Uncharted (Jersey Girls Book 3)

by Lisa-Marie Cabrelli

  Joyce called back, “We don’t have one! Outsourced.”

  Nandita flushed as the man turned back to her. His face had been full of solicitation and kindness, but now it was a mask of irritation. “You know we’re a warehousing company, right? We’re here looking for data analysts to help with our fulfillment systems.”

  “Oh, you’re Savia!” Nandita bashed the heel of her palm against her forehead. “Of course you are! I’m sorry, I was thinking of Navia. You know, the design company?”

  “Never heard of it.” The man pointed to a stack of resumes on a nearby table. “You can leave your resume there, if you’d like. We’ll contact you if something comes up that fits your skills profile.”

  She dropped a resume from the stack in her hands onto the pile and smiled at the man in apology. He didn’t smile back.

  Over the next hour, booth after booth, Nandita’s optimism faded into depression tinged with anxiety. She was woefully underprepared for this experience and, even worse, under-qualified. She was beginning to understand that her fixation on tailoring her education for her Princeton application hadn't served her well. She knew nothing of the corporate world, nothing about how she could pivot her skills into a more desirable career, and nothing about any of these companies. She struggled through brief and painful conversations with the company reps, many recommending she pursue an MBA, since she had no skills in IT. It was so unlike her to be underprepared for anything that her insecurities began to overwhelm her and she was getting close to tears.

  What had Claire said? Consider other options. Maybe it was time.

  The problem was the only other option that would keep her in the US was Sally's hair-brained scheme. Should she consider that? The whole idea of a green card marriage seemed absurd, like something out of a movie, but she could see her other options withering away. There were thousands of job applicants here who had the skills required to do the available jobs. How could she expect to even get an interview, let alone a job offer from a company that would be willing to sponsor her visa?

  Forget it, she thought. I’m getting out of here.

  Leaving with a stack of resumes in her arms would be admitting defeat, so she moved quickly down the aisles through the animated discussions and eager faces, dropping her resume on every slush pile within easy reach—not that her resume would make it off the pile. She couldn’t imagine any of these corporate dudes reading it.

  Wait! Someone was reading it! She had turned at the end of the aisle and was pushing her way back through the crowd when she bumped into a man standing at one of the slush pile tables. She put her hands out to steady herself and saw that, in his hands, held directly at her eye level, was her resume. Her name glared out at her as if announcing her recent bumpy arrival.

  She put on her best smile and lifted her head to apologize to this possible recruiter. Here was her chance. Her gaze landed on intense, dark eyes sitting under a mass of black curls and a face with the most perfect I’m-just-so-busy-and-important-that-I-don’t-have-time-to-shave stubble. The bump didn’t knock the breath out of her, but his face did. She took in a little gasp of air, and the face did not smile back. A flood of recognition swept over her. She knew this face!

  “You!” Nandita said, pushing backward and away from him, the touch of his skin suddenly repulsing her. “You have been following me!”

  It was her stalker.

  12

  Ravi – The Mistake

  Ravi was rooted to the spot. What a stupid mistake he'd just made. He’d been sure she would never see him in this crowd—it was like a cattle market, after all—but here she was, right in front of him. It took him a few seconds to recover from his shock, but once he had gathered his wits, he looked down at her. She was as beautiful in person, if not more so, as she was in the photos he had received via email. Her thick, black hair was loose about her shoulders and looked like licorice. His hand reached out toward her, but he pulled it back quickly. Had she noticed? He fought the crazy instinct to reach out and pull her hair to his nose. Did it smell like licorice, too? She had lined her almond eyes with thick, ebony liner, and her lashes were impossibly long. He registered the angry look on her face and felt his temper flare. What right did she have to be angry? He was the angry one!

  “Why would I follow you?” he said while trying to surreptitiously put the resume in his hand back in the slush pile. “I don’t even know you.”

