by Sara Desai
“Maybe you should say something funny; I might smile then.”
“We matched.” He pointed to the screen. “Given your violent antipathy to me, there is nothing funnier than that.”
Layla quickly skimmed through her online profile. There wasn’t much more to it than Hassan had printed out, save for the introductory paragraph that made her heart squeeze in her chest:
Beloved daughter
My Layla
Make her happy
Treat her with kindness and respect
“He loves you very much,” Sam said.
“Yes, he does.” Her voice trembled. “He wanted to fix my whole life but I was only with him for ten minutes before he had a heart attack. And it was my fault. I should have told him before I arrived that I was coming home for good. The shock was too much.”
Sam squeezed her hand, his palm warm against her skin. “I’m sure that’s not the case. If you check his medical chart, I’ll bet they haven’t written down ‘Cause of heart attack: daughter shows up with blue hair and threatens to stay.’ Although, if you’re planning to meet more suitors you might want to rethink your next hair color choice.”
“What if there are more?”
“You’ll need to access your father’s e-mail account to find out.”
“I know his password.” She leaned over him and opened a new window to access her father’s e-mail. “He’s been using the same one for years.”
A few moments later she was in her father’s e-mail account and scrolling through the unread e-mails in his personal folder, many wishing him a speedy recovery and some reminding him about unpaid bills. She made a mental note to deal with them later and clicked on a folder titled “Desilovematch.” Her father had separated the file into subfolders: “Yes,” “No,” “Maybe.” She opened them all and gasped as hundreds of e-mails filled the screen.
Sam let out a long, low breath. “You’re a popular girl.”
“My mother said he’d been locked in his office since I called to tell him about my last breakup. She didn’t know what he was doing. I guess this was it.” She opened her father’s online calendar and checked it against the folders. “He made appointments to see the ten men in the ‘Yes’ file. Hassan was the first.”
“Ten blind dates. You are a lucky girl.”
Feeling nauseous, she sipped her water. Her father must have sifted through hundreds of marriage résumés to narrow the field down to these ten names. Ten men he thought would make her happy and treat her with kindness and respect, unlike Jonas and all the men she’d dated before him.
Layla had always considered herself a modern desi woman. She was as comfortable in a sari as she was in jeans and enjoyed hamburgers and potato chips as much as dal and curry. Her life revolved around Western friends and a large and extended family of immigrants from Northern India and Pakistan who had brought their culture and beliefs with them—one of which was the benefit of arranged marriage over the Western concept of love.
Despite Dev’s wonderful relationship with Rhea and the success of her parents’ union, Layla had never been interested in having an arranged marriage. Even after a string of failed relationships and heartbreak, she had always believed in true love. Her soul mate was out there waiting for her. All she had to do was open her eyes.
“Are you okay?” Sam’s gentle tone pulled her out of her thoughts.
“I was just thinking.”
“Don’t try too hard. I thought I saw steam coming out of your ears.” Sam stood, carefully adjusting his jacket as he made his way back to his desk. From the fit and the cut of the material, it was clearly high-end and likely very expensive. For the first time she noticed the fancy watch on his left wrist, the gold cuff links, and the crisply pressed shirt. His business wasn’t a fly-by-night operation if he could afford to dress like that.
“Funny. You’re a funny guy, Sam.”
“I can honestly say no one has ever described me that way.” He cleared off his desk, carefully putting his pencils and pens away. “I felt more comfortable when you were cursing like a sailor and calling me filthy names.”
“Are you conceding defeat?” She tried to keep the hopeful tone from her voice when he tucked his laptop into his leather briefcase.
“Of course not.” His dark eyes flashed with mirth. “I have a business meeting in half an hour which I had hoped to conduct here, but I’m too much of a gentleman to intrude on your privacy while you crush the hearts of ten sad and lonely men. I look forward to battling with you tomorrow, Miss Patel. May the best man win.”
