by Sara Desai
“I’ll make sure the coast is clear.” Sam slipped out, closing the door behind him.
Knees weak, Layla leaned against the wall. She’d rationalized their last encounter as a one-night stand. Sex and nothing more. But this felt different. Intimate. Emotions were involved. And not just hers. Where did they go from here? Did she hold him to the game? Cancel the rest of her blind dates and kick him out of the office? Or was she reading too much into this, just like she always did?
* * *
• • •
SAM knew something was wrong the moment he stepped out of the restroom. There was a stillness in the air, a curious tension. He looked around for Nisha but couldn’t see her.
When Layla joined him, he clasped her hand. It was a small pleasure to take care of someone who looked after everyone around her—whether it was finding jobs for her clients, helping her mother in the kitchen, looking after her nieces, or accommodating Daisy’s need to have Max in the office. And now she’d given his sister a little bit of normal.
“Sam.” Nisha’s tremulous, strangled voice was barely audible above the music and chatter, but it made every hair on the back of his neck stand on end.
“Nisha?” He shouted her name, dragging Layla through the racks of clothes. “Where are you?”
“Sam!”
His pulse kicked up a notch, heart pounding in his chest. He burst through the racks near the cashier only to find Ranjeet standing in front of his sister.
“Well, look who’s here.” Ranjeet’s slick voice unlocked a cesspool of painful memories. “Sam. It’s nice to see you again.”
Sam’s hands curled into fists. He hadn’t seen the bastard since the divorce proceedings. Against her lawyer’s advice, Nisha had agreed to give up everything she owned—including her wedding jewelry, her interest in the marital home, and her right to maintenance payments—just to be free of Ranjeet. The bastard had even tried to take the insurance payments that paid for her rehab and the house renovations, but the insurance company had resisted.
It had taken three security guards to drag Sam out of the building after the legal papers had been signed. Even then, he’d waited on the sidewalk, ready to make Ranjeet suffer. He should have known the bastard would slither out the back. Nisha had made him promise not to hunt Ranjeet down. She wanted it to be over. But now that he had Ranjeet in his sights, the anger surged again.
“Get the fuck away from her.”
If not for his piercing black eyes, the man in front of him would have been wholly unremarkable. His dark hair was short and neatly cut, beard and mustache trimmed. He had a prominent nose, curved like a beak, and a rail-thin frame that made him look deceptively lean beneath his blue button-down shirt, despite the extra inch he had on Sam in height.
“You can’t begrudge me a moment with my lovely ex-wife. I was so hoping she had recovered from the brain injury that caused her delusions after the fall.”
Sam glanced over at Nisha, his stomach recoiling when he saw the look of sheer horror on her face.
“If you even look at her again, I’ll break every one of your fingers and end your goddamn career.”
“What’s going on?” Layla stepped in front of him, her face creased in consternation. “Who is that?”
“Dr. Ranjeet Bedi.”
Layla turned and the surgeon smiled. “Sam and I worked together at St. Vincent’s. He was my most promising resident. And Nisha, of course, was once my wife.” He tipped his head to the side, studying Layla intently. “And you are . . .”
“None of your fucking business.” Sam shoved Layla behind him.
Seemingly unflustered, Ranjeet sighed. “Still so hostile. No wonder poor Nisha hasn’t recovered. You’re feeding her delusions. It was an accident. Plain and simple. It’s nobody’s fault. Let her move on, Sam. And you need to move on, too.”
Slimy, fork-tongued, slithering snake. If Sam hadn’t trusted his sister implicitly, even he might have been fooled by Ranjeet’s smooth, friendly manner, his distress when she was brought to the ER, his horror when she was told she might never walk again. The surgeon hadn’t cracked once. From the moment he ran into the ER to the day he signed the divorce papers, he’d played everything from the concerned husband to the innocent victim, conning hospital staff, social workers, police, insurers, and lawyers.
