Incense and Sensibility (The Rajes #3) - Sonali Dev Page 0,65

that for a man like you this feels too out there, but you’re running for governor and you should be everyone’s governor, and being judgmental doesn’t support that.” It was the most she’d said to him about herself since they’d met again.

At Nisha’s wedding, she’d chattered on unencumbered. Unafraid to share herself. She’d shown him her hand, all of it.

Ever since they’d met after the shooting, she’d been the opposite of that. Shuttered. Focused on playing a stranger. Focused on helping him. The way she was looking right now told him she wasn’t happy that she’d said so much. Her fear of making the same mistake again, of not holding back, it was obvious.

She was not wrong.

“I’m sorry. I have sounded mocking before and I shouldn’t have.” Their gazes ended up locked together again. “But I wasn’t mocking or judging you just now.”

The skeptical twitch of her brow said she didn’t believe him.

“Ram was my grandfather’s name too.” That got her attention. “Well, it was one of his names. Shree Ram Chandra Haridas Raje. I might be missing a few more in there, but he was called Ram by his family.”

She looked embarrassed, and that made him feel as small as a rice grain, because it wasn’t like he hadn’t found all this woo-woo a little bit entertaining, and what she said about running for public office with a closed mind was absolutely right.

“I’m sorry for jumping to conclusions. That’s an incredible coincidence, though, isn’t it?” The tiniest spark of the wonder that had captivated him all those years ago lit up her face, then was gone just as quickly.

It was wrong how much he wanted it, wanted her openness, her innermost feelings, her wonder, her trust, considering how he’d thrown it away with so little regard. “It is an incredible coincidence. So, no apology needed.”

With nothing more than a nod, she placed her right hand on her left knee and twisted into it.

Again, he followed along, his stretches as tight as hers were fluid. “I never knew him. He died just before I was born. My aji—my grandmother—says I look like him. She loves telling stories about him. He was quite the revolutionary in the fight against the British. He specialized in”—Yash lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, the way his siblings did when discussing this, an inside joke he’d never shared with anyone else—“making bombs. He dug tunnels and built secret chambers all over our family home in India to hide the rebels. My aji was terrified of him being found out, because he never lied and he wouldn’t have if the British had caught him. He would have hung for his crimes.”

Her eyes shone. “You must be so proud!”

God, how was she so perfect?

Chapter Fourteen

India moved her twist to the other side. But she couldn’t block out the way Yash was looking at her. No one else had ever looked at India like that, as though he saw everything inside her. Until this moment she hadn’t realized this was what she’d been looking for in every relationship she’d been in.

Over the years she’d set up a pattern where her relationships never lasted more than six months, then a few years ago she’d given up because this full-bodied immersion in her feelings just never happened, and without it she’d felt like she was cheating herself. Her body and mind didn’t function as separate entities, she’d never known how to make them.

The last man she’d been with had changed everything about himself for her. Become vegetarian, started meditating and practicing yoga. Being with him should have been filled with peace, but you couldn’t have peace without truth and she’d felt like a liar. In one night, Yash had ruined her forever.

These were absolutely not things she should be thinking right now.

Yash followed her twist, his body supple for a novice and more flexible than he thought it was. He was an overachiever, and yoga was always an adjustment for the overachievers.

Something about the pride in his eyes when he’d talked about his grandfather wrapped around her heart. She imagined a man exactly like Yash. The same finely boned, slightly long face, the stubborn jaw, the most stunning eyes with a million gradations of gray radiating from jet-black pupils.

“I didn’t know my grandfather either,” she said, because she had to keep from focusing on the way he watched her. “Our mom didn’t either. Somehow he’d made his way here from India. He worked for my great-grandparents and basically became