Bollywood and the Beast (Bollywood Confidential) Page 11

  It wasn’t done at all.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  They didn’t have to wait long, just a few hours for Kamal to go to Nina’s and return, but it still felt like months. Like watching the hands on an ancient grandfather clock tick down to high noon. Rocky wanted nothing more than to spend the time curled up in Taj’s arms, but that was impossible with her mother as part of their conspiracy.

  Caroline had suddenly gone from hating her little vacation in the boonies to shadowing Rocky’s every step, following her from the gardens to the roof to the kitchen and peppering her with questions. How was the shoot? Had she gotten any new job offers? Was she happy? “Are you doing okay here, sweetheart? Really?”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?” She flopped into what she’d come to think of as “her” chair in the front room. “I mean, aside from the soap opera sidebar with the Bitch From Hell, it’s been really good. I like being here. I like being with him.” Because that’s what her mom was really asking, wasn’t she? No matter how gung-ho she’d been to team up against Nina, Caroline still didn’t approve of Taj. “He’s more than just what you see, Mom. It’s not all scars and burns and attitude.”

  “You might know that. But does he?”

  She was spared more insightful rhetorical queries when the front door rattled open—the only noise to signify that Kamal was home, since he moved like a dancer, always floating across the floor. Taj moved in concert, appearing from the depths of his lair with his measured, careful stride. She could watch him walk for days. How could such a seemingly simple thing be so precious?

  He glanced over to where she stood, just beyond the threshold of the great room, as if he could feel her watching him. The smile he flashed was brief, replaced by a brisk, businesslike glower at his former caretaker. “Do you have it?”

  “Yes. She told me this was all of it.” Kamal held a file folder, and he pulled a basic black flash drive from one pocket. “I erased original copies from her computer and mobile phone.”

  It could’ve been dialogue from one of Taj’s pre-accident thrillers. It was almost funny how macho they sounded. “Will that be enough?” her mother asked, coming to stand beside her. Like they were evening the odds against the guys. “How do we know this is going to stop her?”

  The female solidarity was nice, but unnecessary. “We don’t,” Rocky answered before either Taj or Kamal could. “The important thing is that she doesn’t have any leverage anymore. So even if she badmouths Ashraf to the press, she has no proof to back it up. Right? That’s what we’re counting on?”

  “Haan. That is what we are counting on,” Taj confirmed, trading some sort of long, cryptic look with Kamal, who tucked the flash drive away like his pocket was a deep, dark hole in the ground. “But I do not think Nina will speak to anyone after this. When she understands that Caroline will not open any doors for her, it should become clear just how many are shut against her.”

  Coming from anyone else, it would’ve sounded rational. But his soft, dangerous voice sent shivers down Rocky’s spine. Both the fun kind and the ominous kind. She followed his gaze to Kamal and back again. “Did you two threaten her or something? Is that what happened? Oh my God…this is not a movie. This is real life—”

  “It is Ashraf’s life.” Kamal interrupted her before she could really get a lecture going. “We made him safe, Rakhee Mem. We will keep him safe. That is all that matters now.”

  Taj crossed to stand before her. In either deference to her mother—which was absurd, since he didn’t defer to anybody—or a rare gesture of chaste chivalry, he took her hand and raised it to his lips. His mouth was a fierce promise as it brushed her knuckles. “I would do the same for you. I will always keep you safe.”

  And there was the rub, wasn’t it? Rocky knew that nothing about Taj Ali Khan would ever be safe. She swallowed, blinking back the sudden damp stinging her eyes.

  “Mom’s right, you know. What if it’s not over? How can we be sure?” she demanded, hoping the worry for Ashraf hid the poorly timed concern for herself. “How do we know? We can’t just hope things will work out. Maybe we need assurances. Maybe we need leverage against her. What if she didn’t let Kamal erase everything?”

  “Ugh.” Her mother made an indelicate and out-of-character noise of annoyance. “This means I have to see that woman again, doesn’t it?”

