Have Gown, Will Wed

by Killian McRae

  “I’d never be able to take away enough time from the company to do anything that serious.” She clipped on her Bollywood-worthy, dangling earrings. “No, I just realized that I wanted what you guys have.”

  “Stretch marks?” Jamie asked.

  “A drinking problem?” Nichole added.

  “A loving partner, someone to come home to at night,” Rosalind said. “You guys are making me worried. Is marriage really that terrible?”

  “Not really.” Nichole swooped back and seated herself on a nearby chair. “Everything has ups and downs, I suppose. Then again, none of us married Kane Kennedy. Oh, my God, Rosalind, how did you ever manage to bag Kane-more-than-able?” She lowered her voice conspiratorially. “And is he still, you know, more-than-able as he used to be?”

  “Having never slept with him in college, I’m lacking a reference point.” She wasn’t about to tell her clamoring formerly close-as-kin friends that she didn’t have any reference point, college-era or otherwise. “I don’t know how it happened. Somehow Xavier just crossed paths with him in his search. He didn’t even know I knew him.”

  “Must be destiny,” Jamie remarked. “Xavier … He was that dashing, Christian Bale-looking guy you said hello to at dinner last night, right? He’s not exactly bad looking himself. Why didn’t you just snap him up?”

  She hoped neither of her friends caught the flush that reddened her cheeks or how she was sucking in her lips to keep herself from jumping into a downward spiral of denial. Dinner last night had been long before the almost kiss. Rosalind was still turning over the events in her head, wondering if she was more ashamed she’d almost let the kiss happen, or regretful that she hadn’t.

  All in all, she concluded that Xavier Hommes really was as gifted with human insight as he said, right down to proving his theory true. Yes, looking back, there were more than a few short-lived romances in her past she’d managed to push into an early grave one way or another. When things got serious, she got suspicious, but it wasn’t exactly for the reasons Xavier supposed. “No, not bad looking at all,” she finally agreed through a sigh. “Well, we better get downstairs or we’ll be late. Traffic here challenges one’s sanity.”

  She let Nichole and Jamie keep up the conversation on the plusses and minuses of matrimony into the elevator. The numbers began their slow, methodical descent, working from her fortieth floor suite down to the thirties, into the twenties. They’d have gone faster if they were scuba diving in a vat of molasses.

  Rosalind looked at her hips with horror. “Damn it, I forgot my purse.” She shoved the call button for a floor just a few down from their current descent. “You guys go down and meet the car. Tell Kane I’ll be along in a minute, okay? I’m going to jump off here and run up on the other elevator.”

  “Will do.”

  At the sixteenth floor, she got out and crossed the concourse, and soon was inching up to her room at the elevator’s leisurely pace. Luckily she’d slipped her access card in to the pocket of her pants. Her bag, of course, was right where she left it, on the bathroom sink. She didn’t even really need it except for carrying one item. As her particular sari didn’t have pockets, she couldn’t think where she’d keep the engagement ring she’d so far successfully concealed.

  The elevator on the way down just couldn’t move quickly enough. Somehow the edges of the day were folding in on her. She had to get through, had to see through this task before she lost her conviction.

  She didn’t notice the elevator had stopped on the twenty-eighth floor until the doors opened. She looked up to see Xavier Hommes, black suit, green tie, looking at her in wide-eyed disbelief.

  She went stiff. He didn’t move. Finally, when the doors automatically began to close, she stuck out her hand to stop them.

  “I can take another car down,” he offered.

  She clicked her tongue and pushed open the door. “For God’s sake, Xav, we’re both adults.”

  “So I’ve heard.” He looked unsure, but he accepted the invitation and stepped in. When the door closed again, he rounded on her. “Last night—”

  Rosalind held out a hand, but refused to look him in the face. “I want to tell you something. My mother was,” she sighed, “the most amazing woman I have ever known. She raised me on her own, all while running her own accounting firm. She always told me how proud she was of me, how much she hoped for me to live a life even better than hers. I knew what an impressive human being my mother was. I knew my father didn’t deserve her, that no one would ever deserve her. And I doubted anyone would ever deserve me, either, because I was going to be damned certain I became every inch the success she hoped I would be.”

