The One She Was Warned About (8 page)

Shweta shifted in her sleep, almost rolling off the sofa, and Nikhil was by her side in an instant. Deciding that she’d be a lot more comfortable in bed, he picked her up, being very careful not to wake her, and took her into the bedroom. She nestled closer to him as he tried to put her down on the bed, her hands curling into the material of his shirt. Finally he lay down next to her, gently removing her hands only once she’d settled down into a deeper sleep. Then he tenderly kissed her on the forehead and left the room.

SIX

‘I feel perfectly
healthy now,’ Shweta announced. ‘And you’re pampering me silly. I won’t know what to do the next time I fall ill.’

‘Call me,’ he said, and his lips curved into an absolutely heart-stopping smile. ‘No reason for you to look after yourself if I’m around.’

They were sitting across from each other at the breakfast table in his Delhi flat. It was five days since he’d come back from Greece and rescued her from the hotel, and he’d pulled out all the stops to make sure she’d got everything she needed to recuperate. She felt disloyal even thinking it, but Nikhil had been a lot more caring than her father or her aunt had ever been when she fell ill growing up. That was one of the disadvantages of being a doctor’s daughter—illnesses were treated in the most matter-of-fact and unsympathetic way possible, even if her father was eaten up with worry inside.

Shweta gave him a saucy wink. ‘If you promise to come over and look after me I don’t mind falling ill every weekend.’ Then, more seriously, she added, ‘I haven’t thanked you properly, have I? Other than Priya, I can’t imagine any of my other friends doing so much for me.’

‘They haven’t known you since you were four,’ Nikhil said. ‘And they haven’t spent their entire childhood being beaten up by you either.’

‘Spent their entire childhood...’ Shweta spluttered at him for a few seconds. ‘
You
were the one who used to drive me up the wall with your teasing and your stupid jokes. And I don’t believe you’ve changed either.’

He laughed. ‘Oh, I have,’ he assured her. ‘In more ways than one. By the way, I meant to tell you—you’re looking pretty good this morning. Are you warm enough?’

His gaze swept over her, and Shweta felt a familiar little jolt of electricity go through her. They’d been living in the same flat for several days, but until now he’d made no move even to touch her—she could have been sixty years old for all the notice he’d taken of her. In a fit of pique she’d pulled out the shortest pair of shorts she’d brought with her and worn them today—they were a cheerful shade of pink, and she’d put on a T-shirt and a black knitted top over them. The Delhi winter was setting in, and her legs
were
beginning to feel a bit chilly, but she’d freeze to death before she admitted it.

‘I’m warm enough. Thanks for asking,’ she muttered. Really, he was overdoing his concern over her health—he sounded as if he was her uncle or something. It was as if the earlier Nikhil had vanished, along with the passionate kisses and the scorching looks. Now that she was feeling human again, Shweta was pretty sure she wanted the old Nikhil back.

‘You don’t need to thank me,’ he said dryly. ‘Just make sure you don’t forget what the doctor said.’

The doctor had been pretty scathing about modern lifestyles and young women who let their immunity levels fall because of over-work and irregular meals.

Shweta winced. ‘I’m not likely to forget,’ she said. ‘I was expecting him to ask for my dad’s number so that he could call and tell my father what a dreadfully careless person I am.’

‘He still might do that,’ Nikhil said, getting up from the dining table. ‘Now, are you sure you aren’t cold?’

‘I’m sure,’ she snapped.

‘What a pity,’ he said. He was standing behind her now, only a few inches away, and she had to twist her body around to look up at him. ‘I’d thought of some interesting ways of keeping you warm—especially since you’re all recovered from your flu. But if you’re sure...’

His voice had changed—became husky, caressing, and very, very sexy—but he was moving away from her. Never good at reading between the lines, Shweta found the conflicting signals frustratingly confusing.

‘I
am
feeling a little chilly,’ she blurted out.

He laughed, his eyes sparkling with devilry. ‘So should I put the heaters on?’

For a few seconds Shweta felt positively murderous. This was like a grown-up version of the teenage Nikhil—making suggestive remarks, and then pretending he’d said nothing out of the ordinary. It was like flirting in reverse. Deciding that stamping her foot or throwing a plate at him would be childish and immature, she sulked instead, turning her back to Nikhil and pretending to be very busy clearing up the breakfast things.

