Buch lesen: «Monsoon Wedding Fever»

CHAPTER ONE

‘DUBEYJI, UTHO. Wake up!’ Riya hissed at the watchman snoring away behind the locked gates of her apartment building.

It was a Friday, and she’d gone out for dinner with a bunch of colleagues in central Mumbai to celebrate a deal they’d just cracked. She’d not bothered to check if the gate was open when her friends dropped her off, and now she was standing all alone on a deserted and not very safe road in the middle of the night, dressed in form-fitting black and fake designer jewellery. She pulled her scarf around her a little more closely as a pair of young men roared past her on a bike. For a minute she contemplated calling her flatmate—only he had a cousin coming down from Singapore that evening, and was likely to be out partying as well.

The snoring rose to a crescendo as Dubeyji settled himself into a more comfortable spot on his plastic chair. Riya rattled the gate a few times, then picked up a handful of little blue pebbles from one of the fancy flowerpots flanking the entrance. The third pebble did the trick, shaking Dubeyji out of what was probably a most interesting dream starring a bevy of luscious Bhojpuri beauties.

‘Yeh koi time hai, ghar aane ka—madam, is this any time to come home?’ he grumbled as he unlocked the gate.

Dubeyji hadn’t got over his disapproval yet that the multinational firm Riya worked for provided accommodation for both male and female employees. He still liked Riya, though, partly because she looked a bit like his favourite movie star, and partly because she came from his part of the country.

Riya was still giggling to herself when she reached the flat, remembering Dubeyji’s outraged expression when the pebble hit him. It took her a minute to open the door—Gaurav had dutifully left it on the latch. He had, however, neglected to leave a single light on, and the living room was in complete and utter darkness when she finally got in.

‘Dumb idiot,’ she said out loud, and then she struggled to get her strappy high-heeled sandals off in the dark. ‘Damn these shoes!’

Barefoot at last, she began padding across the room—to find herself suddenly tripping and falling down in a heap right onto the warm, hard, very muscular and very male body sprawled across the middle of the floor.

For a wild moment Riya wondered if she was in the wrong flat. Then, as she yelped in alarm and tried to push herself off the man, an amused voice drawled in her ear.

‘Gaurav’s missing flatmate, I presume?’

By then she’d found her footing, and she bounced off in a hurry and snapped a switch on. Bright fluorescent light bathed the room as she glared at the man trying to get free of the scarf that had landed on his face. An extremely appealing-looking man, she thought, her annoyance abating as she took in the perfectly sculpted physique, the rumpled hair, and...hang on...the extremely familiar face. Not to mention the extremely, familiar golden-brown eyes, blinking now as they adjusted to the bright light, and the excruciatingly familiar, eminently kissable lips, and the strong hands, with their long, sensitive fingers...

‘Dhruv Malhotra!’ she wailed, sitting down abruptly on the nearest sofa.

‘Shh...people are sleeping inside,’ he said, his deep voice with its slight gravelly undertone as sexy as ever.

‘But—but I don’t understand,’ Riya stammered. ‘What are you doing here? Are you Gaurav’s cousin?’

Dhruv nodded, standing up from the makeshift bed spread out on the floor.

Riya automatically ran her eyes over him. Even in a ratty black vest and faded jogging bottoms, he looked gorgeous. He’d filled out since college—the once boyish frame had morphed into a body worthy of an athlete, all lean limbs, broad shoulders and taut muscle.

‘I’m sorry I couldn’t warn you—I figured out you lived here only when we arrived and I saw your name on the door. We came in quite late and I thought we could deal with the situation in the morning—I wasn’t expecting you to fall over me.’

‘And you were sleeping right in the middle of the living room because...?’

‘My kid sister decided to come along at the last moment, so she’s in the spare room and there was no place left for me.’ He flashed her a sudden grin. ‘I didn’t think you’d appreciate coming home and finding me in your bed.’

‘You’re right. I wouldn’t have,’ Riya said firmly.

She walked up to him and took the scarf from him, willing herself not to touch his hand while she did so. She’d thought about him a lot in the twelve years since they’d last met, and rehearsed countless scenarios in which she confronted him/pretended he didn’t exist/made crazy, wild love to him... Now that they were finally face to face, all she wanted to do was run away and keep going.

‘Goodnight, Dhruv.’

‘Riya?’

She turned. He was looking at her, an oddly appealing glimmer in his eyes.

‘It’s good to see you again.’

