You Can't Fight a Royal Attraction (12 page)

‘He did. She got her just deserts and landed up in jail. Munish had to do time too. At the time the case made headlines in the local paper. I was the target of every wealthy family’s censure and every mother-in-law’s outrage in town. Can you believe it? Instead of offering support they all thought what I should have done was grin and bear it.’ She shook her head. ‘I couldn’t believe people can be like that.’

‘Because they were afraid every woman might turn into Saira.’ His dry tone made her smile. ‘You must have inspired loads of women suffering domination; has that occurred to you? I had no idea you’ve been through so much.’ His throat clogged when he thought of her, struggling with her injuries, with her disillusionment and, to add to it, the anger of the masses. Surely, it was too much for anyone to have got through?

Guilt smote him how he had jumped to the wrong conclusions about her. While she’d been trying to forget the past, he had accused her of troubling Vishakha.

And, caring much for her sister, she had still agreed to come with him. She still had laughed, danced with him like a nymph.

God, that dance…!

Could he blame her for shrinking from any kind of involvement? When her trust had been ripped apart so thoroughly? He had been wrong to offer her a purely sexual fling. A woman who was still nursing her scars. He needed to make sure he kept any reference to that side of their relationship taboo. Aim for a platonic friendship.

Yet the way she had melted against him, the supple feel of her as she’d danced with him… even the thought of it released a rampant flood of feeling he almost felt he could not curb.

‘I should really make an effort to get a job,’ she said, as though sensing the turn of his thoughts. ‘It wouldn’t be too difficult to get one if you help out a bit. I don’t plan on going back to Lucknow, but obviously I’m going to have to make some effort to get a life. I can’t keep staying here with you for long, Rihaan.’

Maybe she was right. Asking her to stay here for ever might seem the perfect solution to satisfy his protective instincts, but she did have her own life to lead.

So had he. A life where he wouldn’t find temptation staring at him on a daily basis.

‘Just until this car rally event is over,’ he said. ‘Two days more and as soon as it’s behind us we’ll work something out for you. In the meantime, how about you think it over and make a list of jobs you fancy doing or any training that you’d like to get? Just promise,’ he warned, ‘that you won’t run away again without talking to me.’

Saira glanced around the manicured lawn of the posh seaside Mumbai hotel, marvelling at the sheer size of the crowd assembled to witness the rally. She had had no idea so many people were interested in old cars. She had to remind herself she was amid mostly billionaires. Even royalty. She caught sight of the resplendent Hyderabadi and Rajasthani monarchs, some of them in their formal traditional wear. Not to mention blue blood of foreign soil also gracing the occasion.

Behind the velvet rope stanchions, breathtaking displays of shiny vintage cars looked fabulous even to her untrained eyes.

‘Hope you weren’t feeling neglected.’ Rihaan came back to her after doing his circulating bit.

‘No room for that at all. I’m finding everything so exciting. Besides—’ she smiled and raised her wine glass,
swirling the golden liquid in it ‘—champagne in the morning? This is my kind of event.’

‘As long as you don’t plan on becoming tipsy again,’ he said dryly.

‘If I do, I have you to carry me out again.’ She gave him a naughty smile. The next moment she could have bitten off her unwary tongue.

What was she doing giving him the wrong idea? He’d think she wanted him to do it.

That
when she’d been over-careful in choosing her dress, finally settling on a long wild print orange-black creation which went A-line from the hip downwards. Modest and not provocative in the slightest, so she’d thought.

Stupid sudden slip-up. ‘Uh… I didn’t mean what it sounded like,’ she proffered.

‘What did it sound like?’ Aggravatingly, he raised dark brows, refusing to allow her an inch of leniency.

‘Like I was flirting with you, but I wasn’t. Honest. It sounded as though I was practically inviting you to do it.’

‘Then maybe you should say what you don’t mean more often,’ he jibed softly, the corner of his mouth lifting in a slow half smile.

She gazed at him in confusion. For two days he hadn’t looked at her as anything more interesting than the lounge furniture. She had told herself she had brought it on—she had wanted to be more sensible. Safer.

The sexy tilt of his mouth set her heart racing. Made her remember the afternoon she had been desperately trying to put out of her mind. So much that she had lied twice to him at meal times that she had already eaten, just in order not to spend more time with him.

