The Sari Shop Widow (21 page)

“I’ve known
about
you. Jeevan-kaka’s been telling me about his talented American niece for years.”

“My uncle says nice things about all his family. He’s a bit prejudiced when it comes to the Kapadias.”

“That’s what I’d thought all this time. I hadn’t paid much attention. But after I met you I realized he was right.”

She twirled her soda can between her fingers. “What exactly did he tell you about me?”

“In his own words, ‘I am telling you,
beta
, our Anju is
bahu soondar, bahu saras.’”
Very pretty, very good.

Anjali melted into amused laughter at Rishi’s Indo-Brit imitation of Jeevan-kaka. “Where did you learn to do that hilarious imitation of my uncle?”

Rishi started chuckling. “I’ve known him long enough for his accent to rub off on me.”

“Exactly how long have you known Jeevan-kaka?”

“Curious about my relationship to your uncle, are you?”

She angled a narrow-eyed look at him. “You’re not by any chance his…um…love child or anything, are you?”

It was his turn to explode into laughter. “Do I look like I’m even remotely related to Jeevan-kaka? Besides, he’s very faithful to his wife, so illegitimate children are highly unlikely. And why would I call him Jeevan-kaka if he’s my father?”

“Precisely what is he to you, then?”

His response was total silence.

Chapter 17

A
njali could see Rishi wasn’t about to reveal anything regarding her uncle and himself—at least not right away. He had an entirely different agenda and she was waiting for it to unfold.

Instead of discussing Jeevan-kaka, he said, “I want you to tell me something first.” He reached out and took her hand. “Did you feel anything at all when I kissed you?”

He was a clever one—trying to steer her attention away from what she was dying to know. But she humored him anyway. “Couldn’t you tell?”

“Yes, I could. You gave back as enthusiastically as I took. Am I right?”

“Um…I guess. So…what are you saying?”

“That we’re both free individuals. I’m no longer with Samantha and you’re no longer with Rowling, so I’d like to kiss you again. I want to see if there’s any chance this could go further.”

She shook her head. “I have no desire to take this further. Just because I’m still reeling from discovering my boyfriend with some woman, I’m not going to hop into another man’s bed on the rebound. I’m not that kind of person.” She rubbed her forehead for a moment. “I don’t even know why I was having an affair with Kip. It just sort of…happened.”

“You were lonely, Anjali,” he murmured, stroking her wrist with his thumb. “There’s nothing wrong in being human. Don’t punish yourself like this. Vikram died, what…ten years ago?”

“But he was my husband. I loved him.” Loved him so much that the ache in her chest was almost physical at times.

“And I’m sure you miss him, but getting involved with another man is not betraying him or his memory in any way. Wouldn’t he have wanted you to find happiness again?”

“Having sex is not finding happiness. Each time I fulfill my need for sex I feel awful. I go home feeling like—like a whore.”

“I’m not asking you to go to bed with me. I respect you too much for that. You’re a lady and I’m asking if you’d allow me to see you socially.”

“Even when you know I’ve been sleeping with another man?”

“I was sleeping with another woman until recently myself. In our own way we were both fulfilling our basic needs and nothing more.” He quirked a brow at her. “Do you think we stand a chance?”

She sighed. “We have nothing in common, Rishi. You’re a jetsetter with businesses scattered around the globe. Women seem to find you wildly attractive. I’m just a middle-class widow with a struggling store that you and my uncle are trying to save. My life’s here in Jersey. I can’t give it up just to sleep with a guy like you every now and then, whenever you’re in town.”

“Bloody hell!” He startled her. Sparks were flying out of those awesome eyes. She’d seen them cold, hard, angry, but not livid. “I’m not asking you to sleep with me
every now and then.”

“Then what are you asking of me?”

“I’m asking you to open your mind a little…accept me as a man with possibilities. If nothing else, we could be friends. Maybe we could give this a chance. Jeevan-kaka’s been hinting for years that we’d be perfect for each other.”

“Jeevan-kaka’s a conservative old man who thinks in terms of marriage and family, not in terms of sleeping with each other to scratch an occasional itch.”

