“Yeah. So what?”
“So, that’s what I’m doing now: what Vikram did. I’m asking you out so we can get to know each other, like two independent, modern, well-bred, single individuals. Who knows, maybe we’ll end up finding we have plenty in common, that we’re compatible.”
“You mean you…I…we…” Was he saying what she thought he was saying? “Didn’t you tell me you’d promised yourself you’d never settle down?”
He took an impatient sip of his soda. “I changed my mind.”
“I thought women were notorious for changing their minds.”
He scrubbed his face with one hand, like he was tired. Maybe he was exhausted and jet lag was setting in after his long flight from London. “I’m beginning to reassess my life lately.”
“You had an epiphany?”
“I wouldn’t call it that, but my forty-second birthday had me thinking. I feel I need an anchor, maybe even a child.”
“Then you’re talking to the wrong woman. I’m going to be thirty-eight soon. My biological clock is dying a slow and silent death even as we speak.”
He shook his head. “How old was your mother when she gave birth to Nilesh?”
“Nearly forty.”
“Exactly my point, darling,” he said. “It’s not uncommon for women in their forties to bear children these days.”
“Don’t call me cute names you don’t mean, Rishi.”
“Who says I don’t? When I called you darling, I meant it.”
All of a sudden he was talking commitment and children, kissing her senseless. He was going at breakneck speed, too. She was getting dizzy with this kind of talk. She needed to slow down and take a breath. That meant she needed to change the direction of his thoughts, give herself some time to absorb all this.
“Brits tend to call everyone darling, even their hairdressers and cleaning ladies. It doesn’t mean anything,” she said, grabbing the first trivial argument that came to mind. Swallowing the last of her soda, she put the can on the coffee table.
“Not this Brit. And I’m not entirely Brit, as you well know. I’m Indo-Brit.”
“Who’re you kidding? All you have to do is open your mouth and say words like dah-ling and bahth-room and shed-dule. It can’t get any more Brit than that.”
“All right, then, I’m a Brit.” He took her hand in his again, sending little electric sparks up and down her arm. “Now may I kiss you again, Miss Kapadia—the old-fashioned English way?” Despite the humor in his words, his eyes had taken on that smoky, heated look. “I know you enjoyed it the first time. And don’t say you didn’t.”
“I’m not denying it. You’re a very attractive man and a polished kisser. I guess you’ve been around the block a few times.”
“Around the block…?” He lifted his brows at her quizzically.
“It means you’ve been with several women, that you’re practiced in the art of kissing and…other things.”
“I didn’t realize kissing and making love were arts.” He grinned unexpectedly, making her feel like her bones were turning to jelly with no solid mass left. “Just goes to show one learns something new every day.” The grin disappeared just as quickly. “I’ve been intimate with only four women, and that includes Samantha and Laura.”
Anjali sighed aloud. “Only four, he says.”
“Enough quibbling over numbers.” Before she could say anything else she was being kissed thoroughly, proving her right once again. He was well versed in the business of kissing. So where did that leave her? She’d kissed only two other men before, one of them being her late husband. But she couldn’t resist the warm tug of Rishi’s mouth on hers. So she gave in to the kiss.
He left her breathless. She was right about the other thing, too. No one had made her feel quite so soft and feminine and desirable since Vik. There was such warmth there. Such need. But it was also frightening. He was beginning to look more attractive by the second.
When he finally let her go she leaned her head against his shoulder, weak and shaking. The kiss had stirred up certain emotions she’d kept locked up. She couldn’t afford to fall in love. She pulled away from him once more.
He watched her withdraw from him. “Did I frighten you, Anju?” he asked.
She shook her head even though it was a lie. She was scared to death of the way she was feeling. And he’d called her Anju for the first time. Only close family called her that. Once again she realized this was moving much too fast for comfort. She should leave right away, she thought, while she still had her wits about her. She didn’t want to leave, but she should.
