First Comes Like

by Alisha Rai

  “Do people not do that?”

  “Some people don’t, no.”

  “Well, perhaps it’s because they haven’t tried to do what you do. I couldn’t do it. Anyway, I enjoy taking photos of you. It’s fun. You make most things fun.”

  “You do, too,” she breathed. “Even getting trapped in a ghost town.”

  He took another step closer, and she mirrored it. They were so close she could look up and count each individual eyelash of his. Jia licked her lower lip, and Dev’s gaze dipped over it. What could she say? That she was growing more into him with every second, despite the short period of time they’d spent together? That she’d forgotten everything that had come before the second she’d walked up to him at a party dressed in gold? That she wanted him for more than playing her suitor with her family, that she wanted to pursue something real with him?

  He released his breath in a big sigh, finishing with her name. “Jia.”

  That was it, only her name, said in that way that made the syllables go up and down, along with the butterflies in her stomach. She dared to edge a little bit closer. Only a breath separated them, and she inhaled it. He still smelled woodsy and dark, and she wanted nothing more than to bury her face in his neck. Jia drew in a deep breath and held it, going light-headed.

  His hand came to hover over her arm, and it was like an electric shock ran through her, from innocent elbow to other not-so-innocent parts of her. They were in one room with each other, wearing their night clothes. There was a bed not so far away. The only bed in the whole place.

  It had been easier to decide to wait for sex when she wasn’t faced with a tall drink of water walking around with just the right amount of scruff on his face. One who let her beat him at Scrabble and then refused his rightful winnings. One who took her and her ambitions seriously.

  Yes, men in the abstract were much easier to resist than this specific Man. His thumb gently brushed her elbow and she shivered. Would a kiss be the worst thing?

  A tiny, disapproving Noor popped onto one shoulder. Yes, it would. Go to bed. You’re not dating this man, you’re not engaged to him. Did our parents raise some girl who goes around kissing strange boys?

  Sadia popped up on her other shoulder, casually cradling her big belly. Counterpoint: you honor yourself and your desires, honey. If that means kissing him, kiss him.

  Damn it. That was a strong counterpoint, one which justified her kissing him. If she rose up on her tiptoes . . .

  He took a giant step back. “Good night, Jia.” His words were rusty, like he hadn’t spoken in a long time.

  She licked her lips. Okay, no shoulder gallery needed, he’d made the decision for them. Cool. Cool, cool, cool, cool, cool. “Good night,” she whispered. She scurried away into the bedroom and shut the door. She pressed herself back against it and touched her lips. They tasted like herself and no one else.

  Oh, for crying out loud. If she’d been on the fence before, it was no longer in doubt. She’d gone and fallen hard for her fake boyfriend. The guy who let her win at Scrabble and apparently faced no epic internal struggle about kissing her. What a mess.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “YOU AND your friend sleep well?”

  The question from behind him almost had Dev dropping the carafe of black coffee he’d picked up. “Uh.” Your friend.

  He hated that word in connection with Jia and wanted to slap it out of his own ears, but that was his problem, not Jenny’s. “Very well, thank you.”

  Jenny walked behind the bar. “Can I get you any breakfast?”

  “No, I’m good.” He carefully poured a cup of coffee and placed the carafe back.

  “Kim called. Your car should be delivered soon.”

  “Excellent.” Then they could head back home. That should make him happy, but he wasn’t.

  You just want to go back upstairs and almost kiss her again.

  Well, obviously. And that could happen, but they needed to work some stuff out first. Big-time.

  “You look so familiar.”

  Dev glanced at Jenny warily. “Do I?”

  “I actually went online last night, because I thought, gosh. That face. But I couldn’t find anything. And then my friend mentioned he saw you after you got stuck and that you looked like this actor who was going to be in a new show with Hudson Rivers and Richard Reese, and that was when the lightbulb went off.”

