by Dani Collins
She found the hanger and came across with it, offering him a lingering kiss as she took the gown. Her hair was still up, her jewelry on, her makeup smudged in the most libidinous way.
He could get used to this, he decided as he began to undress. The fog of sexual satisfaction was particularly delicious while watching her move around her personal space, seeing her in a way that very few others were allowed to.
She slid a knowing smile at him when she caught him admiring her. A hunger that wasn’t purely sexual nestled in the pit of his gut. It was desire for all of her. Her thoughts, her laughter, her moments of doubt. He imagined her belly swelling and being at liberty to press his hand there anytime so he could feel their baby kick.
At some point she would go into labor, and that thought was enough to send a cold rush of protectiveness through him, one that propelled him across to still her hands from fiddling with the gown. He gathered her in and kissed her, holding her close, trying to convey the myriad emotions gripping him.
Her arms came up around his neck, and for long moments they were lost to lazy, sexy kisses. When they broke to catch their breath, her hands slid down to his vest.
“Careful,” she said with an unsteady smile. Her gaze skittered from his as though she was as unsettled by the intensity of the moment as he was. “We’ll wind up forgetting to get undressed again.”
He stole a last fondle of her bottom through the silk of her robe and released her.
“Who do I return this to and how do I pay for borrowing it?” He unbuttoned his vest. “Max wouldn’t say.”
“Because I bought it for you.”
Vijay bristled.
“Oh, don’t look at me like that.” Oriel began to remove her jewelry and set it in a crystal bowl on the dresser. “You didn’t expect or particularly want to attend this party.”
He’d managed to put aside their different backgrounds and enjoy the evening, but it came around hard enough to slap him now.
“I can afford my own tuxedo, Oriel.” Aside from tonight, he had no use for one and had no doubt this one was priced at a premium, given this had been a last-minute alteration, but he wasn’t a pauper. He’d recently inked his name onto a deal that gave him a lot more disposable income than he’d had when he had bought her a gourmet dinner in Milan.
“My father can afford his own Maserati and rarely drives,” she said, “but my mother still bought him one for his birthday. Don’t worry about it.”
“They’re married,” he pointed out. “If you’re buying me clothes, does that mean you intend to marry me?”
“You haven’t asked, have you?” she shot back. “But consider this before you do.” She held up a finger like a scolding schoolteacher. “The reason my parents chose to adopt me was that my mother values her career. She has always had to work very hard to balance her personal aspirations with being a wife and a parent. Papa has a decent income from his books and papers, but Maman is the one who can afford a custom-built house like this. Yet she is constantly judged for not being maternal enough. For emasculating her husband by earning more and holding the spotlight while he takes a supporting role and arranges his life around her touring schedule. If the shoe were on the other foot, no one would bat an eye.”
“You’re warning me I will have to play second fiddle to you and the riches you stand to inherit? I’m well aware, Oriel.” His voice hardened along with every muscle in his body. All his sexual afterglow was gone.
“I’m saying that if you’re already threatened by it, you should definitely save your breath on proposing, because I won’t marry you if you expect me to apologize for who I am or what I have.” She waved at their surroundings. “I’m proud of my mother for all she has accomplished. I won’t reject this or her to appease your ego.”
Vijay removed his cuff links and dropped them into the dish with her own jewelry. The sound was very loud inside their thick silence.
“Those were a gift, too,” she said frostily. “I thought it would be a nice keepsake from a special night. Most people were very honored to be included, but apparently this evening isn’t something you consider worth remembering. Good to know. Sleep in the other room.” She turned her back and started into her bathroom.
“My father was corrupt,” he bit out, loath to talk about it, but it had to be addressed. This fight wasn’t about whether their lovemaking was memorable—it was imprinted on his soul never to be forgotten—or whether he would keep a pair of cuff links. He probably should have mentioned this blight in his history before he started talking about marriage. “I was complicit in his crimes.”
“What?” Her jaw went slack.
“Unknowingly.” He ran his hand into his hair. “But it went on way too long. I’m deeply ashamed, but it’s something you should know about me, whether or not we marry, given we share a child.”
She moved to lower herself onto a velvet stool and blinked somber eyes at him. “What happened?”
“I told you my parents died when I was in my teens.”
“And that you raised Kiran, yes.”
He nodded abruptly. “She was in the car when they died. She uses a wheelchair now, which I only tell you to help you understand how I could have been so oblivious to what was going on beneath my nose. After we lost our grandmother, we still had possession of the house we grew up in. Technically our aunt had care of us, but she had a family and a busy medical practice in Delhi. We stayed in our home with some staff. I was Kiran’s de facto guardian. She still required surgeries and other therapies. We were grieving and trying to move forward with our lives, going to school and making what felt like a normal life. My father’s construction business continued to run under his top managers. I met with them once or twice a year, but I didn’t involve myself in it. I was grateful I didn’t have to worry about money on top of everything else.”
“You were a child,” she said, as if that might excuse his ignorance.
