One Good Friend Deserves Another (9 page)

“That is,” he said, tilting his head thoughtfully, “philosophically perfect.”

“I suppose. What it really means is that you have to take
special
care of your heart. Once part of it dies, it’s gone forever.”

A shadow passed over her. She shook the shadow away as Desh led her to the end of the court to count points.

“I do know,” Desh said, “that your family is very proud of your accomplishments.”

“Ah, my family.” Dhara focused on the pattern of balls by the jack. “I feel guilty sometimes the way I strung them along all those years. Had they any idea that it would take me so long to be certified, to have a real position…well, they probably would have nipped the idea of medical school in the bud while I was still in college.”

“No, they wouldn’t.” Desh put up the score—two points to zero—on the battered scoreboard screwed into the cement wall. “I watched them during the engagement party. They dote on you.”

Dhara felt a little bubble of warmth. Her parents had doted on Desh too, squiring him around to all her crazy relatives. And Desh had gone right with the flow, even greeting her grandmother by bending down and touching the old woman’s feet without hesitation and with great reverence. Desh made it all so effortless. There was no awkwardness. No strained smile. No panicked looks from across the room, amid milling crowds of curious aunts.

Stop.

“It’s one of the many reasons,” Desh said, crouching down to line the balls up in the dirt as they reached the end of the court, “why I agreed to this arrangement. You can tell a lot about a woman from the way her family behaves around her.”

He unfolded himself from the ground and looked at her. Behind the rim of his glasses, she met his soft brown eyes. Steady, honest eyes. And Dhara felt a little shiv of guilt slide between her ribs.

Dishonesty. That’s what had killed her relationship with Cole. The lies he kept from her, the truth he was unwilling to confess. That was the reason she had to confess to Desh the one secret that concerned him, before he made the irrevocable step of tracing the vermilion upon the part in her hair.

She took a deep, shaky breath. “You seem like a very sweet man, Desh.”

He froze for a moment. “Now I know I’m in trouble.”

“I’m sorry?”

“I always hope for
dashing
or
romantic
. I’d even settle for
interesting
.”

“Desh—”

“
Distinguished
even.” He tried a casual shrug. “Maybe
rugged
.”

“There’s nothing wrong with
sweet
.” She swept up a ball, weighing it in her hand. “Not many men are sweet.”

“You are trying to be kind.” He stepped back, ceding the space so she could throw. “But I suspect you called me because you are having second thoughts about this arrangement.”

The guilt shiv slid a little deeper. Why did she think she could hide her motives? Desh understood how out-of-the-ordinary this unchaperoned date really was, in Indian eyes.

“Dhara, let me tell you something.” He traced patterns in the dirt with his feet. “I’m thirty-nine years old. I’ve been a full professor for three years now. You’ve probably heard that this is not my first serious relationship.”

Dhara remembered her aunt Nisha’s secretive little whisper about the American girl Desh chose not to marry.

“It’s a difficult thing, for someone without an Indian background, to understand my situation.” He squinted as he gazed to the end of the court. “My brothers have their own families, their own houses, but I am the youngest and the last. I will take care of my parents in a house we will share. Perhaps you can imagine that this has been an issue with the women I’ve brought home to meet my family.”

Dhara could almost hear Marta clacking her fingernails, in her post-Tito-breakup era, over a man she’d once met. Mama’s boy, Marta had called him—a man in his thirties who still lived with his mother.

But in a traditional Indian family, a mother-in-law ruled the house and expected to rule the bride. Dhara adored Desh’s mom, a dumpling of a woman who’d hugged her so enthusiastically at the engagement party. His mother was round and energetic and bursting with good humor—a dream of a future mother-in-law.

“And so,” he continued, gesturing for her to go ahead and toss the ball, “I finally decided that it was time to stop trying to fit square pegs into round holes. I needed an Indian bride who would understand my family obligations.”

An Indian bride.
A soft, malleable virgin, who’d submit without question to the will of her husband.

Dhara lobbed the ball blindly. It fell considerably short of the jack.

There would never be an easy way to say this.

“I had a serious boyfriend also.” She spoke softly, backing up off the court. “And he was so
not
Indian. He was raised by a single mother, with no other family at all. His life was as unfettered as mine was grounded.” She watched as Desh idly picked up a ball but made no attempt to take his position or lob it down the court. “I think that was part of the appeal. I never knew what he would do next. Just being around him was…”

Intoxicating.

She was talking too much. Telling too much. And yet, not telling enough.

“I know how this ends.” Desh rolled the ball from one hand and then, thoughtfully, to the other. “You couldn’t take him home.”

