Rebel Hard (Hard Play #2)(3)

Nayna’s mother liked to relate the ongoing storyline to her.

Walking over to stand in the doorway of the living room, she waited until a dramatic statement that shocked all the characters onscreen—she now had at least half a minute while the reaction shots went on.

“I’m off,” she said in Hindi. “I’ll be late coming home.” She crossed her toes inside her shoes. “ísa and I are thinking of catching a midnight movie.”

Her father frowned through his spectacles. “What about work?”

“Tomorrow’s Sunday.” Even Nayna drew the line at going in to work on a Sunday.

Grunting, her father settled back down in his prized recliner. After ten years of constant use, it was shaped to his tall and lanky form. As always, he had a half-open book on his lap. Nayna’s first memory of her father was of sitting in his lap while he read to her.

“You make sure and say hello to ísa from us,” her mother said with a smile as she rose to kiss Nayna on the cheek. “Have fun.”

“Where’s Aji?” Nayna’s grandmother was usually ensconced in an armchair by the old-fashioned hearth on the far side of the living room at this time of night. She’d read or work on her knitting while offering sharp commentary on the soap opera. She had been known to say that the meek and sweet heroine would probably turn out to be secretly more evil than the evil sister-in-law.

Nayna had a feeling her grandmother was hoping for just such a twist.

“She’s making herself a cup of tea.” Her mother lowered the volume of her voice. “I wish she’d let me do it.”

“You know she likes to make it her way.” With milk in the saucepan and plenty of cardamom and sugar. “I’ll go say bye to her.”

“Shilpa.”

Her mother hurried back to her seat at Nayna’s father’s forewarning. The reaction shots were over, the drama back on. At moments like this, Nayna’s heart grew tight. Her parents were such different people—her father curt and intellectual and used to getting his own way, her mother gentle and a little dreamy and kind—but then she’d see them watching this show—or catch them discussing it with utmost seriousness—and she’d see a glimmer of why their marriage had lasted.

It probably helped that Shilpa Sharma believed absolutely that the husband was the head of the household. Nayna had never seen her mother oppose her father on anything that mattered. Shilpa always bent while Gaurav got his way. Nayna had been only fourteen when nineteen-year-old Madhuri eloped with her now ex-husband, but she had no memory of her mother fighting her husband even to see her elder daughter.

Good thing Nayna wasn’t planning to ask her mother’s help with tonight’s rebellion.

Moving from the doorway with an inward sigh of relief at having sold her cover story, she walked back down the hall to the kitchen. Her favorite person in all the world stood in front of the stove, watching a saucepan of chai as she brought it up to a boil. Beside the saucepan was a small frypan on which sizzled wide semicircles of taro, each slice about a quarter of an inch in thickness.

“Nayna, beta.” A luminous smile accompanied the affectionate address.

“Aji.” Walking over, Nayna hugged her grandmother’s soft form. For the longest time, her grandmother had worn a white sari. For her, it hadn’t been a simple acknowledgment of her widowhood but a symbol of how much she’d loved her husband and how deeply she missed him. But these days she was starting to change it up.

“I like this tracksuit,” Nayna told her. A vivid pink with white stripes down the sides, it was full-on velour and sparkle. “You look like you’re about to go break dancing.”

Her grandmother wiggled her hips. “I can dance in the rain same as any of those Bollywood heroines. No see-through sari though. Who wants to get pneumonia?”

Laughing, Nayna hugged her again, then snuck a fresh taro chip out of the small bowl of fried ones. “Mmm, carbs.” Crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. Nayna loved salted taro chips even more than she loved fries. “Can’t eat any more though—the dress I’m wearing will show every gram.”

Aji patted her arm with a soft hand that had soothed many a childhood hurt in Nayna. “Go have fun at the party,” she whispered, a willing conspirator. “I’ll stay home and supervise your parents. You know they get very excited at their show.”

Nayna bit back a grin. “I will.”

The twinkle in her grandmother’s eye altered, became solemn. “You’re sure, beta? That you want us to find a boy for you? If you have someone already, you can tell your aji. I will make it all right.”

“I don’t have anyone.” That was part of the problem; she’d talked herself into the arranged-marriage madness partially by pointing out that she hadn’t exactly done better on her own. The constant rejection at high school when added to her inexperience at college had left her floundering out in the modern dating world.

Nayna didn’t know how to flirt.

Not unless talking spreadsheets and financial forecasts was sexy.

So she, a woman addicted to historical romance novels, had convinced herself she’d be okay with a “suitable” match. Sometimes she was an idiot. But she’d made a promise and she’d keep it. Her family needed her to keep it. They were still so fragile, the hurts and the anger of the past a lingering cloud that had never quite dissipated.