No Escape from Love

by Reet Singh

  'Take your pick,' she said, of the bedrooms. 'Oh, and one of these cupboards has towels and sheets and stuff.'

  She waited for him to finish inspecting the premises, and frowned at how the place shrank the minute he stepped in. Despite the towering ceiling of the colonial-style building, Aalok seemed to fill the room. Mohini fidgeted, wanting to be gone already. Her childhood playroom, witness to myriad adventures, suddenly seemed claustrophobic.

  Her guest wandered into one of the bedrooms - she didn't dare follow him into the confined space. He was out in seconds and walked across to check the other one. She heard him whistle, then chuckle, but she stayed put - biting her lip to quell the impulse to go see what was amusing him. Moments later, when he finally came out, he carried a large, knitted teddy bear dressed in a bright pink coat.

  'I'll take this bedroom,' Aalok laughed. 'It offers a room-mate.'

  Mohini flushed. 'That's Raja. He's mine. I haven't seen him in years, but ...'

  She held out her hand. 'I'll take him, if you don't mind.' The sight of her childhood friend tucked into the man's bare-chested embrace troubled her.

  'Aw, come on,' he cajoled, as if she was a grumpy two-year old. 'You have Tiger - let me have Raja.' His eyes glinted wickedly, and Mohini stopped herself from rushing across the room to rescue the teddy bear.

  The man clearly did not believe in personal space or personal property or any of the boundaries most people took for granted.

  'Fine,' she said, turning and stalking out. He made her fuming mad! Let him play his silly games - she couldn't care less.

  'Dinner is in fifteen minutes,' she warned over her shoulder, tempted to latch the door and lock him in so he couldn't disturb her equanimity with his easy, unwelcome, familiarity.

  Horrid, bare-chested, teddy-bear stealing man!

  Three

  When she saw him again, Mohini had had time to calm down. She was no closer to solving the mystery of the man's sudden appearance since her brother's phone was alternately 'out of range' or was 'switched off' every time she called - but she'd convinced herself to put on a brave face.

  The brave face froze when he walked in - he cleaned up nice and her heart fluttered. She almost forgot that she was upset with him - but then the jaunty twinkle in ebony eyes and his raffish air set off alarm signals and she bristled.

  Ignoring tousled, damp hair and the faintly shadowed jaw, she played with the food on her plate as her unnerving guest wolfed down a dinner of black dal and pumpkin. Secretly hoping that he loathed the vegetable - as she knew some people did - she was chagrined when he took a second helping.

  The dinner tasted like ashes. In any case, she barely noticed what she ate, her whole being focused on keeping her gaze averted from the acres of bare skin on display. Acres. The man was huge - and tanned and muscular - and almost indecent in short shorts and a sleeveless T-shirt, this time his own.

  She hoped Tejopur's famed mosquitoes would make a meal of him - but while she swiped one away every now and then, he seemed unharmed.

  Thick-skinned!

  Mohini sniffed and, displeased at the blatant bias, smashed an errant mosquito against her wrist with unnecessary violence, then returned to pushing the food about on her plate.

  When her guest was done eating, she rose, relieved, and gathered the dishes. She waved him back when he made to follow her. 'Let me get you a glass of hot milk. I won't be a minute.'

  He groaned, patting a very flat stomach in protest, but she was having none of it. 'Milk is the obligatory nightcap in this part of the world. From our own buffaloes. You must.' And she scuttled away.

  Of course he followed her out. She should have known he would - he had demonstrated several times how little he cared about keeping his distance.

  'That was fabulous!' he said, sounding quite sincere. Taking over, he relieved her of the tray of dirty dishes and she had no choice but to lead the way to the detached kitchen.

  She washed as he dried - in silence - until he spoke suddenly, almost causing her to drop a spoon.

  'Thanks, by the way! It's a relief that my SIM didn't end up in Tiger's stomach.'

  Mohini - her entire right side buzzing because the man chose to stand closer than she thought necessary - did not look up from her task.

  'Yeah,' she muttered. 'Lucky. Sad about the phone though.'

  'You wouldn't have another one lying about somewhere, would you? Even something old and decrepit that will recognize my SIM? I'm kind of handicapped without a phone.'

  Mohini shook her head, feeling slightly guilty of her indirect role in the loss of his phone. 'We'll have to go into town tomorrow - or no, wait, sorry, but the shops are closed on Sunday. So Monday?' She peeped up at him.

  'God! That's like eons away!'

  'Not really,' Mohini said, surprised at his peevish tone. 'It's only a day and a bit. Don't tell me your world will disintegrate if you don't have a phone? Here, give me that katori before you smash it.'

  'Is it too much to expect? That something as commonplace as a cellphone can be bought just like that? Without too much trouble?'

  'This isn't Delhi. People wake early here, and work horrendously hard all day. And they value family time, so Sundays are...'

  'Whoa! That's some chip you have on your shoulder! I know zillions of people in millions of places, Delhi even, who value family time and Sundays. And who work horrendously hard.'

