“What?!” She automatically replied in amused outrage but considered his words for a moment. It was true, she supposed, Dev was never really an option in her mind.
Seeing that realization was sinking in, Dev seized it. “You know I’m right too. Last year you were dating that basketball player, and now you’re always so busy that…”
Leaning back in her chair, she fixed him with a straightforward look. “And I will always be busy Dev Gorshal,” she ignored his subtle flinch at her tone. The man certainly wasn’t used to women cutting him off, much less arguing with him. There was just nothing good about a man who skated through life with good looks such as his, it made them far too spoiled. “Look,” her tone softened a bit as she gave him a sympathetic smile. “I am not a suitable candidate for you. What you need is a good, traditional Desi girl that will make you and your mother happy by being your perfect overeducated, childbearing homemaker.”
Laughing, he stood up and leaned in close, with both hands against the table. “These are all assumptions Rahina, stereotypical assumptions at that.”
Refusing to let him have the upper hand, she stood up as well. “Dev, you don’t want me, you want someone…”
“How do you know?” He cut her off, the challenge in his voice and posture was clear. “You haven’t even given me a chance.” Stepping around the table, he stood a few feet in front of her, and his voice lowered softly. “That isn’t fair Rahina, how will we know if we never give this a chance?”
Damn that was a good line, she thought, she would have to use it on Roman.
Rahina didn’t get a chance to respond to Dev before a knock sounded at the door and the door opened. Stepping in partly, Dev’s father looked at his son, his face serious.
“There is a call saying that the alarm went off at your office.”
Frowning, Dev pulled out his phone and looked at it, his frown deepening. “I… I have to go,” he said distractedly, barely looking up from his phone. “Don’t go, this shouldn’t take but a few minutes.”
Following his dad out, he left her alone.
Patting her inside skirt pocket, she realized her own phone was absent. Wait for him, Rahina nearly laughed at that. Stepping out of the room, she paused in the hallway. If she went back into the private room with her family, she would be pounced upon by her mother, but if she somehow got ahold of her sister, she could have her bring her phone to her.
Walking forward, Rahina was passing by a door to another private room when it suddenly opened. She was in the middle of jumping back when a hand shot out from the dark room and hauled her in with a lightning fast jerk.
Landing against a warm body, she heard the door shut behind her and the lights click on. Blinking, she looked up to see Roman. Shocked, she stepped back, immediately regretting leaving his solid, warmth especially since his touches were few and far between.
“What are you doing here?” Looking towards the door, Rahina wondered how he even got inside the restaurant unnoticed.
Tilting his head slightly to the side, his narrow gray eyes slowly glided down her figure and back up again. Noises from beyond the door worried her.
“Roman,” she gave him an urgent hiss. “You can’t be in here if my dad or brothers sees…”
Unbuttoning his dark gray suit jacket, Roman revealed more of the royal blue shirt beneath as he put his hands in each of his pants’ pockets. He was completely unfazed by the sense of urgency she was trying to convey.
“Why? Am I interrupting a confirmation of engagement?”
There was something unnaturally still about him that danced along the edges of her wariness. Rahina gave him an exhausted look as she considered his question.
“Hardly,” she snorted. Looking around the room, she thought of Dev, she thought of his overly handsome face and angry eyes as he demanded for her to give him a chance. “If anything, you’re interrupting me doing my best to convince Dev that I would make a terrible wife for him.”
“And how exactly were you trying to convince him?”
Rahina?! They both heard her name being called in the hallway. A lance of fear struck her as she stared at the door to the room they were in and prayed no one entered.
Looking back to him, she gave him a desperate look. “You have to go.”
Lifting his brows, Roman just stood there, giving her a waiting look. “First, I want to hear what you said to convince him that you would make a terrible wife.”
Beyond frustrated with the giant man, Rahina shifted on her feet and turned away. Walking to the door she listened to the low sounds of voices from down the hall. Dev must have gone back towards the front where the main dining area and the larger private rooms were located, most likely assuming she went back to the family. Knowing she had a few minutes at least, she glared back at Roman, who was looking at her as if he didn’t have a care in the world.
Rahina couldn’t help but laugh a little, the man certainly was fearless. “I just told him, he was letting his mother pressure him, I didn’t even get a chance to get into my many shameful qualities.” Walking her fingers on the edge of the lacquered table, her dark blue bangles clinked against her wrist. “Like the fact that I am a workaholic, I have way more male friends than I do women, or that I can’t cook which if you didn’t know, is just blasphemy for Bengali girls.”
Roman looked at her and mild surprise. “You can’t cook?”
Crossing her arms, she met his look of surprise with a defensive glare. “Nope.”
“What do you eat?”
The question didn’t so much confuse her rather, it was the honest curiosity she sensed from him. “I use a subscription service that mails me weekly fresh meals. You have seen them before, it’s the little black and clear container I bring to our lunches.”
Roman nodded in remembrance.
“So now that I told you, are you going to tell me why and how you are here?”