Sam’s hand curled into a fist. This was his chance to dispense a visceral, immediate form of justice. No more making requests for hospital files or begging security staff to let him see the surveillance tapes. No more fruitless meetings with police and insurance investigators. Ranjeet would suffer the way Nisha had suffered. He would feel her pain.
He moved to strike only to find Layla in his way.
“Don’t do it.” She placed her hands on his chest, pushing him back. “I don’t know him, Sam. And I don’t know what happened. But if you hit him, what happens then? This isn’t Evan. He’s clearly not a friend who you can make up with over a couple of drinks. You might wind up with a criminal record. You could even spend time in jail. Your business could suffer. And what about Nisha? Who’s going to look after her then?”
Rage surged through his veins, sweeping away all rational thought. “Get out of my way. You’ve done enough. This is why Nisha never went out. This is exactly what she was afraid would happen. You should have left her alone. If she’d stayed at home, she would have been safe. If I hadn’t been with you, I would have been here to protect her.” He regretted the words even as they fell from his lips. At the back of his mind he knew they were wrong. This wasn’t Layla’s fault. But Nisha deserved justice, and Layla was standing in his way.
Her face paled but her hands stayed pressed against him. “Sam, please. Don’t do this.”
“What’s going on here?” Nira joined them with Deepa trailing behind her.
Ranjeet pulled a card from his jacket pocket and handed it to her. “Dr. Ranjeet Bedi. I called earlier about picking up my sherwani for my wedding. Sam and Nisha are old friends, but it seems they aren’t happy to see me.”
Unbelievable. He was getting married again. Another woman was going to suffer.
“It’s right this way.” Nira led Ranjeet away while Deepa hovered in the aisle, blocking Sam’s pursuit. Layla dropped her hands and turned to Nisha, who hadn’t moved since Sam arrived.
“Are you okay?”
“I just want to go home,” she said quietly.
“Of course. I’ll take you—”
“I want Sam,” she said. “I’m sorry. I just . . . I want Sam to take me home.”
Layla’s face softened with understanding. “I’ll get your bags—”
“No.” Nisha wheeled herself toward the door. “I don’t want anything. I should never have come. I’m sorry, Layla. You were very kind to take me shopping, but . . .” Her voice cracked, broke. “Bhaiya! Get me out of here.”
Caught in a maelstrom of emotion, the world closing in around him, Sam pressed the access button and pushed Nisha out into the cold, rainy evening.
It was only as he was driving away that he realized he hadn’t even said good-bye.
• 18 •
HE’S so much like Jonas . . .
Layla studied the bartender who was shaking a martini on the other side of the bar. With his long, shaggy blond hair, wiry frame, and elegant fingers, he could have been Jonas with a bad dye job.
“Can I buy you another drink?”
Already past her limit, Layla shook her head without even looking at the man who had just sat on the stool beside her. She’d turned down several guys in the hour she’d been waiting for Harman to show up for their date, and they just kept coming.
“No, thanks.” She’d taken a cab so she could enjoy a few drinks, but it was the last thing she wanted a stranger to know.
“A beautiful girl like you shouldn’t have to drink alone.” He was a few inches taller than h
er and solidly built—an athlete of some sort, she figured, definitely someone who stayed in shape. His light brown hair had been shaved close to his head, and he wore a silver medallion over an orange Giants T-shirt.
“I’m meeting someone.”
“Hello, Meeting Someone. I’m Matthias. You look like you need cheering up.”
He was an attractive man. Fit. And obviously interested in getting her into bed. Exactly the kind of guy she would have hooked up with in New York. But she didn’t feel anything when he smiled. Her heart didn’t pound. Her body didn’t heat. Her skin didn’t tingle. And instead of the rush of adrenaline she’d felt when Sam walked into a room, she felt numb.
She’d felt numb for the last four days, but who was counting?
“Just having a bad day.” She didn’t want to encourage him, but he supported her team. How bad could he be?
“I think you’re suffering from a lack of vitamin me,” Matthias said.
She bit back a laugh. “Does that line really work?”
