Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors (The Rajes #1)(127)

She couldn’t be sure, because she couldn’t bloody see, but she thought he lifted himself up onto the railing next to her, and then, yipes! he jumped off the balcony.

Before she could get a shriek out, she felt the tips of his fingers on her feet. “Come on, jump, I’ll catch you.”

She closed one eye and focused on him. “You’ll what?” It was a good eight feet down.

“I’ll catch you. Trust me.”

And that was when she knew she had lost her mind. Because she jumped. She landed in his arms. Which were very, very nice arms to land in. Bicep-chef, indeed!

She felt like the Disney version of a princess for the first time in her life. Which made her burst out laughing.

“You jumped!” he said, also laughing into her ear, his arms still tightly wrapped around her.

“Well, you said you’d catch me.”

He got all intense and serious again, but then they were smiling into each other’s faces once more. “What on earth was that?” she asked finally.

“I heard that you have a thing for romantic gestures involving balconies.”

“I’m going to kill Yash.” But really she was going to kiss her brother.

DJ scooped her up and carried her around the building.

“You can put me down now.” No one had carried her in at least twenty-five years.

He dropped a kiss on her nose. Then gave her a hard kiss on the lips. “You sure? I thought you couldn’t see.” But he put her down and didn’t do anything that gave away how much his arms might be hurting. And she fell a little bit more in love with him.

“You’ll have to lead me around. Where are we going?”

“To my car first. Then I guess we have to find you some spectacles.”

“CAN YOU PLEASE not look at me until I have my contacts in?” she said as soon as she put her spectacles on. “I’m really not comfortable with you seeing me like this.”

DJ turned away from her and studied the huge painting on the bathroom wall. It was a butterfly intricately rendered in patterns of henna. Vibrant in an almost mythical way. “Will you believe me if I said it makes me like you more?”

The laugh she gave him was more of a scoff. She had all these different laughs. “You have a thing for ugly people?”

“You’re not ugly. You’re beautiful.” He touched the painting. The patterns were thick and raised.

“Shut up. I’m not that stupid, you know.”

Outside the open door of her bathroom, the walls of her room were also lined with paintings. End to end. It was like a bloody art museum. “You’re not stupid at all, you’re an outstanding surgeon, mate.”

“Very funny. I’m an outstanding surgeon who does microsurgeries, who can’t see without her glasses. I’m almost done. Sorry.” She sounded apologetic and entirely too self-conscious. He hadn’t noticed until now how often she did that. Actually, he’d noticed but he’d assumed it was her being uppish.

“Trisha, may I ask you a question?”

She made a sound that he took as a yes.

“You know how you said that day . . . at Naomi’s . . . that you were being someone you aren’t, what did you mean by that?”

“Nothing.”

“Tell me. Please.”

Her silence was so thick he could hear her brain working. Over the past hour they had made a leap from strangers—strangers who had hurt each other and regretted it, strangers who had wanted each other for a while but been too afraid and confused by their feelings, but strangers nonetheless—to people who had shared things they’d never shown anyone else. To people who had kissed like they were inside each other, like they’d been wanting this their entire lives.

Now she was arguing with her overactive conscience about living up to her own need to be honest, and broaching something she was incredibly uncomfortable about. She may not know which side would win. He did. So he waited.

“Nisha had prodded me that day about having the courage to let people see what I was feeling,” she said finally. “Because she’d guessed how I felt about you.”

“And when you did that, I was horrid to you.”

“Horrid? Nah, you just told me what an insufferable snobby bitch I was. And I needed that. Because, God, how are you here right now after how I behaved that day?”

“But you’re here, too, after how I’ve behaved.”

“DJ, can this be the last time we talk about that awful day? Please.”

He turned around and stepped close to her and wrapped his arms around her. “My eyes are closed,” he said in her ear. “Sure, let’s never talk about that again. But before we leave it behind, there is something I want to make sure you know. You are most certainly not a bitch and you are only slightly insufferable.”

She elbowed him but she also pressed into him. “I’m done. You can open your eyes.”

He smiled into her cheek and drank in her reflection in the mirror. “I was terribly wrong about you. You are the strongest, most generous woman I have ever met in my life. And you’re also the most beautiful. Inside and out. Although right now it’s the outside that’s making me have trouble breathing.”

He was pressing into her and the proof of how very much he meant those words was probably branding her butt and making coherent thought nearly impossible for him.