  “So what I said was—”

  “Both completely right, and the complete opposite of the truth,” Rosalind supplied. “I’ve lived all my life knowing no one would ever be good enough. And by proxy, those I care about. You see, I don’t throw the term ‘friend’ around loosely. Yet, time after time, I’ve seen them fall in love with men that I had to admit, were stellar people and deserving. Suddenly, I realized that by keeping my heart reserved thinking no man would ever deserve it, I was in fact making myself into someone who didn’t deserve anyone. I don’t think I realized that until last night.”

  “I didn’t mean to insult you,” he declared.

  They were both looking at the shrinking numbers of the elevator’s indicator with impatience and a tiny bit of wariness. This hotel had to have the slowest moving elevators in all of Mumbai.

  “You didn’t,” Rosalind said. “In fact, you brought me clarity. When you said prove it, I thought you were trying to kiss me just because you wanted to kiss me. It wasn’t until later that I realized you did it to prove to me you were right; I have sabotaged many relationships. If I had kissed you last night, even if Kane hadn’t almost walked in on us, it would have given me enough reason to send one more romance to the guillotine.”

  His astonishment dissolved into an awkward smile. “Um, yeah, that’s what I was doing. I was making you come face to face by … But we didn’t kiss. And now you know, Kane must be the one.”

  “Yes, he is,” she agreed. She finally turned to meet Xavier’s gaze just at the doors opened out on to the lobby. “And you were right: he’s very lucky to have me.”

  Folding

  Kane caught sight of Rosalind stepping off the elevator and grinned like a dunce. She was so utterly beautiful, so striking, he actually felt his breath rush from his lungs as well as if he’d been walloped on the chest. He always knew the woman he’d end up marrying would be a divine specimen of female glory. He’d never have imagined, however, that she’d also be an exceptional human being in her own right: intelligent, witty, hardworking, and with goals that mirrored or complemented his own. So what if she was a little … reserved with her passion. She was old-fashioned that way. While he thought at first that would have been a strike against her, Kane found instead the anticipation building a refreshing thrill.

  “Where are Nichole and Jamie?” she asked when she’d made her way to where the town car stood by.

  “I hired them a taxi,” he informed her as he bent to kiss her on the cheek. Jasmine-scented perfume filled his senses. “I wanted a few minutes with you alone. I’ve barely seen you since we arrived yesterday.”

  He felt himself blessed when, instead of her typical argument to the contrary, Rosalind’s features lit up. “That’s so thoughtful of you.”

  Without further ado, Kane circumnavigated the chauffeur who stood at the ready and opened the back door of the car. Rosalind nodded her head in thanks, leaned over, and ducked in. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched as Xavier Hommes negotiated flagging down a taxi with the porter. It crossed Kane’s mind that maybe he should offer him a ride; it seemed a gesture-in-kind for sharing a bed, but then he’d have to wait even longer before getting Rosalind alone.

  Kane allowed the driver to close the
door after he had gotten in. Immediately, his hand reached out to take Rosalind’s. Then, through a slightly inebriated memory of the night before, he found cause to pause.

  “Is it okay to touch you now?”

  She followed his gaze to her arms. “Oh, yeah, it’s fine. I washed the paste off after I got up to the room last night. The dye lasts a couple of weeks, I guess, but how many times am I going to get a chance to go to a wedding in India as one of the bride’s honored guests?”

  The patterns were indeed, simple, yet elegant. He pulled Rosalind’s hand to his mouth and pressed a tender kiss to her knuckles before holding it out to examine more closely. His fingers traced the crisscross of lines over the back of her hand, up her wrist.

  “It is quite extraordinary,” he admitted. “How long did it take for all this?”

  “The painting part? About a half hour. Nila put it on. It was the drying that took forever.”

  He turned over her wrist. Near the crook of her elbow, a blotchy imperfection on the edge of the smooth pattern caught his attention. The flaw was faint, but still noticeable.

  “And what happened here?” he asked, rubbing the spot. “Did she smudge?”

