As if sensing a blubber-fest in the making, Kushi shooed them away. “Go. Mingle. Feed the crowd.”
As Samira picked up a large dish piled high with vada, Kushi touched her arm. “Betee, there’s someone I’d like you to meet later—”
“This platter is heavy, Mom. Got to dash.” But she’d barely made it out of the kitchen when the dork in the tux appeared in the doorway like some misplaced wedding guest who hadn’t got the memo about the smart casual dress code.
“Ah, Manish, how fortuitous. I was just about to tell my Samira about you.” Kushi beamed as Samira resisted the urge to bury her face in the vada.
She’d been through this rigmarole before. The less-than-subtle introductions where the guy had been clued in by his parents, the feigning of surprise, the awkwardness of making small talk with a guy she had no interest in, the sleaze of a guy who thought she’d be an easy target, because why else would a woman need a setup?
Fifteen years ago, she’d been young and naive and eager to please her mom, so she’d allowed herself to get swept along with the unrealistic romance facilitated by Kushi and Avi’s parents. Her dad hadn’t approved, but he’d seen how much it meant to Kushi to see her happily married, so he’d backed down, leaving her mom to propel her headfirst into a relationship she’d neither wanted nor been ready for.
Back then she’d fallen for Avi because she’d believed in the power of love. She’d craved it, a long-standing yearning that began by sneaking Mills and Boons out of the local library as a teen and encouraged by the clueless girls at her high school who regularly expounded their theories on love and sex.
Samira had been woefully innocent and stupidly trusting. Thankfully, she was older and wiser now.
“Nice to meet you, Samira,” Manish said, his voice surprisingly confident and mellifluous for a guy who’d worn a tux to a backyard supper on a Friday night.
“You too.” She forced a smile under her mother’s watchful eye, rewarded by a slight nod from Kushi.
“Need a hand?”
Okay, so Manish had manners. None of the other Indian guys her mom had tried to set her up with before Avi had ever offered to help her with anything.
“Thanks,” she said, relieved when he took the heavily laden platter from her hands. All the easier to escape. However, she should’ve known her mother wouldn’t make it that easy.
“Good, now you can take the dipping chutneys for the vada,” Kushi said, thrusting a smaller platter into her hands before she could protest. “Off you go.”
She shooed them out of the kitchen, and Samira blew out a frustrated breath as they stepped onto the veranda.
“You don’t have to accompany me, you know,” Manish said, staring at her with that way-too-astute gray gaze. “If the hungry hordes want chutneys, you can put them on the table and they can wander over.”
Samira struggled to hide her surprise. Another point in his favor. He didn’t expect her to trot alongside him like a subservient maid. And though she’d wanted to escape the potential awkwardness a moment ago, she didn’t mind being polite and offering guests dipping sauces with their snacks.
“It’s okay. I’ll do one circuit of the yard, and then you’re on your own.”
He chuckled, the corners of his eyes crinkling into fine lines and adding to his handsomeness. She may have sworn off Indian men a long time ago, but this one was nothing like Avi. She guessed her mom had done her homework this time around.
“I can live with that.” He waited for her to step past him. “After you.”
Taking a deep breath, Samira allowed herself to be absorbed into the crowd. She’d expected to face an interrogation of monstrous proportions from the local community and a barrage of matchmaking suggestions. Instead, the worst she copped were a few sidelong glances and some whispers after she passed by.
Then again, nobody had a chance to say much with Manish greeting almost everyone by name and asking after their children/grandchildren/neighbors as he plied them with vada.
“Were you a caterer in a previous life?” she asked as they headed back toward the kitchen, platters empty.
He quirked an eyebrow, just like he had when they’d first laid eyes on each other half an hour ago. This time, it looked less insolent and more charming. “What makes you think I’m not one now?”
“The tux, for one.”
His other eyebrow joined the first. “You don’t like it?”
“It’s overkill.”
“Maybe I’m heading to a James Bond look-alike party after this?”
So he had a sense of humor to go with the manners and the looks. She wouldn’t be swayed.
“Are you?”
“No, but I wish I was.” He screwed up his nose. “There’s a doctors’ fundraiser in the city after this I couldn’t get out of.”
Of course Kushi had chosen a doctor. Ding, ding, ding, she could almost hear her mom setting up the wedding chimes.
“Too bad you’ll be missing out on dessert. Mom makes a killer jalebi.”
“I’m more a gulab jamun kind of guy.”
Typical, obsessed with balls. Then again, she was partial to the golden fried dumplings soaked in sugar syrup too. It wasn’t his fault she was a confirmed cynic when it came to Kushi’s fix-ups.
She made a grand show of looking at her watch. “You don’t want to be late.”
“Trying to get rid of me?”
He leaned in close, and for an insane moment, Samira almost wished she’d feel a spark. Not that she wanted to get married again or stay in Melbourne permanently or get caught up in an Indian matchmaking frenzy, but Manish had been nothing but funny and polite, and it would be easier on everyone if she liked him in that way.
But not a zing or a zap as his breath fanned her cheek, nothing like her body’s reaction to Rory.
“Can I be honest, Manish?”
He straightened, and she glimpsed the disappointment in his eyes that she didn’t want to flirt. “Sure.”
“You seem like a really nice guy, but I’m in Melbourne to work for the next six months, and I’m not interested in a relationship.”
“Too bad,” he said, eyeing her with something akin to hope. “We’re both in the medical field, we’re similar ages, we could’ve been good together.”
“Good on paper according to our family’s astrologers, you mean?”
He laughed again. “If your mom’s anything like my grandmother, you know this won’t be the last time we’ll be ‘encouraged’ to meet.”