Keeping his hands in his pockets, Roman took a step forward. The urge to step back fluttered along her instincts but Rahina purposely ignored it. Roman was a man used to intimidating people and watching them squirm, she would not give him the gratification of her backing away. With a gleam of challenge in her eye, she boldly stepped forward as well. His naturally narrow eyes widened just a fraction as something passed through them—satisfaction, maybe.
“I came to turn the tables on you for once by arriving unannounced,” he pointed out. “How long will it take for them to notice you are not in the bathroom or with the others and start checking the restaurant more thoroughly—room by room?”
Fear threatened to rise up within her stomach as scenarios of her mother and outraged father bursting through the door and finding her talking to the notorious Roman Mashir popped up in her head. She almost stepped back in retreat when it occurred to her, this was just another one of Roman’s scare tactics. Rahina nearly laughed, she almost fell for it. Looking up through her heavy lashes, she smiled coyly and took yet another step forward until there was barely a foot between them. The warmth of his big body radiated against her cool exposed skin. He smelled of coffee in the light trace of cologne; the scent made her want to shut her eyes and inhale.
“Was that your only reason?” Standing this close to him, Rahina lowered her voice. “Or did you do all of that work to get Dev to leave the room for another reason?”
Like a man who had been doing this for years, Roman’s face made no movement to signify shock or surprise that she figured out Dev’s sudden mystery phone call.
Dropping her eyes to the dark buttons of his shirt, she shook her head. “I’m not even going to ask you how you did it.” From what little she did know about the Russian gangster, Rahina knew there wasn’t much he couldn’t do.
“I wanted to see for myself just who exactly I was giving my blessings to,” he explained happily.
“And do you approve?” Unintentionally, her voice came out as a near whisper.
The smile from his lips faded away, leaving her to stare up into the
shadows of the stormy eyes. Lifting one hand, Roman reached for her hair that covered one shoulder. It felt as if the air between them had stopped. Every sound and every movement felt amplified as he lifted the long black hair up, cradling it in his palm before pushing it gently over her shoulder.
“How come you wear your hair like a mushroom in my presence? Why do you never look this way around me?” Moving those steel gray eyes from her hair and down to her clothes, it felt as if he was taking in every detail. Overly conscious of him, Rahina felt as if he was watching even the rise and fall of her chest as she breathed.
“You mean, wearing my sari to your office?” her voice sounded distant even to her, she could barely think in the intensity of this moment between them.
He made a deep sound of agreement in his throat as his eyes continued to slowly travel her form.
His steady gaze was nearly too much. She felt as if she was somehow going to fall over or do something else equally foolish if he didn’t stop.
“That’s just racist,” she stammered out quickly.
His eyes snapped back to hers suddenly as if jolted from his own trance. Beautifully and unexpected, she watched his face relax into a genuine smile as he gave a deep laugh. She felt starstruck as she watched the rare display.
“I meant what I said the other day, you have a beautiful smile,” she blurted out without any thought.
Like a switch being flipped Roman’s laughter died, and he gave her burning look before changing to a tight, mean smile. “Enjoy your engagement party.”
Walking towards the door, Roman grabbed the handle.
Spinning around on the ball of her foot, she felt the fabric of her clothing spin around her legs as she watched him about to leave. She didn’t want him to go not yet, not like this. “Why would I want Dev when I have you?” she threw out the question as her last Hail-Mary.
He didn’t turn around; his broad back didn’t move as he stood perfectly still. “You have no idea who you are playing with, Rahina.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” she allowed. “But I do know I like being around you and I think you like being around me too.” She held her breath as she uttered the presumptuous words. She had hoped he liked her, and she knew that if he really did hate her company as much as he claimed, he would’ve made it undoubtedly clear to her weeks ago.
Seeing that he wasn’t going to say anything, she spoke again. “Will you be in your office for lunch tomorrow?”
Turning to look over his shoulder, Roman raised one brow and gave her a tired stare. “Why ask? Nothing seems to stop you.”
Chapter 7
“It’s amazing that none of your dealership employees bat an eye at the fact that you stroll in every day with that gun strapped to your chest.”
Sitting on the couch, Rahina sat with her sock-clad feet pressed to the edge of his coffee table as she balanced a textbook on her inclined lap. She had been highlighting various lines in the book and occasionally chewing on the end of her pink marker. Looking back down at his laptop screen, Roman thought of the handful of employees downstairs as he opened an email marked important.
“I don’t speak to them, there is a manager who oversees them and that manager reports to Alexie.”
“So, they are more like decoration?”
Roman cut his eyes to hers from his screen, taking note of her playful expression as she waited for a reply to her goad.
Leaning on one arm of his office chair, he gave her a thoughtful look. “I suppose they are just as decorative as your degree.”
With her mouth agape, Rahina clutched the left side of her chest as if she had been mortally wounded. “Oh wow,” she said in shock. “That went to the bone, you cruel man.”
Resisting the urge to smile, Roman gave a small shrug before looking back to his laptop. “I aim to kill.”
“Well, consider me fatally wounded from that low-blow,” she murmured, turning back to her book.
