Chapter Two
Lilavati
Istomp up the stairs to the restaurant my obnoxious cousin has chosen for her bridal shower breakfast. Who the hell does a breakfast bridal shower? Emily, that’s who.
My day started out craptastic, and it’s only got worse. I mean, what kind of idiot stands around in a car park with their car door wide open? Naked.
Clearly, he was in the wrong. And when I call him tomorrow, I’ll tell him so. If he thinks my insurance is going to pay to fix his broken-down old banger of a car, he’s sadly mistaken.
And now I have to deal with my mother. And grandmother. I can’t even anaesthetise with too much champagne because I have to drive home. In a broken car.
“Darling. You’re here at last,” my mother exclaims as though I’m hours, and not just thirty—okay, maybe forty-five—minutes late. She scans my bold—alright, deliberately provocative outfit. “I thought you were going to wear the pretty floral dress I bought you last week?”
A dress I hate, but her intentions were good, if a little self-serving. She knows I rarely get time to shop, and she didn’t want me wearing something inappropriate, which is how she describes my style, such that it is. She was probably frightened I’d turn up in my scrubs.
Mum tugs at the hem of my halter top and smooths down the neckline.
“It’s much more feminine. But heaven forbid you listen to me.
” Mum doesn’t draw breath for me to comment as she pulls me into the crowd towards where my grandmother and Aunt Caroline—Emily’s mother—are sitting.
I whip an entirely necessary mimosa from the tray of a passing server as we go.
The room is loud with the chatter of nearly a hundred women, most of whom are not bothering to listen to anyone else because they’re too busy trying to be heard themselves.
I stand out in this room like a broken toe.
Almost every head is blonde, some natural, some care of the very best and most expensive salons in Sydney.
There are a couple of redheads, and of course, my grandmother is a dignified grey.
But mine is the only head of truly dark hair.
Courtesy of my never-to-be-discussed father. Or so I have to assume.
On occasions like these, I feel even more like a cuckoo in the nest than usual.
Which is why my mother is fussing over what I’m wearing.
It should’ve been a nice, soft floral. A garden party dress.
Or—God forbid—a nice twinset. So I don’t stand out any more than I already do.
But it doesn’t matter what I wear, I don’t fit in. And I don’t really want to.
Which wouldn’t be that big of a deal. Except that I’ll soon be turning thirty, and I’m not married. And now my twenty-four-year-old cousin is getting married. Leaving me the only unmarried granddaughter. Cue the glaring spotlight on me. Or maybe it’s a target.
Never mind that I have a challenging and successful career and own a nice home. I don’t have a husband. And that, in the eyes of my mother and grandmother, makes me a failure.
As usual, Aunt Caroline doesn’t acknowledge me, other than to give me the stink eye, but Grandie gets right down to business.
“Look at Emily. She’s so happy to be getting married, and Julian is such a nice boy. They’ll be having babies in no time,” Grandie says with a deep sigh as I kiss her cheek. Her chest puffs up like a pigeon’s as she looks at my cousin, surrounded by her giggling, vacuous friends.
So many comebacks dance on the tip of my tongue, but I bite them back. It will only get me into trouble. All I need to do is hold my tongue for a couple of hours. Even I can manage that. Usually.
“Why were you so late, sweetheart?” Mum asks, tucking my hair behind my ear and straightening my earrings.
She’s only ever this bad in the company of her control-freak husband or my grandmother, who has never forgiven her for coming home from London pregnant.
Their judgey attitudes bring out the worst in her.
And today she looks particularly rattled.
“I had to work last night. There was an emergency. I slept through the alarm.” I wasn’t helped by the idiot in the car park.
If his door hadn’t been open, I wouldn’t have hit it.
Even as I think this, I have to acknowledge that I wasn’t entirely fair to Naked Guy.
I mean Ant. He was right. Unmoving vehicle versus moving vehicle is a no-brainer for who’s at fault.
“Oh, dear. You work too hard.” Mum frowns.
