Bollywood and the Beast (Bollywood Confidential) (5 page)

“And I want to see Elvis. Somehow, I think she’ll have better luck, even if it’s not with me.” Rocky giggled. “Tell her I say it’s nice to meet her.” She pressed together her palms in a
namaste
and inclined her head to underscore the message.

Nani
’s bright smile expanded to include her. To encompass and embrace her. She’d never met her father’s parents—they’d died before he even left India—and her maternal grandparents were sporty, tanned retirees who had a condo in Boca Raton and insisted she call them by their first names. She’d argued them into a compromise: Mimi and Pops.
Nani
was a…
nani
. A bona fide Indian grandma who meddled in family business and crocheted things. Rocky smiled back until it hurt.

She didn’t need a blessing. Just the acceptance was enough.

He’d put it off for hours, hiding himself away in parts of the house that his brother couldn’t reach. But when night fell, Ashraf could delay it no longer. He let himself into the library. Taj’s uncontested domain teemed with shadows, with stacked film canisters and DVD cases. Taj lived in a fortress of wall-to-wall books, of words and pages that couldn’t wound as a person could.

“At last, the prince returns from exile.” Taj’s voice was a low rumble, like the first thunder before a storm. And when he raised his head from his hardback novel, his bitter smile was as jagged as a cut of lightning.

“Aren’t
you
the one in exile,
Bhaiya
?” He knew Taj’s face as well as he knew his own. Still, the first look after a long gap always hit him like a fist to the gut. It was a struggle to keep a cool smile, to pretend they were meeting under normal circumstances. “But
yeh baat chohro
; leave it.” He dismissed the obligatory snide remarks. “I would have come down earlier, but I wanted to get Rocky settled.
Nani
and Rocky became fast friends. When I left them, they were talking about the gardens, mostly with theatrical hand gestures.”

“The little
Amrikan
is good with her hands?” Taj’s words were vulgar enough, but he illustrated nonetheless. “I am not surprised your girlfriend is so talented. Are you training her up, or is she training you?
Iss main kaun hain
expert
aur kaun hai
student?”

Ashu recoiled before he could stop himself, and bile leaped into his throat. He had to swallow it back, to breathe, to forget fingers wrapped too tight around him and a blood-red smile. Rocky. They were speaking of Rocky. Speaking
very badly
, at that. “She is not my girlfriend,” he forced himself to say, “and
khabardar
. Don’t speak of her like that. She is a good girl.”

“Then she is the only one.” Taj snorted, tossing his book aside and shifting to lift his legs onto the sofa. Ashraf automatically moved to help him, gently placing his feet on the cushions and helping him straighten his knees. His
bhaiya
had been strong once. The strongest man in the world. Now his body betrayed him. In that, and only that, they were too alike.

“
Arré
,
Bhaiya
. Be friendly.” He gave Taj’s foot a soft shove. “She has done nothing to you. Why must you torture her?”

“Because looking at her face tortures
me
.” Instead of mockery there was anguish—and anger—in his brother’s tone. Rare honesty from someone who preferred to growl and bite instead of talking kindly.

“Are you that offended by a pretty girl?” Ashraf tried to keep his tone gentle, lest Taj’s mood shifted again, into something far less confiding.

“Offense? She has committed no offense.
I
offend,” Taj scoffed. “My very
life
is an offense. Perfect people do not belong in this house, Ashu. Beautiful people do not belong in this house. This is a tomb. Fit only for the dead.”

Then it was fitting that he’d come home to it. Because he’d rotted inside, and he was so completely removed from perfection. “Let us suffer our tomb, then.
Oos ko chohro
. Leave her alone.”

“No.” It was the same stubborn defiance Taj had displayed after his first skin graft surgeries. That exact mulish refusal to give up. “I don’t think I will leave her alone.” He kicked at Ashraf’s thigh, an insult and a dare all at once. But his expression…it was still honest. Giving away perhaps more than even he realized. “I don’t think I
can
.”

“Don’t be so sure. You can do anything,
Bhaiya
.” Anything except leave. And Ashu envied him that. Because the only thing in his life he could remember wanting was to stay.

