Spice and Secrets (16 page)

In Sunny-
ji
’s countenance, it wasn’t weariness so much as regret. “Perhaps they are right,” she murmured, staring off beyond Priya’s shoulder to somewhere in the past. “They want what’s best for you, even when they hurt you. Even as you hurt them, too. My parents were long gone when I partied with Sam. They never knew how bad I was. How
ghatia
. When I fell pregnant…I was so glad they didn’t live to see my shame. Now? I wish they’d lived to see my Jai.”

An answering bitterness welled up within Priya along with memories. “When Shona was born…I was under anesthesia. I didn’t hear her cry. The doctors didn’t even let me see her straightaway. Last, Sunny-
ji
. I saw her last, long after everyone else, and I was so frightened that
Ma
and
Baba
sent her to be adopted.” Priya hadn’t thought of that day in so long. Those early hours of fear laced with grogginess. The fear that had followed, however, was as crisp as the ice water on the table in front of her. “For the first three years of her life, I slept holding Shona close to me, terrified that one morning I would wake up to find her gone. So, I behaved. I became a good girl again. I lived in gyms and acting classes and voice lessons. Miss Perfect,
na
? Because I was too weak to do what you did and raise my own child. You’re different—”

“Not so different, Priya,” Sunny cut in gently. “I am afraid also.” It was clear that the admission cost her something great. Her proud shoulders bent, and she cast her gaze downward, at the tabletop. “I don’t trust. I don’t take chances. And what happened?
Main har gayi.
I lost. I lost Shaw. Don’t make the same mistake with Rahul, with your future.”

But she had Shona’s future to consider, too…and,
that
, she couldn’t afford to lose. “He could take her, Sunny
-ji
…and if he doesn’t take her, my
ma
and
baba
could cut me from her life, from their lives and from Anita
Didi
, too. What then? If I have no career and no Shona…where is my future
then
?”

“You don’t know that Rahul will fight your parents for custody. Sam didn’t fight me and,
yakin karo
, believe me, he is
far
more volatile than Rahul. Rahul is calm and cool. He does not act from emotion,
na
?”

Oh, but that was where Sunita was wrong. Rahul could act from emotion in hundreds of ways. With his lips at the base of her throat. With his thumbs tracing the slope of her breasts, cresting her nipples. With his thigh sliding against hers. In this, he didn’t use his
taqat
, his brain.
Nahin
, he used every other weapon at his disposal but that.

Perhaps her skin betrayed her thoughts: the Rose of Bengal in blush pink. For Sunny-
ji
laughed quietly and reached across the table to pat her hand. “You’re not fighting Rahul at all, Priya. Darling, you are fighting yourself.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

After conversing with Priya, Sunita felt like she was balancing on a roof’s edge. She’d felt the girl’s pain so acutely and seen, too clearly, her reflection in those absurdly pretty eyes.
Darling, you are fighting yourself
, she’d observed…only realizing later how those words were just as appropriate for her own condition. In the end, it was Jai who pushed her completely over the railing.
Nahin
, shoved. In a totally disrespecting way. “
Jao
, Mom,” he directed when she came home from her afternoon outing. “Go say sorry to Mr. Shaw. If you don’t, I will move in with Papa and Viki Uncle.”

Her jaw dropped, mouth hanging open like the gaping maws of a fish. “That is blackmail. Who taught you that?”

Jai, turned out handsomely in his school uniform, simply sprawled in a chair like he had no cares in the world besides tormenting his mother. “I watch a lot of movies. Who taught me
that
?” he countered with a cheeky smile.

Hai Bhagavan
, this entire time she thought she’d been raising a son, and it turned out that she’d raised a comedian instead. An impertinent one, at that. Jai glared at her, in a perfect imitation of Sam at his most villainous, until she grabbed her bag and exchanged the ladies’
chappals
she’d slipped into for her proper shoes. “Why are you doing this to me,
beta
?” she asked as she rang Hari to come back from the garage. “Why is this so important to you?”

“Because you’re important to me, Mom, and Mr. Shaw is important to you.”