  Her eyes flashed. “So it’s just a coincidence? I’ve seen you a few times in Hoboken, I saw you in Princeton, and now you’re in New York at the same time as me? It seems a very unbelievable coincidence.”

  “I’m sorry,” Ravi glared at her, “but I think you must be confusing me with someone else. I do live in Princeton, though—you may have seen me there.” Her face glowed with indignation, and he took in a quick breath as he felt his stomach turn and his heart beat a little faster. This rush of emotion was not supposed to be his reaction to her. He should have been angry.

  “Yes, I saw you in Princeton, but I saw you in Hoboken, too. I think you’re following me.”

  “Come on,” he said. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know you.”

  She hitched her bag a little higher on her shoulder and put both hands on her narrow hips, bringing his attention to her even narrower waist. He flushed in embarrassment as his stomach flipped yet again. “If you don’t know me, what were you doing with my resume in your hands?”

  He flushed deeply and glanced at the resume pile. There it was, right on the top and very difficult to deny. “I’m afraid you’ve caught me.” He improvised, casting his eyes downward in mock embarrassment. “I was trying to get my resume to the top of the pile.” He peeked through the black curls that had tumbled in front of his eyes to gauge her reaction. Her hands were still on her hips, but she didn’t look as angry; it was possible she was mellowing. He took a chance, lifted his head, and thrust his hand toward her, “Allow me to introduce myself. My name’s Ravi, and I’m desperate for a job. I was feeling a little overwhelmed by the number of overly qualified and overly confident hordes, so I was moving along the rows, trying to make sure my resume stayed on the top of the pile. It was the only strategy I could think to try. I’m sorry you caught me.”

  She stared at him for a few anxious moments and he could still see distrust in her eyes, but she took his outstretched hand. He choked back a gasp as their skin touched and a connection flamed between them. Her tiny fingers fit perfectly in his large palm, and he fought the urge to weave their fingers together. She felt something, too—he could tell by the way she quickly withdrew her hand and ran it through her licorice hair. He wanted that hand back again.

  “My name’s Nandita, and I’m overwhelmed, too.”

  “I’m sorry for moving your resume.”

  She stared at the growing pile and gave a little laugh. “I don’t think it makes a difference where that resume is in the stack—you’ll be the only one reading it today.”

  Her eyes started to fill with tears, but she quickly reached up and wiped them with the back of her hand. A little of her Kohl eyeliner smudged, and Ravi had the urge to reach out and smooth it away with his thumb.

  He shook himself out of his reverie and quashed his empathy—he could have no empathy for Nandita Bhatt. He was here to do a job and that was it. His reaction to her wasn’t unexpected, but he needed to hold onto his anger if he was going to get through this without getting hurt. He moved his hands into his back pockets, far away from her delicate skin and almond eyes.

  “Well, I have to get on with the business of not finding a job. It was nice to meet you, Nandita.”

  He stepped quickly away from her and moved through the crowd, feeling her eyes on his back as he walked quickly toward the exit. Well, that was it. He had met her now, and there would be no turning back. He had been avoiding contacting her, the obvious next step of his mission, because he had managed to convince himself he needed to gather information from afar. The truth was, however, that he had been avoidin
g meeting her because he wasn’t sure how he would react. He was angry, sure, but the situation was much more complicated than one simple, raw emotion. He hadn’t expected this crazy, instant physical attraction. That was dangerous. If he was to be successful, he needed to figure out a way to keep that in check.

  13

  Ravi – The Job

  Ravi Anand had a challenging life. His parents had moved to the United States when he was very young with the sole objective of raising their son to become a doctor. They came from stable, lower middle-class roots in India. His father had driven a taxi, and his mother had been a cleaner who’d transformed into an expert homemaker the day he was born. They had big dreams for their only son and planned to shower him with every opportunity they’d never had, so he could become a “man of education and substance.” When his uncle had offered Ravi’s dad a job as a factory foreman in the United States, his father had jumped at the chance. As he told it, he’d just known it was their destiny to raise an American doctor. His parents had been kind, but firm, and Ravi had sensed early on that their hopes and dreams were tied to his success, so he’d quickly learned to be terrified of failure. Failure meant disappointing his loving, earnest parents. They had made him their world, so he owed them his.