The email was from Tasha Lannic, the woman he assigned to run one of his most information lucrative businesses, The Iniquity. Located in a five-story unmarked building, The Iniquity was the largest most exclusive brothel in the Northeast offering every conceivable scenario the clients could imagine. There was nothing The Iniquity could not offer, and for that, the clients paid handsomely. However, money wasn’t the topic of this current email. Muting the sound, Roman played the attachment. Roman watched impassively as the Chief Justice of Massachusetts lie on a bed fitted in plastic, the man made an expression of pure ecstasy as two young men pissed on his naked body. What was a couple of million dollars in profit compared to a lifetime of unquestioning loyalty from a man with public sway and power?
Looking back up to Rahina, Roman watched with a knowing smirk as her legs bounced restlessly against the table. She was antsy. It was pathetically easy to see she was no longer interested in studying. When she had burst into his office earlier, she practically leapt across the room in a flurry of smiles and long limbs. Roman had wondered if the energetic dancer ever not smiled.
The memory from last night of her smiling at the young man on the video resurfaced in his mind. Seeing her smiling and following the other man out of the room stirred at something long forgotten inside of him.
“Ugh, I can’t do this anymore,” slamming the book shut, Rahina stood up and stomped purposely over to him.
Closing his laptop, he watched as she perched at the corner of his desk, letting her long legs hang down over the sides as she leaned back on to her hands. As usual, she wore her clothes from practice, today it was a loose peach colored tank-top that nearly reached her knees with black tights underneath. Settling his gaze on the large puffy ball at the crown of her head, Roman found himself picturing her again in her attire from last night. The fine lines of her beautiful face did not take his breath away, her tall, graceful figure draped in exotic fabrics did not make the world stop around him. Seeing her dressed like that, smiling and glowing with extraordinary beauty did something worse, it tempted and toyed with dormant dark craving he had forgotten about. Her dazzling smile only served to scratch at the walls of something darker, something far more consuming—something he had been trying to shield her from.
“So, what do you do when you’re not up to nefarious deeds?” She asked, swinging her feet in boredom.
“You are assuming I am not always up to nefarious deeds,” he countered.
Sitting forward, she grinned with anticipation. “You’re telling me that at every moment of every day you’re always Mr. Big Brawny and Bad?”
Hi didn’t miss the way her large almond eyes scanned his chest with ill-concealed captivation. Either she wasn’t aware of her blatant looks of longing or didn’t care, either way, it was a completely new and amusing experience for him to be openly lusted after. “There is never any rest for the wicked,” he replied.
Laughing, she shook her head. “Nuh uh, I refuse to believe that. So, that would mean you’re a bad-ass even in the shower?”
Adjusting slightly, Roman leaned one elbow nonchalantly on the arm of his chair and propped up his chin with his fist as he raised one brow pointedly at her. “I wear a waterproof gun holster in the shower.”
Her smile grew exponentially before she doubled over in laughter. Gripping the edge of his desk, she laughed silently before catching her breath. “Okay, what about when you sleep?” She managed between breaths.
“A glock under each pillow,” he answered smoothly.
Watching her shake with laughter, he had to admit he was enjoying this on some level.
A light buzz sounded from her thigh, and Roman could see the glow from her phone inside her mesh pocket. With deft ease, Roman read the briefly lit up phone screen, the number was blocked. A blocked number would not have caught his attention if it hadn’t been for the flash of a man’s image behind the word “blocked,” meaning whoever was blocked was one of her contacts.
She completely ignored the phone.
Roman stared at the now blank phone for a couple
of seconds longer before looking up to ask, “What do you do when you are not studying for your ornamental degree?”
She gasped dramatically. “How many times do you plan on throwing that in my face, it’s starting to become painful?”
Still leaning on his fist, Roman grinned evilly. “I am sorry,” he said with mock sincerity. “Does the truth hurt?”
The shock transformed on her face with the barest movements. Lifting one black brow in arched challenge, her lips drew his gaze as they pressed together, moistening them before setting into an arrogant purse.
“Okay, I see,” she nodded as if coming to terms with a new plan of attack. Roman resisted sitting straighter in his chair in anticipation. “If you want the truth, I can give it to you if that’s what you really want?”
Roman didn’t say anything, he just leaned back and opened his arms signaling to her to give him her best shot.
Leaning forward on his desk, Rahina put her face less than a foot from his. “Here are three truths about you.” Her voice was soft, and her brown eyes were impossibly wide. The sudden feeling of that unnamed craving returned violently, clawing at his wall of control. “One,” she began. “I think you, Roman Mashir, the apex criminal and alpha crime lord of Boston are incredibly bored.”
Roman kept his expression neutral.
“Two, I think you are starting to like me because you haven’t threatened to kill me once today.” The amusement in her brown eyes was almost contagious, but he resisted.
“And three, which in my opinion, is the most dangerous truth—are you ready?”
He watched her lips as she whispered the question and felt his smile widen. Lifting his head in a subtle gesture for her to go on, he waited.
“Sitting this close to you, I am reminded that you are extremely good-looking.”
For a few seconds, neither of them moved or blinked. Slowly, second by second, her control dissolved as she bit her bottom lip, trying to contain her laughter. Swiftly, Roman reached up and wrapped his hand around her smooth neck.
His Smile: A Mafia Romance Page 6