Nikhil gave her an amused look. He knew pretty much exactly what was going through her mind. When he’d brought her home from the hotel she’d been so ill that getting her back on her feet had taken priority over everything else. It had been tough having her in the house and not even touching her, but he’d been very careful not to take advantage of her weakened state. Now, of course, she was fully recovered, and he couldn’t resist teasing her a little.

He came to stand right behind her as she plonked dishes into the sink. She was muttering under her breath, and he leaned closer and said, ‘Sorry, I didn’t catch that.’

Shweta jumped a few inches into the air—Nikhil could move very silently when he wanted, and she hadn’t heard him come up behind her. ‘I wasn’t talking to you,’ she said.

‘But I want you to talk to me.’ His voice was purposely mournful as he put his hands on her soapy forearms.

‘I’m doing the dishes.’

‘We’ll ask Krishna to come and do the dishes later,’ he said, lowering his head and kissing the nape of her neck very, very gently.

She could feel his breath ruffling her hair, and she firmly repressed an urge to drop the dishes and turn into his arms. ‘You exploit Krishna.’

‘Hmm...actually, on second thoughts, maybe I don’t want him hanging around after all.’

His hands had moved from her arms to her waist. She just needed to lean back a little to be pressed up against his long, hard body...

‘Maybe I’ll help you do the dishes,’ he was saying now. ‘Then we can...umm...do other things.’

‘Play Scrabble?’ Shweta asked sweetly, and turned the kitchen tap on.

Oops—bad move. In her agitation she’d turned it too far, and a Niagara of water came gushing out. It splashed over the dishes, almost completely soaking the front of her black top. Nikhil leaned over her and turned the tap to a more reasonable setting. Taking her hands, he started rinsing the soap off. He did it very carefully and slowly, holding each hand under the water and running his own hands over it in a slow and sensuous movement that had her squirming against him in no time. Then, without releasing her, he reached out for a towel, and started drying her arms—still very, very, slowly. When that was done he turned her around to face him.

‘You’re completely...wet,’ he said.

There was absolutely nothing suggestive about his tone, but Shweta shivered as he took the hem of her top and gently drew it upwards. She was wearing a T-shirt under it, and was still perfectly well covered when he got the top off and tossed it into a corner of the kitchen—she felt bare, though, when his warm gaze roamed over her body.

‘Come to bed with me?’ he asked softly.

For a few seconds Shweta’s traditional upbringing reared its head, and she almost panicked and said no—but this was Nikhil. She’d known him all her life. She trusted him. Looking into his warm brown eyes, for the first time she began to think that she was probably in love with him, and with that realisation her last doubts fell away.

‘Yes,’ she said, and she sounded confident and very sure of what she wanted.

In the next second she was in Nikhil’s arms. He held her very close for a few seconds, and then he swung her up into his arms and carried her to the nearest bedroom.

* * *

‘I’m hungry,’ Shweta announced, propping herself onto one arm and lazily trailing a finger down Nikhil’s hair-roughened chest.

It was the middle of the afternoon, and the last few hours had been the best hours of her life. Far more experienced than her, Nikhil had been very gentle at first, careful not to alarm her. But, finding her eager and willing, he’d finally abandoned all restraint. Shweta’s lips curved into a smile as she remembered quite how good it had been.

‘Hungry, are you?’ Nikhil frowned at her. ‘Are you likely to turn cannibal? Should I be worried?’

Shweta laughed, and leaned down to nip at his lower lip lovingly. ‘Mmm, that’s a thought,’ she said. ‘You taste pretty good, actually...’

‘I’ll get up and cook lunch for you,’ Nikhil said, sitting up in mock-haste and taking her with him. ‘Just think—you might want to do this again some day, and if you eat me up you’ll have to find a new man. He might not be quite as nice as me.’

Shweta pretended to think.

‘I cook quite well,’ Nikhil said as added inducement. ‘And I’m house-trained—you won’t regret it.’

‘Can you do rice and noodles? With mushrooms?’

‘Yes, ma’am, of course I can.’ Nikhil paused to drop a row of little kisses on her shoulder, but raised his head as she spoke. ‘And you can have chilli chicken with it, if you like. And ice cream. But I didn’t make that—it’s already in the freezer.’

‘The ice cream is the clincher,’ Shweta said. ‘I’ll allow you to live.’

Nikhil gave a mock sigh of relief and tried to get out of bed—Shweta pulled him back for a kiss.

‘I thought you were hungry,’ he protested as he found himself back in bed, with Shweta draped seductively over him.

‘I can wait for a little bit,’ she said. ‘Right now you’ve got me interested in
you
all over again.’

