Priya in Heels (Entangled Embrace) (12 page)

I tapped an irritated foot on the edge of patience. “Get back in the house, Mir, and first thing in the morning I’m telling your parents.”

“You can’t!”

“I will.”

“Why do you want to get me into trouble?”

“I don’t want to get you into trouble, but you’re too young for this stuff, and your parents need to talk to you. They know what’s best for you, and you’re too hormone inundated to make the right decision. These teenage boys don’t think with their heads, or at least not the right one.”

“Gross! They’ll send me to an all-girls school!”

“Then keep your legs crossed and knock out any guy trying to hit on you.”

She turned on her heel and stomped toward the house. Miranda was such a melodramatic child.

“Sheesh,” Pree muttered. “She’s going to hate you.”

“Nah. She loves me. She acts like she won’t listen to me, but she will in the end. But that’s my job, you know? She’s like my little, annoying, neurotic sister.”

Pree hooked elbows with me and rested her head against my shoulder, right where she belonged. “You’re so sweet.”

Something warm bubbled in my chest and spread out. I kissed her head and continued the walk. “I know you don’t have siblings, but didn’t your older cousins look out for you?”

She rolled her eyes. “No. I’m pretty sure they started rumors, though. They were the ones who were screwing guys in college and wearing ho outfits. But they went to temple every week, and both parents were active at temple and seen in the Indian crowds, so they got away with it.”

“So they judged you for what?”

“I dunno. They don’t like me.”

“I can’t imagine that.”

“Long story. Their parents hate my parents and manipulated their kids into hating me.”

“I’m sorry, babe. Why do you let them get to you? Why do you still go anywhere near them?”

“For my mom. She’s adamant about overlooking that stuff and forgiving.”

“Why?”

She shrugged. “It’s difficult to explain to an American.”

“I’m not stupid. Try.”

“Her culture, her society, her temple, her heritage, is everything.”

“I see.”

“Do you really?”

“Yeah, I do. I respect it. Just like I respect my coworker who has more breaks than me because he has to pray five times a day, and his wife who isn’t allowed to show any skin or look at me. The Korean gal I know who believes she has to do all the cooking, cleaning, raise the kids, and serve her husband like a lord.

“I don’t necessarily agree with certain beliefs, but I respect them as long as they’re not abusive. But if a friend wanted me to save her because she thinks her culture’s viewpoint on who she can date and marry sucks, I’d save her.”

“
Hmm
, think of yourself as a superhero, huh?”

“Hey, just because I’ve saved a certain woman before doesn’t mean I wouldn’t save her again…and again, and again,” I said in a lowered voice.

“Maybe we should head back.”

She averted her eyes as I stroked her hand. She dropped her arm from the elbow link, but I took hold of her hand and tugged her back. She smiled and squinted up at me in the sunshine. Her hair had a bright gleam from the light, her eyes sparkled, and her skin glowed as if she’d just dropped down from heaven to say hello. I brushed her hair out of her face and caressed her jawline.

“What are you staring at?” she asked.

“You.”

“Why?”

“You’re just…absolutely beautiful.”

She rolled her eyes and blushed, turning from me to face the house.

I laughed. “No snappy comeback?”

She pushed me with her shoulder, and I kept her close as we walked back to the house. This felt right. This. Walking without a care, on a nice day, with a girl I…what? Liked.
Really, really liked.

Pree squeezed my hand and my heart raced a little faster. I slowed the pace. There wasn’t any reason to get home in a hurry. This smart, amazing woman at my side didn’t seem like the type who needed saving, but something in the corner of my mind told me maybe she did. Maybe she needed someone to step in between her and her pitiful relatives, shield her, protect her, and put them in their place.

“What are you thinking about?” she asked.

“
Hmm
?”

“You got quiet.”

“Just thinking about what you said.”

“And?”

I shrugged. “Maybe you do need a hero.”

She laughed, the sound like wind chimes that told me maybe she thought I was joking. But I wasn’t. I gave her a sidelong glance and smirked, looking at her, for the first time, past this moment, past this day, and into the possibilities of an ever after.

Pree swallowed and stared straight ahead, seemingly uncomfortable beneath my gaze—the way she often was. She babbled on about people’s yards and plants, or lack thereof.

When we returned to the house, Miranda greeted me with a big, overenthusiastic smile. I had been right about Miranda. Before my eyes, she changed from a narcissistic, boy-crazed problem child to a level-headed, serious student.

