Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors (The Rajes #1)(109)

And no one was going to keep her from going into that OR.

Entoff pushed the button that opened the OR doors. “After you, Dr. Raje,” he said.





Chapter Thirty


Every hospital waiting room in the world had to have been designed by the same architect because hell if they didn’t feel exactly the same. They even breathed the same way. Had the same pulse. DJ’s mother had been in the ICU for four days before she had passed and Emma and he hadn’t left the waiting room that entire time except when they were by her side. And now here he was again, and it felt as though he’d never left.

That probably wasn’t the best train of thought right now, but he hated being here alone, sitting on the floral couches, staring at the single potted plant and the generic painting with the stone house surrounded by a profusion of flowers.

He’d been in the waiting room for four hours. Someone from the surgical team had come out every so often and filled him in. There wasn’t any new information, but every time they told him that Emma was stable he felt every bit of life rush back into his limbs.

A little after the four-hour mark, Ashna came in.

“How did you know I was here?” he asked her.

“Trisha had the nurse call me,” she said, pouring him a steaming cup of her legendary chai out of a flask. The woman could do things with ginger and cardamom and tea leaves that left him in awe. He had never been able to replicate it.

Thinking about work calmed him. A taste of her chai practically tranquilized him.

“You put crack in this, don’t you?” he said, taking a long satisfying sip.

Someone else had said similar words to him about his curried stew. Someone who had eyes much like the woman who put her head on his shoulder and let him drink.

“I’m going to take that as a compliment, Chef Caine,” she said, making something an awful lot like hypocrisy prick at his conscience.

When he was done with his chai, he filled Ashna in on how they’d ended up here after their trip to Monterey.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it? My family owns a beach house there. I feel like I spent all my weekends there growing up.” She studied him with her usual calm expression. Her eyes were the same shape as Trisha’s, large, heavy lidded, and turned up at the ends. But Trisha’s were that unique brown and amber, like the fiery licks of flames. And Ashna’s were guarded. She could blank them out so you only saw what she wanted you to see. Trisha could blank nothing out. Everything she was feeling leapt out of her eyes.

“Isn’t Naomi’s café something else? A world in itself. The way every restaurant should be.” There was the distinct burn of envy in her voice. It was the chef’s burn—that particular grudging note chefs got when they praised each other’s work or restaurants.

“It’s beautiful,” he said, the disaster with Trisha that had taken place in their friend’s beautiful café doing a slow-motion replay in his head.

Ashna smiled, albeit a little despondently.

DJ couldn’t understand why Ashna’s own restaurant was having such a hard time. She was incredibly talented.

“How’s the response to the new specials been?” he asked. Ashna was supposed to have test-driven some of his new recipes this week.

She brightened. “Fabulous! We’ve seen a few people come in a few times this week for the okra and the tilapia. And the Yelp ratings have jumped.” Then she got somber again. “I just hope it lasts.”

“It will, love. This is just the beginning.” He was going to do all he could to help her turn Curried Dreams around.

They spent the next half hour discussing menus. Having Ashna here was exactly what he needed right now and he couldn’t stop telling her that.

“Emma will be fine, DJ. I’m really glad you were able to convince her to have the surgery.”

“Actually, I wasn’t the one who convinced her. Your cousin Trisha . . . she . . . she figured out exactly what Emma was afraid of and . . .” God, what an idiot he’d been.

Ashna studied him, her usually distant gaze probing. “That sounds like Trisha. She’s the solver in the family. It’s that brain of hers. Sees everything in all its parts and pieces and knows how to break problems down and put them back together as solutions. Emma is in great hands with her. Truly.”

For everything he had accused Trisha of, that much he’d always known. That much he’d never doubted. For all the sadness and worry pressing against his chest, he smiled. Ashna gave him another quick sideways hug.

“You really should let me pay you for the menu consultation. Especially if it’s going to get these results.”

“Actually, that would mean I’d have to pay you for the kitchen.” They’d decided that he would use her kitchen overnight and early in the morning, before the renter came in. At least until he could afford to pay her rent or find another place. That way she could still make money on it and he’d still have a prep place.

“Barter then,” she said, and they shook on it.

Ashna sat with him for the next six hours, comfortable silences interspersed with comforting conversation. Finally, ten hours after Emma had gone into surgery, she turned to him. “I have to run out and take care of closing up. Will you be okay? I’ll come back after.”

“Of course. I’ll be fine.” As long as his little sister was all right, he would be all right.