Bollywood Fiancé for a Day (13 page)

She gave herself a mental shake. She wasn't going to start empathizing with him and get all soppy now, was she?

She couldn't deny, though, that yesterday had changed everything. As though a load had lifted from their minds with the fixing of her engagement, everyone was chirpily happy. That, in turn, eased her own tension. She felt again a part of things. Saira might take some time to come around from having her thunder stolen. But then wasn't it up to her as an older sister to make allowances for a younger one? It wasn't easy…especially since Saira seemed to have rid herself of any remorse she'd felt for her cheating. This morning she'd come across her in the kitchen and, as though almost forced to, Saira had said, ‘Sorry, I didn't have time to congratulate you properly on your engagement, Vishakha. Everything seems to have happened at rocket speed.'

In response to this overture, Vishakha had wanted to open up and clear the air between them. ‘You must be wondering how I came to be getting engaged to Zaheer Saxena after just one date,' she ventured.

‘No, why should I?' Shorter and plumper than her, Saira wore a sullen look. Her shoulders lifted in a casual gesture. ‘You had a lucky rebound. What's to wonder about? Congrats, he's a big catch.'

Vishakha felt numb at the careless dismissal. Pain speared her as her sister's spiteful words sank in.
A lucky rebound.
Instinctively, she wrapped her arms around her midriff, containing the hurt.

Apart from the friction between her sister and her, things were going superbly well. The whole household wore a different spirit and even the bickering relatives had abandoned picking over their past recriminations. Everyone had a good laugh at Saira, who in tank top and shorts, as part of the rituals, was getting the traditional mixture of turmeric, sandalwood powder and rose water pasted all over her, till she looked as if she was painted in yellow. She'd refused it on her face, allowing only a small streak or two.

Coming out of the room after pasting the mix on her, Vishakha almost walked into Zaheer.

‘God, yesterday an engagement and today this
Haldi
thing. Are you trying to kill me with ceremonies?' he groaned. He shook off the banana leaves and marigolds that brushed against him, swinging from the jute thread strung overhead. With his height, he was bound to experience that annoyance constantly.

‘It was your idea to attend the big fat Indian wedding,' Vishakha couldn't help teasing him.

‘What an unsympathetic fiancée I have! Do you know, if I have one more marigold strand knocking on my ear, I'll tear this whole canopy thing apart.'

She considered him in mock seriousness. ‘What kind of groom would you make if you can't bear the traditions?'

‘Thankfully, the day is far off. Maybe I'll go for a registered marriage. So much better, don't you agree? Nice and clean.' He led her out of the room.

She went with him to the porch, which spilled with bright sunshine. ‘Nah. For my marriage, I want the whole works. The groom on the horse, his relatives dancing in
baraat
, the music of the
shehnai…
' Aware she'd got carried away, she stopped.

‘Die-hard romantic,' he said with a wry smile.

‘Of course not. I don't much believe in love.'

Dark eyebrows lifted in surprise. ‘Weren't you in love with the jerk?'

‘If you mean Munish, no. Haven't I told you Papa is against marrying for love? He didn't want his daughters to risk getting hurt by unsuccessful love affairs, so he's always warned us against getting romantically involved. Munish is the son of his old friend, so obviously he was thought to be trustworthy.' She shaded her eyes at the glare coming off the marble floor.

‘And because your father said so, you were OK with the arranged thing?'

She shrugged. ‘I was an eyewitness to the experience of what love marriages can come to. Just like Papa, my mother had a failed marriage behind her. Mom went against her parents to marry my father. But he left us when I was just five and then she had to face bringing me up alone.'

‘That must have been hard on you.'

She looked away from the sympathy in the hazel eyes. ‘I was just a child then. It was quite tough on her. More because she had no job skills and hadn't even finished college, so she had to do menial jobs to make ends meet. She went through a lot to bring me up. Then my grandparents got in contact with her and persuaded her finally to marry Saira's father, who had had a similar experience and a daughter also to bring up.'

‘So, like me, you're a non-believer in all that jazz about falling in love?'