“Yes. No wonder you haven’t got a husband with those bags under your eyes,” Grandie says with a tsk. Ouch. I thought I did a good job of covering the shadows under my eyes.
“If a couple of dark circles can scare a man off, he’s not the man for me.” I can’t help it. I know I shouldn’t, but jeez.
“Or perhaps it’s that sharp tongue scaring them off.
You’ll never meet a nice boy with an attitude like that,” my grandmother says archly.
Mum looks miserable and fidgets with her necklace before she takes a big gulp of her mimosa, which, if it’s anything like mine, is more juice than champagne, sadly.
“But I have the solution.” Grandie lifts a hand heavy with diamonds to fluff her short silver hair.
“Emily’s fiancé has an older brother. He’s a computer engineer.
Very successful. Single. And from such a nice family.
I’ve spoken with their mother, and she thinks you’d be a good match.
You’ll meet him at the wedding. He’s in the bridal party.
” My grandmother looks very pleased with her scheming.
“What makes you think I don’t have a date?” I don’t, of course. But she doesn’t know that.
Aunt Caroline makes a sound of disbelief and rolls her eyes. My grandmother snorts.
“And who would that be, hmm? A divorced doctor having a midlife crisis and looking for a young fling? A male nurse? An orderly? When would you have met a nice, suitable boy when you work all the time?”
I hate that she’s right. Not that there’s anything wrong with male nurses or orderlies, except in Grandie’s snobby eyes. But she’s right that I don’t have time to meet anyone. Suitable or otherwise.
I’m saved from having to answer by Emily, who has a sixth sense for when a conversation is not about her and looks up to see me with Mum and Grandie. She wastes no time in coming over.
“Lili!” she screeches, throwing her arms wide as though she’s thrilled to see me, which I know for a fact she’s not.
“I’m so glad you could make it. Grandie told me you couldn’t find a date for the wedding.
But don’t worry, we’re going to set you up with Julian’s brother, Miles.
He’s dateless too. He’s a bit boring, but a nerd like you, so you’ll get along great.
” I love the way my family can slip those knives in, right between my ribs, without any medical training whatsoever.
Fortunately, the ma?tre d’ chose that moment to tap a glass and ask us all to sit.
I send up a thanks to the universe that since I’m not in the bridal party—according to my mother, Emily feels I don’t have the right aesthetic, by which she means colouring—I’m at one of the furthest tables from both my grandmother and the blushing bride.
Emily and I aren’t close. It’s not just the age difference. Six years isn’t all that much. But we have nothing in common. She grew up with the sole ambition of marrying well and becoming a society wife and mother. I grew up wanting—much to my grandmother’s consternation—a career.
If I were a boy, my grandmother would be telling everyone she knows all about her grandson, the successful doctor.
Sadly, since I’m a girl, the only acceptable career is motherhood, with a side of charitable work, or a little job in an art gallery or upmarket boutique, to protect my brain from total atrophy.
By the time brunch is over and Emily is halfway through opening the mountain of gifts—most of which seem to be virginal white lingerie, which must surely have been given with a sense of irony—I need some air.
Grabbing a fresh glass of mostly juice, I slip through the doors onto the balcony and lean against the railing.
If I have to hear the words ‘nice boy’ or ‘good family’ one more time, I might scream.
Emily is about to marry one. My other cousin Sarah has already married one. It’s past time I did too.
But I don’t want a nice boy. If I get married at all, I want a man. Preferably not too nice, if you know what I mean. I want someone who makes my blood fizz. Unlike my family, I honestly don’t care what his family are like, where he’s from or what school he went to.
Sure, I’m self-aware enough to know he also has to be intelligent, successful and driven.
A man who’s happy in a dead-end job will bore me in a heartbeat.
He needs to have his own stuff going on, his own passions, so he doesn’t need constant attention and validation from me.
However, without the fizz, all the rest is nothing.
So what I’m looking for is a unicorn. And given how little time I have to do the looking, I doubt it’ll happen any time soon.