Now this attention, the glint in his eyes was trashing all her good intentions.

She gave him a sour look. ‘I’m not into verbal confusion,
sorry. And, as I said, I’m not into flirting either,’ she added for good measure. ‘In case you’re getting ideas.’

‘Every time I’m with you, I seem to break all my pre-determined rules,’ he drawled. ‘You got any remedy for that?’

‘You know what they say about bad company… better alone…’ she offered, hoping he didn’t read the reluctance beneath the words.

They walked on. ‘Ah, but—’ He cut off mid-sentence whatever he had been about to say. She sensed his sudden tension, though she could put a finger on it only afterwards. In front of them was a bright red cabriolet with the sun hitting off the chrome fittings.

‘Pretty, isn’t it…’ She glanced at Rihaan but he wasn’t looking at her. His gaze was fixed on the car in a peculiar way and then he turned to scan the crowd, in particular the gathering under the marquee some metres away, where a few of the royalty in their magnificence were gathered.

‘Hey bhawani maa
, not now…’ That was what it sounded like, the strange words making her gaze sharpen on him. She barely saw his lips move but then he uttered an expletive and went ashen.

She followed his gaze to a bearded man in a Jodhpuri suit. About Rihaan’s age, he had noticed them too and he detached himself from the crowd, gazing at Rihaan with much the same intensity as he was.

‘Rihaan…’ Before she could ask him what the matter was, he’d turned and walked away, an angry growl issuing from his throat.

‘Rihaan!’ she protested. A second look at the regal stranger made her gasp as she recognised what she had missed earlier. The familial resemblance was unmistakable.

‘Come on!’ He turned back and caught hold of her arm, dragging her away in the opposite direction from the still staring man.

‘Slow down, I can’t run in heels,’ she complained and
he let up for a second. If there was a man who’d lost his cool, it was him. His face didn’t give much away but Saira could see the defined hardness of his features, as though his facial muscles had become locked into place.

‘Who was he?’ Her question was quieter.

‘My cousin.’ It was more a husky rasp than an answer. His hand closed around the white knob of a prop pole nearby, as though he needed the support. ‘My uncle’s son, to be exact. Though we’ve grown up like brothers.’ He looked at her, dark eyes wearing a strained look. ‘I know what you’re thinking. I haven’t mentioned him, them… my family…’

‘You don’t owe me an explanation about anything.’ That wasn’t what her heart was saying, but it was the truth, wasn’t it?

He shook his head for no. ‘I should have told you.’ He drew in a deep breath as though bracing himself. ‘My real name isn’t Khehra. I assumed it when I came to Mumbai and began writing. My roots are in Rajasthan. I belong to a clan that’s a part of the vast Mewar with a name that has been passed down through the centuries. My father is a king. I am Rihaan Sumer Singh Rathore of Prabhatgarh.’

A deep voice added, snapping their attention to the man whom it belonged to, ‘The future Maharaja of Prabhatgarh, and present yuvraj
saheb.’

Saira looked across at Rihaan but his eyes never wavered from the road. He’d kept the speedometer needle steady at eighty since leaving Bandra and he didn’t seem to be in any mood to talk.

Not that she wanted to force him into chatting. She just wished he would talk. On his own initiative.

A hurt niggled inside. Once again a man had hidden things from her. She told herself she was placing undue importance on it. This had nothing to do with what had
gone before. Rihaan owed her nothing. If he had kept his real identity a secret from her, she had no business being upset about it.

But the heart was illogical in these matters and the ache in her chest needed more time to subside.

From the moment his cousin… Viren… she had come to know, had bent to touch his feet saying,
‘Ghanikhama, Bhai-sa,’
for her the noonday sun had taken on an unnatural hue.

Evidently the two men were estranged, but she still didn’t expect Rihaan to snap to his cousin, ‘Why did you come after me? You know you’re not supposed to.’

From close up, she saw the resemblance was pretty strong. Fairer and slightly more boyish, still Viren had the same arrogant way of holding himself straight and a somewhat aggressive jut of the jaw. In the chocolate Indowestern wear against Rihaan’s impeccable dark suit, he looked a lighter toned version of Rihaan.

Right down to the thunderous dark anger etched on the older man’s face.

‘Maybe I’m hoping you would not spurn me.’ His answer was equally mystifying as Rihaan’s question.