“On the contrary. I
did
take him home.” She backed up and felt the bite of the concrete divider against her hip. Blindly, she reached for her iced chai sitting on the flat top. “And my wonderful parents swallowed their many reservations, and they welcomed him. With open arms.”

His knuckles went white around the ball. “You loved this man.”

She felt a surge of feeling, a sudden rush of emotions, tangled up and so complicated. She remembered one fall afternoon sitting under the huge sycamore outside the Vassar Library, trying to read Milton while Cole lay with his head in her lap, a Frisbee on his stomach, grinning up at her.

“It was a very long courtship. I resisted getting involved.” She took a swift sip of her drink, trying to swallow the lump rising in her throat. “But in our thirties, in everything but name, he was my husband.”

There. It was spoken. She tilted her chin, but she couldn’t muster the courage to look him in the eye. She felt ashamed, and yet at the same time, strangely defiant—the same mix of tugging emotions that had kept her unnerved, uncertain, and in a terrible flux for too many days. The fact that the moment ticked away in an increasingly tense silence told her that Desh wasn’t about to gently laugh this off, as one deep part of her had secretly hoped.

Already, she was thinking forward to the inevitable confrontation with her mother when she would have to explain why, suddenly, the Bohara family had backed out of the engagement. A result that became increasingly more certain as she listened to the clack of bocce balls being thrown in other courts, the creak of a branch swaying in the wind, and the chatter of two mothers pushing carriages across the paths. Dhara suspected Desh would be circumspect no matter what. He was a kind man. But she couldn’t—wouldn’t—tell her mother the truth. It would hurt her too deeply.

Then Desh moved, ambling across the court toward her, finally resting a safe distance away against the divider. “Now,” he said, “I understand why you called me today.”

She was doing the right thing. Yes, she was. If he couldn’t accept this truth, it was best she know now. Even if it did kill the marriage agreement, her family’s bubbling happiness, and her plans for the future. She would be free.

To do what, she couldn’t even fathom.

“Now it’s my turn,” he said, “to tell you why I agreed to come today.” He leaned back against the divider, rubbing the sand from his hands with more concentration than the task required.

“Last summer,” he began, “my parents and I traveled to Ajmer. My father has some distant relatives in a little village outside the city.”

Her mind tripped over itself, seeking secret meaning in what was a common thing—an Indian family returning to their birth village to strengthen ties with the distant relatives.

“One afternoon, they took me to the house of a family I had never met before. My father gave me no warning.” A muscle flexed in his cheek as he scraped his hands on the divider behind him, bracing himself. “There was a young girl in the family. She was wrapped up in a pink sari. She wouldn’t look at me. It was then that I realized that my parents had brought me there to look her over. As a potential bride.”

Dhara began to understand. Many Indian-American men went back to their home villages to search for a bride of the appropriate caste and clan. It was a venerated cultural tradition, as old as time.

“The poor girl was maybe fifteen, not a day older.” Desh made a strange sound, somewhere between incredulity and frustration. “She didn’t speak a word of English. And she was trembling like a bird. I would have married that girl and brought her back here,” Desh said, “if what I wanted above all was a virgin bride.”

Dhara lifted her gaze and found Desh looking straight at her.

“I did not choose that Ajmer bride, Dhara.” His gaze traveled with slow intent from her hairline, across her cheek, and to her lips, where she could feel the heat warming her skin. “I chose you.”

that weekend

H
e’s a predator, Kelly,” Marta said. “You have to be especially careful. You’re more vulnerable than most women.”

Kelly shared a glance with Dhara and Wendy, silently wondering if they, too, sensed the irony in the statement. Marta hadn’t wanted to talk about her situation all month. They were trying to honor her wishes. But Marta, with feigned disinterest, had just pulled a box out of her pharmacy bag.

It was a home pregnancy test.

“You don’t have a bullshit detector.” Marta unfolded the instructions with deliberate calm. “If you did, you would have known that Trey wanted nothing more from you last night than a hookup.”

Kelly flinched. Her heart still didn’t believe that. Cole had delivered the bad news earlier today. She hadn’t believed him. Even when Marta backed him up by saying she’d witnessed Cole throwing a punch at Trey in the cafeteria, Kelly had just figured Cole must have overreacted to some casual remark.

But on her lap lay the truth. Three pages printed from pickupartists.com, where TreyW300 spilled all the gritty details of his amorous adventures with an easy redhead, posted only hours after he rolled his warm body out of their bed.

“He’s my brother but he’s still an asshole, Kelly.” Wendy struggled with her anger. “When I see him again, I’m going to rip him a new one. But, God, I just wish you’d waited for us before leaving with him.”