  Taj barely acknowledged Caroline’s reaction. Instead, he squeezed Rocky’s fingers and locked his gaze with hers. Communicating some sort of message she couldn’t even decipher. “Okay,” he said simply. “If an assurance is what you need, Rakhee, then an assurance is what we will get.”

  When the car pulled in to the drive, he half-expected the whole household to be out to greet him, a line strong, welcoming the Chote Saab home. But the only person standing in front of the haveli’s grand doors was Usha, the pallu of her sari already clutched to her face to muffle noisy, happy tears.

  It was silly, of course. Taj was not one for such displays. Rocky was likely on set in the city. And Kamal…

  Ashraf’s chest ached, more at the thought that Kamal’s absence was so glaring to him than at the absence itself. Why? How? He couldn’t conceive of how this man had come to mean so much to him in such a short time. But there it was: this feeling, this need. When he closed his eyes, Kamal was there, dark and strong and beautiful. Steadying him with those terribly capable hands. Touching him lightly, gently, like he was something to be treasured, not used and tossed away.

  “Chote,” he whispered, each syllable like a caress, matching the light brushes of his fingertips as he urged Ashraf back onto the bed. “You are safe with me.”

  “I don’t feel safe.” It was half-joke, half-serious, because his whole body felt as though he were perched at the edge of a precipice, dangling high above the ground. The adrenaline rush, the wind in his lungs, not knowing whether he should climb or fall…

  “Kamal,” he gasped, grazing his knuckles along the other man’s beard-roughened jaw. “Tell me what to do.”

  “Simply hold on. Hold on to me.”

  There were innocent visions…and ones far less so. They’d begun plaguing him just a few nights before his release from the hospital. The sorts of things he’d never allowed himself to feel, the things Nina had never let him enjoy without the accompaniments of shame and guilt. Kamal now starred in his fantasies nightly, hourly, as if he did not belong anywhere else but in Ashraf’s arms.

  The fresh-cut grass was a soft, fragrant carpet against his bare back. Marigolds danced in the periphery of his vision. But the most stunning feast for his senses was above him. Kamal, kneeing apart his thighs, coming to rest between them. A carved god of a man, all angles and lines and hard-won smiles…

  “Ahem. Saab?” The driver’s cough drew him from the memories, flushed and choking on a breath as he realized the car had been stopped for several minutes while he sat unawares.

  Ashraf hurried to gather himself and step out to greet Usha while his belongings were pulled from the boot and taken into the house. He hugged the teary housekeeper, ignoring her scandalized squawks about place and propriety—something he’d picked up from Rocky, no doubt—and followed her inside.

  His brother sat in the front parlor, making a surprisingly poor show of not caring that Ashu was home. A newspaper sat open on his knees. His head was tilted forward, hair obscuring his eye so that even if he was reading, he could not be absorbing much from the text. And his gruff “Welcome!” did not seem rasping from annoyance but, rather, from some mixture of fondness and concern. “You are looking well, Ashu,” he added, perhaps realizing that this was one scene he’d scripted poorly. He closed up the paper, folding it into neat quadrants before placing it aside.

  “I am feeling well.” So much better than that terrible day on the chaath. When only Taj had stood between him and oblivion. “Thank you. I do not know what would have happened without you, Bhaiya.”

  “Kuch nahin. Nothing.” Of course, he wouldn’t stand for such words. For any
acknowledgment of help or heroism. He huffed, waving dismissively. “Why are you thanking me? Go and thank Rakhee when she and her mother come home from the city. She is your heroine, na?”

  On camera, perhaps. In truth, she was Taj’s heroine. First, last and always. He hid a smile, and then hid even more as he feigned casual interest and asked, “And Kamal? Where is he?”

  “Kamal?” At last, his stubborn brother quit his pretense of dry detachment. He looked up, meeting Ashraf’s gaze with an uncanny knowing. As if he even knew secrets that Ashu himself had not yet deciphered. “He has gone out also. I don’t know when he will return.”

  Was it pity or sympathy in Taj’s voice? Did it matter?

