Accidentally Engaged(24)
“You don’t?”
“Of course not! Can you imagine how that conversation would go? So, Dad, I needed to drown my sorrows, so I went to a bar and had way too much gin while taking sinus medication. But don’t worry, your employee also had a shitty day, so we drank together. But then I slept in his bed, and he gave me lice.”
He frowned. “We don’t know if you even have them. Let me at least check…”
There was rock bottom, and then this. “Okay. Fine. I don’t have a whole lot of shame left to lose, anyway.” She let her head fall into her arms on the breakfast bar, needing the solid countertop under her to hold her up.
She definitely thought this situation warranted a cry, not a laugh.
“Okay,” he said softly, “I’m going to put my hands in your hair. Tell me if you want me to stop.”
She nodded into her arms. The room fell silent a moment. Two moments. Finally, she sensed a whisper of a touch on her neck. Feathery light fingers that trailed upward into her loose curls. She shivered as he raked through the hairs on the back of her head slowly. It was like nothing existed but her head and his hands parting through her hair. She fell into a sleepy trance, more relaxed than she had been all week.
As he reached the sensitive patch behind her ear, he stroked the soft skin there. The soft skin where no hair grew. That was a caress. She should put a stop to this. Now.
But as he continued to the top of her head, warmth enveloped her whole body, all while his touch, barely there, reminded her exactly what was happening, and who was making her feel this good. This was heaven. The deep serenity eased her mind and calmed her soul.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured.
“You found some?”
“I don’t know for sure, but I think so. You should use the treatment shampoo and let me comb out your hair, just in case.”
She closed her eyes again, leaving her head in her arms. Another blow to her battered life. It didn’t seem fair that this one came with boneless tranquility and soft fingers stroking the back of her neck.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Reena had endured much in her thirty-one years on the planet. As a short, middle-born, socially awkward visible minority, she’d had birthdays forgotten, been bullied at school, been dumped on the subway, and even once had an ex-boyfriend post a picture of her sated, after-sex face on social media—with a self-congratulating caption. But having insecticide shampoo thoroughly applied to her hair by a brown Captain America type felt like a new level of humiliation. She managed only with her eyes squeezed shut—because this stuff apparently stung like the dickens if it came into contact with eyes, and so she wouldn’t catch a glimpse of this in her bathroom mirror.
Surprisingly, though, sitting on the sofa with a man close behind her carefully dragging a narrow comb through her hair turned out to be an oddly intimate experience. Intimate, but not sexual. The comb was hard metal, and Nadim’s enthusiasm about the process of looking for bugs in her hair didn’t do much for the sensual allure of the experience.
“Don’t you find that gross?” she asked after he wiped the comb on a damp paper towel.
“Not at all. I grew up in Africa, remember? I have nothing against creepy-crawlies, unless they carry malaria. Lice are annoying but harmless.”
Reena shuddered, closing her eyes. Only way to survive this was to pretend to be in Tahiti. Or Siberia. Anywhere but here.
“We’re never going to speak to anyone about this, right?” she asked.
He moved her head to get behind her left ear. “I have no intention of telling the world I picked up lice from a hookup. Or that I may have passed them to you, of all people. I don’t even think we should talk to each other about this again.”
Add it to the list of things they wouldn’t speak about, right after the drunken cooking video. “What do you mean me of all people.”
“The boss’s daughter. The woman I’m supposed to impress, but who I’ve already made a fool of myself to.”
She lowered her head so he could reach the back. “You don’t need to impress me. I told you, I’m not going to marry you. Think of me like any other neighbor.”
He didn’t respond. With her head down, she felt brave enough to ask the question she’d wondered since the beginning. “Nadim. Did you really agree to marry a complete stranger?”
He took a while to answer, silently working through her scalp. “I agreed to come here and get to know Aziz Manji’s daughter with the intention of seeing if we could be compatible as husband and wife.”
“Then what? I’m supposed to drop everything, marry you, and move to Africa?”
He sighed. “I hadn’t thought that far ahead.” He unclipped a section of her hair and started combing it. “If you aren’t interested, that’s obviously okay. But they told me you were willing.”
There were so many more questions. Why did he sleep with that teacher if he’d already resigned himself to marrying Reena? And why did he care so much about what Reena thought of him, even after she told him she wasn’t going to marry him? “Is that all I am? Aziz Manji’s daughter?”
He stilled for a moment. “No. No, you’re not. You’re…unexpected. You know that night at the Sparrow? I was having a monumentally shitty day. I was one step away from saying screw it all and leaving town. But”—he stroked behind her ear—“you were there for me. With your flip-flops, and your gin, and your even worse mood. I had the most fun I’ve had in a very long time, on the night that was supposed to be the worst. You were a great friend exactly when I needed it.”