Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors (The Rajes #1)(10)

The idea of her mother playing matchmaker for her was so mortifying she briefly considered telling her about Harry, her maybe-boyfriend-but-more-likely-casual-acquaintance-with-benefits. But the only thing Ma might find worse than her daughter’s inability to form relationships in her thirties was her daughter’s inability to know if she was actually in the relationship she might be in.

Suppressing another groan, she followed Ma into the dining room where the twenty-seater cherrywood table had been moved against one mahogany-paneled wall. Some fifty-odd people were scattered in groups around the room, their elegantly pitched voices creating nothing more than a harmonious din. The sixteenth-century Belgian crystal chandelier that usually lit up the table when it was just the family gathered around had been raised and dimmed. What the guests didn’t know was that the king of Belgium had presented it to her great-great-grandfather after they had become friends at Oxford.

The chandelier had hung for over a century in the Sagar Mahal. Her oldest uncle had shipped it to California as a housewarming gift when HRH built the Anchorage. There was a story there, involving a cricket ball and three young princes, and emergency superglue repairs to keep their father from finding out. HRH never talked about his brothers anymore, but Trisha remembered him laughing about it with Ma long ago.

As Ma stopped to let someone gush over her pantsuit, Trisha did a quick sweep of the room for HRH, but she didn’t spot him, thank God. She forced herself not to think about the expression on his face when he had informed her that the worst mistake of her life was back to haunt her.

Her sister wasn’t here either, which was frustrating. As soon as she told Nisha about the grant, she would feel less like pond scum. All she needed was for just one person to know and be excited for her. Telling Ma could wait until later, when she was less preoccupied.

Someone else waved Ma over and she gave Trisha’s hair another pat and tuck. “I’m glad you’re here.” The pain she let slip into her eyes proved the ostrich theory wasn’t failproof. How had Trisha never thought about how hard it had to be for Ma to deal with Trisha’s issues with Dad and Yash? “Make sure you find Yash and congratulate him before you go hide behind your sister, okay?” With that she clicked away toward a group of political wives who opened up their tight circle at her approach.

“Of course,” Trisha mumbled—because Ma was gone and couldn’t lecture her about how it was uncultured to mumble—and scanned the heads in suits to find her brother’s halo.

There he was. The soon-to-be governor of California. He looked as serene as ever, reminding her of the mythological Prince Karna from the stories Aji loved to tell. Born encased in armor and glowing from within, eternally protected by his father the Sun God himself. Yup, that would be our Yash.

Trisha watched as he did his practiced politician hug thing with the suit he was talking to. One hand on the shoulder, the other in a handshake, grip firm yet friendly. I’m here for you, that gesture said; I can fix everything.

She knew her brother meant it, believed it with every cell of his being, but the ease of the gesture made her despondent. It swallowed up the brother he had been, her Yash. And even after all these years of being shut out, she missed that brother every single day. That was the thing about Yash; even perfect strangers found it impossible to forget him after having met him once. Charisma, the media called it. Imagine being loved by him, she wanted to tell them. And then losing him.

Not that he had ever said an angry word to her after Julia had violated him in every way possible because Trisha had let her. There had been no confrontation, just a slow-bleeding falling-out, aided by the monstrous demands of their work and the constant presence of a plethora of people to hide behind at family gatherings. He didn’t even seem to notice, but standing here watching him like this brought back the full force of how very much the loss still hurt.

As if he could hear her thoughts, Yash’s eyes met Trisha’s over the bald patch of the man who had practically melted into an awestruck puddle beneath his touch. Yash was the only one of Trisha’s siblings and cousins who had inherited their grandfather’s gray eyes. A gray so unique Cosmo had felt the need to coin a term for it—Yash-Raje-Gray—in last month’s issue, the one that had featured him on a list of the country’s hottest politicians. What they didn’t know was that it was a genetic marking of their blue-blooded family, always inherited only by one child in every generation. It had skipped a generation for the first time with her father and his siblings, but it had returned with Yash. Of course it had.

When he first spotted her, those eyes lit up, and his smile flashed wide and carefree for a full instant before disappearing again behind the memories that had built a wall between them. He pulled on his public servant’s I’m-your-man mask that Trisha hated to admit wasn’t a mask anymore, but who her brother had now become. They had both come so far from being two kids who loved sneaking out the attic window to sit up on the roof where all they could see were the hills and all they could be was who they were.

He walked up to her and leaned in as if to give her a hug, but then she moved in the wrong direction and it all turned terribly awkward and he shook her hand instead.

“Congratulations, Yash,” she said, fighting to channel her mother’s graceful nonchalance instead of the stiffness that gripped her.

“How’s my favorite skull-based neurosurgeon?” Only Yash would use the exact right terminology to describe his sister’s surgical specialty.