Bollywood Fiancé for a Day (12 page)

Hell, he was a grown man. It was past the time he put all that behind him. The best way was to pull the door closed.

‘What if they hear of your engagement from some other source, won't they feel hurt you didn't tell them?'

‘I believe this is the floor you get off, sweetheart.' The words were phrased lightly but he felt the anger tightening his throat. Mostly because she was right. His mum…he should've told his mum about the ring ceremony.

He realized his fists were clenched tight and he made himself loosen them. To prove that he had his control back, he drawled, ‘You are a fine one to talk of truth.'

Her expression showed she'd got his meaning. ‘I know I'm not being honest with my own parents but that's because…because I can't.' She gestured helplessly. ‘They love me and I shouldn't be deceiving them, but…It's difficult to explain. You must have gathered by now, Saira is actually my stepsister since my mom married her dad. Mom has always been afraid of appearing partial to me. She constantly shows that her preference is towards Saira, so she won't feel ignored. But, since my engagement ended the way it did, she's been so worried about me. If I tell her I'm just pretending to be engaged to you, she'll be sure to have an anxiety attack.' She turned to him, chin lifting resolutely as she faced him. ‘But keep something as big as an engagement from them, even if it's a fake one? I love them too much to do that and they know that about me.'

Somehow the simple sincere words sent an angry heat shooting along his nerves.
I love them
—the straightforward proclamation was something he could never utter with calm simplicity or with a clear gaze like hers. Something snapped inside, causing him to blurt, ‘Do they? Do they also know about the poor little left-on-the-shelf girl that lives inside of you?'

He saw the stunned expression on her face, knew he'd stepped over the line. Flown way over it, to hit her at her most tender point.

‘Thanks for reminding me,' she whispered, her voice trembling.

Her words cut him, gut-deep like a stabbing wound. She was right in saying her parents knew what was happening in her life. Her father, who wasn't even her biological father, being protective to the extent that he'd thoroughly grilled Zaheer about his suitability for her. God, she didn't
have
her real father and he
envied
her that?
You couldn't be crasser if you tried, Saxena.

Somehow her words had sliced through to some deeply buried secret spot that made him strike back before he knew what he was about.

Hell, was he going to cry about his bad daddy like a kid? After all these years, surely he knew better.

He'd unnecessarily hurt Vishakha, though, turning on her like a wounded tiger whose tail had been stepped on.

He had thought he could lighten the baggage she carried, help her, because he'd fought free of all he had carried himself. But some of it obviously still hung around. Had hung around so long he had become unaware he was still carrying it.

CHAPTER SEVEN

To
PEOPLE FAMILIAR
with him, he was the product of a rich, well-established family. No one knew the lack of real warmth in his family and that was the way it was going to stay.

How could he tell her he was estranged from his parents? An only son, yet he didn't live with them as per the Indian tradition. Far from it, he didn't even meet with them unless a special occasion came along. His mother came round occasionally when he was home. He hadn't seen his father at all during the last six years.

To tell her all that when no one else knew about it. Not done.

But instinct still made him reach out when she whirled round to rush past him. He caught her wrist.

‘Let me go,' she demanded in a furious whisper.

‘No.' That sounded more commanding than apologetic and he winced at the red tide of emotion that swept across her face.

‘I—you…' She struggled to find the words.

He saw the shimmer of tears in her eyes and a curse ripped from his mouth. ‘God, I'm
sorry
, Visha!'

Zaheer took her hand in his, the ring pressing into his palm. He hadn't given a ring to any woman and he'd hurt the one he'd finally given it to. While their engagement might be in name only, he didn't want them to be distanced from each other. She'd trusted him when she had confided in him and allowed him to help her. He didn't want to break that trust, to think that in his haste he already might have.

‘Could you try forgiving me?' It wasn't easy to ask. The guilt stabbing him told him he'd finally gone too far.