Riya gave him a tight little smile and went on to her room without answering.

Dhruv switched off the light and got back into bed. He’d been awake when Riya came in, and had smiled to himself when he’d heard her cursing in her adorably husky voice. Seeing her again had been more of a jolt than he’d expected, even though he had been mentally prepared. She had changed. Not so much in appearance, though she’d probably put on a few kilos—she’d been waif-like in college, so thin that he’d been able to pick her up with one hand, but so energetic and full of life that she’d seemed twice her real size. Now she’d developed some womanly curves—as he’d discovered when she landed on top of him.

For a few seconds he’d been tempted to drag her closer, enjoy the feeling of her soft breasts heavy on his arm and her silky hair spread over his chest. Her hair had been short in college, and she’d always been bundled either into a shapeless salwar kameez—the traditional Asian tunic and loose trousers—or an over-sized T-shirt and scruffy jeans. She looked far more sophisticated now, with figure-hugging clothes and long, wavy perfectly styled hair cascading down her back. Her face was unchanged, with large eyes, sooty eyelashes, flawless dusky skin, rosebud mouth and dainty little tip-tilted nose all present and correct. The eyes were wary, though. Nowhere near as open or as trusting as they’d used to be.

Dhruv punched his pillow in frustration. Five minutes and the woman had already got him tied up in knots. He should make some excuse to Gaurav and move into a hotel for the remaining two days he needed to be in Mumbai. On the other hand Gaurav was getting married in a week, and the whole point of this visit was to spend time with him before the wedding—they’d been very close when they were younger, but hadn’t met in the last six years. Moving out wasn’t the best option—perhaps he should try talking to Riya, laying old ghosts to rest.

Riya latched the door to her room and slowly started clearing the mess of books off her bed. Dhruv still affected her strongly, she noted, feeling extremely displeased with herself.

Over the years she’d come to believe that he had only managed to completely bowl her off her feet because he’d been the first really attractive man she’d come across in the seventeen years she’d spent growing up in a small, conservative North Indian university town. Her schoolmates had been OK, but she’d known them all her life, and the fact that some were male hadn’t really registered even when she was in her teens. It was difficult to lust after someone you’d seen peeing in their pants in kindergarten!

In college Dhruv had stood out among a largely nerdy and uncouth crowd like...like a peacock in a yard full of sparrows. Or, she thought, trying to think of a more appropriate simile, a Swiss chocolate in a bowl of peppermints. Or a Ferrari in a line-up of taxis.

But after college she’d met at least a dozen men who displayed at least as good a combination of looks and brains as Dhruv, and not a single one of them had made her heart race the teensiest bit. Not Sandeep, the hottest man on her graduate course, nor Sikandar, serial heartbreaker and her second boss. Not Marcelo, the drop-dead gorgeous Brazilian she’d met in a training course last year. Not Vinay, whom she’d dated for almost two years before deciding not to marry him. Not even Anurag, the CFO of one of her top corporate clients. Well, maybe Anurag. Just a little bit. Even though he was married and at least fifteen years older than her. But compared to the effect Dhruv had on her even Anurag faded into insignificance.

‘Concentrate on the bad things,’ Riya told herself firmly, chewing on her toothbrush fiercely. ‘He walked away from you without any explanation whatsoever—’ she spat into the sink and rinsed her mouth vigorously ‘—and never bothered to get in touch with you afterwards.’

She climbed into her pyjamas and got into bed. She lay for a while looking up at the ceiling, remembering the feeling of utter bewilderment and loss that had stayed with her every waking minute for months after Dhruv had stepped out of her life. Even now just thinking about it made her feel empty inside... Humiliating as it was to admit, unless she was very, very careful she was in just as much danger of falling for him now as she had been when she was seventeen.

‘Pathetic, man-crazy moron,’ she said sternly to herself, but it didn’t help. Not when Dhruv lay stretched out on the floor in the next room. So close...

‘He might be married,’ the pragmatic part of her brain prompted, and her eyes flew open at the thought. No, he wasn’t married—she distinctly remembered Gaurav saying that his cousin was single, thank goodness. Not that it should affect her; she shouldn’t care even if he’d turned Mormon and married seven wives.

Riya finally managed to fall asleep around five a.m., and slept soundly till well after nine. She was still groggy when Ranjana, their stickler of a cook-cleaner, marched firmly into her room and prodded her awake.