She brought me chocolate cake as an offering. “I cut your slice extra-large, my favorite cousin ever.”

“
Mmhmm
. Bribery doesn’t work.”

“I love you, Tyler!”

“Doesn’t mean you’ve changed.”

“I promise I won’t do anything stupid. I wasn’t going to. I’m going to med school, like Priya, and that doesn’t involve getting pregnant or distracted by losers.”

Wow. Mood swings and bipolarism were interchangeable with teenage girls.

“Better be the truth, Mir, because your parents will be here in the morning.”

She pecked my cheek. “Good night, forgiving, forgetting cousin.”

“
Mmhmm
.”

Miranda kissed my parents on the cheeks and hugged Pree before running off, texting on her cell phone and skillfully whistling a tune at the same time. My parents called it a night soon after.

I nudged Pree’s foot with mine.

“Where are you sleeping?” she asked.

“In my old room.”

“Miranda said I was sleeping in there.”

“You are.”

She kicked my foot. “I’m not sleeping in the same bed with you, Ty. That’s inappropriate, especially in your parents’ house and after you reprimanded Miranda.”

“They think we’re dating, anyway.”

“And that makes it okay for you to sleep in the same room with a girl under their roof?”

“Pree, I’m a grown man. They know what grown men do. This isn’t India. Besides, Miranda is sleeping in the guest room and the fourth bedroom is a mess from the wedding stuff.”

“You can sleep on the couch.” She stood and walked upstairs.

I bounded up the steps and followed her into my room. I closed the door and stripped off my shirt, throwing it to the floor. I playfully went at her, but she pushed me.

“Ty!” she whispered.

“What, babe? They can’t hear anything.” I kissed her neck, reveling in the taste of her. My hand was already beneath her shirt, where her abs met her waist.

“Ty.” The force of unyielding obstinacy crackled into unstable determination. Pree wavered, turning to mush in my arms. She liked it. Her body responded, no matter how hard she tried to stop herself. She even let a moan escape, and that completely derailed me. All I wanted was a kiss, but the taste of her tongue, the sound of her moans, made me forget where we were.

It took everything in me to stop when she pushed me away again. She slipped under my arm and backed into the door, opening it behind her.

“Guess
I’ll
sleep on the sofa, then.”

I called her bluff and tossed a quilt at her. She caught it and smiled, then left, closing the door to the bedroom and closing the door to the bonus room so I couldn’t sneak up on her.

With hands on hips, I waited a few minutes. When she didn’t return—and knowing her pride, she wouldn’t—I swung open the door to the study, strode across the room, picked Pree up, and carried her into my bedroom.

“Ty!”

I locked the door with her in my arms and tossed her onto the bed. “Quiet down, babe.”

I crawled over her body and rested some of my weight above her, defying the need to lower myself all the way. The look in her eyes said maybe she wouldn’t mind if I did, and God knew that I was dying to slip in between her legs again.

Kissing her forehead, I slid to her side, enjoying the friction along the way and how her curves brushed against me. I wrapped an arm around her chest and nibbled her neck.

“I’m not going to do anything in my parents’ house. They hear everything.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“Don’t you wanna change? Thought you were concerned about getting your blouse wrinkled.”

“Do you have a shirt for me?”

“The one I just took off. Here, let me help you.” I undid her top button and she gasped, snatching her shirt closed.

I chuckled.

“No, thank you.”

“Okay. Suit yourself.”

Pree remained stiff but cushioned into my side, and I tried not to laugh. Her comforting scent of lavender lured me toward sleep. After another minute, she relaxed. Every time she moved, I held her tighter until she fell asleep.

This felt right. Here, like this, nearly sound asleep with Pree safe in my arms…this was how I wanted to spend the rest of my life.

Chapter Twenty

Priya

I had willed myself to wake up early, before Ty, so I could brush my teeth and pee, and pray that I hadn’t farted in bed. Well, if I had, then that would fix my problem because no man wanted to have sex with a woman who farted against their crotch.

“Where you going?” Ty asked in his irresistible, drowsy morning voice.

Damn it. I wanted to snuggle closer, but I was determined to get out of there while I had the chance.

I pried open his fingers, removing his tempting grip around my waist, and ran to the bathroom, making it even before Miranda. But like a ninja in hiding, as soon as I re-emerged, Miranda appeared out of nowhere and bum rushed me the second I opened the door.
Holy crap!
So this was a taste of what it would’ve been like to have a sister.

“Morning, Priya!” she said before taking the bathroom hostage.