Speaking of blood fizzing, Naked Guy—with actual clothes on at last—is across the road at a little café, wiping down tables and adjusting umbrellas.
He may have got under my skin earlier with his smirk and his unflappable-ness, but I’ve got eyes in my head. And he certainly gave me something to look at.
I’m pretty sure you’d find a picture of this guy under the entry for beach bum in the dictionary.
He’s tall and broad without being bulky.
And given how we met, I could see that the theory about big feet was, in his case at least, true.
From the top of his sun-bleached, messy blond head to the tips of his tanned toes, all six foot something of him is hard to ignore.
Add in the sky-blue eyes, the two-day scruff and the tattoos and I challenge any woman to remain unmoved.
What I doubt he’d be described as is a ‘nice boy’. He’s a man. And he looks like he knows his way around being very naughty indeed.
He turns suddenly, almost as if he senses me watching him. Our gazes connect before I have time to look away, and I feel it all the way to my toes. With a lingering detour at the top of my thighs.
Even from this distance, I can read the smug expression on his face at having caught me looking. God, he’s annoying. Hot. But annoying.
He’s the antithesis of everything my mother and grandmother are looking for. Exactly the kind of man they’d hate.
An idea starts to form. An idea that could simultaneously solve my problems and irritate Grandie.
Win. Win. Bonus points, I’m unlikely to fall for the kind of guy who is apparently happy to make coffee for a living.
As I said, I need someone with a bit of drive.
Someone who’s as busy with their career as I am with mine.
So, a beach bum barista—no matter how hot—is unlikely to hold my interest for long.
“What are you doing out here all on your own?” Mum asks, sliding the glass door closed behind her, cutting off the high-pitched chatter and squealing from inside.
“Just getting some air.”
Mum fusses with the bracelet on her wrist. “You know your grandmother means well. She wants you to be happy.”
That’s a charitable way to look at it. Alternatively, you could argue she wants to be able to brag to her friends at Bridge Club about the lovely family her granddaughter has married into. And soon enough, Emily’s wedding will be old news. She’s trawling for fresh kill.
“I know, but I am happy. Why can’t you all believe that?” I resist the urge to stamp my foot.
My mother looks conflicted. I know she’s frightened I’ll end up alone. Which, for her, seems like the worst outcome, but for me is less awful than marrying a chinless wonder. Or a controlling arsehole like my stepfather.
“We’d just like to see you settled—”
“With a nice boy. I know,” I interrupt before Mum can finish her thought. She pulls my head to her shoulder and strokes my hair in a way she never does when her husband is around. In a way that makes me yearn for the barely remembered time before he came along.
I wonder if naked guy is still watching from the other side of the road, and what he makes of the scene.
“And your grandmother is right. Emily’s brother-in-law would be a good match.”
I pull away and speak before I even have time to think it through.
“Well, that’s not going to work. I’m already seeing someone.”
“What? Who? Why didn’t you tell us?” There’s a strange expression I can’t quite interpret on my mother’s face, but excitement raises her voice an octave or two.
That’s an easy one to answer.
“Because whenever I tell you things like that, it turns into a whole big thing. And to be honest, I don’t need Grandie interfering.”
“Well, that’s wonderful news.” Mum’s earnest tone almost has me spitting out the truth.
Until I think of Emily’s fiancé. I’ve only met him once, but I fell asleep three minutes into the conversation.
While standing up. If his brother is anything like him, I’d sooner become a nun.
And frankly, I don’t want to risk passing on that weak chin and overbite to my potential children.
“Is it serious?” she asks eagerly.
I can’t quite get the lie through my teeth, so I shrug and nod.
“I’ll speak to Emily about adding him to the guest list. And what’s his name? What does he do?”
Damn, I should’ve thought this through before I opened my big mouth.
“He’s a barista,” I blurt. My mother looks a little taken aback. That won’t fly with my grandmother. But that was part of the half-arsed, half-baked, ill-thought-through plan. There’s no backing out now. “His name is Ant.”