  He took a sip of his coffee. She looked too certain and self-satisfied for him to feign confusion, sadly. He thought about how much cash was left in his wallet. “You got me. I’d rather people not know I was here. You understand.” Especially that he’d spent the night in one suite with this particular woman.

  Call him old-fashioned, but he knew how things worked. They could ride the line of titillation, but they couldn’t flat out metaphorically French kiss in front of cameras. Getting caught seemingly sleeping together was a step too far.

  “I’d rather they did!” Jenny pointed at her wall. “If you could take a photo for our wall of celebrities, that would be fantastic. Is your friend famous, too? ’Cause I have space . . .”

  Dev peered at the wall in the dusky light. Sure enough, there were more than a couple of celebrities up there, though the majority appeared to be artists. If he agreed, perhaps Jenny would be satisfied. “Very well. But no, she’s not.”

  Jenny raised her hands. “Got it.”

  And that was how Devanand Dixit, eldest grandson of Shweta and Vivek Dixit, left a Polaroid photo of his face on the wall of a tired hotel in the middle of the desert.

  His life sure had gotten turned upside down since he’d met Jia.

  Dev ventured out the front door of the inn, holding the paper cup of now lukewarm coffee. The sun kissed the horizon, sending fingers of light over the almost silent town. The temperature hadn’t quite warmed up yet for the day. He’d barely slept the night before and had almost fallen out of bed when Jia’s alarm had gone off for morning prayer, piercing through the thin walls of the suite.

  The sleeplessness had come in handy in one respect. He’d come to a decision. He needed to tell Jia that he wanted to scrap this ridiculous arrangement of theirs. He didn’t want to be her pretend boyfriend. He wanted to be her real one. Possibly more. She made him happy and made him think, and each second he was in her company felt like a second too little.

  You’re sounding like your scripts.

  So what if he was acting out a serial? No, not a serial. A serial had foreboding moments and twists and turns. This felt more muted and warm, though it still retained an undercurrent of passion.

  Dev leaned against the post at the front of the inn and thought about her possible reactions. She could say no, that despite their almost-kiss she wasn’t interested in him like that. Or she could jump in his arms and declare her affections as well. Or there were about ten other scenarios that could happen between those two extremes.

  The sound of a car engine came from down the road and Dev straightened as his rental came into view, towed by a truck. The truck came to a stop in front of the inn, and a stoop-shouldered elderly man got out. “This your car?”

  “It is, yes.”

  The older man grunted, handed him a bill, and went around the truck to take the car down. A man of few words. That was fine.

  Dev took out his wallet while the man unhooked his car. He really was running low on cash. He pulled out what was left and handed it to the man when he finished. The man counted it and nodded. “Thanks for paying in cash instead of asking if I take credit cards or have this app or that app.”

  Dev didn’t have any apps for payment either. “No problem.” He accepted his keys from the guy and dropped them in his pocket. He turned around and jumped to find Jia standing right behind him, silent.

  She was dressed in yesterday’s wilted clothes, carrying her camera and the sweats he’d bought her in the plastic bag they’d come in. This was the first time he’d ever seen her without makeup.

  It was hard to look at her straight
on, and not simply because she was so beautiful. He knew the names of each makeup tool she used to paint her face. There were layers of foundation and blush and highlighter and mascara and contour and eyeliner and shadow between them usually. Now, there was nothing.

  His father used to tell him that he’d fallen in love with his mother within a few hours. She’d been a tailor’s daughter, someone he would have never even met if Adil Uncle hadn’t had a scholarship to the same private school his dad attended. They’d married within the month and had been happy together for the years they’d had.

  But Dev had been skeptical of his parents’ claim of instant love. Until, perhaps, now.

  This could be infatuation.

  No. He’d never been a man given to infatuation or fantasy. He didn’t know what falling for someone felt like, but he imagined it was something like this. This calm certainty in their presence. Certainty, except for the part where he didn’t know how she felt about him.

  She looked like she wanted to kiss you.

