark intensity of his.
“The art gallery has an exhibition on Egyptian art,” he said, serious and intent even though his cheekbones were flushed with color and his pulse hammered in his neck.
Nayna realized she had her hands in his hair. “Kiss me,” she said, because it was all she could say that wouldn’t break the dream.
Pushing back with both hands braced on the wall on either side of her head, he said, “Answer first.” No give in his voice, nothing but a quiet resolve that was like a hurricane.
Nayna loved everything about Egypt. She wanted to visit the pyramids one day, was fascinated by the hieroglyphics and the architecture, had even done a history minor at university just so she could take the classes on Egypt. And none of that mattered because her path was set—and it didn’t involve Raj.
Leaning in, she kissed him again. Nayna might not be a femme fatale, and Raj might be a stubborn rock of a man, but Nayna was good at picking up new things. She’d learned how Raj liked to kiss and now used that new knowledge ruthlessly to distract him. Of course by then his fingers were playing along the crease between her thigh and the heat between her legs and her head was buzzing.
No one had told her sex could be this stressful. If he didn’t touch her there soon, she was going to start begging.
But Raj broke the kiss to say, “Is that a yes on Egypt?”
On the razor edge of need and desperation, Nayna snapped. “Be quiet!” She couldn’t take him wanting her enough to ask her out; this fantasy night was supposed to be a treasure to look back on over the cold, practical years to come. It wasn’t supposed to break her heart by showing her a man who made her body sing and intrigued her mind and who liked her. “I just want your body! Nothing else!”
Sudden winter between them, Raj’s face going glacial.
If she’d thought he was difficult to read before, it now became impossible.
Nayna wanted to crawl into the dirt. What had she just said? Throat dry, she went to try to say something, anything, else when Raj set her down gently on her feet. Then he turned away, put his hands on his hips, and took long, harsh breaths. She could see those breaths but not hear them, the music from the party spilling out to flood the garden.
His shoulders were rigid, the muscles of his arms tightly clenched.
Someone pushed open another set of doors at that instant, and the flood of music turned into a deluge.
Face burning and ice in the air, Nayna fixed her dress with shaking hands, then searched desperately for her shoes and purse. There. The purse was right where he’d pinned her up, and there were the shoes. Out of Raj’s line of sight.
She grabbed them, then made her getaway, her feet silent over the lush grass.
Where had she parked the car?
For a moment she couldn’t remember, and panic beat at her throat like a trapped creature. Then her eyes snagged on her cherished lime-green MINI Cooper. Face flushing to scalding, then to freezing, she hotfooted it down the drive to get in. She slinked down into her seat the instant she was inside. Raj was unlikely to come after her, but she wasn’t about to risk it.
Only when she was certain the coast was clear did she turn on the engine and carefully reposition the car for a quick escape. Oh no, was that Raj? She slinked back down in her seat, relieved she’d turned off the engine and the lights only moments before. Barely able to see from her position, she nonetheless quickly realized the man walking to a nearby Mercedes wasn’t Raj. Her shoulders slumped. He’d probably gone back to the party.
Where he certainly wouldn’t have trouble finding a woman to lick his wounds.
Great, now she could torture herself with that lovely image.
Her face was stinging hot when her phone pinged with a message from Ísa: Where are you?
In the car, hiding, Nayna admitted.
The last thing she expected was for Ísa to slam into the passenger seat only minutes later and say, “Drive!” She sounded as desperate as Nayna felt.
Not hesitating, Nayna started up the car and zoomed out. “Oh thank God,” she said once out on the road.
Ísa spoke the same words at the exact same time.
7
Nayna’s Secret Diary (Password: L3tTh3Cr4Z3oUt)
Things that happened tonight:
* * *
No panties.
Ísa went skinny-dipping with the hot gardener (aka Sailor). Only, he has AWFUL taste in friends. He was there the night Cody the Slimeball publicly dumped Ísa, and Ísa is totally confused and disoriented. She’s making up conspiracy theories that it’s all a way to humiliate her again, but really she’s afraid of trusting her instincts. I wish I could kick Slimeball’s ass for making her doubt herself.
Dad was waiting up for me. Good thing I fixed my hair and makeup at Ísa’s apartment. People at work can’t understand how I still live at home, but this is my reality. All my cousins still live at home too. Moving out is “a waste of money,” as said by every Indian parent ever—and why would you want to move out unless you were “up to something”? Only Madhuri gets a pass. I’m considering marrying the donkey just so I can divorce him and gain my freedom.
Raj. Raj happened.
8
No Sex Things
Nayna barely slept that night, tormented by dreams of an angry man with intense brown eyes who’d left stubble burn on her throat and whose hand she could still feel on her breast.
Gritty-eyed, she handled Sunday—and Madhuri chirping on about the “cute blue sofa” she’d just bought for her apartment.
She had a slight breakdown on Monday night. Thankfully, Ísa was on hand with ice cream and stories of the Slimeball’s face getting punched. Even better, said punching had been done by the hot gardener.
“At least one of us might have a chance at a happily-ever-after,” Nayna muttered to her spreadsheet on Tuesday afternoon.
