First Comes Like (Modern Love #3) - Alisha Rai Page 0,27
sure he meant to hurt me,” he said thickly. It was an admission he wouldn’t have normally made to his cousin.
“Um, I have to go. The connection is terrible.”
“It’s fine.”
Arjun made a scratching, yowling noise, clearly from his own mouth. “I cannot hear you.” More hissing. The man wasn’t exactly their family’s best actor.
“Arjun, don’t you—” But Dev was talking to dead air. He fruitlessly tried calling back twice more. “Damn it.” He sat on his bed, stymied. Arjun may as well have confessed, but what was he supposed to do with that? He couldn’t go running to their grandmother. She’d probably tell them to stop squabbling like they were children and avert her eyes from her youngest grandson’s atrocious behavior.
Dev was a fixer, and he had no idea how to fix this.
He considered the various possibilities. He could lie, tell Jia he had no idea who had done this to her, and they could both move on.
He could tell her everything and humbly apologize and beg her forgiveness.
He could stare into her beautiful eyes in person again.
He shook his head, getting rid of that last thought. And the first one. There was no way his conscience would allow him to ignore a situation his blood had created. No, he had no choice but to fling himself on her mercy.
And then find a way to spend the rest of his time in Hollywood not obsessed with her.
Chapter Seven
JIA HAD spent the day vacillating between loss and anger, ricocheting so much that she was firmly in numb territory by the time she pulled up to the bar seven minutes late.
Dev had texted her at eight on the dot with an I am seated at a table in the back right corner. So she could add punctuality to his list of sins.
“Thank you,” Jia said to her Ryde driver. Gerald would pick her up at the restaurant in a couple hours. She hadn’t wanted him to chauffeur her all over town.
Her stomach was in a mess from nerves, and deep under that was an unhealthy amount of excitement, the same excitement she’d felt last night at the thought of seeing Dev for the first time. She had to remind herself that this wasn’t the man she’d been speaking to.
Jia glanced around when she entered. She’d been to this bar on Melrose before. The lighting was dim and soft. Gauzy fabric draped over the chandeliers. It was romantic, which wasn’t good, but it was also private, which was. She stopped at the hostess stand and forced a smile. “My—” Companion? Date? Face of my catfisher? She began again. “I’m meeting someone here. He’s already seated.”
“Ms. Ahmed?” The hostess nodded and smiled. “Come with me.”
Jia followed the hostess to the table in the back. Candles flickered everywhere, and the lighting was otherwise dim. She spotted more than a couple of celebrities, on lists from A through F, along the way. It wasn’t too crowded, and the tables were set far apart from one another, the better to gossip and conduct secret assignations.
She would have spotted Dev even if there had been a million people in the room. He had an air of utter stillness about him. It was a calm that was foreign to her and her often frenetic mind.
Their eyes met, and he grew even more still before unfolding himself from the chair he’d been sitting in. Wow, he was . . . long. Tall. Had he been this tall at the party? Yes, of course, the venue had been bigger, and she’d been too busy drinking him in to notice any particular feature.
Very tall, and lanky. He wore a suit, a well-fitted, expensive one. Black-rimmed glasses sat on his nose, framing his dark eyes. His beard was neat and trimmed.
Dev held out his hand. “Ms. Ahmed.”
Disappointment ran through her. Her last name was fine on his lips, but it was no . . . “Please, call me Jia.”
“Jia.”
That was better. She hoisted her bag up higher on her shoulder. “Sorry I’m late. I needed to make a detour to grab a shot of espresso before I came here. I didn’t sleep much last night.” She’d also bought a new pair of shoes at the mall, but he didn’t need to know how she coped with her stress.
“Not a problem at all. I am accustomed to being too early to things.”
She sat down opposite him. Though the tables were far apart, the one they were sitting at was rather small. Too small.