Prologue #2
Kabir’s stomach turned as the furious fire in his chest turned to acid burning through his heart.
“Kabs?” The soft voice stopped him before he punched the asshole in his face.
He turned and saw her framed in the doorway to the powder room that was at the end of the hall.
Her curls tumbled around her little, pixie face in wild abandon.
She was wearing ripped jeans and a tank that was crumpled and riding up, exposing the pale skin of her stomach.
But it was only when she looked up at him, met his gaze, that the fire in his chest banked.
“You’re here,” she said, a wondering note in her voice, like she couldn’t believe he was. His stupid heart did a slow roll in his chest.
“Tani, are you okay?” he asked, striding over to her. His hand raised to touch her but then curled into a fist in the air and fell back to his side. “Our mothers were worried. You weren’t taking their calls and they said you were not making sense when you called before that.”
“Of course she’s okay,” Jay answered from somewhere behind him. “Why wouldn’t she be? We’re celebrating the happiest day of our lives.”
Kabir kept his gaze on Tani’s. Her wide, hazel coloured eyes looked soft and unfocused.
“You’re here,” she whispered again.
What the fuck? Was she drunk? Or –
“What is she on?” He turned on Jay, fury riding him like a demon.
“Happiness.” Jay grinned, his smile triumphant as he faced Kabir. “And champagne, of course.”
Kabir didn’t answer. Behind him, Tani shifted, coming closer. She wrapped her arms around his waist, her cheek coming to rest between his shoulder blades. She inhaled deeply, kissed his back and murmured, again, “You’re here.”
Kabir tensed, his hands clenching to fists at his side. The demon inside him purred at her touch.
Jay’s smile dropped a little as he looked at Tani’s arms around Kabir’s waist. “Aren’t you going to congratulate us, Bro,” he asked, flashing a hard, brittle smile. “After all, we just got engaged.”
---***---
Tanisha Bakshi woke the next morning feeling like gremlins were demolishing the inside of her brain, banging away at her skull. What the hell had happened? She cranked one eyelid open and took a bleary survey of her flat. Oh good, whatever had gone down last night, at least she’d made it home.
She groaned and turned over on her side, snuggling deeper into her comforter.
A deep sigh escaped her as her tired, aching body melted into the ridiculously comfortable bed her father had got her on his last trip out to New York.
He’d taken one look at her modular, laminated bedframe and springy mattress and shaken his head.
“No,” he’d said succinctly before disappearing for the day and arriving with a moving van full of brand new luxury furniture.
“Pa!” Tani had protested. “I want to do this my way. I’ll buy a new bed when I can afford it on my pay cheque.”
“No daughter of mine is sleeping on a piece of cardboard masquerading as a bed.” Her father had fixed a ferocious glare at her.
And Karam Bakshi’s glare was legendary. Tani’s lips curved at the memory, even as she mentally thanked her father for the bed he’d bought her.
It felt like she was sinking into a cloud with very firm support for her spine.
The door to her bedroom clicked open and she groaned again, burying her face into her pillow. She wasn’t in the mood for Jay right now. Off late she wasn’t in the mood for Jay at any time of the day or night.
“Jay,” she snapped now, one hand bracing her aching head. “What the hell did you give me to drink last night?”
“That’s what I’d like to know too.” The deep, raspy voice had her freezing in her bed, the comforter still pulled over her head, a handy cocoon.
“Kabs?” she asked cautiously, slowly emerging from the depths of her comforter.
“Tani?” he mimicked her, his low voice a mocking drawl that had her clenching her thighs together.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Tani sat up in bed and gaped at him. “And where is your shirt?”
Kabir Kashyap, the broody bad boy of rock, was standing in her bedroom wearing jeans and nothing else. Low waist jeans with the top button open, she noted, her body giving another involuntary shiver. This jeans were hanging on to his lean hips with a hope and a prayer.
Speaking of hope, something a little unbelievable and a lot wonderful dawned on her. “Oh my God,” she whispered. “Did we…” Her voice cracked. She swallowed hard, firmed it and asked, “Did we spend the night together? Did we-”
“What?” Kabir jolted like she’d prodded him with a live, electric wire. “NO!”
