Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors (The Rajes #1)(125)

“It was two weeks. That’s how much time I spent with them. But Gulshan lost it when an old guy who owned a newsstand refused to make some change for him and threw in a slur. It was something that stupid, and he tossed a lit match at the newsstand. There was a car parked too close—an old clunker with a petrol leak—and it turned into an explosion. We scattered, five boys who knew their lives were over.

“When the coppers showed up at our home to take me in for questioning, my mum opened the door. It was more than she could bear. I . . . I remember her face, she was so confused. She had never even heard of these friends. It was the last time I saw her standing upright, or conscious. I heard later that she collapsed when the police car drove away with me. A stroke.

“The boys told the police the truth. That I had nothing to do with it. That they hadn’t even known me until a few weeks before. They let me go, but when I came home, they had already moved Mum to the hospital. A few days later, she died. Never knowing the truth. Her insurance paid for her burial and Emma’s school. Ammaji sold her dowry jewels and sent me to culinary college in Paris.”

He was breathing hard but his eyes were so parched he had to blink away the dryness. A mercy he couldn’t be more grateful for.

Somewhere along the way Trisha had threaded her fingers through his. Her grip was tight, tears were running down her cheeks, and she was opening and closing her eyes in the strangest way. “Crap,” she said, not letting his hand go. “There’s something you should know about me, too. I’m practically blind without my contact lenses. And crying dislodges them because my corneas have a strange curvature.” She started to pat her dress, which was basically the most beautiful blue thing he’d ever seen, but there wasn’t much of it, no sleeves or straps. Nothing to dry her eyes with.

He untied the smock tied around his waist and held it out, thanking his stars that he had switched it out a few times over the evening.

She took it and dabbed her cheeks and the edges of her eyes in frustrated little movements. This was obviously something she hated. “Shit. This is not going to work. You should have warned me you were going to make me cry. Listen, you cannot make me cry, okay?”

He bit his lip to keep from smiling, but it didn’t work. “Sorry. I didn’t realize there was a crying issue. Don’t you carry a pair of spectacles?”

That made her look even more horrified. “You do not want to see me with . . . with spectacles. And, ugh, I think I dropped a lens.” Her head titled at an awkward angle and she looked miserable. “Basically, now I can only see you if you’re six inches from my face.”

“That can be arranged.” He took a step closer and she grabbed his arms.

Holding him seemed to help her balance. “I’m so sorry,” she said, head still tilted. “I can’t believe what that must have been like for you.”

All right, so they were talking about the Gulshan thing again. “It was a long time ago.”

“But she made you relive it.” Her grip on his arms loosened, then turned to a caress, the flames in her eyes burning bright and fierce. “How did Julia find out about this?”

“My assistant, Rajesh, he’s Ammaji’s grandson. Julia slept with him. The guy isn’t really discreet. He’s an idiot, but I didn’t think he was malicious. Even so, I fired him. He didn’t work this dinner. But he only knew what he had pieced together from neighborhood gossip, that Ammaji had saved me somehow after I’d been in trouble with the law, which I hadn’t been. Not really. He probably believed that’s why I was obligated to put up with him. The rest of it Julia probably pulled up from the archives of the local papers. It was a big story when it happened. It certainly can be spun to make me look like a criminal and harm your family.”

Her hand moved to the center of his chest and rested on his heartbeat.

“I’ve never told anyone that before. Any of it,” he whispered.

“I’m glad you were able to tell me.”

He touched one of those springy curls. It bounced against his finger and he gave it a tug and tucked it off her face. “About that other thing I was trying to say earlier.” Her hair was much softer than he had imagined. He touched it again, because he really couldn’t believe how soft it was. She closed her eyes.

He supposed that was a sign that the story of his pathetic childhood hadn’t altered her feelings, which filled him with relief.

“Yes, about that other thing. Could you hurry up and say what you were going to say?” Her eyes were still closed, her voice breathy.

He slipped a hand behind her head, cradling the petal-soft skin at her nape.

She gasped, and her lips parted.

“Okay?” he said against those lush parted lips, tasting her breath, tasting the anticipation at the edge of a precipice.

“Dear God, yes!” She reached up with both hands and pulled his mouth down against hers. And he fell, an anchor sinking to the ocean floor, slow and hard.





Chapter Thirty-Five


Before now, when Trisha had kissed she remembered looking for sparks, searching for heat. She had found both in little, hard-won spurts. Now she swam past the spasms of heat that melted her core, swam past the sparks that exploded where he touched her, and she floated into the comfort of not seeking, just feeling. His lips taking her in, nudging her apart, making her alive and right and known. That hand at her nape, that taste of his tongue, that feel of the stubble on his scalp, the long thick tendons on his neck. The bones of him, magic in her hands.