Rebel Hard (Hard Play #2)

by Nalini Singh

  “Good,” Shilpa Sharma said after telling Nayna not to buy towels because Shilpa had tons of brand-new spares. “You’re close enough to help with the wedding preparations. I know Sandesh thinks he’s got everything organized, but there are a thousand things that go into a good wedding. And my Madhuri, she’s going to want a big, fancy wedding aren’t you?”

  “I’ve always wanted one of those ice sculptures,” Madhuri confessed. “Like maybe a giant swan with its wings out. Oh, and gold foil used in the wings so they sparkle.”

  “Oooh.” Shilpa’s eyes widened. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen one of those at an Indian wedding—not even Pinky Mehra had one. And how about that cake you showed me on that Insta thingie? The five-layer one with the roses and the lights and the waterfall?”

  “Oh, Ma!” Madhuri all but melted off the sofa “I would die if I had that cake! Should I message the baker? Maybe she can fit me in!”

  * * *

  The next Saturday and Nayna still had no idea what had happened.

  The one thing she did know was that she was standing in her brand-new apartment, boxes around her. Raj was outside with her father and a couple of guys from his crew, doing some work on the deck while her mother and Madhuri bustled about in the kitchen, making some ginger tea for them.

  Their grandmother had a slight cold and had requested it—and strangely enough, Madhuri, who was a terrible cook, made incredible ginger chai, beginning with freshly crushed ginger and lots of full-fat milk. The pot was Shilpa’s, one of a spare set her mother had given to Nayna. Along with cutlery, glasses, plates, even a rice cooker.

  Nayna looked at her best friend, who was carefully unwrapping Nayna’s knickknacks. Ísa sat on an old but funky red sofa that Nayna had found online and that Raj had driven forty minutes out of town to pick up for her.

  “I did it,” Nayna said. “I really did it. I moved out.”

  “Your father is acting very weird,” Ísa whispered after craning her neck around to make sure no one would overhear her, ponytailed red hair swinging against the blue of her top. “Not angry weird. Weird weird.”

  “I think he’s in continued shock from my mother’s first ever show of temper.” To be honest, Nayna hadn’t quite processed that herself. “I just…”

  Sinking down into the sofa beside Ísa, she whispered, “I never thought she’d fight for me like that.” And suddenly her voice trembled, tears closing up her throat. “I always thought I would only be loved if I was perfect. That I had to be perfect.”

  Her friend put her arm around her and hugged her close. “You silly goose.” Ísa’s own eyes were wet. “My mother is a fire-breathing dragon with a calculator for a heart, and she crisped someone who was trying to cause trouble for me. Your mother is an actual human. Of course she fought for you.”

  Nayna snuffled, laughing through her tears before quickly wiping her eyes dry on the tails of her checked green shirt so that her mother and grandmother wouldn’t worry when they returned to the room. “I just… I saw how she was with Madhuri. She was so sad, but she never went against my father.”

  “Well, it seems like she learned from her mistake,” Ísa said. “I’m proud of her. What she did, it meant going against what she’s believed her whole life.”

  Nayna nodded and leaned up against Ísa again. “She was born on a farm in a rural part of Fiji, did I ever tell you that? Only twenty-one when she married my father, and her parents took her out of school at age sixteen so she could help out on the farm more. My aji used to tell me how shy and sweet she was, how my father had to go with her everywhere for a while until she became used to the hustle and bustle of the city.”

  “That actually sounds super cute,” Ísa said with a grin. “Your dad doing that for her.”

  “He loves her.” Of that, Nayna had never been in any doubt. “It was arranged, their marriage, but Aji says after five other introductions, my father took one look at my mother and he was a goner.”

  Nayna raised her hand to her face. “Apparently she was considered damaged goods by others because of that burn scar she has on her upper cheek, but he told Aji that she was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen. And after they got together, he even asked her if she wanted to study some more, and that’s how my mother ended up learning how to be an office manager.” A position she’d held part-time for much of Nayna’s childhood.

  “No wonder he’s so discombobulated now,” Ísa said. “He adores her. And she’s mad at him.”