Okay…the horror in his voice was totally unnecessary, she thought disgruntledly.
“Then what the hell are you doing in my bedroom, half naked?” Tani pushed the comforter aside and swung her legs over the side of the bed. She hung her head, cradling it in her hands as the pounding in her temples intensified.
“We’ll get to that in a minute,” he said, glaring at her. He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the doorframe, watching her.
Tani glared back. “We’ll get to it right now,” she said frostily. “What are you doing here? And why aren’t you at your concert?”
Kabir’s glare faded, concern overshadowing everything else. “Tani what day do you think it is?” He came forward and tried to pry her right eyelid open wider with his thumb, peering into her eyes like it held all the secrets of the universe.
Tani smacked his hand away. “It’s the day of your concert, isn’t it? I got the passes you sent me. Jay and I are going to be there. But why are you here?”
Kabir’s face went carefully blank, his eyes burning into her, like dark coals that simmered beneath the surface.
Unease swam through Tani as she met his gaze. “What?” she asked, her voice dropping an octave. “What am I missing?”
“Apparently, a whole day or night,” Kabir said quietly. “What’s the last thing you remember, Tani?”
A whole day or night? She stared at him blankly.
“Tani!” His quiet voice was an inexorable demand.
“I, um,” she tried to think back. “I finished work, went to a pilates class and then came back to the building. Jay came over, saying there was something he wanted to talk to me about.” Her brow furrowed as she tried to place what happened next. “We…”
It was fuzzy. She could remember patches of an argument or was it just a heated conversation, her head pounded too hard for her to be sure.
“We need to get you to the hospital.” Kabir sounded grim. “I want to have you tested.”
“Tested?” Flummoxed, she stared at his hard profile, her gaze tracing that familiar, beloved, scruffy, stubbled jawline. “Tested for what?”
“Drugs?”
Tanisha’s jaw dropped open. “What the fuck did you just say to me?”
“Tani, listen to me. When I-“
A pillow hit him smack in the face before he could finish whatever rubbish he was spouting. She wasn’t even aware of throwing it but she realised she was already clutching a second one and taking aim. She paused, hand clenched in the pillow.
“How dare you?” she seethed. “I don’t do drugs and you know it. Just because you and your bandmates and your groupies are smoking, inhaling, and shooting up shit doesn’t mean that-“
“Stop. You’re embarrassing yourself.” His voice was granite hard. “When you called your mother last night, you were babbling. The line dropped and they couldn’t get through to you or to Jay.” Saying Jay’s name seemed to cause him physical pain. “So they asked me to come over and check on you.”
Embarrassing yourself. The words were a shameful echo of the past, of a time she really didn’t want to recollect.
“Okay.” Her voice was shaky as she processed the information he was spewing at her. “You checked on me. As you can see, I am okay. So, you can leave now.”
“You’re not okay.”
Tanisha sighed. “Kabs-“
“YOU ARE NOT OKAY!” The furious roar silenced her. Kabir stalked over to where she sat, looming over her, and sending another one of those inappropriate shivers through her. His angry, molten gaze held her confused ones.
“You don’t even remember me coming to Jay’s apartment. You don’t remember me carrying you out of there. And you sure as hell don’t remember me tucking you into bed. Do you, Bug?”
Bug. The nickname sent a pang of desperate longing through her. Desperate, forlorn, and hopeless.
“Do you?” he growled again, this time right in her face. He was so close, she thought despairingly. So close and yet, so far.
“No,” she whispered, realising he was still waiting for an answer. “I guess I had more to drink than I could handle. But drugs…Come on Kabs, you don’t believe that of me, do you?”
“No, I don’t.” He seemed about to say something else but stopped himself.
“I remember everything else,” she told him hastily, hoping he’d drop this insane insistence on going to the hospital.
“Do you?” He looked at her, his gaze hooded.
For a split second, she saw his eyes drop to her lips before he dragged them back to meet her own.
Heat shot through her, pooling in her core as she looked at his ruggedly beautiful face.
Not hers, she reminded herself. Her Kabs, he would always be her Kabs, but he was not hers.
