“What was?”
“Talking. Communicating. It’s what all the cool people are doing.” She kept the smile on even while she felt the temperature drop in the room by a good ten degrees.
“I wouldn’t know,” he replied, honestly. “I have never been cool.”
“Of course, you haven’t.” She shrugged. “I’ll look through the report again. See if I can spot a gremlin. But I think we should go see a man about a field too.” She waited a beat more to see if that would crack the impenetrable ice surrounding him.
It didn’t.
Ziya nodded, her eyes cool again. “I’ll see you day after tomorrow then. You can drive us down in the four-wheel. It’s not a problem, is it?”
He didn’t say whether it was a problem or not. All he said was, “Day after tomorrow. Nine a.m.”
And then he was gone, closing the door behind him in a soundless movement.
Ziya huffed out a breath and twisted the bottle of water in her hand. Men, she mused, were the strangest species on earth. And Krivi Iyer was the king of this species. Too bad he looked exactly like how she’d expect an ex-war vet to look. All surly and brooding, frighteningly efficient. And good enough in jeans as he must have in uniform. Then, because it was unprofessional to daydream about hot ex-war vets during business hours, Ziya turned back to the folder and started reading up on the pros and cons of buying a readymade saffron field.
The next day, Noor made a slight but significant change to their plans. First, she insisted on coming because she was so damn bored working on her ‘Commitment in literature was a hoax’ thesis. And secondly, she was missing Sam and she didn’t want to, so she was going down to Gulmarg and indulging in a day of sightseeing and souvenir shopping. And pigging out on junk food.
Noor was what you’d call an emotional eater. Ziya knew her best friend’s moods as well as she knew her own, so she knew the deep hurt Noor was hiding under her flippant arguments. So, she simply texted Krivi to tell him that they could take two cars down, since Noor and Ziya would probably end up spending the night in Pehelgam.
He sent a word back in reply.
No.
No explanations, no excuses and definitely no deference to the boss’s wishes. Just a no.
She was half-tempted to go down to his cottage and give him a good tongue-lashing for such insubordination, but then her Inner Bitch reared her head and argued that the best revenge in this scenario would be compliance. She’d seen the acute distaste in his eyes when he’d touched her yesterday, which meant that he wasn’t a big fan of her company. For whatever godforsaken reason. So, what better way to avenge her piqued ego than by making him suffer her presence for as long as she could? And that made her mind up and she only sent a single Cool back.
And her last thought, before she slid into deep dreamless sleep was the way his eyes had gone absolutely still when he’d been looking at her. And the way that stillness had touched off something inside of her. A tiny explosion of … something. An explosion for a man who couldn’t even look her in the eye.
So, she consigned him to the deepest bowels of Hades and slept dreamlessly.
The next day, more of the amazing spring weather continued, as Ziya woke up at six a.m.
The sky was so blue it was unreal, and the world looked so fresh and silent, Dada Akhtar’s roses were in vivid Technicolor against the green of the garden. There was a river of fog winding down the ground, and she leaned out of her window and breathed deep. Closing her eyes, just … glad to be alive. Glad to be here and living this moment in Goonj.
Echo.
She opened her eyes and looked straight at the gamekeeper’s cottage. By some twisted uncanny coincidence, the cottage’s owner stepped out of the entrance at the same time and into his Jeep. Ziya shut the window closed with an audible snap. He was not the first thing she wanted to see any morning.
But, two hours later when she was packing for her overnight trip, he was what she thought of and she couldn’t understand her hopeless attraction at all. Especially, because asking Noor about it would be an exercise in futility and awkwardness since she already suspected some deep love-story schtick between Ziya and her taciturn assistant, incurable romantic that she was. And Noor would never keep her trap shut if she caught even a whiff of the tumult and confusion and plain anger running through Ziya’s mind.
“Hey, babe,” Noor said as she came in, without bothering with the knocking. “I have to borrow your earmuffs since …” She stopped dead as she saw the mass of jumbled clothes on her best friend’s bed.
“Did a tornado just pass through here?”
Ziya raked a hand through her short hair and kicked at a stray white tee that had fallen off the pile on her bed.
“It’s a business meeting. But we are going sightseeing later on and I have no fricking clue how to dress up and down at the same time.”
Noor manfully kept her full lips from splitting into a wide grin at the outraged picture her friend made, standing in her flannel pants and cute T-shirt. Ziya dressed more for comfort than she did for style.
“Want some help?”
Ziya gave her a speaking look through dark eyes. “No. I want to not go on this stupid meeting and then have to listen to you whine about how Sam is messing with you for the rest of the day. I have the harvest reports to get through, and the labor union is breathing down my neck and—”
Noor bounded over to her side of the bed and slapped her once. On the cheek. Lightly.
“Shut up,” she advised mildly.
Ziya’s eyes flashed, but she shut up. She rubbed her cheek and said, “I am going to talk to Sam about the benefits of staying single.”
Noor stuck her tongue out and retorted, “You need my help, you thrift store ragamuffin. So let’s not make idle threats here. Capisce?”
Ziya’s shoulders slumped and she conceded defeat.
“I am in your hands, Mistress Gabbana.” She was the undisputed expert on style and fashion as much as the state of politics in 19th Century England, the time period of her doctorate.
Noor grinned, ran a friendly hand on Ziya’s shoulder. “Make that Mistress Dolce. It just sounds better, doesn’t it?”
Ziya sighed and agreed. Because right now she needed Mistress Dolce’s help and she was running out of time because the Crypt Keeper without a watch would arrive on the dot of nine and she didn’t want to deprive him of her presence a second longer than she had to. And because no one was there to counter argue the point with her, she absolutely believed in its logic.
Pehelgam was a small town on the national highway, a tourist hub, just like most of the state’s territory was, and it had many focal points of sightseeing that were a must-see for everyone who visited the place. There was Chandanwadi, an ice cave that never melted through which the river Lidder flowed. Betaab Valley, which was about four acres of parkland where a very famous Bollywood movie had been shot. And, in the beautiful distance, one could see the Himalayan ranges in their majestic splendor.
Since, tourism was the biggest trade for the town; out-of-town vehicles were not allowed to operate inside city limits. Recently though, security had been upped in this sensitive spot because of IED bombings in nearby Sonmarg and Gulmarg in 2008. Pehelgam had, by the grace of God, escaped terrorist attacks but the tourists, army and visitors alike knew that was just fate and not coincidence.
Because