You Can't Fight a Royal Attraction (11 page)

Always. What a treacherous word. You couldn’t rely on always.

When you couldn’t rely on the
always
witnessed by the pious
agni
, the fire around which marriage vows were taken, how could you rely on anything at all?

She let go and he relaxed his hold. ‘Thanks,’ she said.

Silence came and settled between them. Not a bad silence but rather a quiet one after the emotional talk. She became aware that night had fallen while they had talked. The wind had picked up slightly, causing the fronds of the tall coconuts to sway.

He got up, started to pick up the things, the still packed meal. ‘Rihaan…’ He stopped.

She gestured, feeling awkward. ‘I need to tell you, I can’t go for an affair. After what happened, it just won’t feel right to me.’

He gazed at her a second longer than necessary. Tension spiked again, something alien feathering along her nerve endings at that steady regard. She drew in a sharp breath. All talk of not feeling that it was right seemed to be evaporating far too rapidly.

‘If you expect me to say I understand…’ He gave a short laugh. ‘But I do accept it. It’s absolutely your decision to make. I’m glad you’re chalking out your comfort zone.’ He paused and added with bare honestly, ‘Not comfortable but… glad.’

T
HEY HAD THE
neglected picnic meal, finally, sitting at the small table set up in the kitchen.

Fresh after showering, they ate it with gusto. Micro-waved, the food sent out a beguiling fragrance. The tacos she had made weren’t nearly as good after reheating but Rihaan assured her the tasty filling made up for that.

‘I’m sorry I made you lose your appetite back there.’ Saira jerked her thumb in the general direction of the beach. She felt slightly guilty about pouring out her troubles. She had revealed her scars in more ways than one. Had it been wise?

And had it been wise to turn down his offer? Spruced up and every bit as fragrant as the food, the way he looked, it was debatable which was more appealing. From where she was sitting, he didn’t have much competition.

She wouldn’t be human if she didn’t feel a pang of regret… Her gaze roved over wet, still drying hair shaping his skull, healthy, glowing skin, shapely masculine hands cutting into his food.

‘I can fast a bit.’ The note of mockery had her head jerking up. Had it been a double entendre? Judging from that tilt of the corner of his mouth and the gleam in his eyes, yes. Her breath caught in anticipation at his implication that he could wait for her to succumb to his suggestion they become lovers.

But it was dangerous, she knew. Dangerous to want to give in to the impulses he had brought to jerking, wakeful, aching aliveness inside her.

Later, after dinner, she excused herself. The emotional rehash had left her tired. But sleep wouldn’t come. She wandered to the veranda overlooking the lush garden and stood leaning against a support pillar, listening to the insects buzzing in the night. Her own contradictory emotions made her stomach churn. She wanted him physically, yes, but could she take the emotional component out of it? And emotions carried the risk of hurt. The risk of giving up so much, even her self-respect. Who knew better than she? She’d adopted a way of living that other people set out for her, existed to please them, tried to mould herself into what she wasn’t. She didn’t want to go down that road again. To give any man the chance to have that kind of hold on her that made her forget everything but the need to please him.

But what did she plan to do about the desires that he had suddenly woken to life? an insidious voice in her mind whispered.

‘Still awake?’ The deep voice drew her attention to him—all solid muscle and dark good looks—and in a mad impulse she saw herself rushing forward and falling into his arms. Why? Why did this man stir these strange treacherous feelings in her? She knew she couldn’t trust those feelings, yet their intensity swirled around her like a honeyed quagmire, sucking her in with inexorable force.

For a heartbeat, his gaze locked with hers and tension spiced the air.

‘Come with me. I have something to show you.’ He broke the moment.

Startled at the urgency in his tone, she might have been slow to react but an imperative hand closed on her wrist, taking her down the corridor to his study.

‘Have a look and tell me what you think of it.’

His laptop lit up as he swiped a finger. The screen showed her an unfamiliarly aligned text. She began to read.

The initial lines showed the scene was taking place at a bus stop and a girl was dragging a suitcase into the luggage compartment.

‘It’s a script.’ She sought his confirmation.

‘A new one.’ He nodded.

She resumed reading.

The scene rolled out as though before her. The main character was the girl, effusively thanking someone who helped her and not shy of getting chatty with strangers. Only the man she got friendly with, in the bus, was a mysterious stranger who spoke cryptically and asked her to remember him in case she met him again, even in vastly different circumstances.
‘As is bound to happen…’
his sentence echoed eerily in Saira’s mind as she read on ‘…
so remember what I’m about to tell you… ’

Rihaan found himself gazing intensely at her face for her reaction. He hadn’t shown his work to anyone else except professionals. It felt strange to do so now. But she had expressed a desire to know more about his work and he had taken the plunge.

The so-far-and-no-further red flag she had shown him had placed them on another platform in their relationship. Till she moved on with her life and he got back into his, surely no harm could come of a little sharing? She had shared and the stark honesty, the baring of those tender emotions still aroused his admiration. No other way could he reciprocate that trust except by opening up to her too. Except that his life was a locked diary left on the topmost shelf which you never dusted. Opening it was out of the question without the discomfort of having your throat seize up.