“I think I better go home now. Despite my advanced years, my mother worries if I stay out too late,” she told him, trying to work in a casual smile.
“I’ll tell her you were with me—that we accidentally ran into each other at the restaurant…with your friends.”
“You’re going to lie to her?”
“Despite the wisdom of your advanced years, you’ve been lying to her, haven’t you?” he remarked dryly. “And this time it’s for a good cause.” He leaned over and raised his hand to caress her face. “Will you let me take you to dinner tomorrow night? I promise to be a perfect gentleman.”
She was tempted to say yes. But getting involved with him wasn’t without complications. She needed time to think it over—needed a moment to regain her sense of balance.
Meanwhile, a change of subject was needed to help dispel the sexual energy flowing between them. “Only if you promise to tell me here and now everything about you and Jeevan-kaka,” she said, finding a way to get him off the topic of dating and on to something that was almost as important.
“I promise.”
“Who are you? Why are you and my uncle so tight-lipped about your relationship? And since when has Jeevan-kaka started to take on business partners?”
“You know what happened to Pandora when she opened the box?”
“Uh-huh. I still want to know. Now that you mentioned Pandora, I’m even more curious to learn the truth.”
A heartbeat passed. “Very well, then.”
Chapter 18
“First, I want to know who you are.” Anjali settled a little more comfortably in her seat.
“My father was Jagdish Shah,” Rishi began. “My mother was Ellen Porter, a British woman who left her native England for India some forty-five years ago to work as a nurse amongst the poor and sickly in Indian villages.”
“Was? So they’re both deceased?” Anjali instinctively put her hand in his and he curled his fingers around it.
He shook his head. “My father is deceased. My mother’s retired and stays in England.”
“When did your father pass away?”
“When I was a teenager.”
“I’m sorry, Rishi.” Anjali was surprised at the depth of her sympathy for him. An hour ago he was an annoyance and a bully. Now she ached for him. A teenager shouldn’t have to lose a parent.
“It was a long time ago,” he said with a shrug.
Her attention was immediately riveted on his tale. At last, she was going to find out who this mystery man was. She wanted to know all about him, especially now that she was discovering a whole new and exciting side of him.
“My father managed Jeevan-kaka’s dairy farm near Gamdi,” he continued. “At the time, Jeevan-kaka and his family used to stay in the city of Anand, where Jeevan-kaka managed his cloth mill and his other urban businesses. My mother worked for a rural clinic run by a Christian charitable organization. Much of the farm labor went there for treatment. Whenever my father drove his sick and injured laborers to the clinic, he had an opportunity to interact with my mother. Eventually the two fell in love.”
“Love happened to conservative Gujarati men in those days?” she asked, amused and intrigued by the possibility.
“It happened to my father forty-five years ago. To hear my mother tell the story, Papa was the most handsome man she’d ever met. She said he worked extremely hard and she admired his work
ethic. Jeevan-kaka was his close friend besides being his employer.”
“Jeevan-kaka didn’t have something to say about your father marrying a white woman? I’d have thought he’d have some issues with it.”
Rishi chuckled. “I’m sure he did. That’s probably why it took my father two whole years to work up the nerve to ask my mother to marry him. Besides valuing Jeevan-kaka’s opinion, he was also intimidated by him.”
“So…if they got married forty-three years ago, you were born a year later.”
“Your powers of deduction are amazing.” He gave her a teasing grin.
“Very funny, Einstein. So, were there any more children after you came along?”
“No. Mum tells me she had a couple of miscarriages.” He looked wistful as he stroked the back of Anjali’s hand with his own. “I was raised a Hindu. My mother was old-fashioned that way. Although she was Christian, she firmly believed my father’s faith should be mine.”
“Interesting.”
“Nothing but Indian food was served at home, too. I stayed on the farm the first few years and attended the local Gujarati school while my mother taught me English at home. But then my parents sent me off to a boarding school at the age of nine.”
