by Alisha Rai
“Don’t worry about it,” Rana soothed, and moved over to the register. She quickly tapped in some information and waited for the check to print. “You’ll be getting your tip. But you don’t have to see them. They’re leaving.”
“Oh.” Dismay made her face fall. “You can’t mean you’re going to kick them out. I didn’t want to cause any trouble.”
Rana smiled at her, making sure not to direct her anger at the girl. Jyoti was painfully young, and it seemed like she wasn’t used to people sticking up for her. Not her fault. She did, however, have to get used to Rana sticking up for her.
These were her people.
She wanted to kick herself. She should have booted the assholes out the second she got a bad feeling about them. Her instincts rarely led her astray.
Mess made. All that was left was to fix it as best she could.
“You have two choices, Jyoti. You can either watch me kick these jerkfaces out and get some satisfaction from that, or you can go into the kitchen and wait there for five minutes to avoid the unpleasantness.”
The waitress’s shoulders sagged. “I’d rather wait in the kitchen, if that’s okay.”
“Sure thing.” She knew Devi would see the girl’s upset and feed her some happy-making food to cheer her up. Rana slipped the bill into a folio. “And, Jyoti.” She waited for the girl to look at her. “You didn’t cause any trouble. They did. We don’t serve troublemakers here, got it?”
Jyoti didn’t look entirely convinced, but she nodded and scurried away. Rana strode to the table o’ dickheads and gave them a bright smile. “Gentlemen. Everything going smoothly?”
Demonstrating their general assholish tendencies, the blond checked out her breasts, the brunet her legs. “Sure thing,” Boobs said, leering at her.
“Awesome.” She slapped the check down on his full plate of food. “Now leave.”
“Hey,” Legs protested. “What’s this about?”
“This is about being rude to the staff.” Rana kept her voice low and measured. The nearest table was far enough away they wouldn’t overhear, so long as everyone was civil.
“She’s lying,” Boobs muttered.
“Hmm, see, you say that a little too easily,” Rana remarked, not letting her instant rage seep into her voice. “Makes me wonder how many times you’ve said it before.”
“Look—”
“This isn’t a negotiation. Pay your bill and leave.”
“We’re not paying for food we didn’t even eat,” Legs objected.
“Oh, no.” She flipped open the folio and slapped a pen down on the check. “We’ll absorb the cost of the food. You are, however, leaving a nice-sized tip.”
Legs’s lips twisted. “Or what?”
Rana smiled. She leaned down until her face was even with his. “Listen up, douchecanoe. You think I haven’t dealt with men like you before? Here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to leave a forty-percent tip, and then you’re going to quietly get up and leave and never come back. In return…” She picked up the chapati from his plate and slowly crumpled it in her fist. “I won’t take your balls and play Ping-Pong with them. And in case you don’t believe that threat? I won’t tell your boss you’re running around harassing underage waitresses.” Jyoti was twenty, but she looked young. Let the men sweat.
Boobs tried to be brave. “You don’t know our boss.”
The sweet man baby. He was adorable. Rana sighed. “You’re Bob. That’s Martin. You work four buildings over. Your boss is Gerald. He likes to pick up his lunch every Wednesday. Usually lamb korma, medium spicy.” Rana opened her fist and let the ruined chapati fall onto his cooling food. She wiped her buttery hand on her apron. Honestly, did these men think she was new? She was an incurable gossip and incredibly nosy. There were few regular customers she didn’t know way too much about. “Actually, let’s make that a fifty-percent tip, hmm?”
“Is there a problem here?” Leena’s pleasant voice came from next to her, and she silently groaned. The more people who stood around the table, the more attention they would attract.
“Yeah, actually,” Legs started.
“Ping-Pong,” Rana reminded him, barely above a whisper.
He clammed up, then shrugged awkwardly. “No. No problem.”
Boobs was silent, but he had pulled out his wallet. He yanked out an impressive number of bills and dropped them on the table.
“They were just leaving.” Her remembered annoyance at Leena rose up, and she bristled, waiting for her sister to challenge her, but Leena only glanced at the men, back at her, and nodded before walking away. Leena wasn’t as comfortable with customers as Rana was. She tended to stick to the back office unless she truly had to deal with unpleasantness or Rana wasn’t there.
She didn’t leave the table until the men stood, and she followed them to the door, holding it open for them. As they passed, she looked at one angry face, then the other. “Ping. Pong.” Then she tapped the doorframe and gave them her brightest smile. “Have a great night, boys.”
* * *
“You’re tense tonight.”
Rana rolled her neck. “Sorry.” She was draped on the couch again, on her stomach, her head lying on her stacked arms.
His stool scraped across the floor. He did that a lot. When he wasn’t moving her, he was moving himself. He studied her from every angle with an absorption she might have found unnerving from someone else. With Micah, she was fascinated.
“Did you have a bad day at work?”
Oh thank God. She still hadn’t determined if he actually liked talking to her, or if he had figured out she loved babbling and simply wanted her relaxed. Part of her didn’t care. She’d take any excuse to spill out her feels. “Had to boot some assholes out during dinner tonight. They were harassing the staff.”
“They harassed you?”