Dishes clanked downstairs. The clock on the hallway wall, above a half-circular table with flowers, showed seven-thirty.

I debated—the thrill of returning to the sexy, half-naked, sleepy Irishman in bed, or helping his mother with breakfast?

Poking my head back into Ty’s room, I caught him watching me. His arm was under his head, the covers pushed down to his waist and exposing his bare, steamy torso. He winked. “Coming back to bed?”

Oh, shoot. The kitchen it was.

Downstairs I went. Mrs. O’Connor shooed me away and forced me to sit idly by as she chitchatted about the anxieties and exhilarations of having yet another wedding in the family.

She ended with, “Oh, how nice it would be to be the one planning, say, for a child of mine.”

Our eyes met.
Awkward.

Ty walked in, fully dressed. “Morning,” he greeted with a drawl.

“I was just saying, Tyler,” his mom said, “that wouldn’t it be nice to plan a wedding for one’s own child?”

“Sure would, Mama.”

We had breakfast together, as a family in the same seating arrangement as last night. Growing up, my family hadn’t really eaten breakfast together, and when we had, it was quiet. Papa had read the paper, Mummie had been busy doing whatever she had to do, and I always had to cram for a test or working on homework.

This was nice. It was loud, but nice.

Miranda leaned over me to get another biscuit as Ty asked, “Sleep okay?”

“Yes, when I wasn’t terrified of you.”

He grinned and popped a piece of bacon into his mouth.

“I’m just so embarrassed that my blouse is wrinkled.”

“You should’ve slept like I did.”

I glanced around the table to make sure no one could hear us when I taunted, “Topless?”

“Yep.”

“The gentlemanly thing to do was to offer me a shirt.”

“I did offer.”

“To undress me,” I muttered.

He laughed. His family looked at us, wanting to share in the joke. I felt my face turning red, but thankfully Ty shook his head and the conversation jumped back into wedding talk.

Miranda’s parents came to the house after breakfast. As he had promised, Ty didn’t tell on her, and she promised she would never let any boy get in the way of her education. Her parents were as warm and friendly as Ty’s, though they didn’t hug me, and I could live with that.

The parental generation skittered on upstairs to the messy bedroom to organize samples and stuff. Who was I to question why the wedding items weren’t kept at the bride’s place?

The bride herself, Jenny, gave a weak handshake. She was beautiful and willowy like Miranda, but tired, stressed, and perhaps on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

“Can I get you something?” I asked, though I didn’t know where anything was.

“I got it!” Miranda called from the kitchen. She returned with a giant mug of coffee, which I didn’t see helping. But it did. Maybe Jenny was a caffeine addict. Better that than smoking.

“Wedding planning is not as fun as I thought it would be,” she said and sipped. “Will you be Tyler’s plus one for the wedding?”

“Yes, she will!” Miranda answered on my behalf.

“Okay, great. Everyone else better RSVP by the end of the month. There’s no way extra people are eating there, and those who RSVP better show up. A hundred bucks a person is too much to play around with.”

Jenny groaned when her mother called her from upstairs, but she went.

“Don’t worry, she’s actually a happy person,” Miranda assured before running off after her sister.

“Miranda has a lot of energy,” I commented.

“Ready to go home?” Ty asked.

I looked at the clock above the fireplace. “Yeah. Enough time to get dinner later and plenty of sleep tonight.”

“Great!”

We said our good-byes upstairs. Ty’s parents invited me to return anytime I wanted.

“That means they really like you,” he clarified.

In the car, he placed a hand on my thigh and left it there. Before we reached Houston, we ate at a seafood place just outside of the city.

“I’ve never had this stuff,” I confessed, watching live lobster in one tank and crab in another.

“It’s amazing. I love seafood.”

“How can you eat something with eyes still attached to it?”

“Easy, dip it in butter.”

“Cruel and unusual.”

We played it safe. Ty ordered his seafood galore platter first, and I ate off his plate before ordering.

I held up a whole shrimp. “Eyes, Ty, eyes!”

He took it from me, twisted and pulled the head off, then returned it to my plate.

“You’d behead shrimp for me?”

“Of course, babe.”

Okay, headless shrimp tasted pretty good. Ty cracked open crab for me, and that tasted delicious, too. Oysters and clams, not so much.

“Want your own order of shrimp and crab?”

“I’m good. I’ll stick with chicken.”

He laughed and sucked the ends of the shrimp heads. Gross.

“Don’t do that.”

He leaned forward and puckered his lips, glossy from butter. “Don’t want to kiss me now?”