“That’s so sad—a little nine-year-old boy going so far away from home. I’m assuming there weren’t any good schools in the immediate area?”
“My parents wanted the very best education for me, so they had no choice but to send me away to a residential school.”
“Were you and Jeevan-kaka close even then?”
“Not really. To me he was the rich and powerful boss. I respected him, but I also resented him—mostly his big house in the city, the servants, the cars, and everything else that surrounded a wealthy businessman. We weren’t poor, but we lived in a small house on the farm. We had one woman-servant who took care of me during the day, cleaned, and cooked while my mother worked at the clinic.”
“So money was important to you?”
“Back then it was. But now that I have some money and the things it can buy, it seems like an entirely foolish thing to focus on. There’s so much more to life than money, isn’t there?”
“Easy for you to say,” she scoffed. “You’re not the one whose business is teetering and could ruin you for life.”
“Your business will not be ruined, Anjali. I promise you that. I’ll help you get the store back on its feet. That’s what I do for a living. Teetering businesses are the backbone of my consulting business.”
“I’ll hold you to that promise, then.” She tried to reclaim her hand by tugging on it gently, but he held firm. The warm current of electricity flowing through her pulse and going directly to the rest of her body was messing with her brain. “So then you went away to school,” she prompted.
“I went home during holidays, and as a teenager I helped my father with the bookkeeping and paperwork. I did a lot of farm labor, too. I liked working with the dairy processing machines and driving the milk delivery trucks.”
“Even as a young boy you had a head for business?”
“Remember I told you I discovered at a very early age that I liked it? Whenever Jeevan-kaka came to visit the farm he seemed impressed with my business acumen. He even solicited my opinion on some things. I was flattered that such a rich and powerful businessman thought I had something valuable to contribute.”
Anjali figured that’s probably how the old man and Rishi had struck up a friendship. “Did my uncle offer you a job then?”
Rishi laughed. “No. I still had years of schooling to complete. But I began to like Jeevan-kaka more and more.”
“Did you always call him Jeevan-kaka?”
“Yes. My parents wanted me to call him that and his wife kaki. The families were close.”
Anjali recalled something her uncle had said the other day. “Jeevan-kaka said you saved his life. What’s all that about?”
“It’s a rather long and depressing story, Anju.”
“I’d like to hear it. What exactly did you do to save a man like Jeevan-kaka?”
Rishi inhaled a deep breath as if to fortify himself. “When I was fourteen and home for a brief holiday, Jeevan-kaka came to visit. He stayed with us whenever he came down to check on the farm. We’d been having some trouble at the farm off and on: skirmishes with some of our laborers. My father was forced to dismiss a particularly disruptive and violent worker during the week Jeevan-kaka was visiting.”
Anjali could feel Rishi’s hand tensing up. She had a feeling this wasn’t a pleasant subject for him. Nonetheless she remained silent, hoping he’d continue.
“That night, when we were all asleep, someone started a fire in our house. Most likely it was the man who’d been fired earlier by my father. The man had made some veiled threats. He must have used petrol, because the blaze was incredible and the smell of it was everywhere. The house was surrounded by fire.” Rishi’s breath became a little uneven.
“Arson! Did everyone make it out of the house okay?”
He shook his head. “My room was across from my parents’, so I instinctively rushed into theirs. My mother was a thin woman, so we urged her to jump out of the narrow bedroom window. My father couldn’t, since he was a large man. And I was nearly as big as he. I thought Papa and I would manage to get out of there together somehow, but…”
“You couldn’t?”
“Didn’t. Instead he ordered me to get out immediately and save myself while he would see to Jeevan-kaka. Amidst the chaos, I’d forgotten we had a guest. By then the house was filling up with smoke. As I crept through the passageway I heard Jeevan-kaka coughing, so instead of running to safety like I was supposed to, I rushed to help him myself.”
