He sat down next to her. “It’s not your fault entirely. I was going to check the vent on the grill and got distracted.”
She gazed up at him with glistening eyes. “With what?”
“Huh?”
“What did you get distracted with?”
His mind brought up an image of her standing in nearly the same spot, smiling as if the world belonged to her. Inexplicably, he felt a kinship with Meera. They had nothing in common, at least not superficially, but beneath her uppity exterior, he sensed her kind soul. It made him want to know what else lay beneath the princess shell.
She was looking expectantly at him, waiting for an answer. “I got distracted with you.” He reached out and took her hand, needing to feel contact with her.
Her eyes widened, then she squeezed back. He exhaled. It wasn’t just him; she was feeling it, too.
“The point is, this isn’t all on you. And I didn’t mean what I said yesterday—I was angry at myself and taking it out on you. You’re welcome to stay here. God knows you have your hands full with the town. You don’t need to worry about this.”
She sniffed. “I appreciate your generosity, really, but this happened because of me. I’ll take you up on the offer to keep staying here, though. I still need to finish the physicals on your staff.” She extracted her hand from his, then stood up and dusted her palms on her jeans. “If you’ll be patient with me, I want to work on cleaning this up when I’m not twiddling my thumbs at Dr. Harper’s practice.”
Obviously, he wasn’t going to be able to talk her out of it, but maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea. It was one more hand to help clean the mess up, and he couldn’t afford to increase the hours of the other staff. But did he really want her around, distracting him?
“Suit yourself.” He tried to keep his voice nonchalant. “How much time do you have?”
She checked her watch. “I have another hour, maybe more before I have to get ready.”
“I’ll be back.”
He went to the shed and returned with a forklift.
“You ever drive one of these things?”
Meera’s eyes widened and she shook her head. “No! I have no idea how to operate that. I’ll crash it.”
He smiled and held out his hand. “Don’t worry, I’m not trusting you with heavy machinery. I’ll be driving.”
She took his hand, and his heart thumped wildly as she squeezed into the cab next to him.
It was a tight fit and she was half sitting in his lap. He tried not to notice the way her leg touched his or how small she felt snuggled in beside him. He put her hand on the clutch and showed her how to put it in gear, then he stepped on the accelerator. She yelped as they moved forward, and he couldn’t take his eyes off the wild expression on her face.
Focus, Jake, focus. He showed her how to operate the lift and pick up the large tent in sections, moving it to the side.
Once they’d dealt with the tent, they parked the forklift and surveyed the damage underneath. There was ash mixed in with pieces of tables, chairs and the wooden dance floor. Flecks of the red-and-white-checkered tablecloth were strewn everywhere.
“The rental company is gonna charge you a pretty penny.”
Meera shrugged.
“Did you call them and get an estimate?”
She shook her head. “No, it’s fine, whatever it is.”
Jake laughed mirthlessly. And there was another Meera contradiction. She was rich, so why insist on doing the dirty work herself? “Must be nice not to have to worry about money.”
“I guess I’m lucky. My father has a very successful medical practice. He’s never let me worry about money—it’s one of the many things I owe my parents.”
That’s a strange sentiment. “Owe your parents? Why would you owe your parents?”
Meera smiled wistfully. “They’re not my biological parents. They adopted me from an orphanage in India when I was ten.” She looked out at the field, suddenly seeming a million miles away.
He stopped the forklift. He didn’t know a lot about India, but no child belonged in an orphanage. He remembered what it had been like when his mother left, but he’d had his father and the townspeople to take care of him.
“Do you remember your biological parents?”
“I was three years old, or so the matron at the orphanage told me, when they left me at the doorstep. I don’t remember them, the parents that gave birth to me.” She paused, and when she spoke again, her voice was soft and so raw that pain seared through him. “I was living in squalor and poverty, conditions you can’t even imagine until Mum and Pitaji—my father—adopted me.” He could hear the voice of the little girl inside her, the one who was afraid and alone. He put his hand on hers, wishing he could take her pain away.
“They gave me a beautiful, perfect life. In the orphanage, all I could think about was getting my hands on a few rupees to bribe the cook to give me food. They did the bare minimum to keep us alive. Since my parents adopted me, they’ve given me everything any person could ever want.”
That explained so much about her, especially the contradictions. Meera wincing at his dirty hands but then washing dishes in his kitchen and slinging mud to clean his field. He squeezed her hand, wanting her to know she wasn’t alone.
“I can’t begin to tell you how much I owe my parents.”
Now he understood why she insisted on paying him back for everything. She had grown up feeling indebted.
“Have you spent your entire life trying to pay them back?”
Tears filled her eyes. “I don’t think I could pay them back in this life, or my next several lives. I still remember the orphanage. The filth.” He noticed goose bumps on her arms. “There was always dirt everywhere—in our beds, on the tables we ate at. And bugs. Sometimes when I close my eyes, I can still feel the mosquito bites, the cockroaches crawling over my feet as I tried to sleep. The grit between my teeth, like the food had fallen on the floor before they put it on my plate.” She shuddered.
Jake put an arm around her and pulled her close. He wished he could ease her anguish, somehow erase the memories that still haunted her. She was a remarkable woman, more so because of what she had endured and overcome. He had nearly fallen to pieces when his mother left. Had it not been for his father, he wouldn’t have finished high school. That Meera had spent so much time alone made his heart hurt.
She gently pushed away from him. “I had lost all hope. It was always the younger kids who got adopted. With their wealth and stature, my parents could’ve easily taken home a newborn baby. But they chose me, and in doing so, they saved my life. If I’d grown up in that orphanage, I would’ve ended up on the streets, or someone’s mistress.”
It sounded like a well-rehearsed statement, something rote. He wondered if it was how her parents relayed the story, and if that was what she had listened to growing up.
She fixed him with a look. “Instead, I have a life of luxury. My father gives me a generous monthly allowance that I barely spend in one year. I’m a respected doctor, and I have a wonderful future planned for me. I owe my parents everything. I owe them my soul.”
Now he could see why it was so important to her to get Hell’s Bells to like her. She’d spent her childhood wanting to be accepted.
“Your parents got something in return, you know,” he said softly. “They got you.”
She shook her head and inched away from him, as far as she could in the confined space. She was shutting herself off, retreating