The words caused a twang in her heart.
Believe?
Once she'd wanted to believe. In the romance novels. In the movies with soft music. Sometimes even thought she felt the flutter. But she'd learnt that kind of love didn't last. How many times had she paid for the ice cream and chocolate binges of a moping pal because love hadn't worked out? ‘Love? No, I don't believe in love,' she said heavily in answer to his question.

‘But you still don't want a fling?'

She glanced at him. ‘I told you I don't go for casual affairs.'

‘But you'd have sex with a stranger if you were married to him?' He raised his brows.

The brash comment had her snapping indignantly, ‘Of course he wasn't a stranger. We dated quite a few times.' She had had great hopes for her marriage. She'd thought Munish wouldn't fall in love with her but instead would love her, come to care for her as Papa cared so deeply about Mom and them all. The shattering of that dream had hurt and then it had been compounded by the hurt of the deception played on her by her own sister.

He nodded and led her down the steps. Vishakha found her hand tucked in the crook of his arm. ‘Where are we going, anyway?'

‘Out of here.'

‘We can't. It's going to look rude.'

‘We're newly engaged and we want time on our own, what's offensive about that? Besides, I owe you a date.'

She stopped short. ‘Date?'

Zaheer smiled, a glint entering his eyes. ‘I haven't forgotten.'

‘I forfeited it,' she reminded him. ‘Besides, that isn't my cup of tea, I think. I hate dressing up and, with the recent ceremonies, I've had quite enough of fancy clothes.' She definitely had. Ruefully, she looked down at her lime-green
salwar
suit. With the heavily embroidered panel running down the front, it had been difficult to get it trimmed at the waist and she felt pudgier than ever in it.

‘What would you rather do instead?' he asked conversationally.

‘Me?' Put on the spot, she shrugged helplessly. ‘I don't know.'

‘What do you do for fun? Suppose you bunked off hospital for a day…'

What could she say? With a nose kept close to the hospital grindstone, anything different from that routine was fun. Although she loved that routine too. It gave her a sense of being accomplished. She couldn't sparkle at a party or impress people with her wit but she could help kids get well and that was more than satisfying.

She looked for words to explain and couldn't come up with anything that wouldn't sound
pakaoo.
Not wanting to bore him, she shrugged again with a self-conscious laugh. ‘Look, if you want fun, I'm just not the person. In our family, Saira's the fun one. I'm the one who doesn't stay out late unless it's work. The one who follows the rules.' She scuffed the grass with her foot. ‘Saira…she and her gang get up to all kinds of antics. Once they convinced a bartender the alcohol was rancid and they got all their drinks for free…' She trailed off, aware he hadn't been asking for a rundown on her sister and was now looking quizzically at her.

‘Good for Saira,' he said dryly. ‘But I'm asking you, Visha.'

The way he spoke his version of her name stole the breath from her throat. She fought hard not to show the effect, casually turning away and moving her hand in the air in a careless gesture. ‘Off-duty, my friends and I like to catch a movie, lunch at Royal Café or just go
ganjing.
You know, doing window-shopping at Hazratganj. Nothing spectacular.'

‘I love doing non-spectacular.' He grinned, the sexy clefts indenting his cheeks.

She relaxed, smiling back. ‘I'm a bit of a foodie, though. If you want a taste of Luckhnavi cuisine I can show you the best places…and they're
not
the posh restaurants!'

‘You're on.'

Half an hour later she met him in the driveway and gasped at the low-slung white Audi convertible he had conjured up God knew from where. In his aviators and the baseball cap he'd borrowed from her cousin, to make a disguise lest anyone hound him in the open, not to mention her father's cloth jacket her mom had volunteered as an added measure, he was all set. She tried not to let on about the anxiety attack she'd suffered ransacking her wardrobe a few minutes earlier. All she had were loose
churidars
she wore at the hospital and, from her assembled wedding trousseau,
salwar
suits with heavy sequin work. In the end she'd settled on a new pair of jeans and a white
kurti
top with the typical
chikan
done in mauve and pink on neckline and cuffs and small motifs all over the light cotton material.