She nodded now, biting her lower lip to stay focused. His eyes turned molten, the same heat in her body seeming to swarm through them.
“Then,” he whispered, his voice tight with a pain neither of them would ever voice. “Do you remember getting engaged last night, Bug?”
---***---
“Engaged?”
She stared at him, her eyes huge and stunned. Something moved in Kabir’s chest, something that should never have existed.
“What do you mean engaged?” she yelped, holding the comforter close to her chest like it was going to protect her from the news.
Kabir glanced down to the hand clutching the comforter. Tanisha’s eyes followed, widening when she caught sight of the massive diamond sparkling on her ring finger.
“What the actual fuck?” she breathed, horror suffusing her face.
Kabir’s lips quirked up in a small smile at her reaction. There was no denying that it brought him some measure of joy to know that she shared his horror at the idea of her marrying Jay.
“Bug, let’s get you checked out okay?” Kabir said softly.
“I’m not an idiot, Kabs,” she said, still staring at the ring. “I would never do drugs. I barely even drink.” That was said with a pointed stare in his direction.
“Is it possible that he slipped something in your drink?”
Temper sparked in those beautiful eyes of her, the colour of warm, molten honey.
“You can’t be serious?” Tanisha dropped the comforter and shoved out of the bed.
Kabir’s gaze dropped to the long, slim legs visible beneath her nightshirt.
He swallowed hard and looked away. He really needed to get a grip.
Taking a deep breath, he stepped away from the bed, standing closer to the door, putting as much space between them as was possible in the small bedroom.
“I am serious,” he said, scrubbing a hand through his hair and struggling not to look at her.
“I know you don’t like Jay,” Tanisha raged in her corner of the room. “But to suggest that my fiancé drugged me-“
“So, he’s your fiancé now?” Something bitter and ripe turned in his stomach as he heard her use the word.
In response, Tanisha lifted her hand, the diamond winking in the lights of her bedroom.
“You can’t marry him, Tani.”
Her eyebrows shot up, her smudged eyeliner giving her raccoon eyes. Angry raccoon eyes.
“Oh, I can’t?”
She walked over to where he stood, forcing him to take a step back to keep some distance between them. But Tani kept coming. When his back hit the wall, Kabir was forced to stop. She stopped right in front of him.
He took a deep breath, the soft, sweet scent of her hitting him right in the heart. “What are you doing Tani?” he rasped.
“Why can’t I marry Jay, Kabs?” she asked, her voice soft but lethal.
“He’s an idiot.”
“Maybe I like idiots.” He looked down at her to see her eyeing him challengingly.
He wanted to shake her, to force some common sense into her. “Or maybe you are an idiot.”
“Well then, we’d be perfectly matched,” she declared, grinning up at him. “Maybe that’s what makes him my soulmate.”
She turned away from him but not before he caught the angry glitter of tears in her eyes.
“Tan-“
“You should go, Kabs,” she said now. “You’ve checked on me, reported back to the mothers, and waited patiently till I slept off this weird ass champagne hangover. All your big brother duties have been performed perfectly. You’ve done your bit. Now, you can leave.”
He was being dismissed. The peasant to her princess. But that wasn’t what bothered him…
“I’m not your big brother.” The words felt like a knife to the heart, one he’d gladly take. It was far better than the alternative.
“I know,” she said quietly, keeping her back to him, not meeting his gaze. But he saw her shoulders slump as she whispered, “Believe me, I know.”
His heart ached at her visible sadness. If he could make it go away, he would. But he couldn’t. Not now. Not ever.
“Are you going to marry him, Tani?”
She turned to face him then.
“Give me a reason not to, Kabir.” Her eyes said more than her words did.
But he couldn’t.
“Do you love him, Tani?”
“You know who I love.”
She stared at him, her eyes staring into his wretched, tortured soul. He wanted nothing more than to fall to his knees before her, offering her his shredded, battered heart. The heart that only ever beat for her.
But he didn’t. He stayed in his corner of the room, his silence screaming into the small space.
Tanisha smiled sadly. “Then I guess I am going to marry him.”