Chapter 10
The palatial house was already bustling with people when I entered through its massive doors. Dr. Hadden caught my eye and waved me over. Instead of the usual nod, she grabbed me in an excited hug and tugged me along to be introduced to the hosts—the great-grandson of the original oil baron and his wife. They welcomed me with grace and sophistication, but with a decided warmth in their eyes.
“Your paintings are in expert hands, Jenna,” Dr. Hadden said to Mrs. Arlington. “I wouldn’t trust anyone else with them,” she added, sans smile or any other glimpse of warmth. She wasn’t complimenting, merely stating a fact.
Mrs. Arlington smiled at Dr. Hadden’s words and asked if I’d be interested in looking at the other paintings in their collection. With an overeager, possibly unprofessional nod, I accepted the offer as an unexpected privilege. She reacted with a surprised laugh and summoned Peter, one of their “people,” to show me around.
Peter escorted me out of the grand room, into the living area, and to the interior of the house, waiting patiently by every painting as I studied it. Despite my best intentions, I ended up taking long minutes to appreciate each.
“I’m sorry to take up so much time,” I said to Peter as we circled back to the grand room, where the soirée was now in full swing.
“It’s my pleasure. We see them every day, and they kind of blur in the background, you know. It was interesting to watch you admire them.”
“Oh, I could have admired them for hours, you see…” I stopped in my tracks. Ahead of us, standing out in a sea of handsome, elegant people, was Sameer.
His bright eyes scanned the crowd, and his strong smile captivated everyone in his vicinity. On his arm was an equally gorgeous, slender, very well-dressed woman. The couple owned the room, and they knew it. My heart twisted as I saw heads turning to admire the stunning pair.
“Is everything alright?” Peter asked.
“Yes, I thought I saw someone I know,” I said, turning to him, and extended my hand. “Thank you so much for showing me around, Peter. I really appreciate it.”
He smiled and resumed his duties. It took me only a quick moment to deliberate if I should approach Sameer and quell the fire between us or become invisible on the other side of the large room. There was a fair chance Sameer hadn’t seen me, so I chose the latter. There was an equally good chance I’d end up stoking the fire instead of quelling it. I considered myself a good person, but I wasn’t above petty emotions like jealousy. That woman was gorgeous. Perfect’s the word you’re looking for, my brain prodded, but I shut it down quickly.
I found Dr. Hadden talking with our host. As I thanked him for the opportunity to see the paintings, I couldn’t help bringing up the two pieces that perplexed me.
“I think I might be obsessed with them. I keep talking about them to anyone who’ll listen.” I laughed. “They’re challenging me in interesting ways and giving me grief, all at the same time.”
He nodded as if he knew exactly what I was talking about, then let a cunning smile slip. “Let me show you something.”
We followed him to a wall behind the grand room, where he pointed to a painting hiding in the shadows. When he flipped a switch for a recessed light above the frame, my eyes flickered with excitement. The signature was the same as one of the artists of my affliction.
“Do you mind if I spend some time with it?”
“Be my guest,” he said, then squared his shoulders and returned to the party.
“What do you think?” Dr. Hadden asked me.
“I’m not sure. There is something I can’t figure out.”
She patted my shoulder. “Well, have fun with it. I’m going to get another drink.”
“Sure,” I replied absently, and began my investigation.
Standing before the painting reminded me of Sameer’s words, but that particular ship had clearly sailed. I studied the piece till its colors began to blur my vision. What I needed was to rest my eyes and hit the reset button. Perhaps get a drink. I walked back into the grand room, but before I could reach the servers floating around with elegant flutes of white wine and sassy goblets of red, I ran into Sameer.
“Tara!” he said, his eyes wide with disbelief.
My heart jumped at the way his shoulders filled out the tailored jacket. In my heels, I was almost as tall as him, but in that moment, his towering figure overshadowed me.
I did my best to project disinterest. “Oh. Hi, Sameer.”
“Didn’t expect to see you here.”
