5. Naina
Chapter Five
NAINA
On Wednesday morning, I was in our kitchen, considering the viability of starting an OnlyFans to pay off all the bills when Sami came stumbling into the house. Grabbing the back of a chair to steady herself, she took a moment to catch her breath.
We lived in the house which had originally been designed for the groundskeeper. After our great-grandmother turned Hollister House into the Windfield, she had used the money to renovate this house and add in extra rooms.
We had lived here our whole lives. Our mother’s flowers covered half the floor space of the living room and we carefully nurtured them so they didn’t die. Dad’s favorite recliner and throw sat in exactly the same spot, perpendicular to the TV, and neither of us had even touched it.
“What’s going on? Is the Inn on fire?” I was already getting up.
Shaking her head, she gasped, “he’s,” gasp, “here.”
Stony faced, I sat down in my chair again.
“I’m busy. We have a restaurant full of waiters to take his order.”
It had been a week since Kash had come in with his cousin.
You’re not jealous, are you?
I wasn’t sure what I had felt when I saw him with a strange woman I didn’t know. It could have been jealousy, it could have been annoyance. I barely had enough hours in the day to have a moment of peace let alone analyze my feelings about Kash.
I shouldn’t even be having any feelings where he was concerned, unless those feelings were fear and dread. Both about what I did, and the fact that his no show yesterday disappointed both Sonia and Sami. And if I was being honest with myself—which I could be in a moment of rarity—it disappointed me, too.
All the more reason to keep him away from here.
“He says he wants to talk to you and it’s important,” Sami said.
My fingers slackened as dread seized me. The invoice I had been holding fluttered to the table.
This was it.
The moment I had been waiting for since the day Kash walked into the restaurant. Okay, technically, the moment I had been waiting for was for him to remember me. Not that I thought anything would come of it now.
Oh god, I knew I shouldn’t have grown lax and given in to the flirting. If one could even call it that. Kash was probably just bidding his time before he snapped my head off for what I did to his family.
I did the crime so I must do the time. I hoped he didn’t expect me to pay him back all the money he lost because then I would definitely have to start an OnlyFans account— after I sold the Inn.
I massaged the center of my forehead where a headache thrummed incessantly.
“Let’s go.”
I followed Sami down the path that led up to the house and around the bend. The house was set back into a clearing in the trees, away from the Inn to offer some privacy to us and the guests.
We found Kash on the porch, frowning down at his phone. He was dressed more like the Sutherland heir today, in a luxurious looking dark grey suit, a white shirt left open at the collar, no tie. A bold watch adorned his wrist, and on the third finger of his right hand, he wore a gold ring carved with the Sutherland family insignia. He didn’t wear it often, but on the occasions he did, I caught glimpses of the shield of a roaring lion with Sutherland carved under it.
Everything he was wearing probably cost more than the debt I owed on the Inn. Financially, we might as well be on different planets, we were so far apart.
He looked up as I came closer, those light blue eyes knocking the breath out of me. With how attractive he was, Kash probably left scorched Earth behind. It was really unfair.
“Naina.” His mouth tilted up into a smile. The sound of my name on his lips did something to me. Which just confirmed all over again that I was bad at making decisions.
“Mr. Sutherland,” I said coolly. “You wanted to speak to me?”
Just pretend that everything is fine.
“Is there somewhere we can talk in private?”
Someone call 911 because I was about to have a heart attack.
The only private places available were my tiny office or our house. For some reason, I didn’t want to let Kash into either of those places.
“We can talk outside,” I said. It was more private than the porch, with people going in and out. Sometimes guests used the outside door for the restaurant though most preferred to walk through the Inn.
Kash waved his arm, urging me to go first. I could feel my pulse throbbing in my neck.
I led us down into the bright California sunshine. The fog from this morning had burned off, taking the chill with it. The begonias covering the porch railing scented the air.
I waved at Eli as he looked up from trimming the hedges.