“I was fifteen when I started meeting with them. I was twenty-two before I took a proper interest in how the company turned such a healthy profit.” He still hated himself for trusting so blindly. “When I did, I realized our success was built on bribery and backroom deals. Intimidation, in some cases.”
“Are you sure those weren’t the tactics of the people who were left in charge after your father passed?”
“I’m sure. They were following the playbook he had created when he took over a handful of broken-down machines from his own father. He had been bribing officials to win contracts for roads and bridges from day one. Sometimes he failed to meet the building requirements. At one point, a bridge had collapsed and they’d paid to cover up their deliberate watering down of material. Thankfully, no one was injured or killed, but it was only a matter of time. The level of corruption was astonishing.”
“What did you do?” Her eyes were wide with muted horror.
“I took the evidence to the police. Records and assets were seized, arrests made. They were lenient with me because I cooperated, but we lost the house, the business. Everything of value. It was social and financial suicide. All of my friends were connected to the relationships my father had built. To avoid going down with the ship, many turned on us and tried to smear our name. When that happened, even our family turned their backs on us, especially my father’s side.”
“Because you were trying to make reparations for a wrong that wasn’t even your crime? Since when is integrity worse than living off ill-gotten gains?” Oriel asked crossly.
“Since it affected their own social standing and ability to keep their jobs. But thank you for that.” He pushed his hands into his pants pockets. “Kiran was the only one who stood by my decision to come clean. Everyone else said I should have kept my mouth shut and wound it down quietly if I didn’t like it. Instead we had death threats. That’s why Kiran started our security system, to protect us. Many people tried to undermine our success w
ith it, retaliating by suggesting I employed my father’s methods to win the few installations we were hired to make. Our success has been achieved honestly,” he stressed. “Killian, the owner of TecSec wouldn’t have touched us with a ten-foot pole otherwise. So it’s not ego that makes me reluctant to accept your gift, Oriel. It’s my conscience. I need to earn what I have.”
* * *
What a terrible betrayal. She couldn’t fathom how hurtful it would have been for him and his sister to lose everything, including their friends and family, after suffering so much loss already.
“I’ll have Max invoice you if it’s important to you.”
“It is.”
She nodded, compulsively running the silky tail of her robe’s belt between her fingers. “I won’t take that money from Jalil. It’s not mine—”
“Don’t let my feelings color yours.” Vijay moved to crouch before her. His big hand stilled her fidgeting fingers. “Whether you accept that fortune or not is between you and him. Just as what you do with this...” he lifted his gaze to the ceiling of the chateau “...and the rest of what you inherit from your parents is completely up to you. I don’t expect you to renounce any of it. Just know that if we marry, people are going to suggest I came after you for your money. That will get under my skin sometimes, and now you know why. But I know what I’m worth. And it’s not insubstantial.”
Nothing about him was insubstantial. He would be a lot more easy to dismiss if he was.
“Okay, but I hope you won’t think what you just told me, or the fact I will inherit all of this, has anything to do with my concerns about whether or not we marry. We barely know each other, Vijay. I always imagined that if I married, it would be because...” Why did it make her feel so gauche to admit it? “That I would be in love.”
He didn’t laugh. He accepted that with a nod of understanding and stood.
“Did you know that something like ninety percent of marriages in India are still arranged?” he asked. “The couples aren’t usually strangers anymore, but they don’t always know each other well. Even so, our divorce rate is really low. People wind up very content. Why don’t we approach it that way? Tell me what you’re looking for in marriage beyond love.”
What else was there?
“I always thought love was the key,” she said. “My parents have very different personalities, but they’re in love, and that seems to be what makes their marriage work.”
“I’m not going to promise you a life of love, or even that I’m capable of falling in love. But looking at your parents as an outsider, I see a couple who seem to have friendship, respect, affection. Loyalty. We could have those things.”
It was a fair offer, but seemed like a pale knockoff version of the connection she really yearned for.
“What do you want?” she asked, playing her fingers into the space between his shirt buttons. “Don’t say ‘someone who cooks.’ I promise you, I will disappoint.”
His mouth twitched. “I like that you make me laugh. I want that.” He ran his hands over her waist and hips. “Passion is a ‘nice to have.’” He nodded at the wrinkled impression they’d left in the blankets on the edge of her bed.
“Not a deal breaker?”
“It’s not.” He sounded surprised by his own admission. “Don’t get me wrong, I definitely want it. My mouth is watering thinking about all the ways I want to make love with you.” His mouth twisted with self-deprecation while his hand drifted down to fondle her bottom. “But if that was all we had, if I thought I couldn’t trust you, then no. That would be the deal-breaker. Trust is hard for me. It’s going to take time.”
She could understand that, given what he’d just told her, but she drew a slow breath that felt as though it spread powdered glass all through her chest.
“Given the way we started this relationship, I have to question how much I can trust you, too.”
He acknowledged that with a stiff nod and moved his hands to her hips.
“Where does that leave us, then? With me sleeping in the other room?”