  Rosalind’s nose wrinkled. “No, she didn’t smudge anything. She…” Suddenly her tongue stilled. Her mouth hung open. “Oh no, I… must have… brushed against… something last night. Luckily it’s on the inside of my arm, though, so no one will see it. One small flaw, no big deal.”

  “Nothing about you is flawed.” He watched her cheeks blush over. “There’s only divergent perfection.”

  He pressed his lips to the inside of her wrist, then open his mouth just enough to lick the spot. From heavy lidded eyes, he looked up at Rosalind and caught sight of her tongue darting out to wet her lips.

  His hands went to her face and pulled her close. “Please, let me do that.”

  First he pulled her bottom lip between his and sucked, then moved to kiss her full on. To his surprise, he felt her body shift. Rosalind pulled her legs up under herself and propped forward, intensifying the depth.

  “You cannot do that here!”

  Their driver took turns cursing noiselessly at traffic and glaring at them via the rearview mirror. His bony finger shook with the intensity of each word. “I do not have tinted glass. You will get us pulled over for indecency.”

  With a dejected sigh, Kane lowered his hands to Rosalind’s hips and guided her back down in her seat. “Soon.”

  “Tonight?” she asked.

  “You sure about that?” She nodded. “What about needing to keep up appearances? I thought you didn’t want Kamakshi’s family to catch on that we’d be… Gasp, sleeping together before we’re married.”

  Rosalind fixed her seat belt. “I think they’ll be a little too busy today with the wedding to worry about my shenanigans. And more importantly, I want to. I think I’ve been nervous because, well… frankly you had a reputation for being phenomenal, and me, not so much.”

  “You’re scared I’ll break things off because of bad sex?” He almost laughed when she shyly nodded. “Rosalind, don’t worry about it. Even if it does go badly – which, by the way, I don’t think it will – it’s not a one-time only thing. We’ll work on it, make it better. There’s no rush for everything to fall into place right away.”

  No artists in the world could ever hope to capture the way she lit up at his statement.

  Kane flexed his thumb over the back of her hand. “Just relax today, and tonight, I’ll prove it to you.”

  Xavier’s hand hesitated on the car handle door, his shoulders tight, his teeth gritting. Through the back glass of the departing town car, he played dumb witness to Kane and Rosalind’s groping.

  Well, okay, groping might be an exaggeration. But he was touching her, and she was clearly allowing it to happen. At this point, the fact that it was consensual was enough to send him reeling.

  What was the matter with him? There she’d been, within arm’s length, his lips right against hers, and somehow, he had blown it. Moreover, sharing his little theory on her history of gone-wrong relationships right before he tried to kiss her backfired in epic fashion. At the very least, in the elevator, couldn’t he have told her the truth?

  Yes, he could have, and cost his firm one hell of a commission and future client. Not to mention, what would she think of him when she found out? His whole business was based on his reputation for insight and his well-established professional demeanor. True, the search he’d conducted for a spouse was confidential and would never enter in to the public domain, God willing. But if she reacted poorly and withdrew the contract for one year of exclusivity, the rumor mill would grind. It could bring down not only his career, but his whole company. All true and undeniable facts that refused to bow down to one unrelenting truth: he loved Rosalind Betters.

  To hell with it. Xavier Hommes was a man whose talent was matching up a client with the best available candidate for the position. If he didn’t do just that, he’d never be able to have confidence in anything he ever did again.

  “Sir?”

  The taxi cab driver looked back, his right arm stretched over the top of the seat, his fingers cycling through successive taps.

  Xavier nodded. “I think I forgot something in my room. Would you be willing to wait here for about ten minutes while I run up?”

  The cabbie huffed. “You’re at the Crown Mumbai. I know all about that elevator. Unless you’re on the bottom floor, I better be willing to wait fifteen.”

  “But will you?”

  He pushed the red button on an instrument panel on the dash. Immediately a blinking light flashed and a slow climb of numbers shone.

  “Thank you! I’ll be right back.”

  Xavier peeled through the lobby of the hotel as though dogs were nipping his heels. Yes, he was going to give Rosalind a demonstration of how seriously he took his job, and her future.

