Bollywood and the Beast (Bollywood Confidential) Read online

  “Add bleach also,” Taj suggested when he learned of the snafu, nearly doubled over with mirth. “You can be a golden-haired gori mem instead of just half.”

  “You are such an asshole,” she told him, flinging a freshly pressed dupatta at his head.

  He caught the loose ends and used them to loop the brightly colored cloth around her and pull her close. “Lucky for me then that you seem to enjoy assholes, nahin?” And when he nuzzled her throat with something almost like fondness, she enjoyed it quite a bit.

  For his part, Taj didn’t bother with attempting an attitude adjustment but tried to spend more time gingerly walking from room to room. He even met Nani halfway on the stairs, and they shared an emotional hug that he probably wouldn’t admit made him cry.

  It was during this fragile, almost idyllic, ceasefire that a new assault was launched, from a totally unexpected direction. Rocky’s mother descended upon the haveli in a flurry of suitcases and shopping bags.

  After a year and a half, Caroline still played the privileged Ugly American stereotype to the nth degree, acting like anything less than luxury hotel suites and high-end shops was an inconvenience that had to be borne with heavy sighs and a minimal amount of foot traffic. So she stood in the foyer of the Khan haveli like she expected a bellman to come grab her things. “Rocky…what is this place you’ve come to?” she sniffed, perfectly sculpted eyebrows rising as much as her Botoxed forehead would allow. “Honestly, it’s a tomb.”

  Rocky still didn’t understand why she’d come overseas, much less all the way to the wilds of Delhi’s outer suburbs. Maybe to ensure that her dad wouldn’t take up with some sweet, biddable desi woman who wouldn’t burn through his money like it was the dead of winter and firewood was at a premium. Not that she knew any such women lining up at Dad’s door…but her mother took great delight in implying he’d nobly sacrificed a personal harem to settle down with her in Chicago. Sometimes, Caroline seemed to think she lived in a Harlequin sheik romance instead of reality.

  It had only gotten worse over the years. Rocky actually remembered a time when her mom had just been her mom. Normal. Her straight blond hair was always pulled into ponytails. She wore jeans and T-shirts around the house, and even opted for a salwar kameez or a sari if they took a trip to one of the Chicago mandirs. She tried to make biriyani, watched old black-and-white Hindi movies with Dad in the den and laughed all the time. Now?

  Now, she only laughed in response to bons mots from someone influential. And it didn’t sound remotely authentic.

  “It’s a haveli, Mom. A traditional Hindustani mansion with Mughal influences, probably built before the turn of the century.”

  Her mother glanced to and fro, at the shadowy corners and the threadbare rugs. “I think that was the last time anyone cleaned it, too.”

  It wasn’t anything Rocky hadn’t thought herself when she first arrived. But now, all these weeks later, it was like a personal affront to Usha and everyone else who worked so hard to keep the house running. Her skin prickled, and her spine straightened defensively. “If you’re so offended, then you can take the car back to the airport and go back to Mumbai. They probably haven’t even rented out your suite at the Four Seasons yet.”

  Her mom stopped her appraisal of the haveli’s flaws and tucked an imaginary strand of hair behind her ear—imaginary because it was all caught up in a tight, efficient bun, gleaming the pale gold of fresh highlights. “Don’t be ridiculous, Rocky.” She sighed, dramatic and long-suffering. “We’ve let you stay out here with strangers for way too long already. I should be with you, taking care of you while you’re filming God-knows-what.”

  “Why start now?” was on the tip of Rocky’s tongue, but she bit it back, instead reaching down to grab the handle of one of Caroline’s rolling bags. “There’s an empty room down the hall from mine on the second floor. I’m sure Usha can have it made up while you’re getting familiar with the house.”

  Her mother’s ash-gray eyes narrowed with speculation. “And just how familiar have you gotten, sweetheart? You may think I don’t pay attention, but I know what everyone says about Ashraf Khan.”

  “It is not Ashraf you must worry about, Varma Sahiba.” Rocky knew the whisper of wheels over marble just like she knew the whisper of his breath. And she didn’t even have to turn around to know that Taj was quietly furious. It was all there in his mocking address, in the staccato cadence of the words. “Ashraf is a man, playing a man’s games. I’m a monster…and Rakhee is very familiar with me indeed.”

