“Seriously?” he spluttered. “I’m not going to . . .”
He trailed off when she laughed. “You’re so easy to wind up. Your face . . .” She doubled over, her shoulders shaking.
Affronted, he leaned back and folded his arms across his chest. “I take it this means you don’t want to end our arrangement.”
“Are you kidding?” Zara tipped her glass toward him in a mock toast. “You need a woman to straighten you out. Now I’m even more committed to finding your match.”
• 11 •
Zara met Parvati a few blocks away from her father’s gallery after miraculously finding a parking spot on her fifth drive around the Mission.
“I don’t know why I let you talk me into these things. I don’t know anything about art.” Parvati brushed a hand down her slightly rumpled black dress. She kept it in the back of her car for last-minute dates, emergency drinks, and tonight, Zara’s father’s art exhibition.
“You don’t need to know anything,” Zara said. “You just need to be there to show support. He’s been working on this collection for two years. It’s so secret he wouldn’t even show it to me.”
“I’m a terrible liar,” Parvati said. “If he asks what I think, I might just blurt out the truth.”
“He’ll be too busy to ask. I’ve invited dozens of people. Friends, relatives, everyone at my law firm, random people on the street . . . I didn’t want him to open to an empty gallery.”
“And I don’t want to show up with low blood sugar.” Parvati gestured to a nearby food truck. “I need food. I’ve only had a sandwich and a chocolate bar since four a.m. this morning.”
Zara followed Parvati across the street. “Bushra Auntie gave me a copy of the guest list for the wedding next Saturday. I think there are a few potential matches for Jay if he and Indra don’t get along.”
Parvati studied the menu on the side of the truck. “Are you serious? After what he said to you in the restaurant? Forget the stupid deal you have with him. You can find your own celebrity clients.”
“I think I rattled him.” Zara waved a dismissive hand. “People get defensive when you expose their pain. Besides, he apologized. In fact, he groveled, and very nicely, too. I’m totally over it.”
Parvati knew her too well to believe the lie. “There’s something else. What didn’t you tell me?”
Zara toed the ground with her shoe. “There was a moment on the dance floor when I was hugging him . . .” She shrugged it off. “It was nothing.” Another lie. She could still feel the raw heat of him, the muscles hard beneath her hands, the strong arms holding her tight, the warmth of his breath on her lips as he bent down to give her a—
“Obviously it wasn’t nothing or you wouldn’t have tried to hide it.” Parvati’s sharp voice pulled her out of the fantasy. “Spill.”
“There was a . . . bump.”
“A bump?”
Zara’s cheeks heated. “You know . . . when a guy is . . . liking . . . to be hugged.”
“An erection?” Parvati’s lips quivered in amusement. “Is that what you’re trying to say? I’m a doctor. I know what an erection is. What I don’t understand is what it was doing there. I thought you two didn’t get along, that you were complete opposites. Didn’t you call him cold, arrogant, egotistical, and cocky?”
“Yes . . . but there’s more to him than what’s on the outside.” What if she hadn’t run scared? What if she’d closed the distance between them and tasted those lips? Or what if she’d imagined it, and he’d been leaning down to tell her that their food was getting cold?
Parvati ordered her sandwich, a side of fries, macaroni-and-cheese egg rolls, and a soda.
“How are you going to eat all this before we get to the gallery?” Zara helped by carrying the second tray of food.
“Resident trick. Eat fast or die. It’s a known fact that anytime a resident sits down to eat, there’s a code blue or some other dire emergency.”
“I think the emergency is your total lack of nutrition. I don’t know anybody who eats worse than you. And you’re a doctor. What kind of message does that send to your patients?”
“They don’t know all my secrets.” Parvati grinned. “And they never will.”
* * *
• • •
Indra’s gallery was in a reclaimed brick building that had once been a garage. Plateglass windows had replaced the folding doors, and the concrete floor had been polished to a shine. Spotlights on the exposed ceiling were pointed at the sheet-covered paintings on the wall. It was her father’s biggest exhibition. Zara counted at least twenty paintings around her, and that didn’t include the overflow that was hanging in the annex out back.
“I’m worried about the big reveal,” Zara said as they walked into the gallery. “What if no one likes his new collection?” Her father’s paintings were mostly abstract images, loud and angry and fierce with color. They jarred her insides and made her brain hurt. She preferred the calm of landscapes and gentle colors—an escape from the chaos of her life, an anchor in the stormy sea.
“Then he’ll learn not to paint things like that for next time.” Parvati finished her soda and tossed the can in the bin.
“Zara. Darling.” Indra descended on them, all toned arms and twiglike legs, her dark hair twisted in a perfect chignon that made her look older than her thirty-two years. She wore an elegant, sleeveless, long black dress and a single strand of pearls. “Your father will be thrilled you came.”
“I couldn’t miss it for the world.” She air-kissed Indra while Parvati snickered beside her.
“Why all the sheets?” Parvati asked Indra after Zara had introduced them.
“We’re going for a feeling of total immersion, as if you jumped off a cliff into the ocean. The fear. The thrill. The take-your-breath-away moment when you are surrounded, absorbed, fearful, enraptured, and enthralled.” Hand against her forehead as if shading her eyes from bright sunshine, Indra turned from side to side with quick, jerky movements. “You are falling, sinking, enveloped. You look around. Searching. Questing for the surface. But the images are everywhere. Enfolding.” She extended her toned arms above her head. “You reach . . .” She kicked back, her dress moving to the side to expose a slim foot and a jewel-encrusted Manolo Blahnik stiletto. “Kick. Swim to the light.” Her arms moved in a mock breaststroke. “Your eyes clear. You are buoyant, supported, loved. And now you understand.”