less work than a full retreat because she just needed to lead morning yoga sessions and then give a couple lectures about stress management and she’d get paid several times as much as the retreat paid. “Thanks. It would be unwise to give up that kind of money.” But something about not taking care of Tara herself didn’t sit right inside her.
“Yeah, no need to . . . Hold on . . . Oh God . . .” There was a scrambling sound and India heard the television volume turning up at China’s end.
“China, what’s wrong?”
“Oh my God.” That was not China’s emotional drama voice. It was real horror.
“Cee! Will you please stop saying that? You’re scaring me. What’s wrong?”
“Oh my God,” China said again. “Oh no. It’s Yash Raje. Something is wrong.”
A sharp and dark feeling twisted in India’s heart.
“What are you talking about?” It had been a decade since India had seen Yash. In person. You couldn’t avoid him on TV no matter how hard you tried. She was friends with his sisters and his cousin and they thought the sun shone out of his . . . well, out of one of his orifices.
She had thought so too. For precisely one day.
She hated the panic that gathered in her body. By all accounts, her experience with Yash Raje had been some sort of aberration. With everyone else he seemed like a perfectly stand-up guy. Not that any of it had mattered in a very long time. No matter how angry she’d been with him, she most certainly did not want anything to be wrong with him.
Please let nothing be wrong with him.
“Is it the polls? Has he dropped in the polls?” India tried not to follow politics, and she’d avoided it even more since Yash announced his candidacy, but she wasn’t an ostrich either.
Over the phone, China let out a gasp. “It’s not the polls.” Her voice was shrill with tension. This was bad. Really bad. “Oh God. Oh no. I think Yash has been shot.”
Chapter Three
The last time Yash had emerged from general anesthesia he’d been fifteen years old and surrounded by a roomful of family. Every one of them with swollen yet dry eyes. No doubt because his parents had warned his siblings to make sure they did not cry in Yash’s presence because he needed them to be strong.
This time when Yash regained consciousness he was all by himself. Disorienting as this was, it was also a relief, considering how on that day twenty-three years ago he’d been told he would never walk again. He wiggled his toes and moved his legs just to make sure he could.
“You’re up!” Someone ran into his room. Hands were thrown around him with no regard for the shoulder that felt a bit like a boulder was balanced on it.
“It’s you,” he said, poking at his brain for her name. It was gone again.
Fortunately, his sister Trisha followed close on her heels. So he hadn’t forgotten everyone’s names, just the name of the woman who was supposed to be his girlfriend. Fabulous.
“Hey, Yash.” His sister tapped the woman’s arm, obviously trying not to show her impatience, which was usually not something Trisha bothered with.
His girlfriend squeezed Yash’s hand and left the room with an “I’ll be right back.”
Trisha pushed his hair off his forehead. “You’re awake.”
“Was that not what you were expecting?” He tried to remember the details of what had happened, but the fog blanketing his brain was too thick.
She smiled her amused-doctor smile. “No, drama queen, we were fully expecting to not be rid of you just yet. Then again, we were also not expecting you to go and get yourself shot.” She looked like she wanted to smack him upside the head.
Right. He’d been shot. “Abdul. How . . .” Yash tried to sit up.
Trisha pressed him back down. “He’s in the hospital too. We’re treating him.”
Yash waited, but she said nothing more and just kept petting his hair like he was a puppy she’d found on the street. All this out-of-character coddling was more than a little disconcerting. Trisha was his least warm-and-fuzzy sister.
“And . . .” Yash prompted, not bothering to hide his impatience.
“And you need to worry about your own healing right now. How’s your shoulder feeling?”
Yash was the most bullheaded of the siblings. Trisha ought to know that. “But he’s okay? He’s conscious?”
Her hesitation made it clear that they’d had a family meeting while Yash was out and strategized how much