Incense and Sensibility (The Rajes #3) - Sonali Dev Page 0,53
brother. It was legendary, the things they had gotten away with because she had cleaned up after them without breathing a word to anyone.
“What are you looking for? Does Nisha need something? You’re such a good brother, to help your sister on her mehendi day when all the men are off in the den.” He heard the worshipfulness in her voice and felt like a prized fake.
“She needs a safety pin.” He hadn’t said Nisha, so that meant he wasn’t lying, right?
She hurried over, her movements just as efficient in a sari as they were in trousers. Within seconds she had extracted a handful of safety pins from the back of one of the drawers, all crammed with more trinkets and gizmos than he’d seen in his entire life. Usually he hated when someone acted like his sisters were somehow different from him. But, man, Nisha, get a grip!
He gave J-Auntie a quick hug, making sure he didn’t thank her quite as profusely as he wanted to, because he did not want to make her suspicious. He didn’t break into a run until he was outside the house where no one could see him.
“You still here?” He leaned in to the bathroom door and tried not to let his voice sound breathless.
“No.” Just that one word.
It wasn’t even that funny.
Come on, it was hilarious. And incredibly sweet.
“If you open the door, I’ll slip it to you.”
She did, and he did.
Another silent minute went by.
“Yash?”
“India?”
“Have you ever secured a halter with a safety pin?”
“Do it all the time.”
He heard her smile across the door. Then it opened.
Her cheeks were still flushed. And smooth, and glowing. Her head was held high as though she were trying to convince herself that this was not at all embarrassing. One hand held the straps of her halter top at the back of her neck, the other one held the safety pin out to him.
He took it and she turned around, giving him her back. A gesture of trust that hit him square between his ribs.
“You just hold the two ends of these straps I’m holding together and then run the pin through them to secure them together.”
“Easy,” he said as breezily as he could manage. She trusted him to do this and he would rather die than let her feel uncomfortable for even a moment.
In two quick movements, with all the focus he was famous for, he accomplished the mission and stepped away, giving her space. “There, done.”
When she turned to him she had the oddest expression on her face. “You look like you climbed a mountain.” With that she burst into laughter.
For a few moments they stood there, winded with laughter, and the exertion of wrestling fashion, and whatever else was spinning around them. Then she thanked him and started to walk to the door and he realized that he did not want her to leave.
“India?” When he’d heard his sisters say her name, he’d thought it a bit strange to name a child that. Especially a child who had no apparent connection to the country. Now he found that there was a magic to saying it and a perfection to the way it fit her.
“Yash?” She said his name the way his family said it.
His brain raced. All he knew was that he did not want her to leave. “I need help with something, do you mind helping?”
“Sure. What is it?”
Crap. Usually his brain worked faster than this. “The boxes, thanks for helping me move them. I think we need to move them again.”
She raised one eyebrow. God, she was totally on to him. “Sure. Where are we taking them?”
His back groaned. “If we leave them here and someone comes in before I can get them to Nisha and Neel’s home, then the surprise will be ruined.”
“Where did you want to move them?”
That’s how they spent the next half hour, moving boxes that weighed as much as an overfed horse back and forth across the pool house, just so he could learn more about her. She’d just finished grad school, but she only ever wanted to work in her family’s yoga studio. There was a clarity to her thoughts, an almost economic focus to her words that exposed an infinite wealth of understanding. He felt like he’d stumbled into a new universe that was waiting to unravel before him.
“Yash?” she said finally, once again putting down a box much more gently than he had.
“India?”
“I’m really having fun, but I don’t think anyone is