“Prem . . .”
He touched her hand and turned it over to brush the softness on the inside of her wrist. “Rina, give us a shot.”
“Can I ask you a question?”
He brushed a curl off her face; she looked startled but didn’t jerk away from his touch. He’d done that once before, almost like it was an instinctual need for him to be close.
“Ask,” he said, his voice husky.
“Why don’t you believe in true love?”
Prem let out a sigh, but leaned into her space, so it was just the two of them. Nothing else. No one else. “Rina, love is an emotion that can literally damage the heart, and it isn’t sustainable for long-term relationships. An emotional connection? That’s fleeting. Relying on body chemistry means you’re relying on something fickle.”
“Body chemistry,” she said slowly. “That’s what we have.”
“Rina—”
“Kareena.”
“I like calling you Rina,” he said with a smile. “It reminds me of the woman who chugged her drink just so she could have one with me.”
She smiled, and it reached her eyes this time. “Distracting me isn’t going to work. You may think love is an illusion, but it’s real. I saw it when my parents slow danced in the kitchen on Sunday mornings. Love was the stupid car my father bought for my mother that I have to keep in the shed because he gets really sad when he sees it. It’s the echoes of laughter I remember every time I come down the stairs in the house my mother and father built together.”
“Do you really want that much emotion in your life?” Prem asked quietly.
“Absolutely.”
He groaned when the realization hit him like a smack in the face. “Oh god, you’re one of those girls who has a secret list of things that make you think you’re in love, don’t you?” Kareena grinned at him, and her entire face lit up like sunlight.
Even though he’d known her for such a short amount of time, that smile could completely short-circuit his nervous system. Prem’s heart pounded in overtime, and for a moment, he forgot about what they were talking about. Her happiness was blinding.
“I’ve had a lot of time in my dating moratorium to think about what I want,” she said, completely oblivious to his reaction.
“Until you find Mr. Right, pretend to date me for a few months, then we can announce a pretend engagement. After the new year, we’ll break things off. No one will see it coming. Even your aunties won’t find out. This way you don’t have to settle for someone who is less than your perfect man.”
Kareena didn’t say anything for a minute, but Prem could see the wheels turning. Finally, she crossed her arms over her chest, a stubborn line set across her mouth.
“I want to keep dating other people for a few more months before I give you my answer. You’ll have to be my Plan B.”
“What? No way.” The idea of her flirting, having drinks, or spending time with anyone else was completely unacceptable. He wanted to keep all of her laughs to himself.
“That’s a deal breaker, Prem,” she said. “I need you to think about this for one second from my perspective. If I say yes to you, and we start fake whatever it is we’re going to do, then everyone is going to know. All the people who watched our video? They’ll want the update. Mrs. W. S. Gupta may write an article about it. Your family in California will find out.”
“That’s the point,” he said, thinking of his investors. “We want everyone to know.”
“They’re also going to find out when we break up. And do you know what’s going to happen after that? They’ll turn on me. Because hello! We live in a shit world where it’s always the woman’s fault.”
“I don’t think—”
Kareena held up a finger, her eyes widened with a look that only an Indian woman who demanded attention could give. “Don’t even think about trying to lie to me on this one,” she said. “My reputation is going to be completely fucked. And I may have the house, which is something I desperately want, but the chance of me finding a person to love after that is going to be infinitely harder. So, while I have the time, as short a time frame as it might be, I don’t want to get engaged to you, or pretend to marry you just yet. I want to try to find the real deal before I risk my entire future. Otherwise, I’ll be stuck trying to find a man from California.”
“Hey, I’m from California.”
“My point exactly. You still smell like narcissism and avocados.”
“Cute,” he said.
But Kareena wasn’t wrong about her stakes. At the end of the day, the stakes were a lot higher for her than for him, and he’d be an asshole if he didn’t respect that, didn’t understand the power dynamics that still existed for Indian women.
Prem reached out and linked his fingers with hers, enjoying the pleasant jolt that coursed up his arm. He rubbed the pad of his thumb over her knuckles. “It’s just we have so little time . . .”
Kareena pulled away, her hand trembling ever so slightly. “I don’t want to put all my ovaries in one basket,” she said dryly.
Prem shook his head. “Okay, but you’ve made your point. And when it comes down to it, I’ll take the fall as much as I can to protect you as much as I can. But I do want to say something on my next show.”
“Tell your audience that we’ve met and talked. That we’ve come to a mutual understanding that you’re wrong.”
“Ha ha,” he said. Her mutinous expression made it clear that she wasn’t going to budge.
“Fine,” he said. “We’ll play it your way. Try to date other people before you come back to me. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to wait around for you to make up your mind. Give me your phone.”
She stuck her tongue out at him but handed over her cell. He quickly called himself, and then handed back the device. “Please don’t block me; otherwise, I’ll have to involve the aunties again.”
Kareena groaned. “Keep them out of this. At least for now. I don’t want them to make this situation more complicated for me.”
“At least your aunties aren’t vicious,” he said. He thought about the women at home who were best friends with his mother. They were more of the traditional, stereotypical aunty archetype. They judged, and gossiped, and upheld old colonialist and patriarchal views, and then pinched cheeks and pretended that what they said was to help others. Meanwhile, Kareena’s aunties were a bit more . . . progressive.
“My aunties are meddlers,” she said. “Seriously, if you want me to consider your plan, then you have to keep them out of this.”
Prem gripped the bedrails and leaned in until their noses were practically touching. He could hear the hitch in Kareena’s breath, and he liked to think that despite her animosity, there was something about him that affected her the same way he was affected by her presence.
“I will keep the aunties out of this for a little while longer, but once we get close to our deadline, all bets are off. I have a lot of money riding on our engagement, and I need it to build my health center. I will play dirty if I have to.”
Her eyes narrowed into slits. “Are you seriously threatening me?”