  That could mean anything. Kissing wasn’t a declaration of love nowadays, if it had ever been.

  “Good morning,” she murmured.

  “Good morning.” He turned the car keys in a circle on his finger. “Do you want some breakfast or coffee before we leave?”

  “No, I’m fine.” Her gaze skittered away, which made his stomach drop.

  “Jia—”

  “Should we head out then?” she asked brightly.

  He nodded and went to the car to open her door. She slid in, placing the bag on the floorboard, and settled her hands in her lap.

  They were silent for the first fifteen minutes after they left town, and Dev finally cleared his throat. There was no way they could stand this awkwardness for two and a half hours. At some point, they needed to address that almost-kiss.

  His phone beeped with a message, but he ignored it. “Jia—” His phone started ringing, and he cursed and tapped it to silence it. “I suppose we have reception now.”

  A chime came from her camera bag. “I suppose so,” she said, smiling ruefully.

  “I think we should talk about—” Another beep, from her phone. “That is, I think of you very high—” Another beep.

  “Ignore it.” Jia turned toward Dev, as much as the seat belt would allow. “Continue?”

  Best to do this quick. “We almost kissed last night, didn’t we?”

  She bit her lip, and nodded. “It’s okay. I don’t take it personally, that you didn’t want to.”

  Except she’d gone rigid. He cast her an incredulous glance. “Of course I wanted to kiss you. I’ve wanted to do that since the minute I met you.”

  “You did?”

  “Yes. But we were in the middle of nowhere, we hadn’t had a discussion yet about our future or physical affection, there was only one bed . . .”

  “Yes, yes, the one bed.”

  “I only thought we should talk first. Away from the bed.”

  “Probably a good thing you’re less impulsive than me,” she murmured. “I might have gone in for the kiss.”

  He shifted in his seat, suddenly warm. “Ah.”

  “I always planned on waiting for marriage to have sex, but that plan was a lot easier to stick to when there was no one I wanted to make out with.” Jia scratched her head. “Is this what teens feel like? No wonder they can be volatile.”

  He nearly choked. “You, uh, want to . . . I see.”

  “Don’t you?”

  “Yes.” Was that answer too quick? “I mean, of course. But I am fine with waiting, as well.”

  Jia interlinked her fingers. “So you, like, see that in our future? Marriage?”

  He tightened his grip on the steering wheel. “Yes. The truth is, I like you. Very much. Romantically. I’m willing to wait as long as you like, but my end goal would be marriage. It doesn’t have to be right away. We could spend more time getting to know each other, see if we suit.” Dev didn’t need more time. He was frighteningly ready. But he wanted Jia to have the option of time.

  She opened her mouth, but her phone started chiming in rapid succession. “Argh. Hang on. Let me just turn it off . . .” She leaned over and fumbled in her bag, then pulled out the phone and stopped, half hunched over.

  “Jia?”

  “Oh my God,” she whispered. She straightened and started scrolling through her phone. “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.”

  “Jia? What’s wrong?”

  “Oh my God.”

  The car drifted into the shoulder for a second, before he corrected it. “What?”

  She turned the phone toward him. He glanced at it, but he was too careful a driver to take his eyes off the road for very long. “I can’t read it. What does it say?”

  “We’re engaged.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  “HOW COULD you do this,” Dev hissed into the phone.

  Chandu was unfazed. “Dev, I had no choice.”

  Dev ran his hand through his hair. He’d been trying to call Chandu for hours, for the whole drive back to Jia’s home in Santa Barbara.

  His head ached from lack of sleep and the emotional roller coaster of the morning. While their phones continued to blow up from friends and her family, she’d read him the highlights.

  Dixit’s grandson is set to tie the knot with an American!

  Dev’s team has confirmed rumors of engagement.

  Sources on set say the model has visited her fiancé during filming.

  Finally, some happiness for the Dixit family; Shweta Dixit is reportedly delighted with the match and eager to welcome her new granddaughter.

