Bollywood and the Beast (Bollywood Confidential) (13 page)

Taj’s jaw was tight, sharp enough to cut glass, as he read Nina’s missive. Six lines of intricate scribble. So neat, so damning. “She thinks you and Ashu are having an affair. That is why she sent the packet to you and not to me.”

Thanks to their temporary living arrangements, more than a few gossip websites had run with the speculation that she and Ashraf were more than costars—even claiming that their wedding was scheduled for fall. That sort of rumormongering was so common she didn’t think anyone actually
believed
it.

“But what could she possibly want from me?” Rocky couldn’t imagine it would be money. The bulk of her assets were managed by her dad, and the Khans, while comfortable, weren’t exactly rolling in dough. Besides which, Nina probably had a ton in her bank account from her divorce settlement and her shares of Anandaloka Pictures. Extorting them for cash was pointless.

“She is not demanding anything concrete in this letter. Only warning you that her requests are yet to come. Nina wants her industry respect returned to her…and she is willing to trade Ashraf’s to get it.”

“How the hell are we supposed to restore her reputation? Didn’t she wreck that herself?” She’d never really learned the details—something about Rahul Anand, Priya Roy and Priya’s family—because it was one of the few Bollywood dramas that had been shut down and buried before it could spread. “Holding Ashraf’s career hostage is completely insane. How do we fix something we had nothing to do with?”

“That, sweet Rocky, is precisely why she has us in a trap,
nahin
? I won’t let her destroy my brother. He’s suffered enough.”

Taj had experienced pain. He had experienced fire also. But neither so exquisitely as what he felt in Rocky’s arms. She loved like she did everything else: boldly, without shame or fear. Save for the propriety she observed out of respect for his family. They met in the garden. They secluded themselves in his library. They drove the demons from the roof. And each time, the agony made him stronger, as if she were the forge and he the steel of a sword. She tempered him. Re-made him. Fashioned him for her hand.

He could nearly believe it would last. Nearly. For the angry cynic still lived inside him, not yet free of ten years of cursed enchantment.

“Sir?”

It was laughable that Kamal continued to call him that as they sat together like equals. But if Taj knew himself, Kamal remained a complete enigma. The only clear piece of his puzzle was his devotion to Ashraf. The significance of it—familial affection, romantic attachment—was of no matter to Taj. It was enough that someone else cared for his brother. That someone else would kill for him, too. “What is it?”

“Rahul Anand sent everything he has collected about the Manjrekar woman. Most of it was known to us already.”

“And the rest?” He leaned forward, struggling to conceal a wince. Not from any lingering injury but from the scratches Rocky had left on his back.

“She resides in a flat in East Delhi. She has mobile and Internet service. A driver. But very little ready cash. No club in Delhi allows her entrance. No fine restaurant will serve her. She has not attended a launch or a party since leaving Mumbai.”

“So she is powerless everywhere but here. In our house.”

It was infuriating. Unbearable. But…useful. They only had to discover how to wield the weapon.

Chapter Twenty-Three

There wasn’t too much more time left in his vacation, as he’d begun to humorously consider his time at the hospital, and Ashraf was almost sad to see it ending. His daily dosage of antidepression pills had lifted the oppressive fog from his mind, but it was Kamal’s visits that had lightened his soul. Speaking with him, sitting with him, was like sitting next to a river and simply delighting in its flow. He never had to talk in sound bites, strike a pose or fashion a smile for his weary mouth. He could simply listen to word of home, listen to the rhythm of Kamal’s rich voice and think of what lay beneath the water.

“What did you do before you came to us, Kamal? Where were you posted?” he asked impulsively during a quiet tour of the sanitarium’s grounds. “I never knew. I never thought to ask.” The admission came with a shameful glance cast toward his sandal-clad feet. “Awful,
hai na
?”

“Not awful,
Chote Saab
. You were young. Concerned with a young man’s things.” For a moment, it seemed as though that was all Kamal would say. But he stopped walking, turned to regard Ashraf with a serious—and searing—look. “I was a surgeon. Heart cases. Trauma cases. That day, when he was brought in, I was also there.”

