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“Yeah, gotta send a few texts. Go get a charger. See my parents.”
“I have a charger.” He pointed to the wall and poured Cinnamon Toast Crunch into a bowl and topped it off with a sprinkling of Special K. “Why don’t you eat first?”
“I guess I could.” She plugged in her phone next to an empty space on the wall where it looked like a picture had once hung. She sat down and would have asked about it, but he passed her the bowl. “This is breakfast?”
“Or lunch. Your parents’ll be worried about you?”
That made her sound like a baby, not a grown woman who’d spent a wild night having dirty sex. “Not yet. Anna made excuses for me. They’re already at the hospital. They’re doctors at MetroGen.”
“Do they expect you back?”
“I guess not. As long as I check in, I should be fine, but I should go.” It dawned on her what he was suggesting—she didn’t have to leave.
“If you want. Or you could stay here and do nothing.” He helped himself to her cereal. “I only have one bowl.”
“This is my cereal now.” She pulled her bowl back, and it tipped onto her borrowed shirt.
“That shirt’s dirty.” His voice dropped a pitch, and she sensed sex awareness sweeping over her. “You need a shower.”
Less than a minute later, they were both in the shower, and Eowyn the cat made herself comfortable on the milk-covered shirt.
CHAPTER 4
Sneaking around turned out to be a lot of damn fun, and so did watching TV and reading books all day. From the moment she’d met him on Sunday night, Royce had showed her nothing except fun. In the moments between romps in his bed—or floor—or shower, he’d made microwave popcorn and introduced her to mindless action movies or read her sections of Fifty Shades of Grey out loud.
Yet somehow, he managed to leave Wednesday morning around 7:00 a.m.
At least that’s what his note said. He also left her a key.
Good thing because she’d run out of excuses to be ‘staying at Anna’s.’ A few texts later, she had arranged meeting her parents at the hospital for lunch. That should keep them off the scent.
At least, she hoped. She’d never done it before, so hopefully they wouldn’t suspect anything.
Vandy passed the hospital front desk and headed to the attending lounge. Raj wasn’t allowed in since it was off limits to third-year medical students, and her mom wanted to avoid the suggestion of nepotism.
As if there weren’t a few hundred Patels in the hospital already. No one was likely to realize Raj Patel was their son, but her mom wouldn’t budge.
“What are you wearing?” Dr. Sonal Patel wrinkled her nose while escorting Vandy into the well-appointed seating area.
“I didn’t pack that many clothes.” Vandy hoped that excuse flew. She’d stopped at her parents’ empty house and ransacked her luggage to find a long-sleeved maroon T-shirt in the University of Chicago colors. Otherwise, her mom would have noticed the bite marks.
“Eat. Eat. Eat. They can’t have real Gujarati in your dining hall.” Her mom had already set out plates of dal bhat shak rotli (lentils, rice, curry, and flat bread). Raj probably had a whole freezer of it, and Vandy didn’t mention that Chicago had a million Indian restaurants. “Are you having a good time with Anna? She’s such a nice girl.”
“Yes, she said she got early admission to Cleveland College of Medicine.” Vandy stuck to topics that would interest her mother.
“But she didn’t get into the University of Chicago, which is why she’s at Case. I can’t wait till you do your master’s program,” her mom said, her accent rising and falling depending on the topic. “Things are going well at your internship, yes?”
Vandy nodded unenthusiastically. “Things are great.”
It wasn’t exactly a lie. She was a glorified secretary working long hours, fetching coffee, filing forms.
“I’ll have an MD, a PhD, and a CPA-MBA. Sapna is going to be so jealous.”
“Doesn’t Aunt Sapna’s son work on Wall Street?” Vandy tried to remember her older cousin. “Isn’t he engaged?”
“Not anymore. He got rid of that blonde around Holi, and Sapna is over the moon. She has a list of eligible good Gujarati women longer than my arm.”
Vandy tried not to choke on a mouthful of curry. Couldn’t her cousin have broken up on a day different than on Holi, the spring festival of love? Any time marriage came up, there was only one way it would go. Her mom would believe it was fated for him to find new love, which therefore meant Vandy could use some fate in the love and marriage department. “Isn’t it a little early to start dating? Weren’t he and his fiancée together for years?”
