Chapter 31
Thirty-One
RAASHI
Raashi inhaled sharply when she caught sight of Harsh striding in with the rest of the Kodelas. She almost swallowed the olive in her martini with the deep breath she took. Choking and sputtering, she tried to escape the hand Ram was using to pound on her back.
“I’m fine,” she gasped, spitting the olive into a napkin and wiping her streaming eyes with the back of her hand.
And then they were standing in front of them.
“Alright Viper?” he asked, his gaze taking in her carefully curated look for the night.
So, she was back to being Viper, she thought, a sliver of disappointment working its way through her.
“Fine,” she said crisply, blowing her new bangs out of her eyes. He was breathtaking to look at. Clearly! Since she’d actually lost her breath and almost choked to death at the sight of him. Smooth, Raashi, very smooth.
He smirked at her before moving past her to touch her parents’ feet and take their blessings. Oh right, she was supposed to do that too. Flustered, Raashi wobbled forward on her ridiculously high heels and bent to touch Harsh’s parents’ feet. Or rather she tried to bend.
If she bent at the waist, her dress rode up and her boobs threatened to fall out of the front. Face flushed, embarrassment coursing through her, she slapped a hand on her errant cleavage to stop its bid for escape and went down on her haunches, reaching for their feet.
Clearly bewildered by her new style of asking for blessings, the older Kodelas patted her on her head like they would a good dog asking for a treat.
Mortified, Raashi got to her feet only for her gaze to collide with Harsh’s laughing one.
“I think I see my friends,” she mumbled, desperate to leave the group of people now looking at her with expressions that ranged from sympathy to confusion to amusement.
Satan followed her, right on her heels. “You have friends?” the ass queried, his hands shoved in his pockets like he was going for a relaxing, evening stroll.
“Yes,” she gritted out. Somewhere in this crowd a friend or two was scattered. Hopefully. There had to be someone from her childhood whom she’d played hide and seek with. Right?
Apparently wrong. Either they weren’t here, or they’d grown into people she didn’t recognise.
“Rash, slow down.” Harsh dodged a running child with the kind of grace she could only envy as she wobbled along on her ice picks. “You’re going to hurt yourself.”
“No, I won’t.” Pride wouldn’t let her. She would walk to the end of this lawn in her damn heels or die trying. The latter was a good possibility she thought as the heel of her right shoe sank into the lawn beneath. She was going to break her neck before she could find a friend.
“Raashi.” His voice gentled, as he caught her elbow and drew her to a halt. “Hold on a second.”
It was his use of her full name that did it. She blinked at the sudden sting of tears. “I’m not good at this,” she blurted out.
“This?” he asked, his hands going to cup both of her elbows, thumbs gently caressing the skin on the inside of them.
“People. Crowds. Social shit.”
He stared at her, his brain slowly computing the words she practically spat at him.
“Academics. Numbers. Science shit.”
“What?” Raashi stared at him, her brow furrowing.
Harsh used one thumb to smoothen her forehead out. The inside of her right elbow missed it immediately.
“I thought we were trading stories of what made us break out in hives,” he murmured.
Raashi laughed, a broken sound. “I can’t do this, Harsh. I’m not this person.” She waved a hand in the general direction of the masses of people who seemed to be having the time of their life.
“This person being?”
He rubbed the back of her neck soothingly and she broke out in goosebumps. Fuck.
“Someone who can be the life of a party. Someone who knows all the etiquette and social niceties. Someone who can be a Kodela kodalu. And when I don’t know what to do, I get angry and then my tongue has a mind of its own and it runs off at a tangent.”
“Easy,” he said, squeezing gently on the nape of her neck to stop her hysterical tirade. “Take a breath and count to ten.”
“I could count to fucking hundred and still not be ready for our wedding spectacle,” she hissed.
“Then we’ll elope,” he said calmly like he was suggesting they get a cup of tea together.
“Huh?” Raashi gaped at him. “They’ll murder us.”
Harsh paused for a second. “True,” he acknowledged after thinking it through. “Then we need to make the best of it.”
“And how do you suggest we do that when I can’t even touch your parent’s feet without my boobs trying to play peek-a-boo?”
Harsh fought the laughter struggling to break free. “You have a secret weapon, Raashi,” he smiled. “Me.”
She stared at him suspiciously. “If you’re talking about your magic dick, I don’t think that’s the solution here.”
“My dick, magical or otherwise, is the solution to everything,” he told her loftily. “But that’s not what I meant. You may not be good with people, crowds and social shit. You know who is?”
“You,” she muttered grudgingly.
“That’s right,” Harsh nodded encouragingly. “Me and my magic dick.”
An aunty walking past them shot them a horrified and disgusted look. Raashi stifled her laughter, her embarrassment from moments ago fading a little.
“You don’t have to be the Kodela kodalu,” he told her, a small smile on his face. “Just be my wife. The rest will fall into place.”
“And how do I turn myself into Harsh Kodela’s wife?” she asked, sweeping a hand over herself to encompass her new look and wardrobe. “I already tried and clearly didn’t quite manage it.”
Harsh’s smile faded, his eyes turning intense and broody. “That’s the strangest thing Viper. You never had to try. It would seem you already were exactly what Harsh Kodela needed in a wife.”
“And what’s that?” Raashi asked, her mouth dry.
“Raashi Gadde, thorns and all.”
Warmth flooded her as she stared into his eyes, trying to decipher what he was trying to tell her. Did he mean-
“Well. Well. Well. If it isn’t the lovebirds?” The smooth, cultured voice had ice sliding through her veins chasing away the heat Harsh generated so effortlessly.
Long forgotten but never gone fear and anxiety reared their ugly heads as Raashi turned to face Anant Madhavan, the past she’d never quite shaken off.