His work—that was his life too. And that he could share.
Not that it felt particularly comfortable either. Not when it was as raw as this.

She lifted her gaze from the screen to his and the dark eyes held everything he could have wished for as a reaction to exposing his gut. Impatience. Consternation. Barely withheld amazement.

She caught hold of the lapels of his shirt, trying to shake him in her impatience. ‘Where’s the rest? You can’t just stop at this! It’s fantabulous… I want to see this movie, like, right now.’ She shook her head, regret obvious in the gesture.

He laughed, relief flooding him. ‘As yet it’s totally unedited and random. I need to chalk out the plot properly. I wanted to show it to you because…’ he paused, then plunged in ‘…it’s inspired by you.’

‘Me?’

He shrugged. ‘Not consciously. But definitely you triggered it. It’s the first time I’ve taken up a heroine-oriented story, for one thing. The girl character is, of course, in a way you. The friendly way you talked to that reporter. The way you mixed with the sales staff at the supermarket.’

‘So you notice everything and record it for writing? Hmm, I’m not sure I like being a subject,’ she teased.

‘It’s not deliberate,’ he assured her, ‘and she won’t be all you. Just the quirks.’ He smiled as she raised her eyebrows. ‘I’m still to develop the opening properly. The sketch of the story is that this girl interacts openly with everyone, as you’ve just read in the opening. Thus, she gets to listen to a secret she isn’t meant to, a dangerous, dark secret she ought to have steered clear of. What the man tells her is a story, but really it’s a pass code, an entry to an unknown dangerous vista, maybe an alternate universe. She’s going to have to find him to get the key to getting everything back…’ He shook his head, but mostly on what crowded into his mind. ‘It’s going to piece together, I can feel it,
but for now it’s very sketchy.’ He realised she was gazing at him, her mouth slightly open.

‘Not developed? And you came up with all of that in… what? Like fifteen minutes after dinner?’

‘Bit longer than that.’ He had no idea of the time frame. The character had gripped him and that was that. He still wasn’t quite comfortable that Saira had inspired it—he never drew characters quite so totally from life—but, as the story had unfolded before him, he knew it was useless to struggle against it. He hadn’t planned on writing sci-fi either. That part had just come in as he’d talked to her.

An alternate universe. He inhaled slowly as the idea shimmered across his senses, drawing him in.

‘You’ve got that air about you again,’ Saira remarked.

‘What air?’

‘The vibration thing you get when you’re all excited about something in your writing.’ She tilted her head to one side. ‘How is it possible to feel so strongly about what you do? So much enthusiasm that your eyes just glitter with passion.’ She considered him, speaking both in abstract and directly to him.

Passion. His ears picked up the word and his brain put its own spin on it. He could tell her about passion. For a moment, the story was pushed out of his mind and his gaze swept over her. After the shower, she had changed into a feminine set of pyjamas. The soft lime-green cotton clung to her curves. The light scent of soap still enclosed her, making him think of smooth, freshly washed skin.

Skin that he was dying to touch.

Was forbidden to touch. Desire that demanded he should indulge it surged through him, warring with his attempt to suppress it. He inhaled, striving for control.

He brought his attention to her words. ‘You’ll find your passion too some day. That sounds patronizing but it isn’t meant to,’ he assured her. ‘Think of what you really enjoy
doing. Anything which makes you forget your meals and forgo sleep.’

‘Maybe some of us aren’t meant to be as demented as you,’ she teased lightly. Her attention went back to the screen. ‘If you don’t mind, there’s one thing that bothers me about this. This girl, she’ll get her happy ending, won’t she?’

‘At this point, I can’t say.’

‘But then your story will be so dark. Already the theme seems very cynical. People being friendly is
nice.
It shouldn’t lead to bad things.’ Her forehead knitted in a troubled frown.

‘Ah, but such is life. Unexpected things happen, which are far stranger than any fiction, don’t you agree?’ He smiled at her reaction, ‘I must be starting to influence you more than I realised. You’re worrying about my characters like they’re real.’

‘That’s the purpose, isn’t it? To make them so real, people forget their own troubles and root for them for two hours in the darkened hall.’ She moved away, ‘Sometimes, that strong a fantasy can be a lifesaver, especially when you feel like you can’t handle real life.’

‘But you handled it, didn’t you?’ Coming closer when she would have moved away, he put a hand on her shoulder to make her stay. He tilted her chin up with a finger when her gaze seemed to be fixed to the desk. ‘You faced it head on and filed for that divorce. I know your parents didn’t support you for that move. And you didn’t tell Vishakha bhabhisa until much later. You did it all on your own.’

‘I was lucky to have friends who still remembered me and one of them had a lawyer brother. As for telling Vishakha, you know why I wouldn’t do that. At that time we were still not at the forgive-and-forget stage.’

‘You had to bear a lot.’ His mind went over all that she
had told him. ‘What about your mother-in-law? Didn’t your lawyer advise to book a case against her?’ he probed.