After the door closed behind him, she sat back in her chair surrounded by his warmth and the intoxicating scent of his cologne. She knew his type. Hated it. Arrogant. Cocky. Egotistical. Ultracompetitive. Fully aware of how devastatingly handsome he was. A total player. She would have swiped left if his profile had popped up on desi Tinder.
So why couldn’t she stop smiling?
• 6 •
CRAMMED between a dollar store and a run-down pawn shop, Joe Puglisi’s Boxing Club was spit-and-sawdust at its finest. Sam had been training at Joe’s with his friends Evan and John three times a week since he left medical school, addicted to the brutality of the early-morning training sessions as much as the actual fights.
“You warmed up yet?” Evan Archer called out from the free weights. Shorter than Sam by a good two inches, stockier and more muscular, Evan had the kind of messy blond hair women always seemed to want to touch. His eyes were hazel, shifting to dark brown when he was riled or pounding on Sam in the ring. A marketing consultant and amateur MMA fighter with ambitions of going pro, Evan embraced the idea that exercise was both a form of punishment and physically redemptive. Despite the bruises and brutally draining sessions, Sam never felt redeemed, but the physical pain that lingered after each session overrode the pain he carried in his heart.
“Joe came up with a series of unpleasant sit-up variations I need to get through. Give me five minutes, and I can meet you in the ring.” Sam pulled himself up, breathing in the familiar scents of vinyl and sawdust mixed with sweat. The gym was his retreat, the only place he could put aside his emotional pain and pay in blood and sweat for what he’d done to Nisha and his family and the hundreds of poor souls he fired each month.
“He’s weak,” John shouted, his skipping rope whistling through the air, making his straight dark hair stand on end. A marathon runner, attorney John Lee didn’t even break a sweat on Joe’s cardio exercises, but he couldn’t match Sam and Evan when it came to skill in the ring. “I think it’s his age.”
“We’re the same damn age.” And in the same situation with the ladies. Sam didn’t want to commit and John couldn’t commit. After being abandoned by his father, John had raised his younger brother singlehandedly while his mother worked three jobs to support them. He had put himself through law school and started his own firm, Lee, Lee, Lee & Hershkowitz, with three friends, but had been unable to move past his abandonment issues to maintain a relationship for more than a few months.
John transferred the handles of the ropes to one hand and jumped back and forth. “I’ve got that legal opinion you asked for in my bag. You can give Nasir’s daughter the printed copy. There’s no question you have the legal right of occupancy. But are you sure you want to do this? Nasir’s a good guy, and there’s no reason to think his daughter is lying. Legally, the office is yours, but is it right or fair to go against his wishes?”
Sam felt a strange tightening in his chest. He lay back, trying to breathe the curious sensation away. He was doing this for Nisha. For justice. The office location was a key element of the Alpha Health Care pitch, and he couldn’t afford to lose it. “I know what I’m doing. I can handle her.”
“Can you handle me standing over you with a victory grin?” Evan dropped his weights and joined Sam on the mat. Vastly more experienced, he had never lost a fight to either Sam or
John over the years.
“Two shots. My fist in your face. Your face on the mat,” Sam countered with a confidence he didn’t feel in the least.
Evan clapped him on the back. “Someone’s feeling lucky today.”
Not lucky, but he’d woken this morning with a curious sense of anticipation. He didn’t remember the last time he’d started his day with anything other than a feeling of dread, so this peculiar lightness in his chest had to mean this was the day Evan was finally going to kiss the canvas.
“You do seem unusually upbeat.” John helped him to his feet. “You’re not your usual sullen, morose, and uncommunicative self. Is it the new office? Change of scenery good for the soul?”
Sam’s mind flashed to an image of Layla walking across the office, her jeans clinging to her curves, the dreadful Nickelback T-shirt pulled tight across her ample breasts. Then he remembered the office supplies flying at his face, the stubborn set of her jaw, her Juicy ass, and the hideous purple couch. Such an aggravating woman. And yet, when he thought of the way she’d rubbed up against him when she’d jumped to get the résumé, his lips quivered at the corners.