“Ditto,” I replied in the same haughty tone he had used.
His gorgeous companion turned to us with a brilliant smile on her perfect face and stood close to him. Too close. She put a hand on his back.
“Aarti,” Sameer said, his eyes averted. “This is Tara. She’s Amar’s friend from Baroda. Tara, my girlfriend, Aarti.”
The slight guilt working its way into my heart disappeared fast.
I extended my hand. “Nice to meet you,” I said as her brows hit the roof.
“Wow, that’s an old connection.”
I smiled, wondering how she’d react if she knew about our real connection.
“How do you know the family?” Aarti asked.
In other words, where might I stand in the hierarchy of the social elite?
As far away as I could put myself.
“I’m appraising the paintings they’ve donated to the museum,” I said, wishing I had a drink in my hand to hold as a barrier.
Her brows flew higher. “That’s wonderful.” She looked impressed, but I couldn’t decipher if it was genuine appreciation or derision. I wasn’t good at these things. Sameer was. I looked at him.
“Aarti’s an old friend of their daughter.” Sameer’s voice, firm and guiltfree, conveyed the private message loud and clear. The friend who knew the family was the girlfriend. Sneaky, but I was impressed he had managed to keep her out of our conversation this morning.
“Yes, Mary Beth is visiting after a long time since her wedding.” Her eyes beheld Sameer in unmistakable admiration, and my stomach did a funny flip.
“Well, it was wonderful to meet you, Aarti. Nice seeing you again, Sameer.” I faked a big, broad smile, and walked away.
Grabbing a glass of red, I returned to my refuge behind the wall. It was safe to assume he hadn’t told her about buying my painting for that exorbitant amount. But judging by the designer cocktail dress on her, twenty-five thousand dollars was probably pocket change. I resisted the urge to spiral down into thoughts of him and his gorgeous girlfriend and redirected my focus to the painting.
Suddenly something clicked. The painting snapped into relief. I moved in closer, then immediately stepped back in shock and disbelief. It had been right before me all along. I just needed someone to confirm my theory, a desire that took precedence over my anger and heartbreak in that moment.
I found Sameer at the other end of the grand room, talking and smiling. As I approached, hustling quickly through people holding drinks, his smile faded.
“I’m sorry, can I borrow you for a moment?” I asked him, then looked at Aarti.
She smiled. Sameer managed a micro-expression as he set his drink aside. I felt my heart thumping against my eardrums as we weaved back to the landing behind the wall.
“I need to run something by you. See what you think.” He responded with a solemn nod. “Ok, tell me what you see.” I pointed to the painting.
His eyes stayed on me. “Tell me what you want me to see,” he replied with a gruff breath.
“Sameer,” I said sharply, and his frown ironed out. “I need a moment’s détente. This is important.” He responded with a slight nod, and I directed him to the painting once more. “What do you see?”
He scanned it, dispassionately at first, then with a series of knowing blinks. “Is this the same artist?”
“One of them.”
I pointed to specific parts. “What do you see here?”
“I…are those eyes?” He stepped closer to the wall, and I closed my hand around his wrist. I kept my eyes on him as he gazed into the canvas, his pulse steady against my fingers. Notes of musk and tobacco flirted with the drifty oud in his mysterious, seductive cologne. The smell alone was enough to make my heart race. Then I saw it—a twinkle in his eyes, a smile at the corners of his mouth—an expression I knew too well.
“These aren’t benign-looking landscapes, it’s symbolism.”
“Yes!” My fingers clenched tighter around his wrist.
“These trees look like shrouded figures, and the withering tall grass resembles prostrating humans.”
“You see that, right?”
“But the sky is pink and white, and my first thought was Love and Loss. You used pink to depict our first time together, didn’t you?” he asked, his sight trained on the canvas.
“Yes, why? What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking rapture, ecstasy. A transcendental experience of some kind.”
“Spiritual?”
My eyes were glued to the painting, but I felt him shrug.