I planted a palm against his face and pushed him away. He laughed and I giggled.

The waitress came by. “Dessert?”

Ty wagged his brows at me.

“No.” I put a hand over my stomach. “Too much food.”

“Don’t want to split something?” the waitress asked.

“No, thanks.”

“No problem. Here’s the check. Pay whenever you’re ready. No hurry. It was great serving you today. By the way, me and all my coworkers think you two are definitely the cutest couple we’ve seen all day.”

I gave Ty a confused look when the waitress walked away.

“See, we’re a cute couple.” He winked.

…

“You’re going to a wedding with Tyler?” Vicki squealed. “You know what that means!”

“We will not dance and fall in love,” I warned.

“I was going to say go shopping for some extra-pretty things. Or are you going to wear a sari and go all traditional?” Vicki joked.

“No. I’m tired of wearing saris. I want a princess ball gown.”

“I think only the bride gets to wear that.”

“Oh, well, let’s go find something close but not as pretty. Can’t stand up the bride.”

Vicki was delighted. Bless her heart, she loved shopping. I found shopping tedious, but at least I knew exactly what to look for. We headed to the prom section first.

Maybe fashion had changed a lot more than I had expected, but dresses were not what they used to be. I pulled out a short dress with spaghetti straps and a low neckline. “What do girls wear these days?”

“How should I know? We wore
lenghas
to our prom, remember? Ooh, you can wear a
lengha
, huh?”

“No. I can’t outdo the bride.”

We flipped through dozens of dresses and searched through six department stores before I found “the one.” I yanked it off the rack and held it against me to take a gander in the full-length mirror on the wall. Thin straps held up silky material with a sheath of lace. A pleated, fuchsia fabric wrapped around the waist to give the visual of a more slender than possible waistline. The top half was fuchsia with a yellow lace overlay and gold sequins to add bling. The fuchsia blended into bright yellow below the waist with the same yellow lace sheath from the bodice, with glitter on the hem.

I tried it on. The bust was tight and accentuated my breasts. The dress below the pleated part flowed for easy dancing, and ended just above the knees.

I stepped out, grinned ear to ear, and jumped up and down. “It’s perfect!”

“Day-am, you is hawt!” Vicki clapped her hands, then twirled her finger in the air.

I spun around. The dress fanned out and wisped over my knees when I stopped.

Vicki nodded, checked me up and down, and said, “I saw the perfect fuchsia heels. Be right back!” She ran off.

As I waited, I danced in front of the mirror, pretending my handsome, dreamy Ty was carrying me off my feet on the dance floor. The entire audience gleamed with admiration and a twinge of jealousy, and the two of us ran off into a fairy tale ending.

I stopped and stared at my reflection as if someone had punched me. I blinked. Vicki was right. I had surpassed crush and had fallen head over heels for Ty. Maybe I even loved him, because only love could explain this intense emotion that wrapped so tightly around me. I wasn’t sure if I could breathe if it released me. I wanted him, now and forever, and that was terrifying.

My heart thumped so hard it hurt. It shoved me back into reality and reminded me that I better make the right decision or it would haunt and hurt me for the rest of my days. I didn’t live in a fairy tale. I certainly didn’t live in a Bollywood movie, either. Love didn’t triumph over all else.

Vicki returned with a shoebox. I sat down and tried on the fuchsia shoes with peek-a-boo toes, gold beads and black lace down the back of three-inch heels.

“Stunning. Priya in heels. Tyler is going to fall in love with you all over again!”

Again?
Did Vicki know something I didn’t?

Vicki played with my hair, lifting it up into a tight do, then a loose one, then down, and folded the hair up front to see how bangs looked.

All the while, I stood immobile with fear, panic, and a devastating pang in my chest and stomach that was none other than the self-righteous, bloated, elated, mind-blowing deception of love.

How could I have let this get so far? How could I meet his family and fall in love with them? How could they like me so much? Worst of all, how could I lead Ty down this malicious road with the pretense of romance? He made me happy, without a doubt. He made me feel a lot of other things, too, but we would never work out.

How could I be such a fool?

Tyler O’Connor might be in love with me, and I might be in love with him. But he wasn’t the man my mom had planned for me. I hated the thought of breaking his heart, but I couldn’t live with breaking Mummie’s heart. But where did
my
heart play out in all of this?

It didn’t matter. I would sacrifice anything to make Mummie happy, even if it meant letting go of the one man who made me feel unconditional happiness.