by Penny Jordan
“Is it?” he asked in a ragged voice. “Because you brought Zeph and he’s pretty damned incredible.”
“He is, isn’t he?” she said shamelessly. “But he’s half yours so—” She took a few faltering steps toward him, then hesitated, not sure if he was ready to close the distance. The things he’d shared had been hard for him. She’d had to pull the details like teeth and there wasn’t any anesthetic for things like this.
He met her halfway, his strong hands reaching out to take hers in a gentle grip. Her own clenched convulsively, grasping for something more than his steady strength, even though she knew she should be satisfied with that. It should be enough.
Pressing her trembling lips into a line, she searched his face.
He didn’t like it and looked away, obviously not comfortable with her need for reassurance. She dipped her head, suffering another wave of doubt that he’d ever open his heart to her.
“I’m sorry,” he said gruffly. “I should have told you myself, not left it so you’d find out like that. It was like what happened last night, when Gideon told Androu not to touch the light socket and that just made him more aware of them. I didn’t want to put the idea into your head.”
“That I could have an affair with Demitri? He floated that balloon years ago and I stabbed it with a pen.”
Theo snorted, thumbs stroking over her knuckles. “I don’t know why he has to behave like such an ass.”
“You and Adara hold your lives under tight control. If he turns things upside down he gains the upper hand.”
“Now how did you see that and I never have?” He leaned back to absorb that.
“You’ve spent so many years putting up shields, you can’t always see past them.”
He blinked in surprise, seeming disconcerted. “But you can.”
“Sometimes,” she said warily. “Does that bother you?”
He drew a deep breath. “It’s not comfortable.” His hands tightened on hers and he looked into her eyes, even though he winced as he did it, like it was a kind of torture to let her see inside him. “But...” He swallowed, then, “I trust you, Jaya. I know you’re not going to use anything I tell you to hurt me.”
His grip crushed her hands, but she didn’t think he was aware of it. She squeezed back, feeling they stood on a precipice that, if they took this leap of faith, they could land in new, rich, broad territory.
“I would never want to hurt you. Not ever,” she promised, then held her breath.
Bringing her hand to his mouth, he ran the knuckle of her ring finger along his lips. His breath clouded warmly against her skin as he spoke, making her wrist tingle.
“I think half the reason I still speak to Demitri after what he did is gratitude. Ultimately he got me out of a situation I didn’t want.”
“Really?” This didn’t seem the deep confidence she half expected. “Do you think he did it on purpose?” she asked, wondering if that was digging too deep.
“Hell, no. He’d never show that kind of forethought, but he created the excuse and I was glad. Swear to me you’ll never reveal that to him.”
A giggle escaped her, part relief, part joy that he was confiding in her a little. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”
He took a deep breath and looked down on her with something like pride and...affection? His expression had softened into amusement and tenderness. It almost looked like happiness and made her warm all the way to the soles of her feet. He was solemn as he cradled her face and caressed her cheek with the pad of his thumb.
“I can’t wait to marry you.”
“Really?” She wanted to smile, but she was dissolving under his look and couldn’t seem to hold any part of herself steady. “Because I thought it was you at first, when Demitri came in. He made out with that woman right there in front of me and I thought for a horrible second it was you and we were finished. I was devastated,” she admitted.
His mellow smile faded. “I’ll kill him.”
Her turn to set a hand against his smooth cheek, freshly shaved and smelling of something tangy and fresh. “But then I realized it couldn’t be you because you’d never do that to me. I never expected I’d be able to trust a man this much, Theo. I wish I could tell you what a gift you’ve given me with that.” She slid her other hand up his chest and around his neck so her breasts pressed into the hardness of his chest and her damp lips touched his ultra-smooth jaw.
He gathered her in, crushing her close in tight arms and releasing a shuddering breath against her ear.
They sought each other’s mouths, colliding with practiced alignment, parted lips meeting and sealing, plunging her into a dark jungle of sultry heat and velvet sensations. Combing her fingers up the back of his head, she reveled in the short, freshly cut strands, the new haircut, exactly as he’d promised. The thought made her want to smile but he was kissing her too intently.
He rasped his tongue down her neck, one hand palming her breast, making intense sensations race into her loins. She clenched to contain the deliciousness there.
This was moving fast and a distant part of her wondered if she should be worried about that, but desire flowed through her veins in rivers of lava, making her burn for him.
“God, Jaya,” he groaned, stilling her rocking hips against the hard ridge of his erection. “The next two days are going to kill me.”
“Oh, Theo, I don’t want to wait anymo—oh!”
He scooped her up, his strength like a conqueror’s as he bounced her into a high clasp against his chest, his arousal evident in the flush on his cheekbones and the sheen on his feral half grin. “If you’re not going to stop me, then I won’t.”
She slid her hand from his shoulder to his ear, pulling herself close enough to kiss where his pulse pounded like a hammer in his throat.
As he started down the hall, two sounds halted him: Zephyr’s cry and a knock on the penthouse door.
He swore and she softly wailed, “Nooooo,” as he let her feet slide to the floor.