  And just like that, the air became thick with animosity again.

  Mohini had had enough of the annoying man. Thankful that the dishes were all done, she made up her mind to get away before he plagued her any further, the promised glass of buffalo milk be damned!

  She turned off the kitchen faucet but her exasperation caused her to use greater force than it could bear. The ancient valve gave way and an enthusiastic fountain of cold water spouted forth.

  It erupted with enough force to splatter all over her, and over the man who stood working by her side. Stunned, the two combatants sputtered as the icy shower made a mockery of the tensions that had simmered seconds before.

  Aalok was the first of them to recover. Chuckling now, where earlier he'd been so peeved, he attacked the wounded faucet with a cloth napkin. The raging torrent calmed down somewhat. The napkin, though it was a sodden, dripping mess, was holding its own - the tight knot that Aalok had engineered allowed only a trickle to escape.

  Mohini gawked. Was this the same man who couldn't survive a broken cellphone? He'd transformed into a handyman - a somewhat clumsy one - before her disbelieving eyes.

  Impressed though she was, Mohini couldn't stop herself.

  Smirking, she sauntered over to the sink, reached under it, and turned off the main water supply. The drip stopped immediately and completely. Aalok winced.

  Mohini laughed. Her first real, uninhibited laugh in a long while - it rang out lusty and natural.

  'City slicker!' she said, and grabbed his hand as he moved towards a bucket and mop.

  'Leave it! Bindro will get to it in the morning. Let's get out of here before something else attacks us.'

  They were both sopping wet, and grinning, as she led him out of the kitchen. She let go of his hand at once, but could still feel the strength of long, firm fingers wound around hers.

  She had grabbed his hand in the excitement of the moment, and now she felt silly and embarrassed.

  ‘I have a couple of spare taps,’ she babbled. ‘I’ll ask Nikkoo to replace it first thing.’

  They were in the safety of the garden by then, and she gravitated towards the swing.

  Aalok settled by her side and used his feet to propel them back and forth. The cool night breeze played over their damp skin and hair and clothes. They began to speak of random things, and Mohini couldn’t help noticing how the fiasco with the kitchen tap had broken the ice between them.

  'Listen,' she said, a hand gripping the thick chain that hooked up the garden swing.

  ‘Yeah?’

  'My phone has dual SIM capability. If
you like you could use one slot.'

  §§§

  'Why, that's very nice of you. I appreciate it.'

  Aalok was surprised by her sudden generosity, but frankly relieved at her offer. He fumbled in the pocket of his shorts for the neatly wrapped packet - she'd folded and refolded a large square of the local newspaper around the SIM-card, and had then secured it into a plastic bag. He managed to unwrap everything without mishap and handed the card to Mohini.

  He couldn't wait to have a functioning phone. It wouldn't do to lose touch with Delhi.

  His generous hostess inserted the SIM and snapped the back cover of the phone closed. She’d just about switched on the instrument when it rang. The unexpected sound - a rather strident Bollywood number - startled him, and apparently her as well because she jumped and dropped the instrument on to her lap.

  'Oh!' she said, staring at the cell phone while it shrilled away impatiently.

  'You should probably answer that,' Aalok suggested, and Mohini laughed.

  'Of course. It was just so sudden...'

  'Hullo?' she spoke into the phone, her tone warm and sparkling.

  Then, 'I beg your pardon?'

  Aalok raised an eyebrow in the dark, surprised at the frost that displaced all traces of humor from Mohini's voice.

  'Stop! You've got the wrong person. Just a minute,' she said, and almost flung the phone at him. She sprang off the swing as though stung.

  'Some very drunk, very dissolute female wants to know if I can guess what she is or isn't wearing under her dress.'

  Before he could respond, and from halfway across the lawn, she concluded, 'I'm guessing that call is for you!'

  Taken aback at the speed with which the climate went from cozy to icy, he watched her scamper away, flapping her hands, and then wiping them on her shirt, as though they were soiled.

  He was sorry to see her go. He'd been diverted in her company - she'd talked about her grandfather, about the village, and of her cottage industry that employed local women. Her stories had captured his imagination. He was a photo-journalist and so he saw things differently - he noticed what other people missed.

  The untimely phone call had disrupted Mohini's anecdotes and had ended the very brief camaraderie he'd enjoyed with a woman more complicated than any he'd ever met.

  The living room door banged rather decisively behind her and she was gone. Aalok sighed and put the phone to his ear. Frustration and annoyance made his tone harsher that he would have wished.

  'Who the hell is this?’

  ‘Kimi? Seriously? No.......don't. I've told you before....... I am not coming over, and I'm in no mood to play stupid games with you ..... now or ever. Dammit, Kimi, keep your clothes on ... No, I don't think you need another drink.'

  §§§

  Mohini fumed - is that why he'd been so upset about with being phone-less? Because one of his floozies might call? She'd been silly to offer her phone to him!

