Accidentally Engaged(80)

Reena shrugged. “I figured you told her. You are married, after all.”

Dad stared, eyes still wide, lips pinched. Clearly her parents had a lot of stuff to work through. She considered evening the score and telling Dad about Mum’s poker habit, but decided to get back to the matter at hand.

“What does this have to do with Nadim?”

“I needed the money from his father to finish the project. And Shiroz only offered to invest if his son came with the deal. He was concerned about Nadim’s reputation and wanted it…polished a bit. I would not have agreed to hire the man if I had known he bungled the Shah hotel project.”

Reena was learning nothing new here. Dad’s only intel was information Mum had already told her.

“So, you didn’t know about his connection to the Shahs?”

“No. Not until Salim Shah showed that picture on the Facebook.”

“Do you believe Nadim?”

Dad didn’t answer. He stood up and walked toward the front window of the unit. “You know,” he finally said, “so much of what you see here is Nadim’s doing. I would have rented to the first coffee shop who put an application in, but he has ideas about prestige. He believes a restaurant can be an anchor tenant and bring people to the development. The work he has done for this project, research, negotiating with suppliers, tenants, subcontractors…I see no sign of the irresponsible and incapable project manager that they claim him to be.”

“You don’t think the failure of the Shah project was really his fault?”

“Nadim is not the man his father told me he was. I was under the impression I would have to keep a very close eye on him and help him improve irresponsible work habits. Nadim is very sharp. No babysitting necessary.”

“But then, Dad,” Saira asked, “if you thought he’d be a deadbeat, why did you try to force Reena to marry him?”

“There was no forcing. The marriage was his father’s idea—to clean up his image. He thinks Jasmine is below his son—apparently she is an Instant model.”

“Instagram,” Reena corrected.

He waved his hand. “Yes, yes. Anyway. Your mother wasn’t happy that I made this deal with Nadim’s father, or that I agreed to encourage you to marry him. It happened while she was away at her card tournament in Nevada, or I am sure she would have stopped it all.”

Would Mum have stopped it? She’d been the lynchpin behind this matchmaking from the beginning, or so Reena thought. And shady past or not, Nadim looked pretty good on paper as son-in-law material.

Looked pretty good on high-thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets, too.

Hold up…Card tournament in Nevada? Dad knew about Mum’s poker? “She told you why she went to Vegas?” Reena asked.

He chuckled. “I shouldn’t have said that. She doesn’t know I know about her card friends. She’s not hurting anyone and has raised so much money for charity. Let her have her secret fun.”

Reena turned to Saira. “This family is utterly ridiculous.”

Saira shrugged. “You’re just figuring that out now?”

Reena tried to keep it all straight in her head. While Mum was in Vegas with Leon Bergeron, Mrs. Pelozzi, and the rest of the gambling grannies, Dad and Nadim’s father were making a business deal with a bonus marriage tacked on as an appendix. Dad’s motivation was to make up the money he lost when he hired a bogus architect so his wife wouldn’t find out, even though his wife already knew. Nadim’s dad was trying to cover up Nadim’s apparent mismanagement of Salim Shah’s boutique hotel project and end his engagement to a leggy Instagram model.

All seemed perfectly normal things for parents to do.

Reena remembered Mum’s trip, actually. At the time, she had recently split with Jamil and had been experimenting with online dating apps. She had two regular hookups from Tinder then, if she recalled correctly.

Reena frowned. “This isn’t the right family for Shiroz to search for a virgin daughter to make his son look good.”

Dad said nothing. Which was fine, because that only gave Reena more time to think. “Wait. Dad. Mum’s trip was in February.”

She remembered things. Nadim not seeing her picture until he moved to Toronto and being surprised she didn’t live at home with her parents.

She stilled, briefly looking at her sister. “It wasn’t me, was it? February was a month after Saira caught Joran in his love nest with his cousin. You sold Saira, not me.”

“Me?” Saira looked shocked.

Dad shook his head. “No. I sold nobody. But yes, I was thinking of Saira. She also needed to clean up her image. The gossip about your sister was disgusting—people were saying she had an open relationship. Incest. Cheating…I wanted to connect her with a good family to counteract that filth.”

Saira nodded, chuckling. “The gossip wasn’t completely wrong, but I appreciate the effort. Anyway, I have Ashraf now.”

“I know”—he smiled fondly at Saira—“but you didn’t then. I thought I was helping. Your mother didn’t agree. This is why she was angry about the deal—she said you were too hurt for a new relationship and needed to heal. She was right, of course. And when the visa came through and Nadim finally arrived, I realized two things. First, even though I agreed to bring him here reluctantly, I was the winner in this arrangement. Nadim has been an asset to the company. And second, it was not a problem that Saira had found Ashraf, because Nadim was much better suited to Reena. That is why I moved him to the building with you. There was a spark in him that your mother and I both saw. Reena and Nadim were a perfect match.” He smiled at Reena. “You two are the most food-obsessed people we have ever met. We have a good track record for matches, you know. Your mother was the one who encouraged Nafissa and your brother.”