  “She’s really mad. I…” Nayna blew out a breath. “Like Raj said, this wasn’t in the script.” And it had left her with shaky ground under her feet. “It’s all upside down.”

  An engine sounded outside. “Is that another truck arriving?”

  “Oh, that’ll be Sailor,” Ísa said with a sweetly possessive smile. “He had to check in on a job, but he’s going to help Raj finish up the deck. His brothers are coming over too.”

  “The Bishop?” Nayna asked, well aware that Sailor’s older brother was the lauded captain of the national rugby team.

  Ísa nodded. “Gabe’s picking up their younger brothers on his way in.”

  “That, at least, should make my father’s day.” Gaurav Sharma was a huge fan of rugby and of Gabriel Bishop in particular.

  Before Nayna could say anything else, her grandmother returned from the restroom. “Come, Ninu, Isshu,” she said, using the nicknames she’d given them long ago. “We must be faster in unwrapping these things.”

  * * *

  After everyone else had left—post beer and a barbecue—Raj sat down with Nayna’s father on the finished deck. While the other man had turned up today, he’d remained quiet and hadn’t interacted with Nayna at all.

  Raj’d had enough. No one would hurt Nayna on his watch. “She’s the most extraordinary woman I’ve ever met,” he said to the older man. “And she’s never been given any freedom. All she sees in the idea of marriage is a trap, a cage.”

  Nayna’s father stared straight ahead, a muscle working in his jaw. “I was looking out for her,” Gaurav Sharma finally gritted out. “Madhuri ended up abandoned in a foreign city. What kind of life is that for a girl?”

  Raj decided not to point out that Gaurav had curtailed Nayna’s freedom long before Madhuri’s marriage went bad; this wasn’t about point-scoring. It was about ensuring Nayna’s father didn’t hurt her soft heart. “You want to protect her, make sure no harm comes to her.”

  “It’s what a father does.”

  Pain stabbed at Raj. He wanted children too, but only with Nayna. His wild and blazingly intelligent lover who wanted adventure and a life lived on a sprawling canvas… while Raj was most at home in the familiar and the rooted. “I can’t imagine how hard it would be to let my child go into something that could cause him or her harm,” he said past the reminder of how Nayna was moving farther and farther from him. “But holding on so securely that they can’t breathe… it could break them in the end.”

  Nayna’s father didn’t say anything for a long minute. When he did speak, he said, “We should go inside. My mother will want to go home.”

  It wasn’t the end result Raj wanted, but at least Gaurav Sharma said goodbye to his daughter rather than simply ignoring her. And when the older man shot Raj a pointed look for not leaving with them, his wife glared at him, and Nayna’s father said nothing—though thunderclouds formed on his brow.

  “Well,” Nayna said after everyone had gone, “that was a strange, beautiful day.”

  Yes, that was the way to describe it, but for Raj it had also been a terrible day. The day Nayna took her first step away from him. But for now she was his, and he would drown himself in her.

  Pressing his hands to the door on either side of her head, he kissed her.

  Making a throaty sound, she rose up toward him at once, wrapping her arms around his neck. And the stranglehold of fear around his heart, it eased a fraction.

  34

  Dreams, Beer, and Ice Cream (Not in That Order) />
  The following Monday passed by at the speed of light.

  Nayna’s firm had a big meeting to work out their plans and aims for the year to come, and once again, Nayna felt an itch inside her to move beyond the steady, familiar work she was doing there. She was good at it, but she’d never given herself the chance to figure out if she’d be good in a position that required more nimble movements and decisions.

  “Nayna.” Douglas stopped her after the meeting, his green eyes piercing against the dark brown of his hair. “I’ve got a major meet with the Barths Tuesday afternoon. You want to sit in?”

  The Barths were big clients—and whatever Nayna’s future held, any such connections would be a bonus. “Thank you. That’d be fantastic.”

  The meeting ended up being in the private room of a restaurant, and once it was over, Douglas drove them both back to the office. “I spent Christmas vacation in Egypt,” he told her, regaling her with stories when she admitted her interest in the country. “There’s an Egyptian exhibition on at the art gallery,” he said as they turned into the firm’s parking lot. “Last week before it closes. I’m thinking about going. You want to come?”

