The Boy Toy - Nicola Marsh Page 0,48
at a time. She’d come here to discuss Manish. She doubted Kushi could cope with learning about Rory too. Not that there was much to tell anymore.
“I’m enjoying the work,” she said. “I’ve even got a client requiring dialect coaching, which is part of my specialized field back in LA.”
She’d almost said “back home” but stopped herself at the last moment. Kushi may have understood her desire to leave her home city, but she never approved and often badgered her into returning during their phone calls.
“And what about Manish? Have you seen him again since your date?”
Great, her mom had given her the perfect opening to segue into the discussion they had to have.
“No, Mom. And it wasn’t a date.”
“You spent time with him; it is a beginning,” Kushi muttered, pouring the steaming chai into two cups before waddling toward the table and setting them down. “He is a lovely man and so perfect for you—”
“I’ve heard those exact words from you before, Mom, and they turned out to be untrue.”
A blush stained Kushi’s cheeks as a frown creased her brow. “Manish is nothing like that horrid Avi.”
Samira agreed, but she needed to put a stop to her mom’s matrimonial hopes once and for all. “How do you know? Did the aunties extol his virtues and you believed them?”
Kushi tut-tutted. “Leave the aunties out of this.”
“No, Mom, because we need to have this conversation, and it’s long overdue.”
The frown between her mom’s perfectly threaded brows deepened. “No good can come of dredging up the past.”
“This is about the future.” Samira laid a comforting hand on her mom’s forearm. “I like Manish. He is lovely. But there’s no spark between us and we both know it, so we’ve agreed to be friends.”
Disappointment clouded Kushi’s eyes. “But love can grow—”
“Mom, it’s not going to happen. Last time, I got swept up in a fairy tale and living up to expectations. This time, I’m older and wiser and will choose my own men, okay?”
“Men?” Kushi shook her head and slipped her forearm away to fold her arms across her chest. “You should be past the dating stage. You should be looking toward the future.” Her glance slid away. “What about babies—”
“Enough.” Samira held up her hand, ignoring the inevitable twinge of pain whenever the subject of children came up. Her mom knew how difficult it had been for her trying to conceive, and those problems would only be exacerbated now because of her age. “The only reason I told you about meeting up with Manish for coffee is so you would back off. Instead, he’s all you’ve talked about for the last week when we’ve chatted on the phone. So from now on I’d appreciate if you don’t push it, okay?”
Kushi’s lips compressed in a mutinous line Samira had seen many times before. Her mom wouldn’t give up until Samira had a shiny gold band on the ring finger of her left hand. “Friendship can grow into love, but you need to be open to it.”
Samira sighed and reached for her tea. Sipping the fragrant brew should soothe her. It didn’t, because the moment her mom had mentioned being open to love, an image of Rory popped into her head, and she knew all the chais in the world wouldn’t dislodge it.
Twenty-Two
As Rory strode out of Pia’s office for the last time, he knew he had to get his nerves under control or he’d be shot at the audition in two hours.
He had this. Pia had said as much. They’d worked their asses off, and he had to admit his confidence had skyrocketed as a result. But all the dialect exercises and practice in the world couldn’t change one salient fact.
He had to get up in front of a camera and recite from a script without stumbling.
Hard enough for anyone without a speech impediment, but for him? No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t forget the first and only time he’d done this before, when Benedict Dixon had been witness to his humiliation. And now the dickhead would be present again, though this time he wouldn’t see it firsthand; Chris had assured him of that. This role was too big and nothing like the bit part of his first audition where it had been an open set.
Two hours. One hundred and twenty minutes to get his head in the game.
Which meant of course he’d run into Samira.
He’d managed to avoid her and clamp down on the urge to call her since he’d