Rebel Hard (Hard Play #2)(16)

The kitchen door finally swung open, Nayna walking through with a tea tray, her head demurely lowered. Raj scowled while everyone was distracted looking at her. What was she playing at? Yes, she was a little shy—she’d been honestly flustered at the party, especially when he teased her—but she’d also had a quiet confidence that was a glow pulling him into her orbit. No way was she the demure, lowered-head type.

And what in all that was holy was she wearing? The pink monstrosity was a muumuu on her sweet little body. The only thing he liked about her look were the black-framed glasses perched on her nose. He could see her wearing those and nothing else.

He shifted on the couch, telling his mind to end that line of thinking. Now.

“Nayna, beta.” Her grandmother, dressed in a soft white sari, smiled at Nayna as she set down the tray, before the plump elderly lady turned to Raj’s family. “My granddaughter makes the best tea,” she said in pure Hindi, untainted by slang.

Raj’s own paternal grandparents spoke the same way. They were currently in Taupo, visiting with his uncle’s family, or they’d have quizzed him about tonight’s meeting the instant he got home. Set in their beliefs, his aji and aja still scowled at the idea that the younger son had married before the older and couldn’t wait for him to get hitched so that things would be back in balance.

“Our daughter is a good girl,” Gaurav Sharma added. “Dedicated to her studies at university, graduated top of her class. And look at her now—she deals with small businesses valued up to a quarter of a million dollars.”

The devil took Raj. “These days a lot of young women like going to parties and spending wild nights out,” he said solemnly, a worried possible groom. “Is—”

“Oh, our Nayna’s not like that,” her mother said with a laugh. “She never even went to parties at university.”

Her father nodded. “She prefers to spend her free time at home.”

“Oh,” Raj said in a tone that sounded casual enough but that had Nayna’s hand tightening on the teapot she’d just picked up.

He didn’t know why he’d done it, why he was playing along with this charade that they’d never met. Raj preferred to be blunt and honest in his interactions whenever possible. But that night with Nayna… that was a secret shared between the two of them. Raj found he didn’t want to speak about it to anyone but her.

Now, as he watched and waited for a response from this woman who made him act in unfamiliar ways, she poured her grandmother the first cup of chai, exactly as she should. Then she turned to his parents and asked if they’d like sugar. By the time she angled her head toward him, he, a man renowned in his family for his calm under pressure, had to fight not to growl at her.

This modest and meek mouse of a woman was not the siren who’d kissed him so passionately—or who’d told him to shut up because she only wanted his body. That woman who was all wrong for him might’ve infuriated him, but she’d had a fire inside her, and that fire had warmed the cold places inside him.

“One sugar or two?” she asked in a demure murmur, complete with a shy smile.

Disappointment settled like a rock in his gut. Perhaps this was the real Nayna and the wild, blushing, delicious Nayna who’d scorched and angered him at the party had been nothing but a mirage—a game she’d indulged in for the night. “One,” he said, his desire to play a subtle game with her chilled into silence. Just as well. Even as a child, Raj had never been good at play.

His mother had often called him her solemn little man.

Gaurav Sharma asked him a question about the family construction business at that moment, and he became involved in answering it, only turning to take the cup when Nayna said, “Your tea” in that annoying, meek voice that threatened to destroy his memories of the passion he’d found with her.

No woman had ever ignited such fire in him. He’d thought he’d carry the coldness inside him forever. Then had come Nayna. Only that Nayna had never truly existed. She’d disappeared at midnight, taking the warmth with her.

“Thank you.” Muscles rigid from the effort it took to sit here and act normal when he wanted the whole thing over with as fast as possible, he took an absentminded sip of tea… and barely saved himself from splurting it out onto Nayna’s father’s face.

Covering the moment with a cough after managing to swallow the vile stuff, he forced himself to stay put. Not to pick up Nayna and spank her for pouring what felt like half a bag of sugar into his cup. Which he now had to drink or he’d mortally insult her family.

Witch.

And not meek and mild at all.





10





Peaches and Scruff and Cold Showers





Nayna woke the next morning with a fuzzy head and no idea what she was going to do.

The previous night, after Raj and his family left, her parents had turned to her, asked her what she thought. It had been obvious exactly how much they—and her grandmother—liked Raj. Both their families had also gotten along like a house on fire. The meeting had raced to over an hour, only wrapping up because the next day was a workday.

She should’ve said no right then and there no matter how hard it would’ve been to disappoint them, but the words of rejection had stuck in her throat—because she didn’t want to refuse the man who’d made her feel as he had on Saturday night. Even in her confusion about the future she dreamed of for herself, it had felt deeply wrong to do that.