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She shrugged.
“The present is… complicated. Your sister is marrying my brother, and if we fight like preschoolers every time we meet, we’re going to make life difficult for both our families.”
“I don’t fight like a preschooler, Jessie. You do,” he felt obliged to point out.
She let out a deep sigh that made her sound like his mother’s temperamental old pressure cooker.
“I’m going to ignore that,” she said through gritted teeth. “Although you’re just proving my point.”
“Am not!”
“Are so! Oh my God! You’re doing it again,” she screeched, and Aryan hid a grin.
“All right, I get your point. But what are we going to do about this, Jess?”
“We’re going to be polite to each other even if it kills us.”
“That’s it?”
“What more do you expect, Aryan?
“If we’re trying to be mature, don’t you think we need to acknowledge what lies between us?” he asked softly.
Jessie smiled bitterly.
“What lies between us is a ridiculous crush that I’ve outgrown and a very embarrassing moment that I’d like to forget,” she replied, not meeting his eyes.
He frowned at her in confusion.
“What embarrassing moment?”
If looks could kill, Jessie’s hot glare would have shish kebab-ed him into outer space.
“Don’t play dumb, Aryan. I’m talking about that horrible kiss on my eighteenth birthday,” she snapped.
“Oh, that. But that wasn’t embarrassing at all. It was very sweet.”
Jessie made that temperamental pressure cooker sound again, and Aryan took a wary step back.
“You’re right. The kiss wasn’t embarrassing at all. It was a stupid mistake. What was embarrassing was the way you almost pushed me off the roof in your haste to get away from me,” she growled.
Aryan turned a bright red at the reminder of how he’d handled their first kiss. He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose, as he wondered how he was going to explain it to her.
“You were just a kid, Jessie,” he began.
But she shot him a vitriolic glare that stopped him in his tracks.
“You’re right, Aryan. I was just a kid. And now that I’m grown up, I know better than to fling myself at men who don’t want me,” she snarled.
“Will you let me speak, Princess High-and-Mighty? Of course, I wanted you! I wanted you then, and I want you now, ” he snarled back.
“Yeah, right,” she scoffed.
How could such a smart woman be so clueless?
He was drawn to her like a moth drawn to a flame. Doomed to have the same future as that foolish moth, burnt to a crisp by the fire of this maddening woman. And yet, he couldn’t keep away from her. Like she couldn’t keep away from him.
“Let’s not rake up these old issues, Aryan. As far as I can see, our way ahead is fairly simple,” she went on. “We need to get through this wedding with a semblance of civility, and then we can stay away from each other forever.”