Kelly plucked at the papers, grappling with the knowledge that she’d brought this upon herself. Last night as she’d nursed a rum and coke at the bar, cooling her heels until her friends came, she’d glanced up and glimpsed a dream. She knew who was sauntering toward her, though she’d missed the rugby game that afternoon. She’d seen photos of him in silver filigreed frames on the grand piano in Wendy’s home. The living, breathing version far overwhelmed the image in her fantasies. She kept blinking, not believing that tall, ruddy-cheeked Trey Wainwright, still in his grass-stained rugby shirt, was approaching her with interest in his whiskey-brown eyes.

He’d slipped his elbows on the bar and given her a look that could melt bones.

Beautiful redhead, tell me you’re free tonight.

“Well, I’ve got another rule,” Marta added grimly. “Don’t get involved with a guy until he gets the thumbs-up from your friends.”

Kelly knew Marta was right. Trey was a thousand miles out of her league. But last night a descendant of vice presidents and shipping magnates had swung his arm around her shoulders as he led her out into the spring night. Last night, Trey Wainwright had tugged her into his room in the Alumnae House and gently stripped off her clothing. He’d traced her cheek like she was something as delicate and precious as the china that filled the breakfront in the Wainwright parlor. He kissed her like he loved her, all the more ardently when she whispered that this was her first time.

And for one brief moment, Kelly forgot that she was the infamous Gloucester orphan, the two-day-old infant abandoned on the firehouse steps.

“Yeah, and I’ve got another rule.” Marta pulled a stick out of the box. “No more one-night stands for you, Kelly. And no more mistakes for me either.”

L
ee Zhao leaned against the opening to Kelly’s cubicle, rubbing his eyes as he talked about last weekend’s Comic-Con convention. “It was awesome,” he said. “I think the only time I slept was on the plane.”

Kelly scooted to the edge of her seat, noticing his rumpled shirt and the creases in his khaki pants. “Did you just get back from San Diego?”

“This morning. My suitcase is stashed under my desk.”

“Don’t worry, the boss-man is waist-deep in router issues.” Min Jee, Kelly’s cubicle mate, chewed her gum noisily as she hiked her thigh-high boots onto the desk. “Did you and Jack wear the costumes?”

“Oh, yeah. During the
Star Trek
presentation. The whole convention floor was rigged up to look like the inside of the
Starship Enterprise
.”

Kelly suppressed a sigh. She’d always wanted to attend the convention, but student loan payments still sucked up a good part of her disposable income. So she got what thrills she could following bootleg cell-phone videos, Twitter feeds, and Lee’s stories.

Lee cocked his head at her. “You know that I met Moto Hagio?”

She sucked in a breath. “The Japanese manga artist who created
shojo
?”

“The very one.”

“Yeah, but did Jack get to meet that babe from the vampire show?” Min Jee tugged on the blue ends of her choppy hair. “He told me he was going to hunt her down and offer himself up as a sacrifice.”

“He wants to tell that story himself.” Lee shoved his hands in his pockets and rocked in place. “If you’re interested, Jack and I are going out for coffee in a few minutes to try to power-caffeinate ourselves through the rest of the day. Want to join us?”

“Oh, man, I’m so going.” Min Jee dropped her feet off the desk and started shutting windows on her computer. “I’m so sick of beta-testing this network software that I’m going to scream if I have to firewall another fake workstation. Can we make it lunch? As long as it’s not that burrito place.”

“Lunch would be okay. What about you, Kelly?” Lee did another toe-to-heel rock. “We’ve got a whole bag of swag to share.”

She hesitated, plucking at the edges of her lightweight cotton sweater. She’d really love to have lunch with Lee and Jack. But over the past few weeks, it was becoming increasingly apparent that Lee was interested in sharing more than just TV obsessions with her. Even Min Jee sensed it, for her gum chewing had slowed to a contemplative pace.

Then a bouquet of pink roses appeared, handed to her from over the edge of her cubicle. Startled, she grabbed them and looked beyond to the man thrusting them at her.

“Hey, darling. Surprise.”

Kelly blinked. Trey stood before her, his hair haloed by fluorescent lights, and it was such an unexpected sight that for a moment she wondered if Lee Zhao had somehow stolen from Comic-Con a life-size cardboard cutout of the actor Robert Pattinson, who Trey somewhat resembled. But this handsome hunk draped his arms over the edge of the partition, smiling as if his arrival in her office was an everyday event, rather than a first-time-ever.

Then Kelly noticed that Min Jee had stopped chewing her gum entirely, and Lee Zhao was frozen in place.