“That’s your family, isn’t it?” His gruff voice was rueful. “Better now than in five minutes when we would have been naked. I’ll get Zeph. I need to pull myself together.”
Snickering, she kissed his chin and started to walk away. He yanked her back for another deep swift kiss that included a taste of France. Dazzled, she bounced off the wall on her way to greet her guests.
* * *
Despite his sexual frustration, which was more acute than he’d ever thought he could bear, Theo was riding a natural high. Jaya still wanted to marry him.
He hadn’t consciously been aware of that niggling concern. She always responded so sweetly to him and even though they had their differences, they always seemed to work through them. Still, a voice inside him had kept harping that he wasn’t enough.
She thought he was a gift, though, because she could trust him. He swelled with pride knowing how hard-won that kind of reliance was for her. The determination to protect her ran through him on a current of reverence and resolve. In a few days he would pledge to uphold her faith in him and he’d do it with every fiber of his being.
Speaking of gifts...
Lifting his freshly diapered son to eye level, he took a moment to absorb the awe of fatherhood. While the magnitude of responsibility still scared him, and he wasn’t yet a hundred percent confident he’d be everything Zephyr needed, he was learning. For most of his life, he’d been driven by the need to be perfect so he wouldn’t catch hell. Now, he yearned to do well so he could be a better father than he’d had.
“That sets the bar pretty low, doesn’t it?” he murmured to his son before he kissed the boy’s forehead and carried him out to the main lounge.
Heated voices speaking Punjabi fell into a wall of blistering silence when he appeared. He’d picked up a few words from Jaya and was working on a
speech for the wedding, but he wasn’t good enough with the language to follow any of what had been said even if he’d properly heard it.
He was the last man to judge a family for dysfunction, but Jaya had seemed to be making progress with them. Her tone had been growing lighter of heart when she’d spoken of them while travel and wedding plans had fallen into place. He had been counting on her finding some emotional fulfillment through her relationship with her mother and sister to compensate for his own lack. It was important to him that he not cheat her of love, that he give her every chance for it since he couldn’t provide it himself.
This wasn’t love, though. This was a tight army of angry young men backing up a grizzled bear with a thick gray beard. Two older women sat on the sofa, one in green, the other in blue. They bookended a young woman in yellow and a dazed older man. Their clothing seemed extra-colorful against the white leather of the furnishings, their expressions taxed. The women seemed to be trying to make themselves smaller while the young men puffed up their chests under crossed arms.
Jaya stood apart from all of them, her anxiety palpable. The way she dropped her gaze after an initial tense glance at him seemed almost apologetic.
Theo mentally swore. He might have been swimming naked through these sorts of shark-infested undercurrents all his life, but he’d never grown comfortable in them.
“Welcome,” he managed in Punjabi, then zeroed in on the woman beside the frail, confused looking man who must be Jaya’s father.
“Jaya has been eager to see you all.” He hoped that wasn’t overstepping. He hated it when people tried to talk for him. Forcing himself to move forward even though his joints felt rusted, he added, “This young man has been waiting to meet his Naniji, which is...Gurditta?”
He guessed correctly at the woman in the green sari.
Jaya’s mother gasped and stopped dabbing a tissue into her eye, dropping it away so she could pull Zephyr into her lap. Her tears turned to joy as she gathered up the wiggling boy like a bundle of laundry that wanted to drop socks.
Whatever dark cloud had been hovering broke into beams of sunlight for a second as Jaya drank in the sight of her mother holding her son. Then she glanced at the bearded man with a mix of defiance, resentment and—Theo’s heart took it like a stiletto—a remnant of shame.
Before he realized what he was doing, he had moved to her side and set a firm arm across her back. Belatedly, he wondered if his hand on her hip might be a familiarity that would repel someone with traditional views, but he needed her to know she wasn’t alone. They needed to know if they insulted her, they insulted him, and he was not a naïve girl working in a call center.
“Thank you for coming,” he said, falling back on manners because it was one of his few fail-safe strategies in a passive-aggressive confrontation like this. “I imagine you’re tired from the flight. My sister has planned a reception for the families to meet this evening, but you have a few hours to rest.”
Jaya’s uncle, because that’s who the hard-ass old grouch had to be, said something in Punjabi.
Theo looked to her. She had said they all spoke at least a little English and that her father would be the toughest to communicate with because of his injury.
With a level stare that looked through the line of young men, she said, “They object.”
“To sleeping here? Because we’re not married? I’m staying in another suite,” he assured them. “My family owns the hotel. We have other rooms.”
A snort from one of the men almost overrode what Jaya said, her voice quiet and uneven. “It’s the marriage they don’t support.”
A quick blast of Punjabi came at her from her uncle.
She said something back, speaking firmly, but Theo could feel the tension in her was so acute she threatened to shatter.
“You’re too rich, man,” one of the young men blurted. “Look at my father. We can’t pay a dowry that would keep you living like this.” He waved at the opulence of the Makricosta Olympus suite. “Jaya should have known better than to agree. Are you that angry with our uncle you’d ruin him?” he demanded of her.
