Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors (The Rajes #1)(16)

“To all of us.” Reprimand flashed in Nisha’s eyes. “It’s happening, Shasha. After all his hard work. After all he’s been through. Yash is running. He’s going to be governor.”

Nisha was right. It was happening. And it was important. To all of them. This was her family. If they shut her out, she could at least bang on the door. She should be part of Yash’s campaign. “This rice is turning my world upside down,” she said, chewing with reverence.

Her sister smiled again. “So did Entoff totally fall at your feet?”

Trisha grinned and pinched her finger over the spoon. “A teeny bit. Who am I kidding, he practically kissed them!”

Her sister’s eyes brightened in a way that proved exactly why she was Trisha’s favorite person in the whole world.

“And how about that artist patient of yours, is she going to be okay?”

Emma’s fierce eyes, her bottle-cap-popping vagina, it all did a slo-mo flash inside Trisha’s head. “She’s going to lose her sight,” she said softly.

Her sister stroked her hair and rolled a curl around her finger. It was such a Raje gesture. Their mother used to twirl her fingers in their hair when they were babies to put them to sleep and all the kids had picked up the habit. Even Ashna and Esha did it. It was their way of giving comfort, showing affection.

“But you’re saving her life. Trisha, you’re saving her life,” Nisha repeated gently. “It’s not like there’s anything more you can do.”

The rice stuck in Trisha’s throat as she swallowed. She had to get a grip and stop letting this bother her so much. It was one case and she had done all she could. “Yes, and the surgery will give us a chance to use the new robot!” Thinking about the surgery brought the enthusiasm back to her voice.

“My badass baby sister!” Nisha squeezed her shoulder and Trisha pushed the memory of the despair in Emma’s eyes out of her head and focused on the joy warming her insides at Nisha’s praise.

She put another spoonful of the magic rice in her mouth and moaned, the satisfaction of filling her empty belly making all the tension of the day melt away. She was home. Her brother was about to make the family’s dreams come true. And she wasn’t going to watch from the outside anymore. Even the fact that she had been yelled at in her parents’ home by some cook who seemed to think he was on the set of Iron Chef seemed funny in retrospect.

“You’re right. I am totally badass!”

FOR THE SECOND time that day, DJ stood at the kitchen door listening to the sound of that voice. Only this time he knew exactly whom it was coming from. It was coming from someone who had almost cost him this job.

What flooded through him now was certainly not warmth.

Watching his caramel almost splatter on the floor had damn near given him a heart attack. To say nothing of his hands, which stung like the fires of hell. He could feel the blisters forming on his thumb and fingers under the platter he was carrying.

“Not just badass but also, ahem, a genius,” the woman was saying, and it brought to mind an image of her staring at her hands, contemplating their worth. She tried to inject a note of self-mocking into her tone, but this time he knew better than to buy it. He’d seen the truth in her eyes back there.

Do you have any idea what these hands are worth?

He almost laughed at that. Who the hell talked like that?

“Well, you did walk away from that beautiful creature in the kitchen without so much as a glance, so I don’t know about the genius part,” the other woman said, and DJ felt his face warm. “You want to go back in there? I’ll introduce you. You can celebrate for real.”

Both women broke into giggles. DJ almost smiled; maybe he’d overreacted in there a bit.

“No thank you,” the good doctor said in that voice of hers. “But thanks for thinking I’m desperate enough to be set up with the hired help.”

DJ stepped away from the door, the warmth on his face turning into an angry burn.

The hired help? He had worked at a Michelin-starred restaurant, for crying out loud. For years. People across Paris knew his name.

Who the bloody hell did this woman think she was? Sometimes he really, truly hated rich people.

“This rice is like an orgasm in every bite,” she said as though she hadn’t just called the person who had created that rice a servant.

Suddenly, the thought of her eating his food felt like a violation. He wanted to yank it from her hands. His blistering fingers stung as his grip on the platter tightened.

Curry sweep. Smelly. Little. Curry. Sweep.

“DJ got called curry sweep at school,” Emma had sobbed to Mum the moment Mum had walked in the door. She had cried all the way back from school when DJ and she had taken the bus home.

“I blame William Blake,” DJ had said, getting out of the chair he was sprawled on. He’d worked in Ammaji’s kitchen for six hours and he was tired, but Mum had to be even more tired. “It’s a play on chimney sweep.” Not even a good wordplay at that. But the gits in his school weren’t exactly literary geniuses.

Mum had smiled. A literary reference never failed to get a smile out of Mum. And distract her.

“You didn’t get in a fight, did you?” she said, sinking into the chair DJ had just vacated, the only one they had in the rooms they rented. No fighting back—it was Mum’s number one rule.