“You’re still here.” He leaned closer, his hand sliding up her leg.
“Take your hand off me.” She braced herself, mentally running through the sequence of moves she was going to use if he didn’t take his hand away. She hadn’t lied to Sam about learning Krav Maga. It had saved her from more than one bad encounter in a bar.
“Come on, sugar. Loosen up. Your date isn’t going to show.”
“You heard her. Hands off. Or do you want me to do it for you, broken finger by broken finger?” Sam came up behind them, the low rumble of his voice making her melt inside.
Layla waved him away. “I can handle him, Sam.”
“I can handle him better.” Sam yanked Matthias off the stool and shoved him aside.
“What the fuck, dude?” Matthias turned on Sam, his hands curling into fists.
Live to the danger, and annoyed by Sam’s assumption that she needed saving, she got up and grabbed Matthias by the shirt, turning her furious gaze on Sam. “You handled him like a caveman.” She drove her knee between Matthias’s legs, and he doubled over in pain. “I use skill.”
“Kicking a man in the nuts isn’t skill.”
“It is when I do it.” She released Matthias and he dropped to the floor. “See? I incapacitated him. You just made him angry.”
Two burly bouncers pushed their way through the crowd and grabbed Sam by the arms. “Let’s go. You’re out of here.”
“I’m the one who started it.” Layla gave an exasperated sigh. “If you’re going to throw someone out for fighting, it should be me.”
“I helped,” Sam offered. “I pulled him off the stool. You’d better throw me out, too.”
“Are you with her?” The bouncers released Sam and he smoothed down his shirt.
“I sure am.” He wrapped a possessive arm around her shoulders. “I’ll be in the doghouse tonight for being late, but I always make it up to her in bed. Don’t I, meri jaan?”
She was hardly his “dear.” More likely she was a thorn in his side. But she doubted the bouncers understood Urdu, so she forced a smile. At the very least she’d gotten rid of Matthias without breaking her nails. Daisy had spent an hour painting tiny orange lotus flowers on the red press-ons for her big date.
“What are you doing here, Sam?”
“What am I doing here?” Sam gave a look of mock horror. “I thought it was date night. Don’t tell me the babysitter is at home looking after our six kids for nothing.”
“Six kids?” One of the bouncers reached over Layla and shook Sam’s hand. “Respect, man. She doesn’t look a day over twenty-eight.”
“Twenty-eight?” Layla gave an affronted sniff. “I’ve only just turned twenty-six.”
“Married her at seventeen and didn’t waste time.” Sam patted her tummy. “Good thing I’m not a fan of ’roids. Tonight we’re going for seven.”
“Guess whose nuts are next if you don’t get your hand off me?” Layla muttered under her breath.
The bouncer laughed. “I can’t say I envy you going back to a house full of kids, but you’re clearly having fun making them.”
Layla didn’t know whether to be annoyed or amused after the bouncers let them off with a warning. On one hand, she was perfectly capable of handling the unwanted attention. On the other, she’d never had a man swoop in to save her before, and she couldn’t help but be touched by the gesture, even after his behavior at her aunt’s store.
“Six kids?” She took her seat at the bar and Sam sat beside her.
“Seven after tonight, unless you don’t forgive me. I came to apologize.” He waved over the bartender and ordered a snakebite, receiving nods of approval from around the bar.
“How did you know I was here?” She nodded when the bartender offered her a refill. The night had suddenly become interesting again.
“Daisy told me about your date. I checked Harman’s Instagram to see if he’d posted anything and saw he was doing a photo shoot on Baker Beach. I figured he’d stood you up so I came to make sure you were okay.”
“I can look after myself.”
“So I see.”
Layla put down her glass. “How’s Nisha?”
“She’s fine.” Sam finished his drink in one gulp and motioned for another. “I shouldn’t have said the things I said to you. When I saw Ranjeet, I couldn’t think straight. He’s the reason she uses a wheelchair.”