“
Kya
? You’re…a
doctor
?” He was stunned, and too poor of an actor to conceal the shock. His knees did an even poorer job, and he scrambled for a nearby bench, sinking into it with a kind of numbness. “But, Kamal…why? Why would you stay with us, at my brother’s constant call like a servant? You should be posted at a large hospital somewhere.”

“No. Not any longer.” Kamal shook his head, clasping his hands behind his back. A gesture Ashu now knew wasn’t deference but defiance. “There are many ways to heal,
Chote
. Not only in a hospital.”

“Then volunteer in a remote village, at a free clinic,” he suggested. “
Kitne
options
hain
. Why live in our house of horrors?” Why stay with them, when he could be
free
?

As always, Kamal’s stern features were so impassive they nearly showed nothing. “Perhaps Taj
Saab
is not the only one who wishes to hide,” he offered. “Perhaps we all have our reasons.”

But Ashraf did not want to ask after them. Not just now. The strength in Kamal’s hands, in his eyes, suddenly made sense. He was a healer through and through. A doctor not just of the body but of the soul. He’d looked after Taj, and then turned his talent, his caring, to
him
. In a way no one but Nina had ever claimed to care. Not because he was burned, not because he was scarred, but because he was Ashraf.

“Kamal…”

Whatever bits of this revelation Kamal gleaned from Ashu’s face seemed to stop Kamal cold. His dark, fathomless eyes froze over like a mountain lake. “
Nahin
,
Chote
,” he whispered. “Stop. It is forbidden. I cannot be all things to you.”

“It’s too late. You already are.” Ashraf pushed away from the garden bench, pacing Kamal backward until his retreat stalled at a conveniently placed tree. “I’m your heart.
Hai na
, Kamal? You said it yourself. Don’t take it back now that the feeling might be returned.”

Life flickered beneath the ice. Life and hope. But Kamal shook his head. “You mistake a father’s affection for his son for a sin,
Chote Saab
. And you grasp at me only because a woman’s touch has wounded you so deeply.”

Kamal was no more his father than Ashraf was an elephant. It was such
bakwas
that he couldn’t even acknowledge the claim. As for Nina’s touch poisoning him… “
Nahin
, I grasp at you because you reached out for me. Because you would not let me fall.”

“Then it is your chance now,
Chote,
” Kamal whispered as he slipped past him, as he slipped away. “Do not let me fall in return.”

Production for the movie had shifted to nonessential scenes, the villain arc—anything that didn’t require Ashu’s involvement—and they’d begun to tick the days of Ashraf’s inpatient care from the calendar. To treasure them in a way, too, despite the threat of Nina’s extortion looming over their heads. In between being driven to the city for early-morning calls and waiting for more lurid photos to show up in the post, Rocky kept up her Hindi lessons, practicing on everyone in the household…managing to tell the laundry guy all by herself to put less starch on her head
. Khopri, kapre
, potayto, potahto.

“Add bleach also,” Taj suggested when he learned of the snafu, nearly doubled over with mirth. “You can be a golden-haired
gori mem
instead of just half.”

“You are such an asshole,” she told him, flinging a freshly pressed
dupatta
at his head.

He caught the loose ends and used them to loop the brightly colored cloth around her and pull her close. “Lucky for me then that you seem to enjoy assholes,
nahin
?” And when he nuzzled her throat with something almost like fondness, she enjoyed it quite a bit.

For his part, Taj didn’t bother with attempting an attitude adjustment but tried to spend more time gingerly walking from room to room. He even met
Nani
halfway on the stairs, and they shared an emotional hug that he probably wouldn’t admit made him cry.

It was during this fragile, almost idyllic, ceasefire that a new assault was launched, from a totally unexpected direction. Rocky’s mother descended upon the
haveli
in a flurry of suitcases and shopping bags.

After a year and a half, Caroline still played the privileged Ugly American stereotype to the nth degree, acting like anything less than luxury hotel suites and high-end shops was an inconvenience that had to be borne with heavy sighs and a minimal amount of foot traffic. So she stood in the foyer of the Khan
haveli
like she expected a bellman to come grab her things. “Rocky…what
is
this place you’ve come to?” she sniffed, perfectly sculpted eyebrows rising as much as her Botoxed forehead would allow. “Honestly, it’s a tomb.”

