A door slammed in the flat, and Dhruv’s thoughts jerked back to the present. Riya was home. She was sweating slightly after her hour in the gym, and her cheeks were slightly flushed. Dhruv felt his heartbeat accelerate as he saw her—his first thought was that this was exactly how she’d look after being made love to, and he shook himself mentally to get rid of the further images that this conjured up. A second wave of lust hit him as he noticed the hint of cleavage that showed as she bent down to untie the laces of her gym shoes, and he looked hastily away.
Riya checked for a second when she saw Dhruv in the living room. She’d been half hoping that he’d be out of the house by the time she returned, so that she wouldn’t have to struggle to keep up the coolly sophisticated front she’d donned. Her initial impulse was to run to her room, but she forced herself to walk slowly—partly because she didn’t want Dhruv to think he affected her in any way, and partly because she didn’t want to trip and fall flat on her face. Her sense of balance had improved significantly since college days, when she’d fallen over at least once a week, but she didn’t trust herself while Dhruv was around.
‘Where’s Gaurav?’ she heard herself ask.
‘Gone for a bath. By the way, he’s still not come up with any ideas for a gift for Madhulika, so if you can think of something I’d be really, really grateful.’
He smiled up at her, and Riya found herself unable to tear her eyes away from him. He was still impossibly good-looking, she decided. A beam of sunlight from the window glinted off his dark brown hair and highlighted the honey-gold planes of his almost perfectly chiselled face. His lips were just the right shape—not too thin, and not too full—quirking up a little at the corners to offset the firm cast of his jaw. But his best features were still his eyes—golden-brown with flecks of green, framed in impossibly long lashes.
Something in his expression finally cued her that she’d been staring at him like an idiot.
‘Gift?’ she repeated, parrot-like, dragging her eyes away from his. ‘A watch, maybe?’
Dhruv was still looking at her and she kept talking, as if the sound of her own voice would keep her from doing something moderately embarrassing, like reaching a hand out to brush back the straight hair falling over his forehead, or really, really stupid, like flinging herself into his arms.
‘Madhu collects watches, and there’s a new one with a purple dial she likes—Gaurav won’t get it for her because he has this crazy theory about watches being a countdown till the day you die.’
‘Yes, I know about that one,’ Dhruv said drily. ‘It also explains why he’s late for pretty much everything. Thanks for the idea, Riya.’
Riya said politely that he was most welcome, and escaped to her room to collapse onto the bed and stare at the ceiling. Dhruv had changed, she thought. She’d known him very well at one time, and she could sense that something fundamental about him was different. His looks hadn’t altered much—he looked older, of course, and there were a few strands of silver in his thick, floppy hair, and of course his body had...improved.
Riya had to pull her mind back from dwelling lovingly on those improvements. No, that wasn’t it. In college he’d given the initial impression of being laid-back, slightly lazy, even, and that had been part of his charm—the fact that he never really exerted himself to make a good impression, but made one anyway. When she’d got to know him better, however, she’d figured that appearances were deceptive. The chilled-out exterior covered a lot of inner turmoil, the reasons for which, at seventeen, she hadn’t even begun to understand. Now it seemed to be the other way around. Dhruv’s personality was far more compelling, dynamic, but internally he seemed more detached than he’d been before, his wild streak completely dormant. Maybe he’d just grown up.
‘I’ve grown up, too,’ she informed the bedpost. ‘I’m no longer a lovesick donkey. So there’s no way I’m going to make a fool of myself over him again.’
The words were brave, but Riya felt about as confident as she had as a quaking four-year-old on her first day of school. Dhruv Malhotra meant trouble, and the less she saw of him the better.
CHAPTER TWO
GAURAV knocked gently on Riya’s door. ‘Come in!’ she yelled out. He came in quietly and sat down, gingerly perching his bulky frame next to her.
‘I’m sorry about foisting Dhruv on you,’ he said, tugging gently at a lock of her hair. ‘I wish I’d known—I wouldn’t have asked him to stay here.’
‘Relax. You’re not a clairvoyant, so there’s no way you could have known. It doesn’t matter, anyway.’
‘Should I ask him to move to a hotel? He’s offered to, in case you’re uncomfortable with him being around. Chutki’s staying over at a friend’s place from tonight anyway.’
Riya shook her head and laughed. ‘It’s not that big a deal, Gaurav. Really. Dhruv and I used to hang around in college—I took it a little too seriously and scared him off.’
Gaurav hesitated. ‘He seemed to think it’d be better if he moved out.’
‘So let him move, then, for God’s sake,’ Riya snapped. ‘It doesn’t matter to me.’ But it did. It mattered a lot. Chutki’s saying that he’d held on to her picture had made her think that maybe, after all, Dhruv had cared for her—just a little. But if he still wanted to run away from her, even after twelve years, she couldn’t help feeling some of the old hurt creep back.
Gaurav said gently, ‘Do you want to tell me about it?’
Riya shook her head decisively. ‘No, thanks. I made enough of a fool of myself over your cousin the first time around, and I don’t want to think about it any more.’
‘Poor girl.’ Gaurav pulled her against himself for a quick hug. ‘You know what? I think you guys should talk it over now, put it behind you.’
‘Yeah, thanks for the advice, Oprah, but I think I’ll pass.’ The last thing she wanted was more time talking to Dhruv—it wouldn’t be possible to conceal how much he affected her for more than ten minutes.
‘Is it OK if he comes for my surprise party tonight?’
Riya groaned. ‘Gaurav, you aren’t supposed to know that there is a surprise party. Who blabbed?’
He gave her a smug grin. ‘That’s for me to know and you to find out... Come on, Riya, did you really think anything in the office would stay a secret?’
It didn’t. Her office was the original leaky sieve—one of a dozen people could have told Gaurav, and she had been crazy to think that she’d be able to keep the surprise party actually a surprise.
‘You can help clean the house before the party, then,’ she told Gaurav, ‘now that you know. Remember to put all your smelly socks in the wash.’
Gaurav groaned. ‘I should have just pretended to be surprised. Like my grandmother says, there’s no room for honesty in this black era. So, can Dhruv come?’
‘I guess so,’ Riya replied grudgingly, and he beamed back at her, evidently convinced that all was forgiven and forgotten between his cousin and his best friend.
* * *
The house was chock-full of people by eight p.m., and more kept arriving. Gaurav was popular in the firm, and because he was in HR he knew everyone. It was a bring your own booze party, and the food was Chinese takeaway and pizzas—it hadn’t been much trouble to organise—but Riya was finding it difficult to concentrate even on simple things, like making sure someone responsible was in charge of the drinks, and that people didn’t spill ketchup on the company-owned sofas. Her eyes automatically went to the door