“Will you just listen? After meeting you, I’ve been thinking about Jeevan-kaka’s hints—more and more in the past few weeks, especially since you and I had that little talk about your life with Vikram Gandhi.”

“So you’re propositioning me?” She was angry now. How dare he pretend to comfort her at first and then solicit her? Just because he’d guessed she was having an affair with Kip and she was upset over his infidelity, this guy could just assume she’d be available…as a convenient call girl of sorts?

He gave a long-suffering sigh. “Good God, Anjali, didn’t I just say I respect you too much to proposition you?” He shut his eyes for a moment before turning to her. “Tell me, how did you and Vikram meet?” His voice had softened. The annoyance had clearly subsided.

“We were introduced by mutual friends.”

“Then what happened?”

“He asked me out.”

“Did you go out with him the first time he asked?”

“Yes,” she said warily.

“How long were you seeing each other before you fell in love?”

“About four months. What is this, an inquisition?”

He ignored her question and continued. “Then he proposed to you?”

“Yes.” She sent him a piqued look. “Where exactly is all this leading?”

“I’ll tell you in a minute. When did you get married?”

“About six months after the engagement.”

“So, approximately four months after you started dating you fell in love, and six months after that you married the man.”

“Yeah. So what?”

“So, that’s what I’m doing now: what Vikram did. I’m asking you out so we can get to know each other, like two independent, modern, well-bred, single individuals. Who knows, maybe we’ll end up finding we have plenty in common, that we’re compatible.”

“You mean you…I…we…” Was he saying what she thought he was saying? “Didn’t you tell me you’d promised yourself you’d never settle down?”

He took an impatient sip of his soda. “I changed my mind.”

“I thought
women
were notorious for changing their minds.”

He scrubbed his face with one hand, like he was tired. Maybe he was exhausted and jet lag was setting in after his long flight from London. “I’m beginning to reassess my life lately.”

“You had an epiphany?”

“I wouldn’t call it that, but my forty-second birthday had me thinking. I feel I need an anchor, maybe even a child.”

“Then you’re talking to the wrong woman. I’m going to be thirty-eight soon. My biological clock is dying a slow and silent death even as we speak.”

He shook his head. “How old was your mother when she gave birth to Nilesh?”

“Nearly forty.”

“Exactly my point, darling,” he said. “It’s not uncommon for women in their forties to bear children these days.”

“Don’t call me cute names you don’t mean, Rishi.”

“Who says I don’t? When I called you darling, I meant it.”

All of a sudden he was talking commitment and children, kissing her senseless. He was going at breakneck speed, too. She was getting dizzy with this kind of talk. She needed to slow down and take a breath. That meant she needed to change the direction of his thoughts, give herself some time to absorb all this.

“Brits tend to call everyone
darling
, even their hairdressers and cleaning ladies. It doesn’t mean anything,” she said, grabbing the first trivial argument that came to mind. Swallowing the last of her soda, she put the can on the coffee table.

“Not this Brit. And I’m not entirely Brit, as you well know. I’m Indo-Brit.”

“Who’re you kidding? All you have to do is open your mouth and say words like
dah-ling
and
bahth-room
and
shed-dule
. It can’t get any more Brit than that.”

“All right, then, I’m a Brit.” He took her hand in his again, sending little electric sparks up and down her arm. “Now may I kiss you again, Miss Kapadia—the old-fashioned English way?” Despite the humor in his words, his eyes had taken on that smoky, heated look. “I know you enjoyed it the first time. And don’t say you didn’t.”

“I’m not denying it. You’re a very attractive man and a polished kisser. I guess you’ve been around the block a few times.”

“Around the block…?” He lifted his brows at her quizzically.

“It means you’ve been with several women, that you’re practiced in the art of kissing and…other things.”

“I didn’t realize kissing and making love were arts.” He grinned unexpectedly, making her feel like her bones were turning to jelly with no solid mass left. “Just goes to show one learns something new every day.” The grin disappeared just as quickly. “I’ve been intimate with only four women, and that includes Samantha and Laura.”

Anjali sighed aloud. “
Only
four, he says.”