“Or sexual.”
“Or both?” I glanced at him. “The liminal space between the sexual and the spiritual, human and nature?”
A liminal space. Wasn’t that also where we stood?
He turned to me. “That’s for the expert to figure out.” The familiar smile warmed my heart, and I found the nerve to thread my fingers through his. His touch felt the same—thrilling yet comfortable. Warm, soft, yet firm and commanding. We were so close, he could’ve kissed me without moving an inch. Perhaps I wanted him to. But he turned to the wall. “This is brilliant, Tara! You’re brilliant.”
“Couldn’t have done it without you.” I found myself grinning like a giddy teenager. “Told you I’d need your help solving the mystery.”
“You solved it. I only corroborated after the fact.”
“But two artists using similar symbolism seems untenable.”
“Maybe one was an apprentice. Did you find a difference in technique?”
“They have distinctive strokes for sure, but I was on a completely different tangent, so I’ll have to look again.”
As I savored the warmth of his hand in mine behind that sturdy, faithful wall, we found ourselves in a moment of complete bliss. On the other side was a cruel, unfair world, full of pain and heartache.
“Thank you for sharing this with me. It had been a long time. I didn’t think I had it in me anymore.”
“You’ll always have it,” I whispered. “Nothing can take that away.”
When he rolled his thumb over my hand, it was all I needed to get through one lifetime. “So, Amar’s friend, huh?”
“I was angry,” he said, his eyes back on the painting. It was then that I tried to withdraw my hand, but he tugged it back and held on tight. I stood looking into the painting but not seeing it. His grip tightened and my breath turned heavy. “You look beautiful.”
My heart began sprinting again. I waited for something to happen—a sound, a breath, a touch. Nothing changed, but my body was preparing itself for something. Then I heard it. Footsteps. High heels on the polished wood floor. I quickly disengaged my hand and backed up a respectable distance from Sameer just as Aarti came around the corner.
“There you are!” She gave a friendly smile. “What are you doing here?”
He quickly stepped toward her. “Tara wanted to show me something.”
“What?” she asked and looked back and forth between us.
“Just something silly we used to debate about in college,” he said. The smile that accompanied it could be easily misconstrued as adoration if one didn’t know him. But I could spot his discomfort from a mile away. He slid his hand around her waist and looked at me over his shoulder. “See you around, Tara.”
See you around, indeed. I threw back my wine and ambled into the grand room where the hot couple blended seamlessly among the rich and powerful. I walked over to Dr. Hadden and stayed with her until the first guests began to leave.
Out the door I walked, along the path flanked by a rambling lawn, only to end up in Sameer’s presence for the third time that night. He stood by the large marble fountain, talking on the phone, and hung up when he saw me. An uncomfortable moment elapsed as I flashed back to the swift arm he had slipped around Aarti. Fire and brimstone, that was us.
“I was waiting for you. How are you getting back?” he asked, and I felt my anger spike.
“I’m calling a cab,” I said while scrambling to open the app on my phone.
“I’ll drop you off at home.” Not can, will.
“Thank you, but I’ll be alright.”
Just then, a few other guests walked out, and he smacked me with a stern reproach in Hindi. “Zid mat karo.”
I glared at him. He glowered back and placed a call on his phone. “Aarti, I’m going to drop Tara,” he said, and started walking toward the parked cars. “She lives five minutes from mine. You head over. I’ll see you there.”
Bile rose in my throat. Furious that I followed him like an obedient pet.
“I wasn’t being stubborn. I’m furious,” I finally responded to his reprimand, as he held the car door open for me.
“Yeah? So am I,” he said and slammed the door in my face.
The car glided out of the gates. “I’d thank you for the ride, but I didn’t need it.” I was prepared for the quick glare he tossed in my direction. “Why did Aarti not drive back with you?” I asked, and he frowned hard.
“She came directly from hers.”
“But she’s going back to yours?” When that fetched me an incensed look too, I quickly added, “I’m sorry, it’s none of my business.”