The cool menace in the question made her smile. Aw. “Not really. Probably ’cause they knew I wouldn’t take their shit. They said some stuff to Jyoti. The girl who brought you to the back office that day you came to see me.”
He made an immediate disgusted noise, soothing her. “Assholes, indeed.”
“Nothing new. Asshole’s gonna ass.”
“How poetic.”
She sighed. “I’m not torn up over it. Sometimes I don’t mind playing bouncer. Gets my aggression out in a healthy manner.”
“So if it’s not that, then what has your back all knotted up like this?”
She raised an eyebrow. The man was like Sherlock when it came to how attuned he was to body language. “Meh.” She rubbed her cheek against her arm. “I’m kind of annoyed at my sister. We’re opening a second location.”
“You had mentioned that.”
“It’s a smaller space, more like a bistro rather than a full sit-down restaurant. It was supposed to be another revenue stream, like our catering business.” She pursed her lips, the tension headache reappearing at the base of her skull. “All it’s been is an exercise in my sisters ignoring me.” Rana realized she sounded like a pouty child.
She didn’t care.
“That other woman at the restaurant, when I came to see you. That was your sister? You share some similarities.”
“Because we’re brown?” she snarked. Leena was almost a foot shorter than her and both she and Devi took after their mother, while Rana looked way more like their dad.
“No,” he responded calmly. “Because your nose is distinctive.”
Instinctually, she covered her nose, her least favorite of her features. “It’s not that noticeable.”
“It’s not noticeable, but it is distinctive. You share it. You both also have the same hands.”
She pulled her hand away from her face and studied it. The fingers were long, the nails medium length and painted a vibrant orange.
It was a hand. Didn’t all hands look the same?
Riiip. Micah was creating a hefty stack of sketches. After she left, he’d pick them up and tidy them into a pile on one of
his workbenches. While she was there, they pooled all over the floor like discarded pieces of her.
“Stay like that, please.”
“Who the hell notices things like hands and noses when they first meet someone?” she mused, talking to her hand.
“Someone who studies people’s features for a living.”
“Is that why you don’t need a model usually? Because you’re so good at recreating people’s features?”
A pause. She twisted to look at him, but he scowled at her and jerked his chin down, so she returned to her position.
“I used to only use live models,” he finally responded.
Huh. In all the time she had been spying on him, she’d never seen a model in this room.
Before she could ask, he ripped the paper out. “Can you roll over onto your back?”
She shifted and flipped over. His warm palm grasped her ankle, and crossed her leg over her other one. She rested her hand on her belly. He didn’t rearrange her, so she assumed that was fine.
“So that one girl is your sister. Younger?”
“About a year, yes. We have another sister. She’s the chef. She’s four years younger.”
“You’re the oldest child.”
Her smile was wry. “Whatever stereotypes you’re thinking of that come with that designation, forget it.”
“I’m thinking you should be able to boss your sisters into doing whatever you want them to do.”
“Ah. That would work if anyone actually listened to me.”
“Don’t frown. That timid girl you spoke to when I was there. She listened to you.”
She relaxed her brow. “Yes. No one really gets in my way with the staff. It’s when I try to do anything else they shut me down.”
“Why do they do that?”
She lifted her chin. “Because…well, I have sort of a reputation for being flighty. And impulsive. But I’ve never been a dumb screw-up when it comes to the business. I’ve always put it first. Always.”
“Anyone who thinks you’re dumb is foolish.”
The certainty in his immediate reply warmed her. “Thanks. I don’t think my sisters are foolish. Just…I don’t know. Used to seeing me in a particular light? Sometimes it spills over into everything, even when it shouldn’t.”
The scratching of his charcoal slowed. “All families are like that.” His voice was quiet, so quiet she looked at him. He had turned off all the lights tonight and lit about a dozen candles all around the room, saying only, “Shadows,” when she asked him why. She understood it now, though. The lights flickered against his face, deepening the darkness of his eyes and sharpening the hollows under his cheekbones. He looked…different. Softer. She probably did too.
“I suppose so,” she returned.
“Why did you fight today?”
“I showed Leena my pick for the paint for the new place. A lovely soft blue. She barely looked at it and dismissed me.” Remembered frustration made her tense, until he leaned forward and stroked her instep. Her foot flexed.
“Relax. Why did she dismiss you?”
“Because it’s so different from our current place. We’re all red and gold. You know. Traditional. What any person would expect to see when they walked into an Indian restaurant.”
“Why do you want to change it up?”
“One, for practicality. That place is small. Anything darker would overpower it, so the color scheme should be kept light and airy.”
He made an approving noise. “I would agree with that. My flat in London was about the size of this studio. Painted it a lovely ice blue. Lighter colors do tend to open up smaller spaces.”
She glanced at him. He did this sometimes, sprinkled a mention or two of his life before he came here. It sounded so…different. Filled with friends and family instead of nobody, blue instead of beige. What had changed? Was it all because of the attack?
Since she knew he wouldn’t elaborate, she refocused on her problem. “Exactly. Second, I know that area. I went to school there.” She shot him a wry look. “My parents insisted on the best private schools, not that it helped me much.”
