“I wish,” Anjali muttered. “He wakes me up when the baby cries, doesn’t know how to change a nappy and doesn’t want to learn, and now he’s picked up squash. Plays three nights a week, then has soccer on the weekends.”
Nayna flinched inside. Three years earlier, Anjali’s now-husband had proposed with a plane flying a banner while they had a private picnic on a beach. Nayna had been overcome by the romance of it all, even more so because theirs had been an arranged match turned love match.
“I wish I’d never gotten married,” Anjali added bitterly. “I love my two boys, but I’d happily divorce Avinesh now if my parents wouldn’t throw a fit.”
“I recommend divorce for getting rid of excess baggage.” Madhuri’s comment made her friend laugh, Anjali’s resentment falling away to reveal the pretty young woman she was underneath it all.
“I better go—Mum’s waving me over. The baby must be grizzling.” She left after exchanging a one-armed hug with Madhuri.
“Well, that was pretty awful to hear,” Nayna murmured to Madhuri after Anjali was out of earshot. “Avinesh was so lovely with her.”
“All men are before marriage,” Madhuri said sagely. “The real trick is finding a man who’ll be lovely after the rings are exchanged.”
On that less-than-cheerful note, they look their plates of snacks and found seats. As the ceremony went on up ahead, they chatted and people-watched and ate too many sweets and savories while discussing which outfit was the blingiest—a serious contest at an Indian wedding—and for a while they were simply sisters again. For one night Nayna wasn’t angry at Madhuri for how she’d changed the course of Nayna’s life.
When her phone buzzed with a message toward the end of the evening, she checked it to see the words: I got the Pride and Prejudice audiobook and listened to a chunk of it while working on a site today. Mr. Darcy is kind of a dick.
Nayna’s body got all warm, her chest squeezing. That big, tough, physical Raj was reading her favorite Austen book, it chipped away more of her armor. It was better than planes flying banners or grand gestures like elopements. She was glad that Madhuri had gone over to catch up with a friend and quickly typed back a response: He holds the title of one of the dickiest heroes ever, but there is a redemption arc.
Raj’s response made the warmth inside her turn fizzy: That Wickham guy is shady. Why is Lizzy being an idiot? No guy goes around spilling his guts like that.
Nayna held a fisted hand up to her mouth, fighting a laugh. She’d never heard a male point of view on Pride and Prejudice, and clearly she’d been missing out. Lizzy isn’t perfect, she wrote back. She’s the prejudice part of Pride and Prejudice.
Madhuri bustled over. “Are you messaging ísa? What’s she say?”
Quickly typing, Have to go, Nayna slid away her phone—and tried not to think about Raj and Madhuri coming face-to-face for the first time. “Oh, nothing much,” she said through renewed nausea. “Did you see Pinky’s engagement ring? Enough to take out not just an eye but the entire face.”
* * *
Raj put down his phone and was about to start the audiobook again when there was a knock on his door, followed by Aditi’s face poking inside. It struck him suddenly that she’d lost the layer of baby fat she’d carried around for years, her facial bones becoming defined and striking. Around that pointed face with large chestnut-brown eyes bloomed dark curls. His seventeen-year-old sister, he realized with brotherly horror, was turning into a pretty woman.
“Hey,” she said, wandering in to collapse on the battered sofa he kept to one side of the living area he used as his home office. As with all teenagers, her limbs were liquid, arranging themselves in anatomically impossible ways.
“Here, I got you this.” He threw over her favorite chocolate bar, which he’d picked up on the way home.
A small smile, but she put it aside instead of devouring it like she usually did.
Right.
Turning his chair from his drafting desk, Raj rolled that chair across so he was facing her. “Spill it, Monkey.” A childhood nickname from the time she used to clamber all over Raj and cling, giggling and refusing to release him.
“It’s nothing.” She took out her phone, began to scroll through it. “I just want a break from the parentals.”
“Adi,” Raj said quietly in a tone she’d never disobeyed.
Lips pursed together tightly, she sat up. Her body was nearly vibrating. “I have a friend who’s a boy and he asked me to go to the movies as a friend, and you’ll all say no and it’s not fair!”
Raj’s entire body had turned unyielding at Aditi’s first words, the automatic and protective refusal on the edge of his tongue. It was Nayna’s voice that stopped him, the echo of her piercing frustration at the constrained life she’d lived hitting hard. Would she have said yes to him if she hadn’t been so strictly caged? Would she be happy instead of bruised inside to the point where she might never trust him to value her dreams and needs?
“What’s his name?” he asked calmly.
Aditi gave him a mutinous look. “Are you going to go warn him off?”
“No. But I will Google him.”
“Harlow Chan.” Aditi folded her arms across her chest. “He won that Crafty Corners internship.”
Raj raised an eyebrow. He knew all about that hotly contested business internship because Aditi had seemed fascinated with it. Now he understood why. Even if this boy was just a friend now, Aditi liked him in a deeper way. “He must be smart.”
“He is.” Though her eyes remained suspicious, Aditi launched into a spiel about the virtues of the boy.
If all of what she said was true, Harlow Chan was exactly the kind of boy his sister should be calling a friend. “When did he want to go out?”
Aditi scowled at him. “Anytime. The internship is really tough, but he has time after work sometimes. And it’s vacation, so I don’t have to worry about waking up early.”
Raj considered it. “I’ll talk to Ma and Dad,” he said, holding his sister’s gaze. “I trust you, Adi, but you have to keep on being honest with me. Keep me updated on your plans and don’t try to sneak around.” It scared him to let his sister out into the world that might hurt her, but keeping a wild bird in a cage wasn’t fair to that bird. “And if you two become more than friends, you tell me that.”
Lower lip quivering, Aditi launched herself off the sofa and into his arms. Raj held his baby sister and hoped he was doing the right thing. Especially when, an hour later, his father said a flat-out no to Raj’s proposal that they allow Aditi to continue her friendship with this boy. But Raj could out-stubborn anyone in his family, and he got what he wanted: permission for Adi to go on the movie date after she’d introduced the boy to the family and he’d been approved.
Harlow Chan would get grilled to within an inch of his life.
After delivering the news to his deliriously happy sister and getting a huge kiss on the cheek and a hug in thanks, Raj walked back to his flat and found himself looking at his phone. Why did Nayna’s opinion matter so much? But it did. Again, that power she had over him. Fear gripped at his throat.
There was, he thought, only one way to conquer that fear without hurting her as he’d so stupidly done at their lunch. He had to make Nayna Sharma fall madly in love with him—until she was willing to be his without questions or hesitations. Until he never had to fear that she’d walk away and leave him alone once again.
He picked up the phone and sent a message: Just a warning—I want you, Nayna Sharma, and I intend to play dirty to win.
16
Playing Dirty
After Raj’s threat, Nayna was on tenterhooks the next day, but it passed disappointingly smoothly. Even her parents stopped their attempts at an inquisition. Nayna got an answer as to why when she accidentally overheard them talking.