  She had to stop being such a soft touch. Having come to serious grief in the past because she'd trusted too easily, she'd foolishly allowed another man to disarm her - to distract her enough for her to offer him the use of her phone.

  And now, she would never be able to use it again without imagining him getting down and dirty with some woman - maybe even more than one woman. Ugh! Mohini screwed her eyes shut to stop the disconcerting images.

  She paced up and down the lounge, then, when that didn't help, burst into her room and banged the door shut. A little voice in her head tried to tell her she was over reacting - but she shushed it without compunction. She was perfectly within her rights to be upset with a man who barged into her peaceful life and turned it all upside down by being so ... so ... large and obtrusive and so in her face all the time.

  If he had to flash his sexy bare skin and rippling muscle, if he had to be odiously provoking, and if he must whisper sweet nothings into his girlfriend's ear, he could do it on his own time and using his own cell phone, thank you very much. And preferably light years away from her property.

  Bah!

  His overconfidence - his presumptuous acceptance of his place in the world - her world in this case, really got her goat. And of course, there was the niggling little problem that she still didn't know why he was in her world at all.

  She didn’t trust good looking men – especially not men who were aware of the fact and used it to their advantage. This one knew it all right - the way he'd strutted about shirtless and had flexed his well-toned muscles at her. But he was also hiding something, and in her experience that did not make for trust.

  Her heart clenched painfully as half-buried memories threatened to surface. It shook her. That was the second time today that the stranger had managed to evoke something she thought she had entombed deep, deep down.

  She would call Ritvik - never mind if it was Saturday night and he was out clubbing with Tina. Her brother would explain about Aalok and then she'd be at peace. But the wretched man had her cell phone! Well, he had better be finished with it by now because she wasn't letting him use it for a moment longer.

  First, though, she had to calm down. Running agitated fingers through her hair, she encountered clips. Plucking them off took seconds and she sighed in relief - all that second-guessing had given her a headache. She felt much better once the tight knot of her bun opened. As the dark tresses settled about her shoulders, happy to be released from capture, Mohini's fingers found the spot that ached.

  Massaging gently, she took deep breaths to steady fraught nerves. There! Minutes later, feeling gratifyingly numb, she let herself out of the room, and then out of the main house, hoping Aalok hadn't walked off to the annexe with her phone. Somehow, despite her restored composure, she didn't feel equal to tackling him in his den - not that she was going to tackle him, just ask him nicely if she could have her phone back.

  Fortunately for her, he was still on the garden swing, although horizontal now, and sprawled along the length of the cushioned seat.

  And quite still. The phone lay on the grass next to over-sized slippers and a tube of mosquito repellent. For a second her heart fluttered in worry, but then she heard a gentle snore. Followed by another. Daring to venture closer, she peered at his chest and was relieved to see it rise and fall most satisfactorily. God, she was getting spooked - of course he was alive - everyone didn't die on her, for heaven's sake! He must have been exhausted to have fallen asleep in the open like that, even with the mosquito repellent.

  This close up, in the silvery light of a full moon, he looked quite beautiful. Harmless even. She crept closer, ostensibly to pick up her cell phone, but she couldn't look away from the sleeping form of the man who plagued her so much.

  Although she wasn't even remotely interested, it was silly to pretend that he wasn't a fabulous specimen. Now that she could stare without fear of embarrassment, she noted spiked lashes that fluttered ever so slightly as he slept. His jaw was strong and square, a determined contour - no wonder he walked about as though he owned the world. At this late hour, his chin was shadowed with the hint of a stubble making him look raffish - very bad-boyish and rather more attractive than was strictly fair.

  Mohini itched to know the truth. Was he running away from something? How absurd for a city slicker to come out all the way to a village he had never been to before. Even more absurd was for him to come unannounced.

  The city slicker muttered something unintelligible, and Mohini nearly fell over backwards, perched perilously as she was on knees and toes. Her heart sped up - but he didn't waken, and she took in a heaving gulp of air. She was certain her thundering heartbeat would rouse him, but he continued to breathe evenly, his nostrils flaring with every breath he took.

  As her pulse settled to a more placid rate, Mohini's gaze moved willy-nilly to his mouth. She gulped - she didn't want to dwell on it, but it was noticeably full and rather fabulously curvy. If she were to grade it, it would merit a ten as far as sexy mouths went.

  Whoa! She closed her eyes. So she
was a voyeur now?

  She made to move away, but her shoulder bumped the metal edge of the swing and she flinched, swallowing a cry of pain. Freezing, and flaming in embarrassment, she waited for the denouncement. She was doing her clumsy best to be caught skulking about and ogling a man while he slept.

  It was second time lucky for her, because, mercifully, the man was dead to the world. The mild rocking of the swing merely made him twitch and turn his face some degrees away from her prying eyes.

  His companion, who had been invisible to her, wasn't as forgiving, though. A startled hiss drew Mohini's disbelieving attention to where Tiger glared resentfully at her. The fickle feline was tucked into the man's side, snug between his ribcage and the cushioned back of the garden swing!