It was late afternoon by the time they finally made it to the kitchen, and by then both of them were too hungry to bother about cooking an elaborate meal.

‘Scrambled eggs. Or omelettes and bread,’ Shweta decided after doing a quick scan of the fridge. She gave him a doubtful look. ‘Did you mean it when you said you can cook? Because I’m not all that good. Priya does most of the cooking at home.’

‘I meant it,’ Nikhil said. ‘I’m not
cordon bleu
level, exactly, but I can manage.’

He could do more than manage, Shweta decided as she bit into a delicately flavoured omelette. There was a lot more to Nikhil than met the eye. ‘Any other talents I should know about?’ she enquired. ‘Singing, maybe? Ballroom dancing?’

‘Someone did try to teach me to jive once,’ Nikhil said. ‘Mrs Fernandes—remember?’

She did. Shweta had been his partner in a dance their class had been rehearsing for the school annual day. Mrs Fernandes had paired them up because, in her words, ‘that boy’ behaved a little better with Shweta than he did with the other girls. Shweta had been deeply annoyed, but Mrs Fernandes had known her father and she hadn’t dared to protest. And because Mrs Fernandes had been well over fifty at the time, jiving had been the only ‘Western’ dance style she knew well enough to teach the class.

‘I got expelled before that annual day, didn’t I?’ Nikhil asked. ‘Who did you end up dancing with? Vineet?’

‘I didn’t participate,’ Shweta said. ‘Dancing wasn’t really my thing.’ She had been pretty upset when Nikhil was expelled—especially when she’d found out that her father had been on the disciplinary committee. She hadn’t ever said anything to her father, but that was the first time that she’d seen him as a regular human being, capable of making mistakes.

‘They weren’t fair to you, expelling you like that,’ she said.

Nikhil gave her a lazy smile. ‘Oh, I think they were. I’d pushed their patience to the brink.’

‘Vineet and Wilson were with you when you stole that bike,’ she said.

She waved him aside impatiently when he murmured, ‘Borrowed...’

‘And Wilson used to smoke as well—all the time.’

‘They were a lot smarter than I was,’ Nikhil said, getting to his feet. ‘And they didn’t go looking for trouble.’ He surveyed her mutinous expression. ‘I don’t hold it against your dad, if that’s what you’re worried about,’ he said.

Shweta gave an impatient shrug. ‘He’s so...so...
set
in his ways,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t even occur to him that he could be wrong about anything.’

Nikhil leaned across to take her plate. ‘Finished?’ he asked, and when she nodded her head, he said, ‘Still like that, is he?’

Shweta nodded. ‘It’s my fault as well. I shouldn’t bother so much about what he thinks. I don’t even live at home now, and to be fair to him he’s stopped trying to tell me what to do. But he has an opinion on everything, from my job to my clothes. He even had something to say when I chucked away those dreadful glasses and started wearing contacts.’

‘How about your boyfriends?’

Shweta gave him an enquiring look.

‘Does he have opinions about your boyfriends as well?’

‘I’m sure he would, if I introduced any of them to him,’ Shweta said.

Nikhil noticed that she was doing the scribbling thing again—tracing words out on the palm of one hand with the fingers of the other.

‘So far I’ve never bothered—I’ve not had much luck with men. I think he’d have liked Siddhant, only
that
particular story didn’t go anywhere, did it?’

Nikhil nodded. If he’d been in a psychoanalysing mood there would have been a lot he could read into what Shweta was saying, but right now he had a more pressing concern.

‘I assume he would be horrified if he got to know about me?’ he said lightly.

Shweta shrugged. ‘Not planning to tell him,’ she said.

She looked a little tense, but her tone was so matter-of-fact that it took Nikhil a few seconds to absorb what she was saying. When he did get it, he felt a quick stab of anger go through him.

‘Not planning to tell him now, or not planning to tell him ever?’ he asked, keeping his voice carefully even.

Shweta bit her lip. She wasn’t sure why Nikhil was cross-examining her—maybe he was trying to figure out how seriously she’d taken their sleeping together. And maybe he’d run for his life if he figured that she was planning to tell her family about him.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I mean, there isn’t much to tell, is there? We’re friends and...’

‘Friends?’

‘Well... Lovers, I guess. Only I’m not likely to talk to my dad about my sex-life, am I?’ She might have told her mother if she’d been alive, but she didn’t say that out loud.

Nikhil laughed, but there was very little genuine mirth in the sound. ‘So that’s all I am, is it? Part of your sex-life?’