“Mine were focused on academics as well. Until they realized I was spending most of my time in every class drawing.”
She snorted. “I wish I’d been able to at least draw. Instead I…well. Never mind.” It was impossible to describe the sheer soul-crushing experience school had been for her, to be told every day she wasn’t exceptional at anything that mattered. Mediocre at sports, mediocre at academics, mediocre in art. Graduation had been the best day of her life, even if her mother had given her the silent treatment for a good portion of her senior year because Rana’d informed her college was off the table.
Rana rubbed her nose. Her dad had been okay with it. Ah, Rani, you should do what you think best. I can always use your help at the restaurant. “Anyway, the demographic in that neighborhood hasn’t budged in twenty years. There’s not a huge Indian population or Indian restaurants. One Asian fusion place, but it’s super upscale.”
“Your current establishment is hardly cheap looking.”
Rana twisted so she could see him better. He’d stopped drawing to focus on their conversation. He’d never done that before. “What were your first thoughts, when you saw our place?”
He hesitated. “I feel like this is a trap.”
“No trap. I won’t be mad.”
He considered his words. “I had a commission once, when I was in art school. Lovely woman, but she kept throwing around the word exotic for what she wished for her surroundings, and showing me pictures of Indian-inspired decor. That’s what your place reminded me of.”
She laughed loudly. “Good. That’s exactly what we wanted. God, I can remember my dad coming home from work when I was a little girl.” Rana deepened her voice, mimicking her late father so well, it triggered a pang of wistfulness. Someday, she’d probably forget what he’d sounded like. “These goras keep saying they like things to look exotic. How many elephants can we paint on the wall?”
The lines around his eyes crinkled. “So he gave them exotic.”
“Yeah. And we continued it, only refining it. Our clientele likes the red and gold and the marble statue of the Taj Mahal on the bar. They find it charming.”
“You don’t think the population around the new place will want the same thing?”
She struggled to find the right words. “Strategies have to be tailored. The community isn’t far from here geographically, but it’s like a different world. A world where the dresses my grandparents brought me from India were weird, our décor was tacky, and the smell of our food gross.”
“That was a while ago.”
“Yeah, but attitudes don’t change overnight.” She fisted her hand. “It’s a long con, Micah, getting people to embrace something new. We picked that site because Leena ran numbers and studied demographics and surveys, but running a business like ours depends on hooking customers as much as it does anything else. People there might want something different, but unfamiliar things are also scary. We have to be like…those trendy food trucks, where they serve exotic meats wrapped in burritos? We lure them in with something safe, then we give them different with our food.”
When he didn’t speak, she glanced at him. He was studying her with great fascination.
“What?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
“You want to say something.”
“You’re...you’re rather brilliant.”
She scoffed. That was definitely a word no one had ever applied to her. “Uh, no.”
“You are. Your understanding of human nature is impressive.”
“Oh. Well. Hmm.” Her cheeks heated, and she fumbled. “Thanks, I guess. I talk to people a lot, is all.”
Micah shifted. “You explained all this to your sister and she laughed? These sound like valid arguments.”
“Umm.” Now that she thought about it, had she explained any of this? “No. I may have just showed her the color and g
otten annoyed when Leena snorted, and then I got distracted by the assholes.”
His smile was brief but sincere. “You should try explaining your reasoning to them. I can’t imagine they won’t be as impressed as I am.”
She crossed her arms over her chest, trying to tamp down the surge of pleasure at his words. “They should trust me.”
“Why? Blind trust is…” He rested his arm on the pad. “It’s impossible.”
“When it’s family—”
“Family’s the hardest. They might love you to an overwhelming degree, but you can’t always trust they know what’s best. If you both don’t have the same goal in mind, you may be working at cross-purposes.” He shook his head. “It’s not enough to give someone the answer. You have to show the work, so the person can figure out if that’s the right answer for them.”
She stared at him, the intense speech taking her off-guard. “Are we still talking about paint samples?”
His lashes hid his eyes. “Yes. Of course. All I’m saying is, your sisters should listen to you, but you should give them something more to go on than a paint swatch. Make the argument. Back it up. Be upset if they still dismiss you.”
She wanted to pout, but her innate fairness made her realize his words were sensible. “Fine. I’ll think about it.”
Micah rose from his stool and came closer, kneeling in front of her. He wiped his hand on the rag draped over his shoulder, rested his finger against her chin and angled her head.
She had gotten used to this, him touching her and making minute adjustments. She brushed a kiss on his thumb. His warning, “Rana,” dissolved as soon as she took his thumb into her mouth, sucking lightly on it. He smelled clean and woodsy, with a faint hint of paint. A combination she had never thought to find sexy until Micah.
“I haven’t gotten nearly as many sketches as I wanted yet,” he reproved. But he didn’t move away, and she wasn’t imagining the dilation of his eyes or the bulge growing in his pants.
She gave him a final suck and pulled away. “Sorry. You were right there.”
“I need help if I’m going to keep this professional,” he chided.
His stern tone had her shifting, her thighs tightening. His observant eyes missed nothing, not the perking of her nipples or her restless legs. “Can’t we stop?”