Bollywood and the Beast (Bollywood Confidential) (14 page)

He’d probably get off on scaring children at Halloween.

“Why is this funny?” she demanded. “My mother just insulted your house, insulted you, and you’re laughing? It’s terrible! I can’t believe she acted that way. I mean, I can, but—”

“
Shaanth
, sweet Rocky,” he cut in, setting his palm at her hip and pulling her to him. “Cool down. Don’t you think I am accustomed to reactions like hers? To disgust and shrinking away and screams? It’s
you
who are the odd one out. You’re the first person in years who looked me straight in the eye, who flinched not because of my scars but because I was vulgar.”

“You’re
still
vulgar,” she murmured absently as he rested his forehead on her belly and inhaled, like he was breathing her in. She threaded her fingers through his silken hair, combing it back from his forehead. From his devastating, beloved face. “But I think you’re gorgeous, Taj…and I just want everyone to see what I do.”

“No one will see me as you do, Rakhee.” His lips brushed back and forth across the gossamer material of her silk
kurta
, and she felt the sensation as acutely as if he’d kissed her bare skin. “That is all right; it is enough,” he whispered in Hindi. “I can go my whole life only knowing your eyes.”

She swayed into his arms, and, in that moment, it was he who shielded her from all judgments. From everything but the love she knew he still couldn’t admit out loud.

Chapter Twenty-Four

That morning’s hard-boiled egg and toast bobbed in the pit of her stomach like rocks in a churning sea. Rocky tried to steady her breaths as she ran the words over in her mind.
Meet me. Soon. Or this goes to the press.
Taj’s bellow of rage had brought the whole house running, even her mother, who stayed after Usha and the others went back to their posts. Now he was still nuclear, and she felt like she was going to throw up.

She dropped to the free end of Taj’s sofa, hoping being stationary would calm her nausea and her nerves. “I…I still don’t get what Nina wants from us. Is she just getting off on making us crazy?”

“I don’t care. This ends
now
.
Aaj
.
Isi waqt
.” He crushed the latest photo and accompanying note in one hand. A gesture of power so precise that anyone who thought him impotent because of his scar tissue was kidding themselves. “I want this
churail
dealt with before Ashu comes home.”

“But how?” They had four days.
Four days
. Nina had waited until the last possible moment to demand a meeting, knowing they would scramble to protect Ashraf any way they could. “There is no way we can beat her at this. She holds all the cards.”

“Let me help.”

It was as if her mom had said, “I hate room service.” Rocky blinked, not sure she’d heard correctly. “I’m sorry, what?”

“Let me help,” Caroline repeated, tapping her fingers on the teak armrest of her silk-lined chair. “This Nina woman and I are of a certain age, and I could lull her into a false sense of security—pretending to bond with her over disapproving of this relationship you’ve struck up with Ashraf.”

Taj’s eye glinted with amusement. “Somehow, I do not think you will have to pretend so much.”

“Maybe not.” Caroline’s lips lifted in a faint smile, and for a minute she and Taj were so deviously in sync that Rocky was traumatized.

She stifled the urge to scream, “Oh my God, stop that right now!” and leaned forward, effectively interrupting the impromptu conspiratorial lovefest. “Do you think you could get her to hand over the flash drive with the photos? And any hard copies?”

Her mother’s laugh was the most brittle and self-aware that she’d ever heard it. “Sweetheart, there’s very little I can’t make someone do.”

The follow-up was silent, a message transmitted only to Rocky: The only thing Caroline hadn’t been able to control was her husband and daughter picking up and moving across the world.

She ignored the sudden tightness in her throat and settled back, consciously curving her fingers around Taj’s bare foot. As if merely touching him could ground her, could hold her
here
. And it did. “Okay,” she whispered with a shake of her head. “Okay, then. Let’s write the script.”

“I will direct,” Taj murmured as his toes stroked at her palm in a subtle caress. One that shouldn’t have been sexy but was. “You know how I love to set a scene.”

The show was on. Rocky’s mother had placed a call to the number Nina left at the bottom of her
ghatia
little note. The woman would arrive at the
haveli
tomorrow and, if it all played out according to plan, be gone from the lives a day after that.

His brother would never have to know what she’d threatened, never have to suffer the extra sorrow that her cruelty could unleash. If it was at all in Taj’s hands, Ashraf would never,
ever
be called to the roof’s edge again. “Have you seen him?” he asked Kamal, who’d slipped with his usual stealth into the library. “How is he?”

“The driver is scheduled. He will come home as suggested by his psychiatrist.” Kamal’s clinical answer was far from the status update he expected. The man had been less forthcoming than even his usual mysterious self these past few days. Perhaps they’d drawn him too close, broken some barrier of class or propriety…not that Taj had ever cared for those things. Propriety did not exist when you screamed from pain. Class had no meaning when you were literally blind to petty differences.

For years,
Kamal
had no importance to him, save for that of a jailer, a keeper, a witness to his descent into failure and madness. And even those positions were elevated above the shadows that were the servants and anyone outside the
haveli
walls.

But then Rocky had come…and refused to go. Now his life was again filled with
people
. With
feeling
. With…
purpose
.

He smiled vindictively at his nurse, his confidant, his friend. “Tomorrow we will deal with Nina Manjrekar. Would you like to help?”

Kamal’s eyes widened. At last, he seemed to flicker with purpose as well. His ever-straight spine was a bolt of steel, and he nodded sharply. “
Ji-haan
,
Saab
. I would like that very much.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

The doors that led from the library to his bedroom were shut, giving the illusion that it was an independent, neutral space where Nina could conduct her business. That he was just beyond the wall, she would not know. That he was not a weak, frail invalid, she did not know. That his sweet Rakhee had claws, she could never understand. Nina thought she preyed on the runts of the herd…and that would prove her undoing. It had to. Failure was unacceptable.
Failing Ashu
was unacceptable.