  All the blood drained from Caroline’s face, leaving her pale skin almost bone white. She probably hadn’t even heard what Taj had said, so transfixed was she by the sight of his disfigurement.

  Taj just lounged in his chair—which he was clearly using just for effect, the melodramatic son of a bitch—daring her mother to give voice to her horror.

  Oh God, oh God, oh God. Please don’t say anything. Rocky’s protective instinct went from fierce to nuclear. “Don’t be a jerk, Taj,” she muttered, when all she really wanted to do was climb into his arms and shield him from Caroline’s judgment. And then… “Go upstairs, Mom. Second room on your right. Put your purse down. Usha and I will bring up the rest.”

  Wonder of wonders, Caroline listened to her, heading for the wide, Gone With The Wind-esque staircase on autopilot, her Birkin bag hanging limply from one hand. She was probably convincing herself she’d hallucinated the less-than optimal introduction. It wasn’t until she was up to the landing that Rocky swung around to focus on Taj. His head was bent, his hair falling forward to hide his face, and his shoulders shook with unrepentant mirth.

  He’d probably get off on scaring children at Halloween.

  “Why is this funny?” she demanded. “My mother just insulted your house, insulted you, and you’re laughing? It’s terrible! I can’t believe she acted that way. I mean, I can, but—”

  “Shaanth, sweet Rocky,” he cut in, setting his palm at her hip and pulling her to him. “Cool down. Don’t you think I am accustomed to reactions like hers? To disgust and shrinking away and screams? It’s you who are the odd one out. You’re the first person in years who looked me straight in the eye, who flinched not because of my scars but because I was vulgar.”

  “You’re still vulgar,” she murmured absently as he rested his forehead on her belly and inhaled, like he was breathing her in. She threaded her fingers through his silken hair, combing it back from his forehead. From his devastating, beloved face. “But I think you’re gorgeous, Taj…and I just want everyone to see what I do.”

  “No one will see me as you do, Rakhee.” His lips brushed back and forth across the gossamer material of her silk kurta, and she felt the sensation as acutely as if he’d kissed her bare skin. “That is all right; it is enough,” he whispered in Hindi. “I can go my whole life only knowing your eyes.”

  She swayed into his arms, and, in that moment, it was he who shielded her from all judgments. From everything but the love she knew he still couldn’t admit out loud.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  That morning’s hard-boiled egg and toast bobbed in the pit of her stomach like rocks in a churning sea. Rocky tried to steady her breaths as she ran the words over in her mind. Meet me. Soon. Or this goes to the press. Taj’s bellow of rage had brought the whole house running, even her mother, who stayed after Usha and the others went back to their posts. Now he was still nuclear, and she felt like she was going to throw up.

  She dropped to the free end of Taj’s sofa, hoping being stationary would calm her nausea and her nerves. “I…I still don’t get what Nina wants from us. Is she just getting off on making us crazy?”

  “I don’t care. This ends now. Aaj. Isi waqt.” He crushed the latest photo and accompanying note in one hand. A gesture of power so precise that anyone who thought him impotent because of his scar tissue was kidding themselves. “I want this churail dealt with before Ashu comes home.”

  “But how?” They had four days. Four days. N
ina had waited until the last possible moment to demand a meeting, knowing they would scramble to protect Ashraf any way they could. “There is no way we can beat her at this. She holds all the cards.”

  “Let me help.”

  It was as if her mom had said, “I hate room service.” Rocky blinked, not sure she’d heard correctly. “I’m sorry, what?”

  “Let me help,” Caroline repeated, tapping her fingers on the teak armrest of her silk-lined chair. “This Nina woman and I are of a certain age, and I could lull her into a false sense of security—pretending to bond with her over disapproving of this relationship you’ve struck up with Ashraf.”

  Taj’s eye glinted with amusement. “Somehow, I do not think you will have to pretend so much.”

  “Maybe not.” Caroline’s lips lifted in a faint smile, and for a minute she and Taj were so deviously in sync that Rocky was traumatized.