Jaya started to respond, but Theo gently squeezed her into silence, his fury nearly blinding him. It took everything he had to remain calm and civilized. He hated confrontation, but he’d been serious about fighting to the death for her.
“Dowries are illegal. I brought you here because Jaya wished to have her family at our wedding. If you leave, that will hurt her. I can’t allow that.” He held first her brother’s gaze, then her uncle’s.
Into the silence, her father said, “Jaya?” He patted Zephyr’s leg and smiled.
Jaya drew a sharp breath and said, “Yes, he’s mine.” She drew Theo forward and crouched to the floor so it would be easier for her father to see her. She spoke slowly in Punjabi to him, something about their wedding and then she introduced Theo as her groom, straightening to stand beside him with pride.
Theo drew her close while the old man studied them. He felt on trial as he used the Punjabi he was still learning to ask her parents for their blessing.
She tilted her smile up to him, her pride in him almost too much to withstand.
When her father nodded, Jaya dissolved into happy tears, first kissing her father then wrapping her arms around Theo so tightly he could barely breathe.
He looked over her head at her brother, still twitching at all the animosity hovering in the room, but bearing it, for her. “I intend to take care of your parents. Leave if you wish, but if you’d like to hear the arrangements you should stay. Now, Jaya.” He coaxed her to show her damp face. “Would you please introduce me to the rest of your family?”
* * *
As the days of celebration raged, Jaya agonized over whether it was too much for Theo. They hadn’t gone with a full-out Indian wedding, but there was enough to be overwhelming.
That’s why it surprised her he spent an hour with her male relatives without telling her. Then she was even more annoyed when her brother told her it had been about his arrangements for their parents.
“Every time Uncle raised an objection, Theo said, ‘I thought of that, but...’ Uncle underestimated him. We all underestimated you.” He eyed her like he couldn’t imagine how his disreputable sister had landed such a catch.
She quizzed Theo later on when he’d turned into a chauvinist and why he’d kept her from a meeting that impacted her.
“Two reasons,” he said without apology. “First, I wanted your uncle to know that he can’t manipulate you with guilt or fear any longer. You won’t be padding his life with your earnings because I will provide your parents with their own home and income and a care aid for your father. If your uncle finds himself suffering financially, and needs to ask you for help, that will be at your discretion. You have the power now, not him.”
“Oh.” She was too overwhelmed by the sense of shackles falling off her body to know what else to say. “And the other reason?”
“I’m so angry with the way he treated you, I don’t want you in the same room with him.”
She didn’t cross paths with her uncle much. All of them were so busy with the nearly two hundred guests that swelled the hotel to capacity. Cousins from both sides took over the two lower floors, work associates of the Makricostas’ flew in from all four corners, and friends of Jaya’s arrived wide-eyed with awe from Bali and Marseilles. Quentin and Bina were the last to arrive and Theo arranged for them to stay with his family, knowing there might be awkwardness with Jaya’s.
It was a heart wrenching moment when Jaya’s aunt, Saranya’s mother, greeted Bina with open arms. Jaya grew tearful during the reception, recalling the way the little girl had broken down in her grandmother’s arms, both of them united in grief. Bina had missed out on so much living in Saranya’s exile, but her family connections were being restored now. Saranya would have been so hap
py.
“Jaya,” she heard near her ear just before a broad hand settled on her waist and Theo’s wide shoulders loomed to block out the Grand Ballroom. “Are you okay?”
She nodded and smiled through her tears. “Just wishing Saranya could be here to see how happy you’ve made me. You’ve given me back my family, Theo. They’re healing rifts that have broken us apart for years. Thank you.”
“I wanted that for you.” His smile was so tender, she barely felt the knife of knowing he deliberately surrounded her with love from other sources so she wouldn’t miss his.
“But you didn’t expect all this, did you?” she said, sheepish at how she’d taken him at his word and put together a wedding that married their two cultures as well as themselves.
He glanced around the room draped in red silk curtains. Gold beads dangled in strings from the ceiling like sunlight caught in raindrops. Children were trying out the bride and groom’s thronelike chairs under the floral covered mandap. Brilliant saris competed with designer gowns as people danced and stole exotic treats from the circulating waiters.
“This is definitely more socializing than I can typically swallow, but I’m not sorry. Everything is very beautiful.” His gaze came back to her, his admiration evident in his slow, studied perusal. “Especially you. I don’t know why I never pictured you like this, so exotic. You’re breathtaking.” His gaze paused on the pendant of her maang tikka dangling off the line of pearls in the part in her hair.
“You must feel like you’ve married a stranger.” She lifted a hand to check her red-and-gold headscarf hadn’t slipped. His gaze followed the sound of her abundant gold bangles clattering against the red and faux ivory ones anchored on her wrist. She felt like a pack mule, she wore so much heavy, ornate jewelry.
He looked striking himself, not wearing a turban or pyjama, but he was carrying a sword over his white morning coat.
“Thank you for including Adara and Rowan in the henna party. When they heard it was supposed to be only for the bride’s family, they were devastated.”