The truth of it was like a punch. Like the vodka shots she no longer touched. Davey was important to her. No, he’d somehow become bloody
essential
. She craved his sharp smile, his cool eyes. She missed his
darling
s. She even missed him calling her
Rani Sahiba
, despite her realizing ages ago that he’d stolen it from a StarPlus serial. She reached out for him in the darkness, though he’d never shared her bed. Shaw had, in short order, melded with her until she barely knew where she ended and he began.

It was this that carried her, choked and hushed and hopeful, from Versova to Juhu. To his door. She’d come to him so disarmed once before…made a choice to cross one threshold. Now, after all of this, would he even let her in? Her closed fist shook as she knocked. Once. Twice. Thrice. Each louder, more frantic, than the last. Until, finally, he threw the door open.

He looked terrible. Hair askew as though he’d raked his fingers through it. Eyes bloodshot and unfocused. Shirt unbuttoned, revealing his suntanned English chest. He looked downright unhinged—and unbearably handsome. “Sunita? What are you doing here?”

Rather than answer that question she asked one of her own. “Davey…are you okay?
Kya hua?
What is wrong?”

“It’s not me,” he said absently, very nearly looking
through
her instead of directly at her. “It’s George.”

George. The mysterious, maddening George of whom he’d refused to speak. Her heart seized, and jealousy threaded through her like she was the eye of a needle. Somehow, she drew it tight and knotted it. Shaw was in distress. His
taklif
, his
parishaan
, mattered more than her insecurity.

“George?” she repeated, backing him into the flat, taking his cold hands into hers as the door drifted shut. “What is happening to George, Davey? Tell me.”

“She’s in labor.” Davey’s response couldn’t have surprised her more if he’d said, “George is a winged serpent attacking Tokyo.”

She?
George was a woman? Her shock flared bright before she tucked it aside, making soothing noises and prompting him with leading questions. “She’s in labor? When did it start?” Her interviewing skills had never been used with such gentle precision. “Where is she? London
main
?”

Slowly, a trickle of words became a flood. Georgie, Georgina, was his dearest friend, an “insufferable brat of a girl”, and she’d spent the last few months of her pregnancy assigned to strict bedrest. “The baby’s coming, Sunita, and Tegan said something was wrong. They were taking Georgie into surgery…but they wouldn’t tell Tegan too much more. Partners aren’t wives, and all that rot.” Again and again his hands gripped his hair, his skull—his strong, capable fingers at a loss. “Georgie needs me. She’s a mess without me, you know? I…I ought to go, oughtn’t I?” he murmured, staring vacantly toward the open laptop on the end table. “I was searching flights when you knocked.”

She grasped his chin, forcing his gaze back to her, catching and holding those beautiful blue eyes. “No, you ought
not
go,” she stressed. “You’d be in midair if and when word came from London,
na
? Just sit here.
Hum saath saath intezar karega.
We will wait together
.
”

“You’d do that? For me?” Shaw’s senses were returning to him, a clarity filtering into his expression and a tightness coming to the fingers that had grasped her shoulders for anchoring. “Even though you don’t trust me?”

I am afraid. I don’t trust. I don’t take chances.
Hadn’t she told Priya all those things? And were they not true? Sunny shook her head. “It’s not you I don’t trust, Davey.
Main darpok hoon.
I’m a coward,” she confessed.

“That’s ridiculous.” Shaw’s eyebrows arched in that way that maddened and aroused her in turns. “You’re the bravest woman I know. Sunita, you’ve got balls of solid steel.”

“No, I don’t.” She sighed and laughed at all once, leaning her forehead against his and breathing him in. “You know I was alone in the operation theater when I labored with Jai? I cried the whole time. I begged. The nurses wouldn’t give me anything for the pain, because I was young and strong…and because they thought I was a junkie. Because Sam was in a bathroom down the hall, reeking of
ganja
and cutting lines of cocaine on the sink.” She hadn’t thought about it in years, choosing to focus only on the end result…holding Jai in her arms and laughing at his little monkey face, all of the agony forgotten. “I can’t remember ever being so scared. But last week? When you left me? I almost felt it again.
Nahin
, Shaw, I’m not brave at all.”