Unfortunately for her, that spreadsheet was simple. She still had enough work to take her through to Friday and the mandatory two weeks of Christmas vacation, but none of that work was complex. It left her with far too much time to think… and to remember. How Raj’s hands had felt on her body, how his mouth had tasted, how she’d wanted to rub herself all over him.
She jumped when her mobile phone rang. Seeing it was her grandmother, she picked up at once. “Aji, hello.”
“Nayna, beta,” her grandmother said, her voice upbeat. “Is this leopard cologne popular with men these days?”
Leopard cologne?
“Do you know the name of it?”
“It’s the one on television with the oiled men spraying themselves and the big black cats and the girls clawing the men like she-cats.”
Nayna’s cheeks heated at the memory of how she’d clawed Raj. If he’d left her with stubble burn, she’d left him with a few marks of her own. She wondered if he’d thought about her, winced immediately. If he did, it would be to freeze her to the spot with an icy glare. Raj hadn’t struck her as the forgiving type.
“Oh, I know the cologne you mean,” she said to her grandmother. “But if you’re thinking of buying a gift for Dad, he doesn’t use that one.”
“It’s not for him,” her grandmother said airily.
Nayna blinked. “Aji?”
“I just think Mr. Hohepa’s a
nice man,” her grandmother answered, coy and nonchalant.
Nayna’s mouth fell open. Mr. Hohepa was their new neighbor, having moved in only six months earlier. He and his dog, Pixie, had become firm friends with Aji. The two elders often went for walks together, Pixie bounding between them.
Mr. Hohepa, however, was at least eight years her grandmother’s junior.
Nayna narrowed her eyes as she realized her grandmother had started getting the velour tracksuits around then too—with the excuse that her sari wasn’t convenient for walking. “How good of a friend is Mr. Hohepa,” she asked suspiciously; if that Lothario was leading her grandmother along…
A very un-aji-like giggle. “We don’t do the sex things, beta,” her grandmother said, turning Nayna’s ears red. “But I’m not dead and he’s a fit young man. I’m going to buy him the leopard cologne.”
Nayna sat staring at her phone a long time after her grandmother hung up. “Aji has a boyfriend.” She wrote it down on her notepad, stared at it, wrote it again, and still couldn’t get it to settle in her brain.
“Nayna?” One of her more senior colleagues stuck his head inside. “I’m doing a coffee run,” Douglas said. “You want your usual?”
“I think my seventy-five-year-old grandmother has a boytoy boyfriend.”
“Well, dayum! Good on your grandma!”
Yes, Nayna thought after her workmate had left, good on Aji. She’d loved Nayna’s grandfather, of that Nayna had not a single doubt, but she’d also been widowed for ten long years. She deserved fun and joy and romance.
How about you, Nayna?
The voice came from deep inside her, and it was of the fourteen-year-old who hadn’t been allowed to go to dances, or to wear makeup, or to be anything less than perfect. That fourteen-year-old looked at her grandmother, living life more joyously and wickedly than she ever had, and it could be that was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Or it could be it was the most recent evidence of Madhuri’s carefree life that pushed her over the edge. Highly likely it also involved the reason for her semi-breakdown last night: realizing on Monday morning as her father laughed at something her sister had said that Madhuri would always be his favorite. It didn’t matter what Nayna did—she’d never be good enough, perfect enough. Her family would be fine if Nayna was no longer around; it was Nayna who had to be ready to suffer the repudiation.
Then there was Raj.
The idea of allowing a shadowy “suitable match” to put his hands and mouth on her as Raj had done, it made her shudder. “No more introductions, no more trying to impress assholes and idiots,” she said in a strangely calm tone.
Nayna was done.
* * *
She had the words to her bombshell decision all worked out by the time she left the converted villa that functioned as their offices that night. An urgent client request had come in, and Nayna had volunteered to handle it just to give herself a couple more hours to build up to the confrontation. It was as she was packing up that her father called and asked her to be home by eight thirty for a surprise.
“I’m almost done,” she told him and was about to ask about the surprise when he hung up.
Most likely they had an unexpected guest from Fiji. Many of their extended family still called the tiny island nation home, and while her parents had left it more than three decades earlier, they remained deeply connected to people there. Nayna had last visited two years ago, when she’d taken Aji over for a catch-up with her younger sister.
The two older women had laughed and told her stories deep into the humid tropical night as they sat on a porch screened against the mosquitos. Nayna had seen small fruit bats take off from the breadfruit trees during the dark orange of sunset, heard the sounds of the frogs croaking their courtship songs, and felt her skin settle into the easy rhythm of life in a rural town far from Fiji’s cosmopolitan resorts and hotels.
That night she’d been in charge of keeping up the supply of tea and snacks, those snacks mostly consisting of mango slices cut before the fruit was fully ripe, then rubbed with a little fresh chili pepper before being sprinkled with salt. It was rare to find unripe mangos in New Zealand, since the fruit didn’t grow here, but the rare times she did, the taste immediately brought back the memory of that hazy, lazy night.
