Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors (The Rajes #1)(86)
He had to laugh at that. “And honesty is only fair when it reinforces your own high opinion of yourself?”
“Which you’ve made crystal clear you do not share.” She turned to leave, then turned back. “I would never have imagined you as someone who came with such a truckload of preconceived notions and prejudices.”
“Are you bloody joking? You did not just pull the ‘reverse prejudice is real’ thing on me.”
“I’m not trying to pull anything on you. From what I just heard, my greatest fault is that I dare to take pride in my work, in knowing I’m excellent at it.” The brown paper crumpled tighter in her hands. “How is that snobbery?”
“Of course being excellent at your work and knowing it isn’t snobbery. But believing that you are somehow unique in excelling at your work while looking down on what others do—that’s the snobbish part. Especially given the life you were born into.”
She paled at that. “I’m not going to apologize for the life I was born into. Which, by the way, I have never taken for granted or misused for one moment. Tell me, if I were a man, would you see my confidence in my work and my pride in where I come from as arrogance?”
“This gets better and better. As you pointed out, so disdainfully, I cook for a living. Nurturing people, nourishing them holds incredible meaning to me. You cannot pull the gender-role card on me. Plus, I have a vested interest in you being good at your work. My issue is with how you think it absolves you from treating those around you with consideration and respect. Cooking for a living is something I happen to be incredibly proud of.”
“As you should be. You’re amazing at it.” That of all things made her voice crack. She threw a look of such longing at the two empty bowls on the table that despite his anger pride swelled inside him.
It was followed by a sense of hypocrisy that he pushed away. “Yes, I am, and I don’t appreciate when someone treats me like a servant for doing it.”
She looked horrified. Obviously, she didn’t even remember calling him the hired help. Which made it that much worse.
“Then there’s the offhanded way in which you negate everything that isn’t your personal experience. Thanks to you, I had a cop pull a gun on me. Certainly not conducive to feelings of attraction. Oh, then there’s the way you treat people less fortunate than you. I know what you did to your college roommate. You’re not emotionally blind, Dr. Raje; you are too focused on yourself to take the time to think about anyone else. That’s not an affliction, it’s a choice.”
She blinked. Color flooded her face again. What he had said had to be painful. But returning a blow with a blow felt so bloody good. It felt like taking off a straitjacket that was crushing his lungs, and he refused to feel guilty about it.
With another blink, she blanked out all feeling from her eyes and he hated that he saw what it cost her to do it.
“At least there’s no doubt that my feelings are not reciprocated. I’m sorry I put you in this position. I don’t know what came over me. I was trying to be someone I’m not.” She gave an embarrassed little laugh, and it made him feel two inches tall. “I do have one question. Are you this angry with me about the cop because I’m brown and I still didn’t expect it? Would you have been less angry if I had been white, instead of just ‘acting white,’ as you called it?”
He would not dignify that with an answer.
The breath she took made her lips tremble. “As for the lies Julia Wickham has been filling your head with, I might’ve wondered why you’ve believed them so easily, but I know only too well what a skilled liar Julia is.” Grabbing her coat off the back of a chair, she slung it over her arm. The top half of the brown paper bag had been crushed beyond recognition. “If my family ever finds out that you’re in any way associated with her, there will be no chance of them ever working with you. That’s not a threat. It’s simply the truth.” With that she walked out the door, her head held high but her legs unsteady.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Trying to combat instant regret with instant gratification wasn’t working. Trisha took another bite of Naomi’s blueberry muffin straight out of the bag. She had torn off the crushed upper part of it so the muffins sat on her lap, exposed. A mangled mess of discarded muffin paper and crumbs peeked up from the carnage. When she stopped at a light, she would look down and count how many she had eaten.
Stuffing muffins into her face to keep from sobbing was just making the muffins salty. Which was tragic. They were the taste of her childhood and now all she tasted was the salt of her tears and the desperation of swallowing them down in great gulps.
I make it a practice not to find women who insult me at every opportunity attractive.
When had she insulted him? When had she looked down on what he did? When? She’d lost all her dignity over his food, salivated over it. She’d salivated over him! And shown it, which made her want to die. All her inhibitions, all her reservations, she had put them away and been honest with him. That was insulting?
I would never go anywhere near a person as self-absorbed and arrogant as you.
That . . . that was insulting.
Self-absorbed?
She had just driven eighty miles to meet with an artist on the off chance that she might help Emma choose to have the surgery. Eighty miles! She pressed a fist into her chest. Who would have thought it could hurt so damn much?