“Bollocks.” His lips brushed against her cheek, her chin, her jaw. Not so much kisses as they were tiny forgivenesses. “You’re strong, Sunny. You’re being strong for me right now…and I thank you for it.”

“Don’t thank me yet, Davey.” She pulled back just enough so that she could take his hand and hold it tight. “We’ve got some time,
na
? Hours? You might still hate me in the end.”

He curled his fingers around hers, his grip warm and solid. Real. Like he had no plans to let her go. “Doubtful,
Rani Sahiba
.” He chuckled wryly. “Because I didn’t even hate you in the beginning.”

You could’ve knocked Davey over with the proverbial feather when Sunita showed up on his doorstep. It was the last thing he’d expected…and the very first thing he needed. So, now, he clung to her like a buoy in a storm-tossed sea, holding her hands in a death grip and prompting her for more vaguely appalling stories of her youthful courage. Holding her served two purposes: keeping him from frantically dialing Tegan on his mobile…and preventing him from tearing off to punch Sam Khanna in the mouth. To think, he’d actually given the man the benefit of the doubt. Sunny’s matter-of-fact recounting of his abominable behavior certainly put a different, much more grim, cast on what their lives together had truly been like.

“You are the one who advised me to put my anger to rest, Shaw-
saab
. And now you want to thrash him?” Her laugh…God, how he’d missed it. Just as he’d missed her hair falling around him in a tangled cloud and her lipstick staining his collar as she pressed her lips to his throat. “You can’t fight the world,” she sighed.

“Can’t I?” Sheer terror was something he couldn’t spar with. Knowing George was across the ocean…helpless, scared for her life and her baby’s life…no amount of fisticuffs would change any of it. But he could certainly throttle Sam for his lack of honor…and war with Sunny for her heart. “Why’d you come round,
Rani Sahiba
? Why are you here?”

“Because Jai-
ne
zabardast kiya
. He blackmailed me.” He felt the upturn of her lips against his skin, and her voice was filled with a combination of pride and exasperation. “He told me to come say
sorry
or he would move out. My son…the extortionist.”

“Sounds like my kind of fellow.” He suspected George’s little one—a girl, she and Tegan had told him a few weeks back—would be equally precocious once she made her highly anticipated debut. A drama queen already, that one. Just like her mum. “How do you do it?” he marveled softly. “All of you. Bringing children into the world and turning them into functional little humans? It’s a bloody miracle…and, honestly, Sunita, I don’t blame you for not wanting Jai anywhere near me. You were just doing what any good mother would do. He deserves to be cared for and protected, and you really don’t know me at all. Not yet.”

“
Nahin
, Davey…you mistook me.
I
mistook me,” she admitted. “Jai doesn’t need protecting from you. I know enough to know that you are a good man. The
best
man. I was only protecting myself. Because introducing my son to you would make our affair too serious.” He knew words like
affair
and
proposal
had different meanings in India than they did in the rest of the world…but that didn’t make the term sting any less. As if she sensed that, she stroked the side of his fist with her thumb. “I have not been serious with a man in fourteen years, Shaw. It can’t change in five minutes,
na
? But that doesn’t mean I
won’t
change.
Samjhe?
”

Yes. He did understand. Perhaps even more clearly than Sunita herself did. And—and his introspection was cut short by the buzzing of his mobile. It vibrated like a livewire on the glass-topped coffee table. His phone had become his enemy these past few days, and it had never inspired more dread than in this moment. Rose had rung mere hours ago. Surely that wasn’t enough time for a proper surgery…which meant it had gone wrong, which meant—

“It’s okay. Pick it up.” He didn’t realize he was still gawking until Sunny patted his arm. “Answer it,” she urged. When he was slow to follow, she summarily plucked the mobile from the table and handed it to him. “You need to know, Davey, not to wonder.”

The minute the line engaged, all he heard was tears. Steady, perpetually composed Tegan in uncharacteristic hysterics. The cell almost fell from his nerveless fingers, but somehow he held on. “For God’s sake, Teags. What is it? Is she all right?” The connection was terrible. Static-laden. He could barely make her out. “Speak up!”