Rocky still didn’t understand why she’d come overseas, much less all the way to the wilds of Delhi’s outer suburbs. Maybe to ensure that her dad wouldn’t take up with some sweet, biddable
desi
woman who wouldn’t burn through his money like it was the dead of winter and firewood was at a premium. Not that she knew any such women lining up at Dad’s door…but her mother took great delight in implying he’d nobly sacrificed a personal harem to settle down with her in Chicago. Sometimes, Caroline seemed to think she lived in a Harlequin sheik romance instead of reality.

It had only gotten worse over the years. Rocky actually remembered a time when her mom had just been her mom. Normal. Her straight blond hair was always pulled into ponytails. She wore jeans and T-shirts around the house, and even opted for a
salwar kameez
or a sari if they took a trip to one of the Chicago
mandir
s. She tried to make
biriyani
, watched old black-and-white Hindi movies with Dad in the den and laughed all the time. Now?

Now, she only laughed in response to bons mots from someone influential. And it didn’t sound remotely authentic.

“It’s a
haveli
, Mom. A traditional Hindustani mansion with Mughal influences, probably built before the turn of the century.”

Her mother glanced to and fro, at the shadowy corners and the threadbare rugs. “I think that was the last time anyone cleaned it, too.”

It wasn’t anything Rocky hadn’t thought herself when she first arrived. But now, all these weeks later, it was like a personal affront to Usha and everyone else who worked so hard to keep the house running. Her skin prickled, and her spine straightened defensively. “If you’re so offended, then you can take the car back to the airport and go back to Mumbai. They probably haven’t even rented out your suite at the Four Seasons yet.”

Her mom stopped her appraisal of the
haveli
’s flaws and tucked an imaginary strand of hair behind her ear—imaginary because it was all caught up in a tight, efficient bun, gleaming the pale gold of fresh highlights. “Don’t be ridiculous, Rocky.” She sighed, dramatic and long-suffering. “We’ve let you stay out here with strangers for way too long already. I should be with you, taking care of you while you’re filming God-knows-what.”

“Why start now?” was on the tip of Rocky’s tongue, but she bit it back, instead reaching down to grab the handle of one of Caroline’s rolling bags. “There’s an empty room down the hall from mine on the second floor. I’m sure Usha can have it made up while you’re getting familiar with the house.”

Her mother’s ash-gray eyes narrowed with speculation. “And just how familiar have you gotten, sweetheart? You may think I don’t pay attention, but I know what everyone says about Ashraf Khan.”

“It is not Ashraf you must worry about, Varma
Sahiba
.” Rocky knew the whisper of wheels over marble just like she knew the whisper of his breath. And she didn’t even have to turn around to know that Taj was quietly furious. It was all there in his mocking address, in the staccato cadence of the words. “Ashraf is a man, playing a man’s games. I’m a monster…and Rakhee is very familiar with me indeed.”

All the blood drained from Caroline’s face, leaving her pale skin almost bone white. She probably hadn’t even heard what Taj had said, so transfixed was she by the sight of his disfigurement.

Taj just lounged in his chair—which he was clearly using just for effect, the melodramatic son of a bitch—
daring
her mother to give voice to her horror.

Oh God, oh God, oh God. Please don’t say anything.
Rocky’s protective instinct went from fierce to nuclear. “Don’t be a jerk, Taj,” she muttered, when all she really wanted to do was climb into his arms and shield him from Caroline’s judgment. And then… “Go upstairs, Mom. Second room on your right. Put your purse down. Usha and I will bring up the rest.”

Wonder of wonders, Caroline listened to her, heading for the wide
, Gone With The Wind
-esque staircase on autopilot, her Birkin bag hanging limply from one hand. She was probably convincing herself she’d hallucinated the less-than optimal introduction. It wasn’t until she was up to the landing that Rocky swung around to focus on Taj. His head was bent, his hair falling forward to hide his face, and his shoulders shook with unrepentant mirth.