‘Utho, didi—wake up. Everyone else woke up hours ago.’

‘Good for them,’ Riya mumbled, rolling over in bed.

‘The little didi also just woke up.’

Riya opened her eyes, wondering if Dhruv had been enterprising enough to smuggle a girlfriend into the flat. Or not. Hadn’t he said his sister had come down with him? Curiosity stirred. Dhruv had talked a lot about his kid sister when they were in college. She must be around twenty now, as she was some twelve years younger than him. Clearly an afterthought on the part of their parents, but her older brother adored her.

Dhruv was sitting at the breakfast table watching Gaurav efficiently work his way through a triple-egg omelette and a small mountain of buttered toast. If possible, Dhruv looked even better than he had the previous night. His hair was damp from the shower and curling slightly at the nape of his neck, and his white T-shirt set off the honey-gold of his skin perfectly. Riya’s treacherous heart started doing a little jig of excitement inside her chest. Evidently the previous night’s self-administered homily had gone to waste.

‘Hey there, Sleeping Beauty!’ Gaurav said as he caught sight of Riya. ‘Come here—meet my cousin.’

Dhruv gave her a brief smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes.

‘We’ve met,’ Riya said, sliding into the chair opposite her stocky flatmate. ‘Gaurav, don’t use the jam knife for the butter—no wonder the chicken butter masala Ranjana made last week was pink!’

‘I thought that was for Valentine’s Day,’ Gaurav said cheerfully. ‘I’ve suspected Ranjana of nursing a secret passion for me for the last five years.’

‘Who’s Ranjana—the cook?’ A curvy, impish-looking girl walked into the room. She was wearing a black T-shirt with a skull embroidered on it—the skull sported a pink bow—and the matching pyjama trousers had ‘Sweet Devil’ embroidered over the butt in pink.

‘Look who’s awake!’ Gaurav said. ‘Riya, this is Chutki—Dhruv’s little sister and officially the most painful brat alive. Chutki, say hello to Riya like a good girl.’

Chutki stuck her tongue out at him. ‘Stop calling me by my nickname. It makes me sound like a two-year-old. Hi, I’m Drishti,’ she said, smiling at Riya. Then she looked a little closer. ‘Hey, you look awfully familiar. Have we met?’

‘I don’t think so,’ Riya replied, wondering if Dhruv had told his sister something about her.

She’d never met Chutki before, but she’d heard a lot about his cute little sister. She was the only person in Dhruv’s family that he’d ever talked about. They had a brother, too, who was a couple of years younger than Dhruv, she remembered, but Dhruv had only mentioned him once in passing, saying that he was crazy about photography. He’d never talked about his parents, giving evasive answers to even the most pointed questions, and very early on in their relationship Riya had learnt not to ask too many questions about them.

Chutki was still observing Riya closely, trying to puzzle something out.

‘I get it,’ she said suddenly. ‘Dhruv—doesn’t she look just like that girl whose photo you used to keep hidden in your cupboard?’

Riya couldn’t help it. Her cheeks flamed in embarrassment and Gaurav, who’d opened his mouth to make a wisecrack, shut it hastily after one look at her face.

Dhruv looked up.

‘Thanks, Chutki.’ He’d been furious with her when she’d found a faded photograph of Riya hidden under a stack of T-shirts in his cupboard, and he’d caught her and shaken her hard when she’d gone dancing out of his room with the photo to show it to their mother. He still remembered the shock on her little face, the tears filling her eyes—it was the first time her beloved big brother had lost his temper with her.

She looked almost as upset now. ‘You mean she’s the same... Oh, God, I’m so sorry. Open mouth, change feet—that’s me. But if you guys know each other, how come you didn’t realise you were...?’ She shut up abruptly as Dhruv gave her a look.

‘It was a long time ago—we knew each other in college,’ said Dhruv curtly, wishing he’d never been a sentimental idiot and hung on to the photograph. ‘We haven’t been in touch since then.’

‘Oh, right,’ Gaurav said easily. ‘I knew you went to the same college. Never thought to ask Riya if she knew you. I just assumed you’d have graduated before she joined. Given how ancient you are and all.’

Dhruv smiled. ‘I’m three years older than the two of you. Architecture is a five-year course, remember?’ He was hoping that they were safely off the topic—he could see that Riya had tensed up, and it boded ill for his chances of having any kind of sensible conversation on the subject with her later on. He hadn’t reckoned on his little sister’s never-ending curiosity, though.

