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Her hair had been braided and dressed in a beautiful knot, and a white jasminegajrawound around the knot.
The PR person had delivered, along with the sari and the blouse, a heavy pearl necklace intertwined with shimmering rubies in an antique Hyderabadi design and matchingjhumkas. She knew the color scheme would be coordinated with Vikram’s clothes as they were appearing together at the premiere and at the after-party tonight.
Zara had always loved the simple and stunning beauty of a sari. But this sari—so close in shade and texture to the one she’d picked for her and Virat’s Hindu wedding ceremony, draped beautifully, even around her rounding belly. It felt as if it was made of clouds, and floated with Zara as she moved.
For a few seconds after Anna had left, Zara had stood staring at herself in the full-length mirror in her bedroom.
Until today, Zara had worn mostly loose, free-flowing dresses at the few PR events she’d attended. With her statuesque frame and long legs, it had been very easy to hide her pregnancy. Even though it had been Virat who had decided it, Zara had also loathed the very idea of talking about their relationship or the pregnancy or anything else to the press.
Only Mama, Naina and her friend Anna knew about the baby, because when Zara had told them they were postponing the wedding date, they’d all simply showed up one evening demanding to know everything and wouldn’t leave until she’d told them at least part of it.
The whole truth about what had happened felt intimate and private and something that only belonged to both her and Virat. Since she’d had a scheduled vacation anyway, she’d mostly laid low.
Tonight would be her first public appearance with her small belly showing clearly. She knew it was going to create more than just waves. But she wasn’t going to hide it anymore, either.
Their relationship, it seemed, was in limbo.
Virat hadn’t announced to the world that he had dumped his pregnant fiancée because she had admitted she was in love with him. And Zara had left it alone, too. She wasn’t the one who’d walked away. If he wanted to tell the world that they were done, then he was welcome to do it himself.
At first, she’d been so unbelievably crushed that if not for her mother’s opportune arrival for the blasted party that Virat had arranged, she would have walked around her bungalow like some ghostly apparition singing mournfully about the true love who’d deserted her for a richer, prettier woman.
Like the very scene she loved so much from a slapstick comedy/thriller Virat had written and directed a few years ago. The shimmering ghost woman, turns out to have killed her lover before the movie begins, and in a brilliant reversal, it is the man that turns out to be the ghost.
With its masterful visual effects and immersive storytelling, the movie was an ode to his talent.
As her chauffeur maneuvered the Mercedes around the bustling square and traffic to the newly renovated centuries-old theater—where Vijay Raawal had released his first movie years ago, Zara had a flash of complete empathy with the heroine of Virat’s movie.
She would have very much liked to bash his stubborn head against something hard until he saw sense. She took in a long breath as the car came to a halt around a courtyard, and saw reporters and media persons being pushed behind lines by uniformed constables.
The door opened before her chauffeur had even moved. Expecting Vikram, Zara put on a wide smile and stepped out of the car.
Instead, it was the man who’d always held her heart in the palm of his hand.
Zara’s smile fell, and she felt a swooping sensation in her belly—the ache from two months ago just as acute and fresh as if it had been yesterday that he’d left her. A small part of her wanted to get back into the car and drive away. To never see him again.
A large part of her urged her to throw herself at him and demand that he come back to her. That he take her in his arms and kiss her and hold her, only as he could.
Somehow, Zara managed to suppress both of those voices inside her head and gave her hand into his outstretched one. “I was expecting Vikram,” she said softly, even as she could hear the pop of a hundred flashes going off in every direction around them. “You know, the man who doesn’t keep disappearing from my life for long stretches of time.”
She heard the whispered hiss of his indrawn breath, and felt a savage satisfaction. “You know where to hit me to hurt me the most, don’t you,shahzadi?”
“Do I?” she said fluttering her lashes. To the world, they looked like lovers, with their fingers laced together. Their gazes greedily drinking in each other after a long drought. Zara was sure it was desperation she spied in his eyes. Naked hunger. Raw longing. Because for two months, she’d seen the same emotions in her own eyes when she looked at the mirror, morning, noon or night.
Who the hell was he punishing? she wanted to ask.
“And since you disappeared to God knows where for two months without a word, and it was Vikram who kept an eye on me, it’s not that much of a stretch, is it?”
Draping his arm around her shoulders, he subtly adjusted their bodies until he could bend and kiss her cheek. Her skin felt as if it would catch on fire from the simple contact. “I don’t begrudge your friendship with him. And he’s always been a good brother to me. Even when I was calling him names. He agreed to keep an eye on you, without asking me exactly how I’d mucked up everything.”
Her gaze jerked to his. “What?” Zara saw the truth in his eyes. Truth that gave her hope. Hope she suppressed by embracing anger instead. “I don’t need you to appoint a keeper to look after me. I’m very capable of looking after myself.”
“I have no doubt about that,shahzadi. Whatever I did was for my own peace of mind. I had to leave for Switzerland immediately and I couldn’t get out of it. Bhai, I knew, you wouldn’t refuse.”
“I take back everything I said about parenting this baby together. You can’t flit in and out of my life whenever you feel like it—”
“I knew I was wrong the moment I left you, Zara. That I was making the biggest mistake of my life.”
Zara’s heart thundered in her chest. “And it took you two months to say this to me?”
