Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors (The Rajes #1)(75)

Maybe it was the expanse of blue sky and blue sea that framed her that did it, maybe it was the low sun that tinted her chocolate hair coppery as it flew about her face, but in that moment, he knew exactly how he felt about her, how he would feel until the day he died.

He hated her. Hated that there were people in the world who had what she had and didn’t even know it. Or knew it but thought they somehow deserved it. Simply by being born.

“I have to take a picture of this view for Nisha.” She felt her pocket for a few seconds. “Shoot, I left my phone in your car.”

“I’ll go get it,” he said and then kicked himself for always being so damn accommodating. But Mum had been brutal in her expectation of manners. Manners aren’t about appearance at all, she had loved to say, they are about kindness. You put the other person’s comfort before yours, that’s good breeding.

Ammaji had had no concept of any formal English rules of etiquette. She’d never set a table the proper way or even used a fork and knife to eat, but she’d taught DJ the exact same lesson. No one is so special that they can’t exert themselves a little for others.

He’d never had a hard time with politeness until he had met this woman. With her he had to pull on every bit of protocol to keep from going head-to-head with her about everything. Unsuccessfully.

“No, you stay and finish the tour of the kitchen. And I . . . um . . . kitchens aren’t my favorite place,” Trisha said, looking faintly traumatized. “I . . . I was burned as a child. When my aji was teaching me how to cook.”

Well, that explained a lot. Before he could ask her about it, the unusually tall and sullen Mr. Mantis reappeared on the terrace.

“Ready to get started again, Dr. Raje?”

She gave the manager a smile that managed to be both gracious and distant. “Mr. Caine will do the tour of the kitchens without me. I have to run to the car. Is there anything else?”

Mantis assured her there wasn’t, and if she wanted him to wait, it would be his pleasure, no no, his honor, to wait until she returned. His time was hers, etc., etc.

DJ manufactured an obliging smile to match Mantis’s and made all the right sounds: He was at their disposal. Whatever they wanted, etc., etc.

She studied his face. He didn’t care what she saw. All he cared about was the kitchen Mantis was about to show him, the place where he was going to make magic.

“Sorry,” she said directly to DJ. “Go ahead and finish up. I’ll see you in the car.” She attempted a smile. “It’s not like you need me.”

Oh, she couldn’t be more right about that. “Don’t give it another thought.” He dropped the keys on her palm and followed the manager into the area where the supplies would be stocked.

The amenities were perfect. The kitchen was every chef’s dream brought to life in quartz and steel. Familiarizing himself with all of it took a good half hour more.

After Dr. Raje’s departure, all the pleasant subservience disappeared rather quickly from Mantis’s demeanor. “So this is your first time catering at the Astoria,” he stated rather than asked.

“It is. And it’s an honor,” DJ said as pleasantly as he could. At least that wasn’t a lie.

“Our own restaurant has a Michelin star and all the private chefs we allow to cater here are trained under star chefs, if not star chefs themselves.”

“That’s impressive,” DJ said. Andre had two Michelin stars, but DJ didn’t feel like mentioning that fact. Maybe because, in a perverse way, he needed to see this side of the manager. It kept DJ’s view of the world firmly grounded.

“The Rajes are a very generous family. So gracious. So open-minded,” Mantis said pointedly, as though the fact that the Rajes were actually allowing him to cater for them was somehow “gracious.”

“We did their older daughter’s wedding here. It was in Architectural Digest and People magazine. I was the resident event manager on that, too.” Evidently Nisha’s wedding had been one of the highlights of Mantis’s career because he spent the next five minutes waxing eloquent about all the details and pulling up the magazine articles on his phone.

DJ presented him with a sufficiently impressed smile. He really shouldn’t judge. Catering a fund-raiser for Yash Raje was definitely the highlight of his own career, no point pretending like it wasn’t.

“Do you know the family?” Mantis asked, encouraged into expanding their conversation into the personal realm by DJ’s show of interest in his chatter.

“Somewhat,” DJ said, picking out his favorite word for stopping conversations of this nature in their tracks. Of course he knew where the man was going with this. Mantis’s curiosity—which was really incredulousness in disguise—had little to do with getting to know DJ, and more to do with the color of DJ’s skin, which was, unlike the Rajes’, not rendered irrelevant by wealth. The syntax of prejudice—threaded into conversation with the perfect pauses and facial expressions—was like ciphers and spy codes. The meaning clear to those it was meant for. To everyone else, it was harmless scribbles. Easy enough to deny.

“I’d better be getting back to Dr. Raje,” DJ said finally, jotting down a last note on his tablet.

Extracting his phone out of his pocket, he tried to call her but she didn’t answer. He texted her, but there was no response to that, either.