  The past and the future collided, two very different men asking her to attend the same event. Douglas, of course, was just being friendly. Though he was divorced and currently single, he’d never made any move on Nayna.

  “Thank you,” she said, “but I’m not going anywhere until I clear my workload.”

  “Well,” Douglas said, “if you change your mind, you know where I work.” His grin was wide. “I’ll email you a few of my Egypt photos too. I’ve already bored everyone else with them.”

  Laughing, the two of them entered the villa and headed off to their separate offices.

  In the days that followed, Nayna had to work long hours to catch up after having taken extra time off work. Raj dropped by one night with takeout while she and Douglas were working out a problem.

  Delight had her bouncing inside.

  She introduced the men and they shook hands. For a second, she thought she was imagining the sudden tension in the air, but Raj’s expressions were no longer opaque to her—and the way he was holding his jaw, it didn’t exactly shout happiness. As for Douglas, he shot her a huge smile before he left and said, “Don’t forget about the Egyptian exhibition. We still have a few days to catch it.”

  Raj said absolutely nothing after Douglas left the room, simply helped her set out the takeout on the coffee table in one corner of her office, between two small sofas. Nayna waited until her colleague had exited the villa altogether, driving off in his BMW, before deciding to take the bull by the horns.

  “I don’t know what that was about,” she said bluntly. “If I was going to go to that exhibition, it’d be with you.”

  Raj gave her an intent look. “I don’t think he knew I existed until I walked in.” Quiet, potent words.

  Nayna frowned. “That’s because I don’t talk about my private life in the office.” She liked her colleagues but didn’t consider them close enough friends to chat to them about the problems and joys of her life.

  Raj’s shoulder muscles remained rigid. “He thought you were single, and he was building up to asking you out.”

  Nayna snorted. “He’s known me since I began working here. He hasn’t suddenly been overcome by my beauty.” And if Raj didn’t stop being so hardheaded about this, Nayna would have a blowup to rival Shilpa Sharma’s.

  “The man was hitting on you,” Raj said without raising his voice. “Or does he stay behind to help out all the people in this office?”

  “Ugh!” Nayna hauled Raj’s face down to her own, kissing him until his fingers dug into her hips and her heart was thunder. “You’re my man, and we’re not having a dumb fight over nothing.”

  Raj’s gaze smoldered. He was the one who initiated the next kiss, and that kiss burned through her like hot black fire. She’d already taken off her jacket earlier in the day, and now he unbuttoned her shirt with one hand while tugging up the hem of her pencil skirt with the other.

  She shoved her hands under his T-shirt, clawing at his back as he kissed her throat, one hand on the lace-covered mound of her bra. Each squeeze, each brush, it only made her hotter. When he pulled away to spin her around, she instinctively braced her hands on the edge of her desk.

  “Raj?”

  Shoving up her skirt to her hips, Raj didn’t reply as he pulled down her panties. Nayna lifted one foot, then the other so he could get them fully off. The sound of a belt being opened, a zipper being lowered, the crackle of foil.

  Her face was hot, her entire body teetering on the cliff of anticipation.

  One big hand gripped her hip. “Nayna.” A ground-out word that demanded a response.

  She lowered herself even farther, arching her back. “Yes,” she whispered. “Yes.”

  He surged into her in a hard thrust that lifted her onto her toes and tore a scream from her mouth. Hands on her hips on either side, Raj thrust in and out in a relentless motion that pushed her over the cliff in a passionate clenching of inner muscles that made him stiffen and let out a loud grunt before he leaned down to press a kiss to her neck.

  His breath was heaving bellows, his heart pounding against her back.

  Reaching up with one hand, Nayna brushed her palm over his bristled cheek. “You’re mine,” she said, her voice husky. “I don’t want anyone else.”

  * * *

  Raj met up with Navin for a beer the next night, his mood still dark.