  He had studied hard at school, and although he was very bright, he wasn’t a natural learner. Homework that took his classmates ten minutes to complete during recess had taken him thirty minutes to complete at home. The pressure from his parents had kept him inside studying, away from the neighborhood street games of t-ball and flashlight tag. It had kept him from friends, too.

  He could count the friends he had made in his lifetime on one hand, and his only friend at this point was Tammy. Given the opportunity, she would bring her horde of friends to their apartment and force them to like him, but they had an unspoken agreement that Tammy did her “friending” elsewhere. The few times she did have gatherings at the apartment, she’d either made sure he wasn’t home, or gave him space to stay in his room. She understood and respected his drive to be alone and focused.

  Ravi didn’t want to be a doctor. He'd tried to want to be a doctor. In fact, as a teenager, he'd lain in his bed every night and prayed to every god he could think of to please make him want it. The desire never came, though, and as he got deeper into his studies, he became lonelier and lonelier. Not only did he not have time for friends, but he’d also felt himself pulling away from his parents. He was afraid they would discover his betrayal and sense that their dreams for him, borne out of love and adoration for their only child, were slowly destroying his soul. He couldn’t do that to them, so he’d slowly pulled away until he was an island—an island with a dog.

  He wanted to be a vet, which was the reason he had adopted Sandy, the big, fluffy, rusty-haired lab who was his one, true friend. Sandy never demanded, judged, or disappointed. Sandy was Sandy and she never pretended to be anything else.

  He'd never kissed a girl, which is why Tammy still thought he was gay. He wasn’t immune to the draw of a beautiful woman, and more than a few had propositioned him, telling him he looked like a Bollywood movie star. He’d been saving himself, though—stupidly, perhaps, but romantically—for the girl of his dreams. When that girl had disappeared from his life, he had never met anyone who stirred his soul in the same way—until yesterday.

  Now, lying on his bed and scratching Sandy’s head, he pulled a photo from his wallet. Soft in his hand and scuffed around the edges from all the handling, it was in black and white and taken like a passport photo. The girl in the picture was young, maybe fourteen, with her hair in two bouncy ponytails. Her grin was a challenge and a taunt to the camera, but it was her eyes that had spun him head over heels when he had first seen this photo ten years ago. Her eyes promised mischief, adventure, and freedom. It was these imagined exploits—the promise of a partner in crime—that had kept him going throughout high school. He had loved her without a doubt, but then she had left him. He tucked the photo back into his wallet.

  The bright glow of his laptop screen was the only light in the room. He sat at the computer and opened his email; it was no good to be so maudlin when he had a job to do.

  Anything?

  The email contained a single word, but the message was clear. That one word said, “I have been waiting to get information from you and you have given me none.” The problem was that it was hard to get information about a person when you were afraid to talk to people. He wasn’t the detective type. Again, his parents had accidentally placed him on a path he had no desire to follow.

  He had finally spoken to her today, though, and what had he learned? She was fierce and driven with a soft core of self-doubt that was threatening to overtake her. He learned she was overwhelmingly beautiful and that she made his skin light up like there were tiny power lines threaded throughout his body. Was that useful information? He didn’t think so. He felt his anger flare again. He hated being in this position, but he had no choice. He didn’t want to do this job, but if he didn’t go through with it, he couldn’t face the consequences. This nightmare was tearing him apart.

  He hit reply on the email and typed.

  She is applying for jobs. Lots of them. He clicked send. He was just starting to get lost again in his memory of their touching fingers when his computer dinged with a reply.

  Interview Wednesday. 11am. Allied Graphics. 12 North Tulane Street, Princeton.

