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His mother’s face crumpled and Aryan felt sorry for her. Not sorry enough to get back with Arshia, though. Or go back into the ballroom, for that matter.
He gave her an awkward one-armed hug and walked away. And kept out of her way for the next few days. It wasn’t so difficult because he had a lot on his plate. The hospital was full of sick kids who needed his constant attention. And all his free time was spent at the community clinic that he was setting up in one of the slums in the older part of Devgarh.
And yet, he couldn’t get Jessie out of his mind. It didn’t matter if she married that smarmy royal bastard or moved out of Devgarh. He was hers - mind, body and soul.
As he drove home almost a week after the roka, Aryan mused that he was probably going to turn into a crotchety old workaholic whose only companion was a cat that he adopted just because she reminded him of the girl that he had loved and lost. And one day, he would die all alone, and his cat would eat him. He shuddered at the thought. No! No cats. Ever.
His phone rang, distracting him from his maudling thoughts and he smiled in relief. It was Nivy. He wondered if she wanted him to run interference with their mother over something. But it was much worse.
“Slow down. I can’t understand a word,” he said, but she was sobbing too much to talk clearly.
Aryan sighed as he turned the car around and drove to the palace to pick her up. He didn’t know why she had broken up with Veer, but it must have been for good reason. And now, both the Sharma siblings would be skulking around their house, licking the wounds inflicted by the Devgarh royals, he thought savagely.
To be fair to Jessie, she hadn’t asked him to fall in love with her. And he couldn’t blame her for wanting to marry someone from her own social circle. Even if that someone was a frog dressed up as a prince. The only good thing that came out of Nivy’s broken engagement was that now Aryan had a real excuse to avoid Jessie’s upcoming wedding.
CHAPTER8
JESSIE
“Why is your sister such a bloody witch?” I screeched into the phone.
“Hey, it’s not her fault that Nivy turned out to be a slut,” argued Deep.
“You take that back, Deep! Nivy isnota slut. This is all just a big misunderstanding caused by your nasty sister,” I growled.
“Why do you believe those Sharmas over us, Jessie? You always have. Even when we were kids! You’d force us to play with those bloody commoners. Nivy deserves whatever she gets. As for her brother, don’t even get me started,” said Deep.
I hung up on him before I said anything that my mother would regret. How dare he say such things about my best friend? And what was that crap about them being commoners? We were all commoners. We lived in a democracy, not a monarchy, for fuck’s sake.
How had things gone so spectacularly wrong in such a short time? One minute, Nivy and Veer were deliriously happy, and the next minute they had broken up. Thanks to Anika.
Ma walked into my room and threw herself on the sofa. For the first time in her life, my mother looked defeated. I walked over to her and curled up with my head on her lap.
“I’ve asked Anika to return to Tejpur,” she said wearily.
“I’m glad. I can’t even stand to look at the nasty cow.”
“You’ll have to look at her every day after you marry her brother,” she replied drily.
I sat up in horror as the truth of that statement sank in.
“I can’t live in the same house with her, Ma.”
“You won’t have a choice, Jayshree. The Tejpurs are a united family. They all live together.”
“Surely Deep has a flat of his own somewhere?”
Ma shook her head slowly.
“I don’t think so, Jayshree. I heard that the Maharawal has sold all his other properties in order to hold on to the palace at Tejpur. He ran into financial difficulties a few years ago and thought it prudent to offload the rest of his estate. That’s how they’ve kept up their lavish lifestyle.”
“But Ma, Deep promised me that we could live wherever we wanted - the US or even Europe!”
“Jayshree, you need to discuss this with him before your wedding,” she warned.
I knew she was right.
“I’m going to his hotel right now, Ma.”