“What can I help you with?” I asked, looking up at Kash.
At 5’10”, I was tall for a woman, and he was still taller than me. A few inches over 6’ easily.
“I was hoping we could help each other.” Kash slipped his phone into his suit jacket. “I’ve overheard enough of your conversations to know you’re having some financial difficulties. It wasn’t all that difficult to confirm, either. Because my family has decided to make things difficult for me, I need a wife. I’ll give you the money to renovate the Inn, I’ll even pay you five million dollars, and in return, you will marry me—temporarily, for six months or a year.”
I opened my mouth, and not a single sound came out. What?
What?
My head was about to explode. This did not go as I had expected. Oh, no, this was far worse.
Kash wanted me to…what?
Had I heard him correctly?
Had he been talking to Samira?
“I’m sorry, it’s so loud out here. What did you just say?”
There was no one out there except Kash, me, the cicadas, and Eli in the distance.
Kash stepped closer, halving the distance between us, and bent forward, keeping his eyes locked to mine. My breath stuttered and when I attempted to breath deeply to restart my heart, I was surrounded by his scent and his presence.
“I will give you the money to renovate the Windfield if you agree to be my wife. Temporarily, of course.”
“Oh, so I didn’t hallucinate that.”
Kash smirked. “You hallucinate about me a lot?”
“Only when I think you’ve lost your ever-loving mind,” I snapped.
I would have preferred it if he had threatened to destroy my livelihood. Who just woke up one day and decided they were going to offer temporary marriage to someone? How did that even work? What the hell did I know about being a billionaire’s wife?
Kash straightened with a sigh, looking over my head at the trees in the distance.
“Do you want to go for a walk with me?”
Even if I wanted to go back into those woods again, I wouldn’t with him. As it was, most of the time I pretended the woods beside the Inn didn’t even exist. We lived close enough that we weren’t in the woods.
“And become an episode of Dateline ? I don’t think so.”
“You don’t have to have sex with me, if that’s what you’re worried about,” he said.
“I’m not having sex with you regardless. We don’t need a pretend marriage for that.”
“Why do you…” He trailed off, the muscles in his jaw bunching. He turned his back on me so I turned back to the Inn. As far as I was concerned, this conversation was over.
Before I could get past him, Kash grabbed the back of my sweater, tugging me back to him. My back met the solid wall of his chest and I felt his breath stirring my hair as he bent to whisper in my ear.
“Why do you have to be so stubborn about everything? This is a good thing for you, Naina.”
I swallowed, my breath sawing in and out of me rapidly. He wasn’t touching me anywhere, and yet I felt like my body was on fire, simply from the timbre of his voice.
“And you’re doing it out of the goodness of your heart?” I asked, my voice surprisingly steady.
I wasn’t crazy. I didn’t think six months of weekly flirting meant a relationship, a situationship, or otherwise. I was entertainment for him. There was no in between where Kash and I existed together. Even if it was possible, I had doused that bridge in gasoline and turned it into a bonfire.
Still, there was no denying how solid he felt behind me. How a part of me just wanted to lean back and let him carry me. But I wasn’t going to be that person anymore.
“I don’t give anything for free, that would make me a bad businessman. I don’t do bad business.”
I felt the thumb of his other hand graze my waist as he slipped something into my pocket.
With that, he stepped back, cold air seeping in between us. I turned to look at him and he was already stepping away, walking towards a black SUV that had just pulled up the driveway.
“Call me when you’ve changed your mind,” he said over his shoulder.
It was only when the car pulled away and my senses returned to me that I remembered he had slipped something in my pocket. Reaching in, I pulled out a business card printed on thick stock. His name was spelled in neat, black letters with Sutherland Ford Vanderbilt below it. On the back was a number, probably his.
I almost considered ripping it to pieces and using it as sod for my plants but slipped it back into my pocket at the last minute.
It would make a great anecdote in twenty years.