‘Viren, you know exactly who has been spurning whom, so don’t hassle me,’ Rihaan answered with little patience. ‘And what’s this about being the future Maharaja? Maybe you’ve forgotten this isn’t April Fool’s Day,’ he bit out.

‘I haven’t,
bhai-sa
… but, now that we’ve met, I have to tell you what is going on in the Maharaj’s mind. Nadira was wondering if we’d run into you. Guess she was right to.’

‘Nadira? She’s here too?’ Rihaan burst out.

For Saira the morning went downhill from there.

Not just because Nadira, when she appeared, proved to be a statuesque, elegant creature in a georgette sari that she wore as if she was born into it. Not because she was pretty and had a smile that looked as if she had borrowed
it from Cleopatra. Not even because she gave Rihaan a tight, air-squeezing hug.

But because the moment she heard Rihaan say, ‘She’s here too?’ in that tone of voice, her mind—not too bright when it needed to be—went ahead this time and snagged on what he had told her at the beach. Something about having been in love once and that he had found it ‘as sour an experience as you have’.

And her suddenly Einstein-ic mind put two and two together.

Nadira must have been the woman he’d been speaking of.

The one who’d broken his heart? At that moment, Nadira hugged him as though he were a long lost friend. Of course Rihaan, as self-possessed as ever, couldn’t be counted an injured Romeo but then he hardly ever gave anything away, so there was no telling from his face as he’d patted Nadira’s back in a friendly gesture and stepped away.

At least they had remembered her enough to exchange introductions. His cousin charmingly bowed to her as he introduced himself as, ‘Virendra Pratap Singh Rathore.’

And then the cousins disappeared inside the hotel, leaving Saira to make chit-chat with Nadira. Princess Nadira. She came to know that Nadira’s father had been royalty too but somehow, after his death, Nadira had grown up in the Rathore palace.

Palace?
Palace!

‘Okay, okay. Just let me get this—’ she sat up now ‘—you are a prince and, according to something the other prince said, you’ll be a Maharaja some day? A real jewels-in-the-crown and the puffed-out-chest kind of Maharaja? So you’re the crown prince.’

She tried to place him in that background. This grumpy, grouchy, sometimes charming, always sexy—not that she was supposed to think that last one—hunk was royalty? Blue blood?

‘Well, you certainly have the arrogance,’ she remarked. One criteria ticked off.

‘Viren was babbling,’ Rihaan dismissed.

‘That confirms it.’ She nodded in all seriousness. ‘Only someone with an inflated head can brush off that charming princely talk as babble.’

He directed her a sharp glance, eyes narrowed. ‘Are you talking about Viren? You forget I’ve known him since he was born. I’m hardly likely to be bowled over by what you call charm.’

What about Nadira? a voice in her head egged her on to ask. She didn’t. She was a coward.

‘I haven’t been any kind of royalty for more than six years,’ he told her. ‘And Viren has simply misunderstood the situation, that’s all.’

‘Which is?’

‘Let’s stop for ice cream,’ was all he said.

But when they were seated at the same dessert bar they’d stopped at before, Saira couldn’t help reflecting that it seemed to have become a ritual with them. Rihaan even ordered his old choice. Vanilla.

‘Six years ago,’ Rihaan said, arresting her attention, ‘something happened to make me leave Prabhatgarh. It wasn’t an easy break. I was forbidden to ever come back. Consequently, I severed all the links with the clan.’ A dark look began to creep over his face, his eyes focusing in the middle distance as though he was seeing some scene from the past. Maybe he was. The occasion when it had come to pass, perhaps.

‘Why?’ she ventured.

His gaze shifted to her and she shivered suddenly at the bleakness she could see in there. Cutting away all connections. Slowly it sank home in her consciousness. Was that even possible?

‘I went back on my word,’ he said. ‘I was engaged to
Nadira. And I refused to marry her. The match was forged because my father had given his word to her dying father. The punishment for reneging on my father’s word, the punishment for breaking my word of honour when I had promised her was decided by the elders to be nothing less than banishment from the clan. Total. With no communication allowed whatever.’

The cold, detached way he said the words obviously didn’t match the intensity of them.

Rihaan felt the old ache creep up and grip his throat. However many times he recalled it, the past didn’t let him go. And the stone weight on his chest didn’t ease even though time passed.