  Ashu let the questions chase him up to his room, and he left the answers on the other side of the door.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  The restaurant was just below intolerably chichi. “I’m hardly going to take her someplace top tier,” her mother had sniffed while hammering out the details of their—hopefully—final Nina trap. Frankly, Rocky couldn’t really tell the difference. Crowded even for lunch, the trendy bistro was practically a wall-to-wall of Delhi elite. Politicians rubbed elbows with actors, who dangled their goods in front of producers and directors. All while pretending to eat overpriced fusion Caesar salads and soy kebabs.

  Rocky had made a reservation a half hour earlier than Caroline and Nina’s, picking a table with a good view of the rest of the bustling, sunny room. That she wore giant, face-obscuring, bug-eyed sunglasses was no big thing. Half the clientele, men and women alike, were doing the same. “You can come too, you know,” she’d told Taj.

  “Because that would be so inconspicuous?” He’d chased the snark with a dismissive hand wave, turning back toward the television, where some sporting event was poised to absorb all his attention.

  It had been on the tip of her tongue to point out that they were actors. That makeup and disguise were part of their stock in trade. It would take all of five minutes to sweep his hair forward over his face and perch a wide-brimmed hat on his head. But his argument wasn’t really about standing out. It was about walking out. About leaving the haveli and venturing into Delhi for the first time in God only knew how long.

  She could’ve begged. Pleaded. Used the “Do it for me?” emotional blackmail that a few of her characters had certainly employed on the big screen. But what was the use? She knew he wouldn’t do it for her. He couldn’t. Not even for himself. Besides, Ashraf was scheduled to come home from the hospital today, and someone had to be there to welcome him…even if that someone was generally the least welcoming person in the house. Taj would grumble. He would scowl. He would pretend he wasn’t deliriously happy to see his baby brother alive and safe and well. But inside, he’d embrace it. He’d hold Ashu as close as he held her.

  So she’d do this for both of them—watch the last act play out, as Kamal, still playing driver and all-around henchman, brought her mom and Nina to the shopping district and dropped them off for some girl time. Unlike Taj, he was more than happy to play an active role.

  Like she’d called him up by thinking about him, Kamal came in through the terrace entrance to join her at her table. He’d gotten into the spirit of things, surprisingly. Mirrored shades sat atop his head. His pale blue shirt was starched and screamed of money, as did his tailored black slacks. The man even had an accent scarf. A scarf.

  “Wow,” she couldn’t help but gasp as he sat down, angling himself so he, too, would have a clear view of the proceedings. “You look fantastic. Did you keep all of that in the glove compartment or what?”

  “No. The boot.” Something that was almost a smile played across his mouth. “But I could have worn it while driving also. That woman’s kind…they do not truly notice the help.”

  It didn’t escape her that he avoided using Nina Manjrekar’s name. As if just the act of doing so was too repulsive to contemplate. She had to wonder, again, what exactly he’d said to Nina or done to her to get the flash drive of Ashu’s pictures. It couldn’t really have rendered him forgettable, could it? Because even at his most subtle, Kamal was not a man who left no impression. But before she could ask, her mother’s voice filtered through the clink of silverware and hubbub of Hindi, English and Marathi conversation.

  “Yes, I’m certain,” she was telling someone. Probably a manager. “I made a reservation for one o’clock, and I expect to keep it. I wasn’t aware that I had to provide a guest list.”

  Whatever the other person said was too low, too accommodating, to bounce off the walls. Then a tall, slender hostess, who probably hoped to walk a fashion runway at some point in her life, led Mom and Nina to a center table. Very public. Very strategic.

  It was strange to finally see the woman who’d wreaked so much havoc and caused so much pain. Rocky had assumed she’d be bigger—larger than life, like all memorable cinema villains—but she was shorter than Caroline. A petite, dangerous package, Nina was all curves—except where she was smooth. Her forehead alone made Rocky take back all her unkind comments about her mother’s Botox habits. And her makeup was bold and dramatic, like she wanted people to see her traffic-light-red lips from three miles away. People were certainly looking now.