‘You think?' She turned away and he cursed again to think he'd made her cry. When the express purpose of his being here was to keep her chin up. Her pride intact.

‘I know what you're thinking. Mentally you must be putting me in the same bracket as your fiancé and sister. Thinking everyone tries to hurt you. But that's absolutely the wrong way to think. You're becoming too much of a martyr because of your sister—'

‘And you're really helping me to stand up for myself? Thanks!'

He was making a total mess of it. He sighed and resisted the urge to rake his hair.

‘It's not you, Vishakha. It's me. I lashed out at you because—' he took a deep breath ‘—you hit somewhere that was already tender. My parents, or really my father, is a sore point with me.' He shrugged. ‘We've never got along. He's always been too full of himself to even acknowledge what I am. We are in contact only through my mum. That's why I didn't tell him—them—about the engagement.'

She stilled and stood in silence. He led her over to the steps, sitting down there with her.

‘It's no excuse, but it's the only one I can offer. My father had just one way of communicating and that was through slaps. He used to hit me and every time he did I'd run away. And then I started having nothing to do with him.' This was more than he'd let on to anyone.

She gasped. ‘Gosh, I'm sorry, Zaheer. I had no right to blame you for not telling them about us without knowing the whole story.'

He exhaled. ‘Don't feel sorry. It's not your fault my family's like this.'

‘You must have had a terrible childhood.'

‘Maybe. Then again, maybe not. I had all the things money could provide. When you consider how many kids in the city don't have even their basic needs met, that accounts for a lot. What bothered me was why he treated me like that. For some reason, he's always hated me. Maybe because I was a symbol of his getting tied down in a marriage he didn't want.' The words came almost automatically. Not polished or well thought out, just random thoughts coalescing. ‘My mum was an orphaned distant relative of
dadi
and when Granny was ill, close to dying, she made my father promise to marry Mum. He is a retired colonel, as rigid in his bearing as he ever was in duty. Being over forty when he got married, he was probably too set in his ways to adjust. Hell, that sounds as though I'm defending him.' He thrust a hand through his hair. ‘My mother had only her younger brother for family then, also a dependent, and I think she's still buried under the gratitude that Dad married her. He treats her little better than a helper. She's always kept running around him and giving in to his rigid ways of wanting things done. But he never lets her have a say in the house. She always makes efforts to please him. He tried to treat me the same but since an early age I rebelled.' He grimaced. ‘Perhaps there's more of him in me than he guessed. Hence the beatings. I used to run away from home then come back in the evening. Then, one day, I left for good.'

‘You didn't?'

She sounded shocked and no wonder. With her close-knit family, it would make scant sense. ‘He forbade my mother to contact me. Before I went away, I swore to Mum I would take her out of there.' He paused. Like a dam burst open, the facts had tumbled out, one after the other. He didn't need to tell her all of this to explain himself for his rudeness to her. But it seemed the words weren't yet ready to be stemmed.

‘And?' Her soft nudge egged him on.

‘Initially I was struggling financially myself. Then, when I finally got the bucks, I did buy a place for her but she refused to leave him,' he said, clipping the words short. The promise he'd made to his mother had haunted him every single day and night. It was a gut-deep satisfaction when he'd succeeded in buying a house larger than his father's. But his mother's decision had left him stymied.

‘So you haven't even seen him, living in the same city…for how long?'

He shook his head. ‘You don't want to know. The last time my father and I were anywhere together was six years ago. The first of my action movies had been released and it was doing reasonably well. I had a bit of a get-together, a sort of thank you party for everyone who'd helped me.' He drew in a breath. ‘He came but didn't speak to me. No question of congratulating me. Then, when he was leaving, he asked me when I was coming home to be trained to look over the estate. It was obvious by his words he thought nothing of my acting career. He just wouldn't acknowledge me or what I'd achieved.'