  He’d been rough with Nayna the previous day in her office, and he wasn’t happy with himself about it. He hadn’t physically hurt her, and she’d been with him all the way, but Raj wasn’t used to losing control the way he had with her.

  You’re mine. I don’t want anyone else.

  Nayna believed that now. But how much longer would those words be true?

  “Hey.” Navin tapped his beer bottle to Raj’s. “What’s with the tall, dark, and brooding look, bro? I know you’re not trying to pick up women.”

  Raj hadn’t even noticed the women in the pub, all his attention on an accountant with dark eyes who filled all the holes inside him but who might only be his for a small moment in time. “It’s nothing,” he said to his brother. “How are you and Komal doing?” The strain between the two had hit such a fever pitch that Aditi had all but moved into Raj’s small flat, making up a bed for herself on his fold-out couch.

  Navin shrugged and took a sip of his beer. “She’s pissed off at me because I’m ‘just’ a teacher, can’t give her some fancy lifestyle. I don’t know what she expected since I was a student teacher when we met.”

  Raj didn’t like his sister-in-law, but he knew this wasn’t all Komal’s fault. “You’re hardly home, Navin. Why the fuck are you out with the boys all hours when you’ve got a pretty young wife at home?”

  “It’s not like she’s at home either,” Navin shot back. “I saw her at the same club I was at yesterday.”

  Raj’s temples pounded. “I don’t care who’s at what club,” he said. “You two have to figure something out—it’s not fair on Mum and Dad and Aditi to have you two hissing at each other like feral cats.”

  Flushing, Navin ducked his head. “Komal didn’t even want to move in with the family,” he muttered. “I talked her into it.”

  That, at least, explained a little of his sister-in-law’s behavior when she’d first come home as Navin’s bride. “Have you considered moving out?” At this stage, their parents would wave them off with cheerful smiles and offers to load their furniture.

  “It’s fucking expensive,” Navin said, though—despite his complaints—he wasn’t hard up. Not only did he have his teacher’s salary, he got a percentage of the construction company’s profits. Raj had made his father and mother agree to that setup—even though Raj was running the business, he never wanted Navin or Aditi to feel cut out of something their parents had built.

  “I can organize more funds,” he began.
>
  But Navin shook his head. “I’m being an asshole, bhaiya.” Taking another drink of his beer, he put it back down. “I know I’m in a good spot, and I know if you weren’t around, the parents would be looking at me to take over the family business—and I’d be miserable.” A faint grin that reminded Raj of the small boy who’d once followed him around. “I must’ve done something good in a past life to end up with you as a brother, though I clearly also did something very nasty to end up with the marriage from hell.”

  Raj squeezed his shoulder. “Try, Navin,” he said quietly. “You loved Komal madly when you two got married. That kind of love doesn’t just disappear.” His own love for Nayna would be forever a part of him, no matter what happened.

  Navin’s hand tightened to bloodless whiteness round the beer bottle, and Raj realized his younger brother was fighting a strong surge of emotion. “I think she’s having an affair.”

  The words were a punch to the gut. “Think or know?”

  “I don’t have any proof.” Navin finished off his beer. “Not that I really care. It’s not like she loves me anyway.”

  Raj did what he could for his brother that night, but Navin wasn’t talking anymore. He was also drunk when Raj drove him home, then helped him up the internal stairs to his and Komal’s part of the house. The house had three master suites, two upstairs and one downstairs. Raj’s parents occupied one of the upstairs ones, Komal and Navin the other.

  There had previously only been one master suite upstairs, but Raj had added in a second after Navin’s engagement, when his brother told Raj he and his new wife would be staying in the family home. He’d done it as a wedding present, never realizing that his brother was trampling on Komal’s needs and wants.

  Aditi had a single room at the far end of the same hallway.

  At the end nearest the stairs was a large rumpus room/lounge, set up with a television and sofas.

  Raj and Navin had both had single bedrooms on the ground floor before Navin got married and Raj moved out. At present, one was his mother’s sewing room and the other functioned as his father’s study. When in town, Raj’s grandparents occupied the final master suite on the ground floor. That suite had been built for them so they wouldn’t have to deal with stairs.