  The buzz began even before Nina and Mom took their chairs and set down a bunch of high-end shopping bags, a low hum of conversation that had a distinctly different energy than before—one punctuated by the shifting of chairs and the clearing of throats. Rocky was actually delighted to recognize Nicky Kohli, a music producer, with someone at a table on the left and a controversial party leader seated on the right.

  She texted Taj an update, hoping the spotty cell towers between here and the haveli were feeling charitable, and settled back in her uncomfortable bamboo chair. From across the room, her mother and Nina looked like two peas in a pod—fashionably coiffed heads bent close, one fair and one dark, each of them dressed to the nines in designer dresses and shoes. They looked like the proverbial ladies who lunch. No doubt Caroline had gotten Nina welcomed back into all kinds of expensive boutiques.

  “What do you imagine they’re speaking of?” Like her, Kamal was intently focused…and, like her, he was vaguely appalled by the whole scenario.

  “Clothes, shopping, men?” she suggested. She and Caroline had worked out a loose script beforehand, and she had no doubt her mom could stick to it. But the shallow topics were all that she and Nina had in common. For all of Rocky’s visions of Mom as some vapid Ugly American who spent her life at the spa, she was leaps and bounds more human than that thing masquerading as a woman.

  “Men.” Kamal repeated the word softly, as a statement and not a question. “Ashraf.” This too was a matter of fact. “Ashraf was just a boy when they met first. A boy.”

  His disgust was palpable. So arresting that she actually stopped watching her mom for a moment so she could try and piece together his puzzle.

  That, of course, was when shit went down.

  “You bitch!” Just like it had in the library, her mother’s voice carried like that of a veteran stage actress. “That is a vicious lie!” she cried, rising from her chair and throwing down her napkin. “I trusted you,” she was saying, as Nina scrambled from her own seat in alarm. “I took you in as a friend. And you’ve been telling people that my daughter…that my daughter is…” Her shuddering breath was a melodramatic thing of beauty.

  “Nahin! Nahin! Caroline…Caroline, stop this.” Nina was trying to wrest control of the scene, to imbue her voice with menace.

  But all eyes were on Mom, the lone white woman in the room. “I know what you are, Nina Manjrekar. I know what you did in Mumbai. To that poor family. Don’t you dare think you can get away with that here,” she raged. Rocky half-expected her to bite her knuckles. She had to bite her own to stop from laughing at the image.

  Kamal wasn’t as amused. He was leaning forward, hands knotted so tightly his knuckles stood out in sharp relief.

  Nina’s red lips were similar hard bumps. “Caroline,
you know I have in my possession—”

  “Connections?” Caroline swiftly interrupted before she could mention the dirty photos of Ashraf. She swept her arm wide, encompassing the entire room. “Do you really think you still have any weapons? Who is going to listen to you? Who here is going to help you?”

  Chairs shifted again. Eyes averted. People actually bit into the kebabs they’d been poking at just minutes earlier. Delhi society closed ranks.

  And when her mom’s arm came back around, she just happened to knock into a glass of wine. The goblet took off like a shotput, arcing red liquid all across the front of Nina’s expensive designer suit before falling to the ground and shattering.

  “Oh.” Caroline blinked, all innocent eyes and distress. But she didn’t apologize. Or move to help the other woman with the spreading stain.

  It was kind of amazing. But not as amazing as watching Nina Manjrekar’s face crumple like a wet tissue. Moments later, even as she cried, protested and resorted to calling Caroline all kinds of unprintable Hindi names—Rocky would have to ask Taj what they all meant—the hostess and the manager calmly escorted her out the door. Her outraged threats and wails lingered for only a minute or two before getting lost in the din of the bistro returning to business as usual.

  Her mom just sat back down, put her napkin in her lap, and gestured for a waiter.

  Rocky almost wanted to applaud. Except… “But she said she still has photos…” Kamal made a low sound that was either a laugh or a growl. If it was the latter, he’d probably caught the habit from Taj like a communicable disease. But his hands weren’t tensed anymore. No, he actually relaxed them, palms flat on the tabletop. “Okay, spill it,” she demanded. “What did you do?”