Chapter Eight

Rocky rose early, with the sun, washing up in the semi-modern bath and making a quick call to her parents as she breakfasted on the biscuits and
chai
that Usha brought up to her room on an antique silver tray. She didn’t yet know how to tell the woman, “It’s okay, I can come downstairs.” Saying “
neeche
” a couple of times just made Usha laugh and shake her head.

Cell phone service was spotty but manageable, and five minutes of catch-up and assuring Mom and Dad that she was fine were more than enough. Filming didn’t start until tomorrow, so she had the whole day to familiarize herself with the layout of the
haveli
and the grounds. She
needed
the whole day to familiarize herself. Hidden nooks and crannies abounded. Hallways led to nowhere. Stairs led to the roof. At one point, she ran smack into a tall, bearded man with sad, serious eyes. He pointed her, quite politely, out the back veranda to the gardens.

True to
Nani
’s word, they were breathtaking. Surrounded by roses and jasmine, Rocky could almost believe she hadn’t walked into the middle of a gothic murder mystery and written her name on the victim list. Bush after bush was heavy with deep red blooms as wide as her palm. There were pink roses, too. As delicate as a newborn baby’s cheek. Whoever was ignoring the house was clearly turning all their attention to the flowers.

She couldn’t resist touching one gigantic blossom, gently brushing the edge of her thumb along a satin-soft petal.

“Don’t you know the story?” The lofty, arrogant words stopped her hand just as she was pulling it back. Like she was a cobra and the mere act of Taj speaking had charmed her. “Pluck the Beast’s roses and stay here forever?”

“Beauty’s father picked the flowers, not her.” Rocky tried to figure out where his voice was coming from. Everywhere and nowhere at once. “The story doesn’t apply…even if you
are
a beast.”

She finally found an arbor, tucked away, its arch camouflaged in the hedges. Taj lounged on a bench, again playing lord of the haunted manor. His face was obscured, not by shadows this time but by hair…long strands swept over his cheeks like creeper vines. As though his garden had grown around him, trapping him in the foliage. And he didn’t seem to mind. He was comfortable being a prisoner, his sprawl so easy that it instantly drew her eyes to the wide vee of his long legs. To the flowing poet’s shirt that was buttoned halfway, revealing slick, shiny burns and scar tissue set against regular skin. If he’d meant to be off-putting, he’d failed. One glimpse of his body was like looking at a vast stretch of sand accentuated by irregular dunes. He was everything hot and mysterious. A tropical jungle, an arid desert. It was a little obscene how wholly sexual his staging was. A little obscene…and a lot intriguing.

“Do you do this all the time?” she wondered, forcing her gaze back to his. To that one, dark, daring eye. “Sit around spying on girls in the dark?”

“You are the one intruding,” he pointed out, with that rumbling mockery wrapping around his voice like a glove…and wrapping around
her
like one, too. “Generally, there is no one here to watch.”

“Oh, so what you
actually
do is switch between sitting around in the dark inside and sitting around in the dark outside,” she concluded. “Wow, your life must be so exciting. I don’t know how you stand it.”

“I’ve had more than enough excitement in my life.”

He spoke in a mix of English and Hindi, but she understood “
kafi
” and “excitement” and his dangerous growl. God, only a day and she could already interpret his growls. Most of them were simple: variations on “Go away, little girl”. Others…others seemed to say “Come closer”. Those were the ones that really put her off-balance. Rocky wasn’t cold, but she rubbed her arms, trying to will away the sudden goose bumps.

The movement didn’t go unnoticed. “Are you scared?” Taj wondered, sounding entirely too pleased by the prospect. “So soon?”

No way. It took a lot more to freak Rocky out than a few guttural noises and a bad Lon Chaney impression. “You have a really high opinion of your own creep factor, don’t you? You’re not
that
terrifying, buddy,” she assured him.