  She stifled the urge to scream, “Oh my God, stop that right now!” and leaned forward, effectively interrupting the impromptu conspiratorial lovefest. “Do you think you could get her to hand over the flash drive with the photos? And any hard copies?”

  Her mother’s laugh was the most brittle and self-aware that she’d ever heard it. “Sweetheart, there’s very little I can’t make someone do.”

  The follow-up was silent, a message transmitted only to Rocky: The only thing Caroline hadn’t been able to control was her husband and daughter picking up and moving across the world.

  She ignored the sudden tightness in her throat and settled back, consciously curving her fingers around Taj’s bare foot. As if merely touching him could ground her, could hold her here. And it did. “Okay,” she whispered with a shake of her head. “Okay, then. Let’s write the script.”

  “I will direct,” Taj murmured as his toes stroked at her palm in a subtle caress. One that shouldn’t have been sexy but was. “You know how I love to set a scene.”

  The show was on. Rocky’s mother had placed a call to the number Nina left at the bottom of her ghatia little note. The woman would arrive at the haveli tomorrow and, if it all played out according to plan, be gone from the lives a day after that.

  His brother would never have to know what she’d threatened, never have to suffer the extra sorrow that her cruelty could unleash. If it was at all in Taj’s hands, Ashraf would never, ever be called to the roof’s edge again. “Have you seen him?” he asked Kamal, who’d slipped with his usual stealth into the library. “How is he?”

  “The driver is scheduled. He will come home as suggested by his psychiatrist.” Kamal’s clinical answer was far from the status update he expected. The man had been less forthcoming than even his usual mysterious self these past few days. Perhaps they’d drawn him too close, broken some barrier of class or propriety…not that Taj had ever cared for those things. Propriety did not exist when you screamed from pain. Class had no meaning when you were literally blind to petty differences.

  For years, Kamal had no importance to him, save for that of a jailer, a keeper, a witness to his descent into failure and madness. And even those positions were elevated above the shadows that were the servants and anyone outside the haveli walls.

  But then Rocky had come…and refused to go. Now his life was again filled with people. With feeling. With…purpose.

  He smiled vindictively at his nurse, his confidant, his friend. “Tomorrow we will deal with Nina Manjrekar. Would you like to help?”

  Kamal’s eyes widened. At last, he seemed to flicker with purpose as well. His ever-straight spine was a bolt of steel, and he nodded sharply. “Ji-haan, Saab. I would like that very much.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The doors that led from the library to his bedroom were shut, giving the illusion that it was an independent, neutral space where Nina could conduct her business. That he was just beyond the wall, she would not know. That he was not a weak, frail invalid, she did not know. That his sweet Rakhee had claws, she could never understand. Nina thought she preyed on the runts of the herd…and that would prove her undoing. It had to. Failure was unacceptable. Failing Ashu was unacceptable.

  Taj paced to and fro, both to burn his restlessness and to exercise his still unreliable limbs. He moved so swiftly that Rakhee begged him to stop making her dizzy.

  She had finally returned to his sanctum—and the one place he had yet to have her. They’d made love in every corner of the beast’s lair but this. But she sat perched on the edge of his bed like the ocean lay farther in and she would drown if she tipped backward. What would she do if he held her under? Would she thrash beneath him and gasp for breath?

  “That’s making me dizzy, too,” she murmured.

  “What is?”

  “The way you’re looking at me. Don’t do that.”

  “And why not? What will happen if I continue?”

  “You know what’ll happen. I’ll kiss you, and you’ll kiss me, and we’ll have nowhere to go but way too far, because we’re stuck in here until Mom and Nina’s little meeting is over.”

  He wanted to be stuck with her. He wanted to kiss her. He wanted to dive in deep and never surface. “Would that be so wrong, Rakhee?”

  She looked as though she wanted to say yes. As though her morals, her sanskar, might override her mischief and her bold tongue. But all she did was tease him. “Just the timing. We don’t want to miss the radio broadcast from next door, right?”