“No.” The word escaped her as a barb of loss caught at her heart. She flashed her thick lashes up at him. “We’re not going to learn to trust each other if we put walls between us.”
“Or oceans,” he said pointedly and started to draw her closer.
“No,” she said, pressing away. “We have such different ideas of what a marriage means. I don’t want to think about it anymore. I am washing off my makeup before you distract me again.”
“Fine. I’ll go brush my teeth. But Oriel.” He caught her wrist. “If you want to sleep, tell me to stay in the other room.”
She gave him her smokiest smile. “We’ll sleep. Eventually.”
* * *
Oriel had a rough start to her morning. They had slept, but not much. They might still be tentative about trusting one another, but between the sheets, she felt completely safe with Vijay. When she was with him like that, she felt, well, loved. It was kind of addictive.
When she woke and rose, however, she was tired and a bit achy and had to face the reality that sex hadn’t solved anything. She was still pregnant by a man who was a bit of a mystery. Her life had still been cracked wide open by her birth family.
She barely swallowed her breakfast and was worried about it staying down by the time Vijay was placing the call to India.
“Do you want me to put it off?” he asked, frowning with concern.
“I think it’s nerves.” She had never felt so many caterpillars spinning cocoons in her middle.
His sister Kiran answered with a cheerful hello that immediately put Oriel at ease.
Thankfully, she had the excuse of a late night at her parents’ party to explain any colorlessness on her part. It was also such an emotional call for both her and Jalil, bringing sharp tears to her eyes when she heard the break in his voice, that they could both hardly speak.
They kept it short, and she promised to be in touch soon to let him know when she might book a trip to meet him in person.
Afterward, she had a reactive cry in Vijay’s arms, then pulled herself together and asked him to drive her to her childhood physician, where she was pronounced healthy and definitely pregnant. If her morning sickness became debilitating, she was advised to seek further medical attention. Otherwise, she should take her prescribed vitamins and consider scaling back her workload.
Oriel already knew she would have to do that, and it was eating at her.
“I know I don’t have to work, but I’ve put in so much effort to get this far. Now my entire life is a row of dominoes that are falling over, one after another,” she complained as Vijay drove her home. “I’ll have to tell Payton to break my contracts. He’ll want to tell the clients why, because some will say it’s okay if I’m pregnant. Sometimes that works for their show or campaign. But I can’t leak my pregnancy to the whole industry without telling my mother first. If I tell her, she’ll want to know who the father is.” She rolled her head on the headrest. “And what our plans are. Then there’s your sister. I don’t expect you to keep this from her, but will she tell Jalil? How will he react?”
“There is one more domino to consider.”
“No,” she said petulantly and turned her face away. “I don’t want to hear it.”
He pulled the car off the road to a spot that gave them a view of the river. The fronds of a willow dangled to play with the lily pads at the edge of the water.
“At some point your connection to Lakshmi will become public. You can put that off, but I doubt you can keep it hidden indefinitely, especially once you’re in India. Her face is very well known. I recommend staying in front of the story to control how it rolls out. Once it’s known, much will be made of the fact that Lakshmi was an unwed mother. Do you want to be judged for being the same?”
“That shouldn’t matter! Not in this day and age.”
/> “I agree.” He held up a hand. “And to many it won’t. To some it will be an affront. Unfortunately, those are the voices the media will amplify because that’s what gains them clicks and revenue. I wouldn’t want our child to suffer because we wished to make a point about free will.”
“Ugh. What kind of a world are we bringing this baby into?” she muttered, bracing her elbow on the door and covering her eyes with her hand.
“Come. Let’s walk a minute. Clear our heads. Is this the park your cousin teased you about last night?”
“Yes.” She couldn’t help a small laugh. She had forgotten about their childhood game in the pavilion of pretending to be a princess locked in a tower, taking turns rescuing the other.
“Show me.” Vijay left the car and came around to open her door.
“I will not re-enact it,” she warned, but enjoyed the short walk along the river’s edge to the structure that overlooked the river. A family of tourists left it as they arrived.
“I don’t know what I thought a knight in shining armor was supposed to save me from. My life was very simple and happy back then.” She moved to the spot with the best view and curled her arm around the post. “Honestly, my life is not that difficult right now, just very unclear. I wish I knew what to do first.”
“Oriel.”
She looked over her shoulder.
Vijay was on one knee. He opened a ring box and offered it. “Will you marry me?”
She slapped her hand over her mouth, but a muffled squeak of shock came out. Inexplicably, tears came into her eyes. She wouldn’t have expected to be so moved by a proposal from a man she had really only known a few days, but she was.
“How did you...?” She came closer. The ring was lovely. Modest, but eye-catching with its center diamond surrounded by smaller ones in a daisy pattern, all set in yellow gold. It looked like an antique. “Is that a family ring?”
“I went shopping while you were with the doctor. The jeweler said it came to him through an estate sale. It was likely made in the middle eighteen hundreds, but its provenance is mostly unknown.”