“Hey, Trey.” She pressed her face into the flowers, smelling nothing in her confusion. “These are just lovely.”

“I knew you’d like them.”

She placed them on her lap and then checked the pencil-roll of her hair, tucking in some wayward strands. “Um…this is such a surprise. What are you doing here?”

“Rescuing you from this maze.” He rolled his eyes at the room and its seemingly endless rows of boxy cubicles. “I’ve blown out of the office for the day. It’s sunny, it’s warm, and it’s too nice to work. Come have lunch with me.”

Sharp little prickles danced all over her skin. She became exquisitely aware of her naked thighs under her breezy, cotton sundress. She hadn’t been alone with Trey in two full weeks. Trey had bunked in Parker’s spare bedroom since coming back from London six months ago, with the intent of taking over Parker’s lease after Wendy’s wedding. The chance of running into Wendy prevented Kelly from going to that sweet sixteenth-floor apartment. Now Cole’s presence on her couch prevented Trey from coming to her.

“Don’t be rude, Kelly, introduce us to your friend.” Min Jee leaped up and thrust out her hand, black fingernail polish and all. “I’m Min Jee, Kelly’s lunchtime mah-Jongg partner and fellow C++ programming geek.”

“Whoa, Mingee, nice eyebrow stud.” Trey grinned as he shook her hand. “I’m Trey Wainwright. Kelly’s boyfriend.”

Trey slid his gaze toward her with lazy confidence, and a smile that said
I’m not telling them anything that ain’t so.
Min Jee’s eyes nearly popped out of their black-lined sockets. With his usual good manners, Trey turned to introduce himself to Lee Zhao, who looked like he’d eaten a bad burrito. Lee shook Trey’s hand, mumbled some excuse, and shuffled off the field of battle.

Kelly said, “I’d better find a vase for these.” She swept the flowers off her lap, crinkling the cellophane. “Trey, why don’t you follow me? I’ll show you the lunch room.”

Kelly exited her cubicle and brushed by him. The friction churned up a whole shower of sparks. His broadening smile told her he’d felt them too, as he fell into pace beside her.

Trey leaned close. “Mad at me?”

“Furious.” She meant to sound angry, but the word came out husky instead. Her palms had begun to sweat on the cellophane, but her body was buzzing with excitement. “You didn’t call me first.”

“We don’t have to hide from anybody here.”

Kelly wasn’t so sure of that. She’d left her desk only to avoid Min Jee eavesdropping on their conversation, but as she paraded through her workplace carrying a dozen roses with a handsome guy trailing behind, she began to realize the full impact of her decision. As she passed each cubicle, she heard the squeal of chairs against carpet protectors, the clack of a dropped mouse, and the deep-breathed rise of her coworkers from their seats. It was like she were some sort of self-propelling, super conducting magnet, strong enough to pull geeks free from their computers and alert them to a shocking new social paradigm.

“Without my approval,” Kelly said, heaving a shaky breath, “you’ve just made a public quantum leap with our relationship.”

“Yes,” he murmured, all sexy vibrato. “Yes, I have.”

It was impossible to be mad at him, not while the fragrance of a dozen roses billowed around her. The last time she’d received flowers, they were daisies from her prom date, who’d picked them from her own front yard. She’d been wearing a borrowed dress made of cheap rayon. She’d pinned one of the daisies on her bodice to hide a stain.

She swept into the lunchroom, a sprawling room littered with game tables, Foosball, a Nerf basketball net, and a small putting green. Trey paused a few steps into it.

“Whoa.”

Kelly waltzed to the sink. A foursome in the middle of a mah-Jongg game—the office’s latest obsession—stopped clicking tiles long enough to stare. Kelly waved and then shielded her face with the door of the upper cabinets, where she searched for a vase.

Trey leaned a hip against the counter. “Is this place for real?”

“It’s under construction. We’ve been lobbying for some old-fashioned arcade games, but can’t budge the higher-ups.”

“No, I mean, seriously. We get memos if we’re caught playing computer solitaire. You’ve got a Ping-Pong table.”

“Tournament starts next week. Min Jee’s the reigning champion.”

“How many piercings does she have?”

“It depends if you count all of them,” Kelly said, “or just the ones you can see.”

But Trey wasn’t paying attention. Two guys from system administration were leaving the lunchroom; one had a blue Mohawk, the other, a leather fetish that revealed itself in vests and chaps. Trey gave them a friendly head bob, and as soon as they left the room, he spoke out of the corner of his mouth. “This place is like that cantina from the
Star Wars
movie.”

“The Mos Eisley Cantina on Tatooine.” On their last date, she’d made Trey sit through the original three of the series. “Ten geek points to you, big boy.”