He'd never talked like this to anyone. He didn't want a verdict from her, but the things that had only been felt, never said, the words locked inside and never aired, which didn't feel as if they could have substance, saying those things was harder than he'd expected. He felt an uncomfortably tight feeling in his chest and forced himself to breathe calmly. Why did just the thought of his father have this effect on him? As if he wanted to run and run and never stop? Most days he didn't think about his father, filling his mind with things till there was no space. Now, talking about it was causing all the clawing feelings to climb to the forefront and, like a snake charmer returning the serpent to the basket, he had to put it all back in a corner of his mind. Even as a boy, he'd suppressed it all inside. It had felt distant from his friends' lives. When you felt what occupied you didn't have any echo in the outside world, it became unreal. Was so much harder to bring it out or share it…

Was better left locked up.

A soft touch clasped his hand and, for some reason, his throat closed. He didn't look at her. Weird. He'd come to offer her comfort, and now he was getting it from her.

‘He sounds awful,' she whispered and something crumbled away inside him. A defence that had made him try to justify his father, because it hurt to admit that someone who belonged to you wasn't all good. How long had he thought that it must be something wrong with him that was the matter, not his father.

It wasn't till he'd spoken out to Vishakha that he was even aware of it. Deep inside, the germ had persisted. For months and years. And the knot had grown tighter over time. Tougher to unravel. Because it had been hard to break the code of loyalty he'd always held sacred. He and his mother both. Because, even among themselves, they didn't discuss his father. An unwritten rule.

‘I'm sorry.' He saw Vishakha's eyes soft and moist with sympathy and a wave of contrition shook him.

‘Don't be!' He let go of her hand. ‘I didn't mean to upset you. It's not worth getting worked up over anyway. All water under the bridge now. I didn't know it still pinched me to think of my father. Reacting like that was just…I should've known better.' He threw up his hands. ‘My only excuse is I was uncomfortable getting engaged. For a man who's never thought he would, it all came a touch too close to reality. Hell, that's hardly reasonable. I should've known better. Much better.'

He should have known better than to spill his guts to Vishakha. But, sated by the comfort of her touch, he couldn't bring himself to feel the cold touch of regret.

A mirage, he told himself. Vulnerable as she was, he didn't want her to soften too much towards him. The main reason she was so suitable for this whole sham of an engagement was her animosity towards him. It made sure whatever it was between them remained curbed. He didn't want her melting towards him. Comfort or no, he needed to put distance between the temptation to soak in the luminous eyes that looked up to him and the need to succumb to their lure, to resist the flood of desire that waited to be unleashed if only he would capture the moist invitation of her soft mouth.

* * *

It was humbling to be the recipient of his confidences. To feel special because he'd allowed her a peek inside to the real person beneath the glamorous Bollywood playboy exterior. To find she could empathize with that person. But that feeling of closeness frightened her too.

She spent a restless night. The man who had been an arrogant, supercilious hunk this morning had turned into a flesh and blood man, able to get scars the same as everyone else. So why should the human element of him disturb her so much?

Because it increased the appeal of him?

It didn't help that he was there early the next day to take part in the various events leading up to her sister's wedding.

How could she look at him and not think of the grimness that lay beyond the humorous curve of that mouth? The hurt a bad parent gave a child wasn't something one could just lay aside. She knew all too well it affected your life in so many ways. The caution with which she approached things, her need to work hard at her job was evidence of that fact in hers. Yet, to all appearances, Zaheer looked like he had not a care in the world. That flamboyance had instead made her think he was self-centred.

Right now he stood with her cousins, mixing, chatting easily to offer the use of his car for the wedding chores. He'd also brought over autographed and uncut DVDs of his movies for her teen girl cousins, who'd been bright-eyed with the excitement of having a superstar in the family. Bubbly Auntie went past Zaheer, saying something, and he had a quick smile and probably a compliment for her because she blushed prettily as she went to the alcove where Saira was seated. Vishakha's gaze fixed on his curving mouth and the glimmer of humour that was never far from his eyes. He used that humour like a cloak to hide his pain, she thought fancifully.