Taj laughed. That, too, was something she was learning to translate. It meant he was about to up the ante. “You don’t know real fear, sweet Rocky. Not until you’re trapped inside a burning car, glass from the windshield cutting at your face, puncturing your eye like a grape. Do you know I felt my flesh melt? And the warmth of my own blood?”

He could’ve been reciting a grocery list instead of recounting his accident. He sounded
bored
by the gruesome details. Like he was talking about someone else. That made it all the more difficult to listen to. And he probably knew it. “Stop it.” Her stomach lurched, and the words came out book-ended by gagging. “Shut up.”

Her choking noises didn’t seem to wound him. No, if anything, they just made him look more arrogant, more sure that he was so completely above her. “
Kyu
? I had to live it. Why should you not hear it?”

“Because you’re telling me to hurt me, to play some kind of game, not to let me in.” Did she even
want
in? Before Rocky could analyze what she’d blurted out, he echoed that exact query aloud.

“Do you want to come inside?
You
?
Sach
?” Every soft note of the words telegraphed his disbelief, his contempt. “Bullshit.”

She knew what people thought of her. What they saw. The silly, shallow American
desi
who read her Hindi dialogue phonetically off a teleprompter and couldn’t act her way out of a paper bag. Taj had dismissed her the minute she walked in the door, and he was doing it again now. Like not being born in India, not speaking the languages, meant she didn’t have a brain. Or any compassion. “Fuck you,” she whispered. “You have no idea who I am.”

“Fuck
me
,” he corrected, “and I will learn.”

She’d heard worse offers on the El. Hell, on the streets of Mumbai, too. But still, her cheeks went hot and she gasped. Taj’s eyes glittered with a fevered triumph, like he’d beaten her with one dirty come-on. Rocky slowly shook her head. “No. You’ll have to do better than that.”

“What if I cannot?” He gestured toward his crotch, smiling coldly when her gaze followed and landed on the tented vee of his loose
pyjama
-style pants. “Perhaps I am half a man in more ways than one. Perhaps my tongue is all I have.”

He left no doubt as to what he could, what he
would
do, with his tongue if given the chance. Rocky’s breath caught again. Her knees jellied. And, God help her, she couldn’t stop herself from imagining his dark, demonic head between her thighs.
You need so many lessons.
But she refused to cave. Taj was a chauvinistic pig. Like any other chauvinistic pig out there in the street. No better than someone who catcalled her or undressed her with his eyes. “You know what? It’s not your face that makes you a monster. It’s everything else. You’re disgusting.”

He seemed to relish the idea, to revel in being deemed totally gross…or maybe in being something else entirely. “I am? Then why is your heart racing? Why does your mouth beg for a kiss?”

Had he written all of this dialogue ahead of time? Expecting to offend her or turn her on or both? Even if her pulse
was
zooming, even if she
did
wonder what it would be like to kiss him, she was damned if she would give him any indication of success. “Have you even kissed anyone in ten years without having to pay for it?” she demanded. “Because, believe me, my price is way too high for you.”

It was a good line to leave on, and Rocky almost tossed herself through the arch and back into the garden. But she didn’t move fast enough to be out of earshot. To hear Taj’s promise.

“I’ll pay it, Rakhee. And so will you.”

He stayed in the garden long after she’d gone, unwilling to move, to do anything but lock the scent of her and the look of her away in a tower. Amid the leaves, he could breathe. Amid the flowers, he could bear a caress—if only from their fragile petals. Here was his only refuge outside the claustrophobic walls of the
haveli
, his only solace aside from the books and films that had filled his privileged youth. A solace he desperately needed.

And Kamal shattered it, stepping soundlessly into the arbor, a white-clad ghost with reproach in his all-knowing eyes. “Was that truly necessary,
Saab
?” Of course he spoke in the lyrical tongue of his homeland, of parts of northern India as well. Had Taj not understood it, he would still understand the judgment. “How do you tend your roses with such a gentle hand but crush her blooms between your fingers?”

“You have no idea who I am,”
she’d said. But Taj did know. He’d seen her type so many times before he’d stopped looking at all. Rakhee Varma was young. Beautiful. Strong. So sure of her place in the world.