Taj paced to and fro, both to burn his restlessness and to exercise his still unreliable limbs. He moved so swiftly that Rakhee begged him to stop making her dizzy.

She had finally returned to his sanctum—and the one place he had yet to have her. They’d made love in every corner of the beast’s lair but this. But she sat perched on the edge of his bed like the ocean lay farther in and she would drown if she tipped backward. What would she do if he held her under? Would she thrash beneath him and gasp for breath?

“That’s making me dizzy, too,” she murmured.

“What is?”

“The way you’re looking at me. Don’t do that.”

“And why not? What will happen if I continue?”

“You know what’ll happen. I’ll kiss you, and you’ll kiss me, and we’ll have nowhere to go but way too far, because we’re stuck in here until Mom and Nina’s little meeting is over.”

He
wanted
to be stuck with her. He
wanted
to kiss her. He wanted to dive in deep and never surface. “Would that be so wrong, Rakhee?”

She looked as though she wanted to say yes. As though her morals, her
sanskar
, might override her mischief and her bold tongue. But all she did was tease him. “Just the timing. We don’t want to miss the radio broadcast from next door, right?”

She was such a mix of contradictions. Of youth and age. Of hope and darkness. She expected better of him—of everyone—because she demanded it of herself. She did not realize it yet, but their timing…it would always be off.

Taj finally did as she asked, tearing his gaze from her and focusing beyond the doors, where Caroline’s voice had suddenly pitched to the dress circle of a theater like an accomplished actress. Nina had arrived. No doubt shadowed by Kamal, whom she would assume was a servant.

He’d never met the woman. And now all he wanted was to come face-to-face with her, to confront this creature that had broken Ashu’s spirit. It took everything he had not to burst into the room, to instead flatten himself against the thick wooden panels of the door, press his ear to the barrier and simply listen.

“My daughter and Mr. Khan have found your letters to be…illuminating.”

“
Sach?
I thought them very dark. Like a bedroom decorated for a seduction.”

Rocky joined him. He felt her heat, the gentle support of her hand at his back, and then their faces were tantalizingly close, bent together as they waited for their scene. Exquisite perfection and stark ugliness. Her two beautiful eyes peering up into his unforgivably rude one. Her breath on his skin was like warm wind flowing across a jagged canyon.

“…the way I see it, you and I both want the same thing, Ms. Manjrekar.”

“I am certain we can be mutually satisfied, Mrs. Varma.”

“Taj. Pay attention,” Rakhee chided.

“I am multitasking.” Could he not crave vengeance and
her
at the same time?

“You are not.” She frowned at him, but when he brushed his mouth against the pulse in her throat, it was wild and hungry. She gasped, and her fingers curled into his shirt.

“I’d like some assurances. Like the photos, for instance. Getting Rocky out of this godforsaken hellhole and back to Bombay will require some incentive.”

“I do not know if I want to give my prizes away. Ashraf is so beautiful,
na
?
My collection is precious to me.”

“God, she’s awful.” Rocky shuddered. And just like that, the way they clutched at one another turned from a grip of desire to one of desperation, lest they tumble over the threshold and take turns wringing Nina’s neck.

Kamal was there. Inside. Tall and glowering with fury. This, Taj could picture in vivid detail. If the man so devoted to his brother could restrain himself, surely they could do the same. “We can speak freely in front of him,” Caroline had lied. “He doesn’t understand English.” Of course he understood more than any of them could possibly comprehend. He spoke like a goddamn professor and saw everything like a mystic.

Taj wondered if he could
will
Kamal to move, to launch across the room and throttle Nina.

“Shhh.” Rocky squeezed his arm before tucking her head beneath his chin and strengthening their embrace. “She’s going to get hers. Don’t worry.”

“How do I know you won’t release the digital copies to the press? I’ll lose my leverage against Rocky entirely. She’ll probably send me back to Chicago, and her father will never speak to me again.”

“Send your man with me. I will give him the flash drive and wipe the files also.
And after…? As far as the public is concerned, you are my new best friend.
Hai na?
Parties, clubs, shopping. Every door we enter together will open more to me.”

He’d thought Rocky’s mother was shallow, silly, concerned only with status. But she was a model of compassion in comparison to Nina. What had molded her into this monster? Or had she been born this evil? How could anyone be
born
to cause so much misery? How could hurting Ashraf have been written on her lifeline?

“Hey. It’s almost over.” Rakhee stroked her fingers across his chest, soothing him. Her palm flattened over his heart as if to catch the erratic beat. “A couple of more minutes, right?”

Taj breathed her in. Her calm, her strength, her assurances. The voices on the other side became an indistinct buzz of details and faux pleasantries and goodbyes. It was she who kissed his throat now, who licked his jaw and chastely brushed his lips. She stoked his desire and brought his anger and disgust to heel.

When at last Kamal and Nina made their exit, he and Rakhee nearly burst from behind the bedroom doors like characters in a slapstick physical comedy—without the laughing track.

Caroline sat on the sofa, her hands knotted in her lap, her face pale and tight. “It’s done. I hope.” If she noticed they were breathless, disheveled and still wound up with a hundred different passions, it did not show in her eyes. No, there he saw the same determination that her daughter wore like spectacles. Determination…and an accusation as well:
What have you pulled my child into?

It wasn’t done at all.

Chapter Twenty-Six

They didn’t have to wait long, just a few hours for Kamal to go to Nina’s and return, but it still felt like months. Like watching the hands on an ancient grandfather clock tick down to high noon. Rocky wanted nothing more than to spend the time curled up in Taj’s arms, but that was impossible with her mother as part of their conspiracy.