‘You were dating, weren’t you? Why’d you split up?’ Chutki asked, interested.

Suddenly Riya had had enough. ‘We weren’t dating,’ she said crisply. ‘We were friends and, like Dhruv said, he was three years ahead of me. We didn’t stay in touch after he left college.’

Chutki looked a little abashed, and Riya felt guilty about snapping at her. It wasn’t her fault. She was just curious, and she belonged to the reality TV generation in which everyone discussed their past and current relationships in loud and public detail. She’d probably be hugely amused if she knew how Riya went all shivery and tingly each time she looked at Dhruv.

Riya pushed her chair back from the table. ‘I’m done,’ she said. ‘I’m going down to the gym for an hour. You guys staying in? Or do you plan to go out?’

Gaurav said, ‘We haven’t decided yet. Dhruv wants to buy something for Madhulika, only I’m not sure what she’d like. I was hoping you’d have some ideas...’

‘Given that you’re marrying the woman in a week, I’d have expected you to have some clue,’ Riya retorted, irritated at her flatmate for trying to palm off the decision onto her. ‘If you can’t think of something yourself, try Googling “gift ideas for morons”.’

‘I’ll make her come up with something,’ Gaurav said to Dhruv as he got up to clear the dishes. ‘She’s spent hours chatting to Madhulika on the phone about the wedding. By the way, I’ve never seen her being this snippy, and I’ve known her for some years now. Bad break-up?’

Dhruv shook his head, irritated with his cousin. ‘We weren’t in a relationship. I told you. She told you. What does it take to drive that simple fact into your skull?’

‘A lot more than just you idiots telling me so every two minutes,’ Gaurav said tartly. ‘You may not have been dating, but you were definitely not “just good friends”. Sparks fly all over the place when you look at each other.’

He would have probably continued in that vein for a few more minutes if Riya’s door hadn’t opened. She came out wearing a no-nonsense sleeveless navy vest with a pair of dry-fit tracksuit bottoms. The outfit had obviously been chosen for comfort rather than elegance, but the stretchy material of the top clung to her near-perfect hourglass figure in a way that made Dhruv’s mouth immediately go dry.

She hardly looked at him on her way out, just pausing to say over her shoulder, ‘Order the groceries, please, Gaurav. Ranjana’s made a list.’

‘Just good friends,’ Gaurav muttered, taking in Dhruv’s expression as he continued gazing at the door a good five minutes after Riya had shut it behind her.

Dhruv stood up abruptly. ‘I have some work calls to make,’ he said. ‘And, if we’re going out, isn’t it about time you had a wash and changed? Unless, of course, you’re planning to stun Mumbai with a glimpse of those psychedelic pyjamas.’

Gaurav grimaced and went to the bathroom. Dhruv was still his favourite cousin, but his tongue was as barbed as ever—he made a mental note not to bug him about Riya ever again.

* * *

‘For God’s sake, Chang, you should be able to handle this!’ Dhruv exploded forty minutes later.

He strode over to the window and looked out, frowning as his second-in-command launched into a lengthy explanation for the current crisis at work. He very rarely lost his temper with his team, but he was now at the end of his tether. This trip wasn’t going as planned, he thought as he closed the call, cutting off his employee’s explanation midway. He’d been unnecessarily harsh with Chang, and he knew the reason had nothing to do with work. Meeting Riya had unsettled him more than he would have imagined possible.

He’d thought of her often since they’d parted—for many years the memory of how he’d treated her had filled him with guilt, and an unexplained feeling of anger. She’d been head-over-heels in love with him, and he’d spurned her without much of an explanation. At that time he had thought he was acting for the best, but in hindsight he’d acted like an immature idiot.

He’d known very early on that they didn’t have a future together. For a twenty-year-old, he’d had very fixed ideas, utterly convinced by his parents’ disastrous marriage that falling in love was a mug’s game. Till he met Riya, he’d never even been tempted. She’d been doing an undergraduate degree in Computer Science, while he’d been in his final year of his architecture course, and the first time he’d met her what had struck him was her vitality—her enthusiasm for life. It had stepped out of her and grabbed him around the throat before he’d known what was happening. She was beautiful as well, and intelligent, but those were things that he’d noticed only later.