  Read the first texts between Dev and Jia after he slid into her DMs!

  Will true love outweigh their cultural differences?

  That was a fraction of the news stories. He’d stopped her from reciting the tweets aloud when her breath hitched over a particularly nasty one. How did some nobody IG model snag him?

  Even sweet Jenny had betrayed them with amazing speed, with the photo he’d given her popping up as another story when they were a few miles from home. Jia had rushed to delete a selfie she’d posted on the beach yesterday, but some investigative soul had already put two and two together to place them in the same spot and spin a tale about a romantic rendezvous.

  Nobody sleuthed better than the internet.

  After that, Jia had turned her phone off and sat silently while Dev frantically hit redial. What the hell had his team done?

  Dev turned his back on the couch, where Jia’s roommates were busy consoling her. “No choice? You had no choice when you decided to announce an engagement for me?”

  Chandu’s voice turned frosty. “I tried to reach you all day, Dev. You didn’t tell me there were these love texts between the two of you. I did what I had to do to make sure this stayed aboveboard, and I had to do it fast before it blew up and damaged both of your reputations. Especially since you’re apparently staying in hotel rooms together now.”

  “You didn’t have to say she was my fiancée.”

  “I didn’t? Sure, the progressives would have stayed on your side. Your texts were tame compared to what the kids send nowadays. But you would have been smeared by the more conservative folks delighted to see a Dixit scandal.”

  “My brother brought home an illegitimate child without much of a fuss.”

  “People liked your brother more than you,” Chandu said bluntly. “And your grandfather was alive then, and Rohan made sure he protected Luna by hiding her away. Plus, times were different. The internet was slower, tensions weren’t so high.”

  What Chandu had said about speed wasn’t wrong. How could Jenny have found a buyer for his Polaroid so fast?

  “Leaking a photo where you’re casually flirting with a girl, stirring up speculation, that’s a lot different than texts that say my heart beats only for you.”

  Dev nearly groaned. It had only been a few texts that had leaked, thank God. Now he kind of regretted not taking Jia up on her offer to see the rest of t
he lines his brother and cousin had sent.

  “It would have been the girl who took the brunt of that abuse, Dev,” Chandu reminded him. “But if you’re engaged, it doesn’t matter. Now it’s a love story, not a tawdry affair or a seduction.”

  Dev grimaced. Chandu wasn’t . . . wrong. He glanced over his shoulder. Jia’s face was buried in her hands. Her phone was on the coffee table in front of her. “Do you know . . . do you know how the reporters got the texts?” He hadn’t thought Arjun would do something like this, but then again, he hadn’t thought his own family was capable of a cruel prank like catfishing someone to begin with.

  “I spoke with the tabloid who broke it.” Chandu had good relationships with every tabloid in Mumbai. “They said it was leaked via a mass phone hack. If you’d told me the truth in the beginning, Dev, I would have been prepared. I assumed that photo of you embracing a girl was a publicity stunt.”

  “It’s not—” He broke off as he heard a feminine voice in the background calling for Chandu, which was odd. His agent wasn’t married. He was extremely dedicated to his clients, which, for the last thirty years, had consisted entirely of the Dixit family.

  The older man cleared his throat. “Your grandmother wishes to speak with you.”

  Dev pulled the phone away from his ear and stared at it for a second. “Why is my grandmother at your house?”

  “I am at the compound.” The gated mansion his grandparents lived in. “We had some work to do. You know we’re both night owls.”

  Then why hadn’t Chandu picked up the phone for the last few hours, while he’d been calling?

  Dear God, were his agent and his grandmother . . . no. Impossible. Also, irrelevant right now.

  “Devanand,” his grandmother said briskly, taking the phone from Chandu. “You lied to me.”

  He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Hello, Aji.”

  The soft murmurs went silent behind him. He glanced around to find Jia watching with a furrowed brow. She must have realized who he was talking to.