“That’s not a bad grovel.” She squeezed his hand. “What happened? What did he do?”
Voice thick with emotion, Sam told her about Nisha’s arranged marriage and his part in bringing her and Ranjeet together. “No one knew he had a drinking problem or that he was abusive. When Nisha found out, she kept it quiet. She thought she could help him, but he was an angry, violent drunk, and in the last few months of the marriage things took a turn for the worse.”
Layla’s hand flew to her mouth. “He hit her?”
“No.” Sam drained his glass and asked the bartender for a jug of water. “But he scared her and she could see things going that way. One day she came to the hospital to meet him for lunch. She remembers arguing with him in the back stairwell, and then the next thing she knew she was in the ER with a shattered L2 vertebra. She was sure he pushed her, although she has no memory of the accident. Ranjeet says he wasn’t there, that he left her in the hallway and only found out when he was called to the ER.”
Her heart squeezed in her chest. “Poor Nisha.”
“Ranjeet convinced everyone she was delusional because she’d suffered a head injury during the fall, but I know Nisha. I believe her. I had her moved to Redwood Hospital and I did everything I could to get the hospital to investigate. I even contacted the police. But Ranjeet is a highly respected surgeon, and she’s a nobody who couldn’t even remember the details of the accident. She divorced him and the case was closed, but I heard rumors of a cover-up.”
“That’s horrible.”
“I’ve been trying to get justice for her ever since.” His voice hitched. “Unfortunately, I hit a brick wall at every turn. If there was a cover-up, it was a good one, because no one would talk.”
“She was lucky to have you, Sam.”
He shook his head. “She wasn’t lucky at all. I worked beside him for years and never knew what kind of person he really was. I was the one who brought them together, and he rewarded me for it with privileges the other residents didn’t get. He was a mentor, and I thought he was a friend.”
She squeezed his hand. “You couldn’t have known.”
“I should have known.”
“Is he the reason you dropped out of your residency?”
Sam sighed. “I couldn’t work there and see him every day. He was the antithesis of everything a doctor stands for. Our guiding principle is to cause no harm. I also felt unworthy to be a healer. I was so blinded by ambition and all th
e things Ranjeet offered to do for my career, I didn’t protect Nisha the way I should have.”
“You’re carrying a heavy burden,” she said gently. “One that isn’t yours to carry.”
His voice hitched. “I failed her as a brother, and I failed my family as a son. I couldn’t be part of that culture, or embrace the traditions that had allowed it to happen.” He poured a glass of water and drained it dry.
“The only person who failed her is Ranjeet,” Layla said firmly. “Culture and tradition have nothing to do with what happened to her. Even if she’d met him in a coffee shop, and they dated before getting married, there’s no guarantee he would have shown his true face. She may even have had less information about him than she had when her marriage was arranged. Look at the men we interviewed. My dad screened them, and yet he didn’t know that Hassan was a scammer or that Dilip was a dancer, or that Bob wanted a virgin. It took both of us to get that information, and those were just the secrets they wanted to share. The only person who was honest was the CIA agent.”
“How’s that for ironic?” The tension eased from Sam’s shoulders.
Layla laughed. “Maybe I should choose him. He did offer to get me elephants.”
He turned his hand so they were palm to palm, and squeezed her fingers. “I think you should consider your alternatives.”
“What alternatives?”
“Me.”
She tilted her head down to hide her smile. “You aren’t on the list.”
“I don’t care about the damn list, and I don’t care about the game. I want you, Layla. And if I have to leave the office—”
“I don’t want you to leave the office,” she said softly. “I like sharing the space with you. I like being with you. I like that you’re caring and protective. I like that you line up your pencils, and color-code your files, and that your shoes are always polished, and your ties are perfectly knotted. I like that you are funny and sarcastic, and some of the best times I’ve had have been interviewing people with you. I like how loyal you are, even though you support the wrong baseball team. I like that you pretend not to know any movies but you can list almost every horror film ever made. And I like the way you kiss.”