Dhruv grimly thought back to how he’d deluded himself for several months, trying to think of her as an interesting companion—more of an intellectual sparring partner than a flesh-and-blood woman. Reality had hit while he’d been helping her with an engineering drawing assignment, leaning over her shoulder to loosen her death-grip on the pencil. Her hair had smelt of lemons and tangerines, and as she’d turned laughingly towards him he’d looked into her wide cinnamon eyes and found himself unable to look away. The sudden attraction had blindsided him, shaking him temporarily out of the carefully erected emotional barriers he had surrounded himself with.

She’d stopped mid-sentence when she’d seen the naked longing in his eyes, and blushed deeply, her long, sooty eyelashes dropping down to cover her eyes. If nothing else, Dhruv thought wryly, that was the only time he’d ever seen her at a loss for words. Nothing had been said, but there had been a new kind of awareness between them from that day onwards, an always present undercurrent of sexual tension that had made the simplest gestures take on immense significance.

A door slammed in the flat, and Dhruv’s thoughts jerked back to the present. Riya was home. She was sweating slightly after her hour in the gym, and her cheeks were slightly flushed. Dhruv felt his heartbeat accelerate as he saw her—his first thought was that this was exactly how she’d look after being made love to, and he shook himself mentally to get rid of the further images that this conjured up. A second wave of lust hit him as he noticed the hint of cleavage that showed as she bent down to untie the laces of her gym shoes, and he looked hastily away.

Riya checked for a second when she saw Dhruv in the living room. She’d been half hoping that he’d be out of the house by the time she returned, so that she wouldn’t have to struggle to keep up the coolly sophisticated front she’d donned. Her initial impulse was to run to her room, but she forced herself to walk slowly—partly because she didn’t want Dhruv to think he affected her in any way, and partly because she didn’t want to trip and fall flat on her face. Her sense of balance had improved significantly since college days, when she’d fallen over at least once a week, but she didn’t trust herself while Dhruv was around.

‘Where’s Gaurav?’ she heard herself ask.

‘Gone for a bath. By the way, he’s still not come up with any ideas for a gift for Madhulika, so if you can think of something I’d be really, really grateful.’

He smiled up at her, and Riya found herself unable to tear her eyes away from him. He was still impossibly good-looking, she decided. A beam of sunlight from the window glinted off his dark brown hair and highlighted the honey-gold planes of his almost perfectly chiselled face. His lips were just the right shape—not too thin, and not too full—quirking up a little at the corners to offset the firm cast of his jaw. But his best features were still his eyes—golden-brown with flecks of green, framed in impossibly long lashes.

Something in his expression finally cued her that she’d been staring at him like an idiot.

‘Gift?’ she repeated, parrot-like, dragging her eyes away from his. ‘A watch, maybe?’

Dhruv was still looking at her and she kept talking, as if the sound of her own voice would keep her from doing something moderately embarrassing, like reaching a hand out to brush back the straight hair falling over his forehead, or really, really stupid, like flinging herself into his arms.

‘Madhu collects watches, and there’s a new one with a purple dial she likes—Gaurav won’t get it for her because he has this crazy theory about watches being a countdown till the day you die.’

‘Yes, I know about that one,’ Dhruv said drily. ‘It also explains why he’s late for pretty much everything. Thanks for the idea, Riya.’

Riya said politely that he was most welcome, and escaped to her room to collapse onto the bed and stare at the ceiling. Dhruv had changed, she thought. She’d known him very well at one time, and she could sense that something fundamental about him was different. His looks hadn’t altered much—he looked older, of course, and there were a few strands of silver in his thick, floppy hair, and of course his body had...improved.

Riya had to pull her mind back from dwelling lovingly on those improvements. No, that wasn’t it. In college he’d given the initial impression of being laid-back, slightly lazy, even, and that had been part of his charm—the fact that he never really exerted himself to make a good impression, but made one anyway. When she’d got to know him better, however, she’d figured that appearances were deceptive. The chilled-out exterior covered a lot of inner turmoil, the reasons for which, at seventeen, she hadn’t even begun to understand. Now it seemed to be the other way around. Dhruv’s personality was far more compelling, dynamic, but internally he seemed more detached than he’d been before, his wild streak completely dormant. Maybe he’d just grown up.

‘I’ve grown up, too,’ she informed the bedpost. ‘I’m no longer a lovesick donkey. So there’s no way I’m going to make a fool of myself over him again.’

The words were brave, but Riya felt about as confident as she had as a quaking four-year-old on her first day of school. Dhruv Malhotra meant trouble, and the less she saw of him the better.