“Or is it the girl?”
Sometimes it sucked having a friend who was a lawyer. John was far too astute, and when he started with the questions, there was no escaping the truth.
“What girl?” Evan pulled two sets of gloves from the equipment box and handed one pair to Sam.
“The one he’s planning to throw out on the street even though her father is ill.”
Evan’s face lit with interest. “Do tell.”
Sam brought Evan up to speed on the office situation, the contract, and Nasir’s secret plans to find Layla a husband.
“What does Royce think about the whole situation?” Evan and Royce had been friends since college. After Sam had left medicine and completed his MBA, Evan had hooked him up with Royce, who was looking for a partner to join his new consulting business.
“He doesn’t know.”
Evan chuckled. “Find her a husband and she’ll be too busy planning her wedding to worry about setting up a new business.”
Sam shook his head as he pulled on a glove. “She’s stubborn as hell, irritating, strong willed, and far too competitive to give up the office because someone wants to put a ring on her finger.” She was also the sexiest goddamn woman he’d ever seen, but that wasn’t information he was willing to share. “She’s disorganized, unprofessional, and her taste in furniture is even worse than her taste in friends.”
“Sounds like my kind of girl.”
Sam’s stomach tightened at the thought of Evan with Layla. With his good looks and easy charm, Evan was the king of hookups. Sam couldn’t remember a night when they’d left a bar together.
“She’s not your type.”
“I don’t discriminate,” Evan said, misunderstanding. “I like all women. Last week I hooked up with a girl who’d had plastic surgery to give herself elf ears. Her elf name was Buttorwyr. She kicked me out when I called her Butt for short.”
“What a surprise.” John made no effort to disguise the sarcasm in his voice.
“She won’t be around long enough for you to work your magic.” Sam climbed through the ropes to join Evan in the ring. “John says the law is on my side. I’m going to tell her to clear out her stuff by the end of the day.” No second thoughts. It didn’t matter that she was beautiful and smart and snarky enough to keep him on his toes. He couldn’t afford to get distracted.
Evan smashed his fist into Sam’s face, sending him staggering back into the ropes. The world began to spin, and he dropped to his knees, the side of his face throbbing from the powerful blow.
“What the hell was that?” he shouted, more angry with himself than with the friend who had caught him off guard.
Evan held out a hand to pull him up. “Wake-up call. You weren’t paying attention.”
* * *
• • •
“WHAT the hell happened in here?” Sam pushed his way into the office, shoving aside half-empty boxes of dishes, baskets of shoes, fuzzy blankets, bags filled with clothes, picture frames, stuffed animals, shampoo bottles, and bolts of colorful fabric.
“You’re a late starter, I see.” Layla looked up from the rosewood desk. She had removed all his belongings and scattered them across the Eagerson in a heap. “I’ve been up since five A.M. I spent two hours in the kitchen with my mom, visited my dad in the hospital, and made it here just as the movers arrived with my stuff from New York.”
Sam stared at the mess aghast. There was no way he could work in this chaos. How would his clients even make it through the door? “Why would you have your personal belongings delivered to your office instead of your apartment?”
“First of all, I’m living with my parents while I figure my life out. Second, these aren’t my personal belongings. This is what I had in my office.” She leaned back in her chair, folding her arms under her chest, drawing his attention to the filmy white blouse that was unbuttoned low enough to reveal the crescents of her breasts.
He forced his gaze up only to notice that her hair was down and fell over her shoulders in thick, dark, glossy waves. How the hell was he supposed to focus when he had to look at her all day? Why couldn’t she have worn something loose and hideous? Maybe a One Direction T-shirt or a woolly hat . . .
Sam lifted a bolt of fabric. “How was this used in the recruitment business?”