  Red-Handed

  Kane wore confusion on his face like a five o’clock shadow. He’d gone wide-eyed as soon as they’d entered the temple and had barely caught his breath since he noticed the symbolic fire pit the bride and groom were to sit before. Rosalind knew that a man of his occupation didn’t easily let it be known he was outside of his element, and loved seeing a more vulnerable side of him.

  “Your first Indian wedding, I take it.” Rosalind hooked her arm with his and led them through the huddle and into the reception hall.

  “Is it so obvious?”

  “Only if someone looks at you.” A smile danced between them. “It’s okay, I get it. This is my third one, but even still, I’m a bit overwhelmed. I had no idea Kamakshi’s would be so extravagant. This all must have cost a fortune.”

  “Well, when you get married, you should do it right, right?”

  There was something peculiar in his tone. Kane spoke with a tinge of nerves. She hoped he wasn’t upset by the tight confines needed to pass through the doors to the inside. Or worse, that he had caught on to her plan.

  Rosalind could not have been prepared for the splendor the reception hall held. Four hundred could easily fill the space. Looking at the mass of people in front and behind them, that’s about how many they had invited, too. Near the head of the hall, a dais on which thrones contoured of red cloth and bearing gold embellishments sat, over atop which a white canopy laced over with freshly cut jasmine vines had been erected.

  “I think maybe the reason that the divorce rate is so low in India is because people can only afford one of these each lifetime,” Kane said. “That also sort of makes the reincarnation thing make sense, too. The only way you could pull off something this big more than once is to live more than once.”

  To the side of the tables a half dozen poster boards mounted on easels sat at irregular intervals. They approached one near the back of the hall and scouted. Rosalind’s finger traced over the plan until finally she
found R. BETTERS and K. KENNEDY at a table near the bride. Jamie and Nichole were at the same table, along with Kamakshi’s Stanford advisor and a few coworkers back from San Francisco. It seemed this is where the foreign contingent would be hosted. And that included ...

  “X. Hommes,” Kane read aloud the moment she said the name to herself. “I didn’t realize he was so close to the bride and groom.”

  “Me neither.” She shrugged in her effort to thwart all the butterflies in her stomach the memory of her lips against Xavier’s set off. Which, she told herself, was unnecessary. Xavier had set up a test for her perfectly and she’d passed. She didn’t send her and Kane’s future to the galleys by kissing the helpful headhunter. And they’d sat together at a table and had dinner before, so what was the difference now? Getting so worked up over his proximity was silly.

  Kane tugged her insistently. “Shall we then?”

  For the next thirty minutes, they rounded the room and stopped every so often to introduce themselves. A few of Kamakshi’s relatives recognized her from her last visit, though Rosalind was ashamed to admit that only their nameless faces had stuck in her memories. She was certain there were a good number of fill-in-the-blank-anans, but she couldn’t recall. Finally, a low hum arose from near the doors. Looking back in that direction, they saw a tunnel of people forming right before the house lights lowered and drum-driven Indian music filled the air.

  Kane yelped as Rosalind grabbed his hand and yanked. “Come on, I want a good view of this!”

  “Why, what’s going on?”

  “The entrance. I’m not sure what they’re doing, but Kamakshi said I was really going to be wowed. I want to be close.”

  Indian wedding receptions, Rosalind knew from experience, were not mundane, humble affairs. The reception in particular was not only a social function, it was considered by many to be an opportunity for an entertainment extravaganza. The pulsing beat over the speakers set the room buzzing. All about her, the crowd clapped and hollered. The doors opened, and Kamakshi’s parents made their way through the aisle of humanity, dancing in a jaunty, rehearsed routine. At the end of the line, Kamakshi’s father buried his head in his wife’s chest and shook, sending out a round of wolf whistles by those who could see. Nila played off the act with a frisky slap. Another, more elderly couple followed—Prashant’s parents, Rosalind concluded—who also did their best through stiff joints to give the ensemble a little joy and tiny laugh. Kamakshi’s cousins and other members of the wedding party were next. This youthful group of ten stopped in the midst of the crowd and proceeded to break out in a full-scale, choreographed routine worthy of the cinema.