Anjali noticed his knuckles were white as they held hers in a death grip. “It was a very brave thing for a young boy to do,” she said. Most boys that age would have taken care of themselves first.
With his spare hand Rishi pinched the bridge of his nose. “Hardly. I resented Jeevan-kaka’s presence in our home at a time when we couldn’t afford it.”
“And yet you helped him.”
He shrugged. “Despite the smoke I managed to get to the farthest bedroom and to Jeevan-kaka. I found him sitting on the bed, dazed and gasping for breath. I grabbed his hand and led him through the long passageway and to the drawing room. Meanwhile I could hear my father coughing somewhere in the back of the house. I couldn’t assure him that Jeevan-kaka was with me. Opening my mouth meant swallowing smoke, choking on it.”
“Did you know if your father had at least made it out of his bedroom?”
“I couldn’t really tell. It was difficult to think rationally at the time. I believe my father succeeded in making it to Jeevan-kaka’s room after the old man and I had already reached the drawing room. I assumed he’d find Jeevan-kaka missing and conclude that he’d saved himself. By then the flames were everywhere and I wasn’t sure if we were going to get out alive. Jeevan-kaka was wheezing hard and so was I.
“I thought we’d choke to death if not burn. I couldn’t quite see the front door but had to feel my way around the furniture through the blinding smoke. Finally I managed to get the front door open and literally shoved Jeevan-kaka out. I saw him fall on his face and groan in pain. That was all I could remember.”
Anjali could picture the scene in her mind, feel the tension mounting. “What did you do?”
He went silent for a moment. “Opening the door brought in fresh air to fan the flames. The fire got worse. Just as I turned around to go back for my father, a flaming wooden beam came flying from somewhere in the ceiling and slammed into me, throwing me on my back. It pinned my leg to the floor.”
“Oh no!” She winced.
“I don’t remember how I managed to free myself but it must have been pure adrenaline. The pain was excruciating. All I could do was drag myself on one leg and keep dragging till I got away from the inferno.”
“And then you had to watch your home burn down.”
R
ishi withdrew his hand, leaned forward, and buried his face in his hands, probably reliving the hell he’d experienced. “I wish that was all my mother and I had to watch. My father…he never made it out of there. With my injury and multiple burns I had no hope of going back inside for him. I was in agony and weeping like a baby. Besides, the house was engulfed by fire. Papa must have choked on the smoke and collapsed in the passageway.”
Anjali’s heart broke over what she was hearing. Rishi was hurting badly and she hurt for him. She placed a hand on his shoulder. “I’m so sorry, Rishi.”
He stayed with his face in his hands for a long time. “So am I,” he said, finally raising his head. “They found his charred body right outside Jeevan-kaka’s room. Apparently he’d made his way there to save his boss and friend. Even when he knew he was dying, his first concern was Jeevan-kaka.”
“Your father was obviously a very caring and selfless man.”
Rishi hesitated. “He was no saint, mind you. He had a volatile temper and could be unreasonable at times—a slave driver with the laborers. He was harsh in punishing the errant ones. There were reasons why they resented him.”
“I’m sure Jeevan-kaka appreciated that stony side of his personality.”
“The main reason he’d employed my father in the first place,” said Rishi with a wry smile. “But Papa was always loyal to Jeevan-kaka—loyal to a fault.”
“So were you.”
“No. I hated Jeevan-kaka for years afterward. He was the one who should have died that night, not my father.” He stared at the carpet for a minute. “Took me a long time to forgive the old man.”
Now it was all clear to Anjali. No wonder her uncle was so attached to Rishi. Something else became obvious, too. She turned to him. “Is that why you favor one leg?”
“Favor?” he snapped. “I have a distinct limp, Anju.”
“Not really.”
“I nearly lost the leg, but my mother’s nursing skills kept it in one piece until they could transport me to a hospital. And then the around-the-clock care she gave me for months afterward was nothing short of a miracle.”
The Sari Shop Widow Page 17