“How do you get anything done? I’d be playing Foosball all day.”

“Discipline.” She pulled a dusty acrylic vase from the back of a middle shelf. “Programmers work long hours. We catch inspiration where we can. And, for starters, we don’t blow off work to take long lunches.”

“I’m not looking for a long lunch.” He slid a little closer. “I’m here to coerce you into an afternoon of sweaty sex.”

Her mouth went dry. She met his gaze—light brown eyes, dark on the outer ring, lighter in the middle, like liquid amber.

“There’s a hotel just around the corner.” He dropped his voice. “Room service from a four-star restaurant. An awesome view from the upper floors.”

There it was again, that sexy vibration in his whisper. It worked on her like a tuning fork. Her body adjusted instantly to its rhythm. It had been two weeks since she’d bitten his hand to suppress her tendency to moan during sex. Two full weeks since he’d shoved one of her naked legs over his shoulder, grinding into her while she fisted the mattress.

And if she didn’t break eye contact with him right now, she’d be hopping onto the cabinet, spreading her knees, and making an even bigger scene in front of all her curious and suddenly hungry coworkers. Besides, she knew him well enough to know that this spontaneous tryst was a distraction, in part. A ploy to get her to ignore all that other stuff that she could read in his eyes.

She slipped the vase in the sink and shoved the faucet on so that it would fill with water fast. “Bad day, huh?”

She noticed that, physically, he pulled back only a fraction—but mentally, she sensed that he reared back about two hundred miles. Oh, yeah. She hadn’t forgotten how much he despised his desk job on Wall Street. She hadn’t forgotten how he’d confessed his yearning to do something else—
anything
else. So she kept her gaze on him long after the water overflowed the vase.

“Two weeks, Kelly.” Trey crossed his arms, blithely changing the subject. “When is this friend of yours going to leave your apartment?”

“I don’t know.” She hardly saw Cole these days. He stayed out late and slept even later, completely oblivious to the fact that he was a serious kink in her previously awesome sex life. “It’s complicated.” And it was time to change the subject so Trey wouldn’t figure out more than he needed to know. “It would help if we could go to your place now and again.”

“It’s Parker’s place until September. And these days Parker’s there all the time.” Trey pushed away from the counter as she unwrapped the cellophane and pulled the rubber bands from the stems. “Wendy cut him off cold turkey.”

Kelly tried to mute her surprise. Wendy hadn’t said anything about that at the tapas place last week. In fact, Wendy had been unusually quiet.

“Yeah, some asinine idea about wanting to make the wedding night special. The guy is climbing the walls.”

Kelly slipped the roses into the vase. She didn’t like talking about Wendy to Trey. It felt like talking out of school, and the longer she kept this secret, the more it felt like a betrayal. Then Trey came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist, enfolding her in nearly six feet of warm, strong Wainwright, and she forgot about Wendy, about flowers, about breathing.

“They’ve got cable, pay-per-view.” He spoke into her hair, carefully nudging the pencil shoved in it. “I’ll even promise to sit through
Doctor Who
.” He tightened his grip. “Once we’re done.”

She had a voice of her own. Somewhere. “I’ve…I’ve got a weekly progress meeting at three.”

“Reschedule.”

“I’m one of the team. Presenting the new networking protocols.”

“I love it when you talk like that.”

He pulled at her sundress, making the hem climb up past her knee. Against her shoulder blade, she felt the throb of his runner’s steady heartbeat. His lips closed over the tip of her ear.

“I can manage,” she said, her muscles clenching, “maybe an hour.”

Only then did he release her.

On unsteady feet, Kelly took the vase and tried not to stumble back down the maze. As she neared her cubicle, she spied Min Jee on her toes, deep in whispered conversation with Matt, a twenty-something with bleach-tipped hair who worked in the adjoining cubicle. Kelly rounded the partition and slipped the vase across her desk. Min Jee started, and Matt dropped out of view.

“I’m heading out for lunch.” Kelly avoided Min Jee’s eyes by searching for her cell phone amid the Post-it notes on her desk. “If Karen asks where I am, give my cell a buzz, would you?”

“Sure thing, girlfriend.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Kelly caught Trey shaking his head at Min Jee, wordlessly gesturing that Min Jee shouldn’t call at all. Kelly straightened in mild annoyance, ready to bust up the conspiracy when she caught sight of the second shocker of the day.

It happened in ultraslow motion. Cole rounded the corner of the far cubicle, his head bobbing. His lanky silhouette loped up the narrow aisle as he searched the nameplates. She saw him lift his curly head. She saw him catch sight of her. His expression bloomed into an open, friendly smile.