Smiling, she wondered if Aji would like to go in the new year sometime. Her grandmother had decided not to accompany Nayna’s parents on their upcoming trip, saying “husbands and wives should have time alone.” Everyone had scratched their heads over that, as Aji usually chose to stay with her sister while Gaurav and Shilpa went around on their own, doing as they pleased, but Aji had been adamant.
“Old age,” Nayna’s mother had whispered to Nayna. “It happens to all of us.”
Yeah, right. Nayna had a feeling her grandmother’s odd decision had far more to do with being free from watchful eyes while she carried on with Mr. Hohepa. “I can’t believe my grandmother has a more scandalous love life than I do,” she muttered as she left the office, but her lips curved.
She’d cyberstalked Mr. Hohepa after her grandmother’s call, and it appeared he was exactly who he said: a widower who had four children and three grandchildren. Still, Nayna was going to keep a close eye on the situation, just in case Mr. Hohepa was a gray-haired Don Juan with a woman in every neighborhood.
The light mood fostered by thoughts of her grandmother’s romance was long gone by the time she arrived home. She’d practiced how she’d tell her parents of her decision to pull out of the marriage deal over and over again in the car, the words a heavy rock in her gut. If the surprise wasn’t a guest, she was going to tell them straightaway.
The longer she waited, the worse it would be.
No unknown car sat in the drive, and she saw no shoes on the front stoop that she didn’t recognize. No guest then. Walking in, she girded herself to jump right into the flames.
Her mother pounced on her before she was two feet inside; Shilpa Sharma’s face was flustered and happy. “There’s a boy coming, beta!” she blurted out before Nayna could speak. “He works late too, so we and his parents made the arrangements for a quarter to nine. Hurry, hurry, change quickly and freshen up!”
Plans shattered in an instant, Nayna walked into her bedroom and just stared at the wall for a minute before full panic screamed into her mind and she grabbed her phone and a paper bag, then went to hide in the bathroom to call Ísa. What the hell was she going to do? She breathed into the paper bag while desperately hoping her best friend would pick up her phone.
She did—and was calm in the face of Nayna’s hyperventilating panic. “Just do the same thing you did with the other five. Tell your folks you have nothing in common with him and can’t see a marriage working out.”
“The other five were asses.” Nayna breathed into the paper bag again. “My family didn’t like them either. What if this guy isn’t an ass and my parents and grandmother love him?” It would be just her freaking luck that guy number six was the charm, a suitable boy with no flaws. “What if I’m trapped in a marriage I don’t want?”
“Look,” Ísa said firmly. “This is your life. Your family can’t force you to the altar.”
Nayna put down the paper bag, her heart squeezing. “I love them, Ísa.” It was as much a truth as her stick-straight black hair and dark brown skin. “No matter what, I love them. I can’t be like Madhuri and risk being cut off.” And their relationship wasn’t a simple equation where she didn’t feel loved in return.
Six months ago, her mother had spent three days hunched over with needle and thread, repairing Nayna’s favorite salwar kameez—a long tunic paired with thin pants cut close to her legs. An unfortunate incident featuring a badly maintained fence and darkness had left the tunic part of the outfit with a gigantic tear in an awkward spot—and destroyed the beaded pattern. Unexpectedly, her father had turned up with a handful of tiny, shimmering beads to match the ones lost in the darkness. He’d asked a colleague who did crafts
for the name of her bead supplier, then personally gone and found matching beads.
Just like two years earlier he’d found a replacement for the fountain pen that had broken.
Her parents might have their blind spots, and they were driven too much by the pain of the past—pain not caused by Nayna—but she could never doubt that they loved her.
As for Aji, her love was a flame that would never go out. Madhuri had hurt their grandmother so much; Nayna had never seen her so wounded. She hadn’t understood why her cherished granddaughter hadn’t confided in her—and yet, despite that, Aji had sent money to Madhuri to help her out. A teenaged Nayna had helped her fill in the forms for the money transfer. Aji would’ve probably even gone to see Madhuri if Nayna’s sister hadn’t eloped all the way to Perth, Australia.
Nayna’s parents would’ve never let her go, and Aji didn’t like to fly alone.
Thankfully, Ísa understood what it was to love family even when they drove you to the edge of madness. She loved her mother even though multimillionaire CEO Jacqueline Rain—aka the Dragon—was the least maternal person Nayna had ever met. “How about if…” A small pause before Ísa’s voice brightened. “Say that during your private talk, you discovered that he’s a little dim in the brain department.”
Nayna’s eyes widened.
“Knowing your folks, he’s likely to have a degree or two, so maybe also hint that perhaps all isn’t kosher there,” Ísa suggested with a deviousness that would’ve delighted the Dragon. “Or that you got the impression he barely scraped by.”
“Oh God, you’re a genius, Ísa!” Scrunching up the bag, Nayna lifted the fist of victory. “My parents are already planning for grandchildren with doctorates—a less-than-intelligent son-in-law will not do.”
And no, she didn’t feel guilty besmirching a random stranger’s intelligence. Not when she’d be saving them both from the horror of wriggling out of an arrangement that had no chance in hell of success.