  He sighed and closed his laptop. Turning to Sandy, he said, “Time for a long walk tomorrow, buddy! At least it’s relatively local.” Sandy looked up at him, whined a little, and stood. She circled a few times on the bed, dragging the covers into a mess, until she finally settled with her head on one of the pillows. “I know, it’s time for bed. I’m coming.”

  Ravi stared at the envelope on the desk with the University of Pennsylvania return address and felt his stomach turn. What was he doing with his life?

  14

  Nandita – The Plan B

  Sally groaned, kicked off her shoes, and propped her feet up on Nandita’s coffee table.

  “Very ladylike, Sally. People eat off that table, you know.” Nandita was in the kitchen pouring Sally a glass of wine—always the first thing she did when Sally showed up for one of their chats.

  “Oh no, Nan, do not give me that wine. I swear, if you do, I will fall asleep. I don’t know what’s up with me lately, but this afternoon, I had to go upstairs and take a nap. I left the gallery to Marie for an hour. I think the stress of Tod being away all the time is getting to me. Plus, we had a huge fight.”

  Nandita stopped pouring in surprise. “You and Tod had a fight? You don’t fight, do you?” She put the half-filled glass and bottle of pinot grigio back in the fridge and held up the kettle to Sally, raising her eyebrows.

  “Yes, please. Tea would be great. No, we don’t fight, like, ever! That's why I'm freaking out. Remember I told you guys something felt off? Well, it all came to a head the other night. I’ve been working so hard on these gallery tours, but he’s miserable and he’s blaming all of his stress on me.” She started rubbing her feet, groaning again. “I mean, I can’t work any harder to make us successful, Nan. Why doesn’t he appreciate it? He accused me of doing all of this for me! Can you believe it? I mean, how could I be doing it for me? He’s the amazingly talented artist who stands to get famous!”

  Nandita stood next to the kettle, organizing the tea bags and waiting for the water to boil. She had something to say, but she knew she needed to tread lightly with Sally. She had a temper like a firework with a very fast-burning fuse, and if you accidentally lit that fuse, it was often difficult to get out of the way before it blew up. “Well, maybe he just misses you, Sal. Do you think maybe he doesn’t want to be famous?”

  “Doesn’t want to be famous? Who doesn’t want to be famous? I mean, this is what life is about! You want to make your mark, right? You want to be a famous architect!”

  Nandita laughed as she poured the hot water into the delicate china cups
. She had bought them yesterday, thinking they would be a perfect addition to her little, cozy apartment. She didn’t tell Claire, though, as she would have been worried about Nandita getting too comfortable. “I want to be an architect, yes, but famous? Not so much. I just want to do work I enjoy in a place I enjoy.”

  “Pish, posh!” Sally said, getting up to help Nandita bring the tea to the table. “Everyone wants to be famous—they just pretend they don’t. Anyway, Tod will realize how good all of this travel is for him. He just needs some time to adjust. He left yesterday for Miami to a show at a gallery that’s a perfect fit for his work. They have very little to offer in his style, and he could fill a niche. I bet he’ll text me in the next few hours apologizing for yelling at me. He’d better.”

  Nandita checked out Sally’s face thoughtfully. Was that worry? It must have been quite a bad fight for Sally to be worried. Tod adored her, and they had a fiery, passionate connection fueled mostly by Sally’s strong personality. She needed to be careful that their fire didn’t burn anything.

  “I’m sure you’re right—and you'll forgive him in an instant, of course. On another topic, I met my stalker a few days ago.”

  Sally crashed her delicate cup into her saucer, making Nandita wince. It would be just like her to break something Nandita had only bought yesterday. Her passion was abundant.

  “What!?”

  “Yep. I ran into him at the job fair Maureen mentioned. He gave me some story about looking for a job, himself, but he was lying.”

  Sally put her hands on her knees and gave her a stern look. “Listen to me, Nan. A stalker is not something to mess with. If this guy is stalking you, he could be dangerous. You’re not supposed to converse with your stalker.”