First Comes Like (Modern Love #3) - Alisha Rai Page 0,91

won’t tell Aji either, will you?”

“Trust me, that’s the last thing I want. I’ll beg Jia’s forgiveness, and then we can never discuss this again.”

“If Jia wants you to stay out of her sight, you’ll do that, too.”

“But I’ve never been to Malibu. Plus, what will I tell Aji when I hole up in my room?” Arjun whined.

“Tell her whatever you want.”

“But there’s a surfboard in the garage.” A pout started to form on his cousin’s annoyingly symmetrical face, but it dissolved like sugar in the rain when Dev took a step toward him. “Fine, fine.”

“I’m going to go settle my uncle into his room. I mean it, Arjun, no more shenanigans.”

Arjun was silent until Dev reached the door. “I was trying to help.”

Dev rubbed his eyes. The sad, plaintive note in Arjun’s voice made him sound much younger than his thirty years.

He’s acting.

Only, Dev didn’t think he was. He was, in fact, pretty sure Arjun had just been more honest in the last few minutes than he had in a while.

He turned around and looked his cousin up and down with new eyes. “Do me a favor and never try to help me again.” He tried not to feel bad when Arjun visibly deflated. The man had done something awful and cruel, and it was only by pure luck that Jia and Dev might actually have a chance together, and that she hadn’t been irreparably traumatized, her ability to trust demolished.

And yet . . .

Dev was tired of being wary of family members. It was a slap in the face to know his little brother had disliked him enough to play such a cruel joke on him. Arjun’s earnest desire to help, however misguided that help had been, well, it didn’t make up for his strained relationship with his brother, but it wasn’t the worst consolation prize. Rohan’s part in this may have been motivated by cruelty, but Arjun hadn’t seemed to come from a place of malice.

People change. “At the very least, don’t help me again without asking first,” he clarified, and Arjun brightened.

“Will do. Want to go surfing with me? I brought new swim trunks. Shorter inseams are very in right now.”

Dev held up his hand, palm out. “We’re not there yet, brother.”

Arjun nodded amicably, his grin slow, but real. “Fair enough, Bhai.”

Chapter Twenty

“THE FLIGHT was exhausting. Jia, you could not move to New York City? You had to come to Los Angeles? It would have been a closer trip for us.”

Jia glanced in the rearview mirror. “What would I be doing in New York City?”

“You work from home. You could be doing the same things you do here.”

Jia didn’t bother to explain to her mother that the connections she was making in entertainment were quite different in L.A. Her mom knew that already. Farzana liked to complain about things she knew no one could possibly change. Had Jia moved to New York, her mom would have complained about the noise and weather. “Not quite.”

Despite her mother’s crankiness, and the fact that her family was here under bizarre circumstances, joy had filled Jia when they’d walked out of LAX. That happiness had been reflected in their faces, and when her parents and twin had hugged her, they’d given her a little piece of her old home, enough to ground her in her new home.

It was almost enough to make her forget that they were now driving straight from the airport to Dev’s grandmother’s Malibu home for their weekend trip. Where his cousin also was. His terrible, no-good cousin.

She’d kind of moved on, she’d thought, from being catfished, but seeing Arjun’s name had slammed all that mortification back at her, knocking her out of the careful plans she’d made. But then she’d recalibrated. She’d declined an apology, mostly because she preferred to never see Arjun’s face if she could help it. Dev had promised to keep him out of view.

It was probably unrealistic to assume that was an actual possibility when he was in the same house and Dev’s only cousin, but she’d keep her fingers crossed.

“If you couldn’t live closer, at least you found a boy who seems nice. Mo, InshAllah, soon we’ll only have one daughter left to get married off. Remember when your mother said five girls would be a burden and a headache? I wish she was here to see this.”

Jia’s grandmother was in Pakistan, not dead, but her mom rarely made a distinction between the two when it came to her mother-in-law. Her