  She was such a mix of contradictions. Of youth and age. Of hope and darkness. She expected better of him—of everyone—because she demanded it of herself. She did not realize it yet, but their timing…it would always be off.

  Taj finally did as she asked, tearing his gaze from her and focusing beyond the doors, where Caroline’s voice had suddenly pitched to the dress circle of a theater like an accomplished actress. Nina had arrived. No doubt shadowed by Kamal, whom she would assume was a servant.

  He’d never met the woman. And now all he wanted was to come face-to-face with her, to confront this creature that had broken Ashu’s spirit. It took everything he had not to burst into the room, to instead flatten himself against the thick wooden panels of the door, press his ear to the barrier and simply listen.

  “My daughter and Mr. Khan have found your letters to be…illuminating.”

  “Sach? I thought them very dark. Like a bedroom decorated for a seduction.”

  Rocky joined him. He felt her heat, the gentle support of her hand at his back, and then their faces were tantalizingly close, bent together as they waited for their scene. Exquisite perfection and stark ugliness. Her two beautiful eyes peering up into his unforgivably rude one. Her breath on his skin was like warm wind flowing across a jagged canyon.

  “…the way I see it, you and I both want the same thing, Ms. Manjrekar.”

  “I am certain we can be mutually satisfied, Mrs. Varma.”

  “Taj. Pay attention,” Rakhee chided.

  “I am multitasking.” Could he not crave vengeance and her at the same time?

  “You are not.” She frowned at him, but when he brushed his mouth against the pulse in her throat, it was wild and hungry. She gasped, and her fingers curled into his shirt.

  “I’d like some assurances. Like the photos, for instance. Getting Rocky out of this godforsaken hellhole and back to Bombay will require some incentive.”

  “I do not know if I want to give my prizes away. Ashraf is so beautiful, na? My collection is precious to me.”

  “God, she’s awful.” Rocky shuddered. And just like that, the way they clutched at one another turned from a grip of desire to one of desperation, lest they tumble over the threshold and take turns wringing Nina’s neck.

  Kamal was there. Inside. Tall and glowering with fury. This, Taj could picture in vivid detail. If the man so devoted to his brother could restrain himself, surely they could do the same. “We can speak freely in front of him,” Caroline had lied. “He doesn’t understand English.” Of course he understood more than any of them could possibly comprehend.
He spoke like a goddamn professor and saw everything like a mystic.

  Taj wondered if he could will Kamal to move, to launch across the room and throttle Nina.

  “Shhh.” Rocky squeezed his arm before tucking her head beneath his chin and strengthening their embrace. “She’s going to get hers. Don’t worry.”

  “How do I know you won’t release the digital copies to the press? I’ll lose my leverage against Rocky entirely. She’ll probably send me back to Chicago, and her father will never speak to me again.”

  “Send your man with me. I will give him the flash drive and wipe the files also. And after…? As far as the public is concerned, you are my new best friend. Hai na? Parties, clubs, shopping. Every door we enter together will open more to me.”

  He’d thought Rocky’s mother was shallow, silly, concerned only with status. But she was a model of compassion in comparison to Nina. What had molded her into this monster? Or had she been born this evil? How could anyone be born to cause so much misery? How could hurting Ashraf have been written on her lifeline?

  “Hey. It’s almost over.” Rakhee stroked her fingers across his chest, soothing him. Her palm flattened over his heart as if to catch the erratic beat. “A couple of more minutes, right?”

  Taj breathed her in. Her calm, her strength, her assurances. The voices on the other side became an indistinct buzz of details and faux pleasantries and goodbyes. It was she who kissed his throat now, who licked his jaw and chastely brushed his lips. She stoked his desire and brought his anger and disgust to heel.

  When at last Kamal and Nina made their exit, he and Rakhee nearly burst from behind the bedroom doors like characters in a slapstick physical comedy—without the laughing track.

  Caroline sat on the sofa, her hands knotted in her lap, her face pale and tight. “It’s done. I hope.” If she noticed they were breathless, disheveled and still wound up with a hundred different passions, it did not show in her eyes. No, there he saw the same determination that her daughter wore like spectacles. Determination…and an accusation as well: What have you pulled my child into?