“Because you did a tremendously hideous thing,” Dev said calmly. “And you will apologize to me, and if she wishes to see your ugly face, Jia as well. Both for the catfishing and the texts.”
Arjun came to his full height, with some difficulty. “I told you, it was a hack.”
“It wouldn’t have been hacked if you hadn’t had the messages in the first place.”
Arjun licked his lips. “I know. Trust me, I know.”
Dev flung his arms wide. “What the fuck were you thinking, doing something like this?”
Arjun rubbed his arms and pouted. “It was Rohan’s idea,” he muttered.
Dev pointed at the bed. “Sit down.” He was already taller than his cousin, but he’d like to really intimidate him.
Arjun sat.
“I require a better explanation than that.”
“Rohan wanted to prank you, so he sent a few messages to random women.”
Dev slapped his forehead, his hurt at his brother’s perpetual dislike of him subsumed by panic. “There are more women?”
“No! No. The others didn’t answer.”
“And you were in on this joke. Using my old scripts for lines to feed her.”
“I helped him splice them up,” Arjun confessed. “Rohan said you wrote most of them. You’re not a bad writer, by the way.”
Oh, that one hurt. Arjun liking anything wasn’t a good endorsement as far as he was concerned right now. “And after he died?”
Arjun hung his head. “I don’t know. Rohan was my buddy. I missed him, and Luna, too. I wasn’t thinking straight, so when Jia started texting again a couple months ago . . .”
“You thought you’d prank boring old me as well.”
“No! I thought to help you.”
“Help me!”
“Yeah, because of the will. You need to find a wife, so I thought maybe . . .” He trailed off. “I didn’t think far enough about her meeting you or anything. But it seems like you did fall in love with her! So it worked.”
Dear Lord. Adil Uncle hadn’t been that far off base with his matchmaking theory. “It . . . worked?” Dev growled. “It has turned my life upside down.”
“In a bad way?”
“Could there be a good way?”
“Sure.” Arjun squinted at him. “You’re right, you were boring. Got up, went to work, always on time, hit all your marks, went home, slept. No way you would have even talked to a girl like that without someone forcing you into it.”
“What do you mean a girl like that?”
“I mean a talented, popular, outgoing one. And look! According to Aji, you’re marrying her soon.”
Dev opened his mouth and closed it, wishing he could dispute anything his cousin was saying. “What you did was horrible, despite the result.”
Arjun sobered. “I know. I realized as soon as Jia started pushing to meet me. I mean, you. I’m sorry about that. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
Dev leaned away. He hadn’t expected a sincere apology from his selfish, foolish cousin. “I don’t know either.”
“Have you told Aji?”
“No.”
Arjun looked up at him from under his lashes. “Are you going to?”
“Worried about your own inheritance now?” Dev’s lip curled. “No, I’m not going to.”
His cousin released a giant sigh of relief. “Thank you.”
“I literally can’t, not without exposing what happened. I won’t do that to Jia. She feels embarrassed, though I’ve assured her the embarrassment belongs to you and you only.” He narrowed his eyes at Arjun. “And you 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.