It felt easy and nice to take off with him. Maybe she could stretch these moments, she thought, slipping on her sunglasses and raising her face to the breeze as the top was off the car. His mouth curving, he stepped on the throttle, taking advantage of an empty stretch of road, and the breeze increased. She whipped off the scarf she had knotted on her hair, letting the strands blow out, shaking them free and enjoying the wind in the open convertible. It was a moment as wild and unrestrained as the grin that he exchanged with her as she suddenly stood up with a whoop, and with a ‘Yayyy' egged him on and waved as he sped past other bug-eyed travellers. The road entered the crowded area and, still laughing, she subsided back into her seat. Yes, she should manage to have those moments. Not other moments like these now, when his lazy smile spread warmth through her and made her pulse rate rocket.

CHAPTER EIGHT

‘T
ELL ME MORE
about yourself. How did you get into films? You mentioned you had a love of the stage,' Vishakha asked him while they waited for their order.

‘Acting became a focal point of my life, so I joined a drama troupe. But naturally the tinsel world has its own attraction. I tried to get into movies, figuring I'd start low, even with minor roles, then go up. But three years and no break in sight disappointed me. So I gave up, got out of Mumbai, became something of a drifter. Travelled a lot, inaccessible places in the Indian terrain, anywhere that offered something new.'

‘Then you began to do stunts?' She'd heard something of the sort said about him.

‘I was feeling reckless, a director needed a stuntman for some action few would attempt, so I joined him. In the same movie, I did a bit of acting so, for his new venture, his assistant took a bet on me. And I on him. We came up with a pure action movie, unheard of in Bollywood. It clicked. The rest, as they
don't
say, is GK.' He smiled.

The lunch came, a plethora of mouth-watering dishes. Crisp fried stuffed
naan
and lamb
kebab
, with the pineapple
raita
and
anari bhindi.
To her gratification, Zaheer agreed every bit with her on the degree of heavenliness the food possessed.

The pleasure is all mine
she felt like saying, then told herself to cool it.

‘Do you know, kebabs were originally made for an old and toothless nawab of Awadh, Asaf-Ud-Daula, who had difficulty in eating meat?' she said to ward off the ridiculous rush of pleasure she felt in witnessing his enjoyment in the meal she had chosen. ‘He asked chefs all over his kingdom to prepare special meat for him and that's how these kebabs came into existence.'

‘You definitely don't need teeth to eat these,' he agreed. ‘I guess they have those centuries-old secret recipes handed down the ages to make them so succulent.'

Maybe, she thought with secret mischief, she'd found the way to keep that mockery in check—keep him engrossed in eating.

They got a few curious stares but evidently the staff was too shy to get close or maybe they simply couldn't believe their eyes.

Rather full after lunch, the beautiful displays in the main market drew them. A walk seemed a natural follow-through and she fell into step beside him. She told him a bit about the history of the area.

‘Hazratganj was built by a nawab, as you probably know, but it was frequented by the British during their heyday here, particularly the Mayfair building, where there was a British Library and a cinema. And also in Colonial times, a ballroom. I've heard so many stories about it from great-grandma…Women used to dress in European clothes to attend, though some went in saris too. I used to dream of living in those times, dancing to a live orchestra till five in the morning.' She smiled.

An elderly couple walked in front of them, bent and taking slow steps. The man put his arm round the woman's shoulders and she leaned in to him, smiling up at him, wrinkles and all. Vishakha's gaze was drawn to them, especially when the man took the old lady's hand in his and kissed it and she blushed.

‘Oh, how sweet!' escaped her as they passed them. She turned back to wave at them and they smiled and waved back. ‘Aren't they awesome?'

‘Must be his new girlfriend,' Zaheer said snidely beside her. ‘That's all they can get up to in their advancing years.'

‘You're the pits, you know that?' She glared at him. ‘Anyone can see they've been married for ages.'

‘Come back to reality, my little dream-chaser.' He took hold of a strand of her hair and gave a gentle tug. ‘You really gobbled that up, didn't you? So much for not being romantic. You're all mush inside.'