“I found it on sale in a small fabric store one lunch hour and put it under my desk and totally forgot about it until I was leaving. Isn’t it pretty? I’m going to ask Nira Auntie to make it into a salwar kameez for me. She owns a clothing store on East El Camino Real.”
“This is a place of business.” Sam tossed the bolt into the nearest box. “Not a storage warehouse.” He dropped his briefcase on the messy desk, cringing at the disarray.
“Chill, Sam. You are entirely too uptight. I’ll get everything organized and you’ll never even know it’s all here.” Layla grabbed a coffee cup from her desk and treated him to a view of her perfect ass molded by a tight black skirt as she walked to the office kitchen, her black heels clicking softly on the wooden floor.
He growled under his breath. This was warfare of the most insidious kind. He slid into his seat, cursing his new slim-fitting suit. Clearly the designer didn’t have to deal with sexy women in tight skirts and high heels or he would have left a little extra “comfort” room for the unexpected expression of desire.
“If I were uptight, I would have tossed you and your couch out the first day I walked in here.” He reached into his bag and pulled out the legal opinion.
“I heard that,” Layla called from the kitchen. “And if you’re done hating on my furniture, you can come and help yourself to some coffee and breakfast. I bought donuts and my mom made some dal parathas from yesterday’s leftovers.”
“Donuts and dal again? You’re the epitome of culturally confused.”
Layla shrugged as she emerged from the kitchen, coffee and treats in hand. “Dal is my comfort food. I’m still depressed about my breakup. The donuts are just part of my plan to work my way through all the bakeries in the city now that I’m back. You can join me, or you can just watch my hips expand.”
Her hips were delightful just the way they were. Not that he was going to share his thoughts. He was already having enough trouble dealing with the situation down below.
He breathed in the rich scent of coffee and cursed himself inwardly for deciding to forgo his morning espresso in favor of trying to beat her to the office. He didn’t function well without his caffeine kick, but damned if he was going to accept it now after she’d rubbed in her early start. “No coffee.”
“I have chai if you prefer.” Her lips curved in a teasing smile, but Sam didn’t take the bait.
“I told you, I don’t touch the stuff.” Of all the tra
ditional foods he’d given up, he missed chai the most. His mother had made the flavored tea by brewing black tea with her own special mixture of aromatic Indian spices and herbs. It was his comfort drink. But he didn’t allow himself those comforts anymore.
“How about water? I watch a lot of science TED Talks. Your body is sixty-five percent water, so you must have had a glass or two in your life.”
Too much talking. Too early in the morning. Given the hostile nature of his job, Sam preferred to start his workdays in peace. “Are you planning on poisoning me? Is that why you’re pushing the beverages so hard?”
“I was trying to be polite. Obviously my efforts are wasted on you.” Her breasts bounced gently beneath her filmy blouse as she walked back to her desk. Even if he’d wanted the coffee, there was no way he could stand up now and give her the legal opinion. It was going to take at least ten minutes of reading stock reports before he could even consider moving from his desk.
Sam pulled a sports drink from his bag. He’d already had his usual post-training breakfast: two egg whites, two slices of wholemeal toast with peanut butter, one glass of skim milk, and one banana, but the combined scents of coffee and dal parathas made his mouth water.
“Sugar water. I should have guessed.” She gave him a cheeky smile as she settled in her chair. “Good thing you brought your own beverage. I considered adding a laxative or even a spoon of ipecac syrup to the coffee, but there’s only one bathroom and I’ll need to freshen up for my clients.”
Coldhearted woman. She wasn’t even ashamed to admit she’d planned to incapacitate him.
“Oh God,” she blurted out, her gaze fixed on her screen. “Another desilovematch.com dude wants an appointment to see my father. What am I going to do?”
He was tempted to tell her to pick one and get married, leaving him in quiet possession of the office, but then he thought of Nisha. If he’d known how easy it was for a predator to hide behind degrees and awards and a charming smile, he would have torn up every résumé his parents received on her behalf when he had the chance.