“Yes, it’s none of your business, and yes, she’s spending the rest of the weekend with me, which she does whenever she can.”
Those words were carefully chosen to inflict pain, and they did, but I pushed back the humiliation.
“She’s gorgeous. You both look good together.”
“She’s not you,” he said with his eyes on the road and an angry frown between them.
“No,” I said with a sigh. “She isn’t. She’s perfect, and she’s with you.”
“You can stop it, Tara. You’ve already hurt me enough. You don’t need to take it any further. You have no right to judge me when you know nothing about my life.”
My heart wrenched. I had never intended to hurt him, but I had, twice. I looked out the window as we zipped along the empty roads. Sona said I had a choice to make. I could apologize or let it fester into an irreconcilable affair. But by the time we arrived at my apartment, I still hadn’t decided what I wanted.
“I’m texting you my number,” he said as his dexterous thumbs glided over the screen. We stood by his car underneath my building. “I’ll wait here until you’re in.”
“You don’t have to do that. I’m a grown woman. I know how to be careful.”
“Give me your apartment number,” he added as if I had silently acquiesced to his first demand.
I unleashed a resigned sigh. “1707.”
We stood in silence with the sound of an occasional car driving past in the cool night.
“Good night, Tara.” Another command.
I heard the distance in his voice. “You have every right to be angry, Sameer. But for what it’s worth, I didn’t mean those things. I’ve been holding on to a lot, and I guess I snapped. But that’s not how I really feel about you. I want you to know that.” I started walking away, then turned. “But if you’d trusted me with your past, we wouldn’t be here.”
“You didn’t give me a chance,” I heard him say, but I kept walking.
Riding up an elevator as empty as I felt inside, I entered my apartment and texted him, In. Thank you. Then, I kicked off my heels and collapsed onto the couch in tears. It felt like my heart had burst open again. How could this happen to me twice? Weren’t there rules for heartbreaks? How was it fair that I had to live through this pain again? I couldn’t decide if I was hurting more from having wounded Sameer or from the visions of him spending the weekend with his glamorous girlfriend, tumbling around in bed having sweet sex. A fresh stream of tears erupted at the thought.
My cell phone vibrated on the coffee table. I blinked away the tears and saw Sameer’s number flashing on the screen. I didn’t answer. The last thing I wanted was to make him a witness to my breakdown, a defeat of my wits against his perfect life with his perfect girlfriend. He called again. I let it go to voicemail. And again.
When the phone buzzed for the fourth time, it was a text, Open the door. I rushed to the door and peeked through the peephole to see him standing outside. I wiped my eyes and reluctantly pulled the door open.
He entered and closed it behind him.
“I knew you’d be crying,” he said, holding my arm. “I’m angry, Tara, but I can’t be the reason for your tears. Never again.” He threw his arms around me and drew me into his chest.
“I hate myself for hurting you,” I said before breaking down and lining his fancy jacket with my tears.
“It’s okay. We’re in this mess because of me.”
His hands slipped under my hair and touched my bare back. It was an accidental touch, and I felt him hesitate, but the next instant, I heard him inhale a quick breath against my cheek. His fingers dug into my skin and clutched me tighter, my breasts pressing into his hard chest. His warm breath landed on my neck, his smell reaching deep inside me and turning my knees to jelly. Wrapping my arms around him, I sank deeper against him and felt his lips draw closer to my cheek. I held my breath. I was ready. I knew what I wanted.
“Sameer, I—” It was a gentle tremor from his jacket that stunned me into silence.
He pulled out his phone. “It’s Aarti. She’s at my place. I should go.”
Like the fool that I was, I stayed in his arms a moment longer than I should’ve before I stepped out and wiped away my tears.
“Will you be alright?”
“Yes.”
“We should talk, Tara.”
“There’s no need. You just made your decision very clear.”
“Tara…”
“Leave.”
He hesitated at the door but left anyway, and I crumbled on the couch.