“Enough quibbling over numbers.” Before she could say anything else she was being kissed thoroughly, proving her right once again. He was well versed in the business of kissing. So where did that leave her? She’d kissed only two other men before, one of them being her late husband. But she couldn’t resist the warm tug of Rishi’s mouth on hers. So she gave in to the kiss.

He left her breathless. She was right about the other thing, too. No one had made her feel quite so soft and feminine and desirable since Vik. There was such warmth there. Such need. But it was also frightening. He was beginning to look more attractive by the second.

When he finally let her go she leaned her head against his shoulder, weak and shaking. The kiss had stirred up certain emotions she’d kept locked up. She couldn’t afford to fall in love. She pulled away from him once more.

He watched her withdraw from him. “Did I frighten you, Anju?” he asked.

She shook her head even though it was a lie. She was scared to death of the way she was feeling. And he’d called her Anju for the first time. Only close family called her that. Once again she realized this was moving much too fast for comfort. She should leave right away, she thought, while she still had her wits about her. She didn’t want to leave, but she should.

“I think I better go home now. Despite my advanced years, my mother worries if I stay out too late,” she told him, trying to work in a casual smile.

“I’ll tell her you were with me—that we accidentally ran into each other at the restaurant…with your friends.”

“You’re going to lie to her?”

“Despite the wisdom of your advanced years,
you’ve
been lying to her, haven’t you?” he remarked dryly. “And this time it’s for a good cause.” He leaned over and raised his hand to caress her face. “Will you let me take you to dinner tomorrow night? I promise to be a perfect gentleman.”

She was tempted to say yes. But getting involved with him wasn’t without complications. She needed time to think it over—needed a moment to regain her sense of balance.

Meanwhile, a change of subject was needed to help dispel the sexual energy flowing between them. “Only if you promise to tell me here and now everything about you and Jeevan-kaka,” she said, finding a way to get him off the topic of dating and on to something that was almost as important.

“I promise.”

“Who
are
you? Why are you and my uncle so tight-lipped about your relationship? And since when has Jeevan-kaka started to take on business partners?”

“You know what happened to Pandora when she opened the box?”

“Uh-huh. I still want to know. Now that you mentioned Pandora, I’m even more curious to learn the truth.”

A heartbeat passed. “Very well, then.”

Chapter 18

“F
irst, I want to know who you are.” Anjali settled a little more comfortably in her seat.

“My father was Jagdish Shah,” Rishi began. “My mother was Ellen Porter, a British woman who left her native England for India some forty-five years ago to work as a nurse amongst the poor and sickly in Indian villages.”

“Was? So they’re both deceased?” Anjali instinctively put her hand in his and he curled his fingers around it.

He shook his head. “My father is deceased. My mother’s retired and stays in England.”

“When did your father pass away?”

“When I was a teenager.”

“I’m sorry, Rishi.” Anjali was surprised at the depth of her sympathy for him. An hour ago he was an annoyance and a bully. Now she ached for him. A teenager shouldn’t have to lose a parent.

“It was a long time ago,” he said with a shrug.

Her attention was immediately riveted on his tale. At last, she was going to find out who this mystery man was. She wanted to know all about him, especially now that she was discovering a whole new and exciting side of him.

“My father managed Jeevan-kaka’s dairy farm near Gamdi,” he continued. “At the time, Jeevan-kaka and his family used to stay in the city of Anand, where Jeevan-kaka managed his cloth mill and his other urban businesses. My mother worked for a rural clinic run by a Christian charitable organization. Much of the farm labor went there for treatment. Whenever my father drove his sick and injured laborers to the clinic, he had an opportunity to interact with my mother. Eventually the two fell in love.”

“Love happened to conservative Gujarati men in those days?” she asked, amused and intrigued by the possibility.

“It happened to my father forty-five years ago. To hear my mother tell the story, Papa was the most handsome man she’d ever met. She said he worked extremely hard and she admired his work ethic. Jeevan-kaka was his close friend besides being his employer.”

“Jeevan-kaka didn’t have something to say about your father marrying a white woman? I’d have thought he’d have some issues with it.”