Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors (The Rajes #1)(51)

Actually . . . to hell with calming down. He slammed the trunk shut. “I’m sorry, but am I missing something? I wasn’t aware that I was still auditioning for the job. I try to help you and you threaten to fire me?”

She met his eyes. The harshness in his tone seemed to surprise her. Not that he gave a shit. Anger rose in her gaze and matched his, their five minutes of peace gone like water drops on an overheated pan.

Just as quickly her shoulders slumped and she squeezed her temples. “Look, I’m sorry. I wasn’t threatening you.”

“Whatever it was you were doing, I need to know if the job is mine or not. We have the menu almost pinned down. I’ve spent days on prep work. I’ve booked assistants. I really cannot afford to go through all that if you’re still considering other people. I need to talk to Nisha.” He walked past her and headed for the front door to go back inside. This had to be straightened out now. He needed this job, but no matter how disposable Trisha Raje thought he was, he wasn’t desperate enough to be treated like a common cook in constant fear of being thrown out of the kitchen.

She jogged after him and held his arm. “You don’t have to talk to Nisha. I said I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. It’s just really hard to explain how important it is that no one in the family finds out about Nisha.”

“I thought your family was close.”

She let his arm go and pressed her hand into her belly. On anyone else the gesture would’ve been vulnerable, but on her . . . on her he would be stupid to imagine vulnerability. “We are close. That’s why. It’s not serious and we don’t want to alarm anyone.” She worried her lip with her teeth, looking awfully anxious. “Actually, that’s not true. It is serious, but not the way you would think. We aren’t sure how things are going to . . . to turn out. But it . . . it impacts the entire family. I know it’s not easy to understand. But I can’t let Nisha be hurt. Imagine if this were your sister, imagine if it were Emma.”

Was she bloody joking? “You want me to imagine how it feels to let Emma be hurt?” He pressed his jaw into his hand in the Thinker’s pose. “That’s not going to be easy now, is it?” He couldn’t help but laugh. She had just sent his gravely sick sister home where anything could happen to her. Did she have absolutely no empathy at all?

Her face softened. “I’m sorry. That’s not what I meant. How is Emma holding up?”

That question just made everything worse. “Holding up what? She’s home and wants to act like everything is normal. But it’s not.” He hadn’t slept one wink since she’d come home. At least not without waking up in a panic every few minutes. “She should be in a hospital being treated, not at home left to her own devices.”

She blinked in surprise. A car passed behind her on the shaded street and she turned around and threw it a glance over her shoulder. For a few moments she seemed unsure of how to respond. The conversation had veered off in a direction she hadn’t expected. He hadn’t either. “It wasn’t my decision,” she said finally.

“I beg your pardon? Emma didn’t discharge herself. No other doctor did either. You did.” Their voices had gone quiet, but suddenly they felt louder than when they’d been nearly fighting a few minutes ago.

“No other doctor gave her a solution, either.”

Didn’t he know it. “But if she doesn’t want your solution, isn’t it your job to convince her to do what’s right for her?”

She touched her fingers to her temples again, then met his eyes again. “No, actually that’s her job. Your job. You’re her brother. You should be able to talk sense into her. Millions of people live in the world with disabilities.” Her voice gathered steam as she spoke. “My job was to analyze what was wrong with her and to find a way to save her life. And now my job is to execute that surgery—and there’s no one else in the world who can execute it with as much skill as I can. That is my job. And I always do it well.”

As opposed to him. Who was failing at his part by not talking sense into his sister.

She didn’t say it. But it was there in her eyes. Right there with that uncontainable arrogance when it came to her work. This was only about the surgery to her.

He thought about backing away, but he was sick of backing away from fights. So sick of it. “And doing your job well is sending her home where she can’t be monitored, where she can’t be treated? For what? To teach her a lesson? Put her in a corner until she comes around to where you need her to be? So you can prove your skill?”

She took a step back, but she didn’t look away. “I don’t need to prove my skill. But you seem to need to find someone to blame. Maybe you should try stepping up instead, and try finding a solution?”

Once again, was she bloody joking? He’d been stepping up and finding solutions for problems since he was twelve years old. Feeding his family, putting a roof over their heads. Real problems, not challenges he sought out to prove his skill. “I’m not blaming you for what’s happened to Emma. Hell, I couldn’t appreciate your skill more. But pardon me for wondering if this is about Emma at all for you, or if it’s only about what you can accomplish.”

A combination of emotions flashed in her strangely colored eyes; in the end, disbelief at being contradicted shone brightest. “Do you always judge people without knowing one damn thing about them? Or is it just me?”