Busted in Bollywood Read Free

enthusiasm elicited a frown.
    “Here’s the info dossier. Keep it safe.”
    She handed me a slim manila folder, the beige blandly discreet. Welcome to my life as a 007 sidekick. Halle Berry? Nah, I’m not that vain. Miss Moneypenny? Not that old, though considering the time I’d wasted on Tate, I was starting to feel it.
    “My future as a single woman able to make her own life choices depends on it.”
    I rolled my eyes but took the folder. “I know everything there is to know about the Rama family. You’ve drilled me for a month straight.”
    “Okay, wiseass. Who’s the father and what does he do?”
    I sipped at my mojito and cleared my throat, trying not to chuckle at Rita’s obvious impatience as she drummed her fingernails against the armrest. “Too easy. Senthil Rama, musician, plays tabla for Bollywood movies.”
    “The mother?”
    “Anu. Bossy cow.”
    A smile tugged at the corners of Rita’s crimson-glossed mouth. “Sisters?”
    “Three. Pooja, Divya, and Shruti. Watch them. If the mom’s a cow, they’re the calves.”
    Rita’s smile turned into a full-fledged grin. “And last but not least?”
    “Rakesh Rama. Betrothed to Amrita Muthu, New York City girl shirking her familial responsibility, besmirching her Hindu heritage, shaming her mother, disappointing her father, embroiling her best friend in deception—”
    “Smartass.”
    Rita threw a silk-covered cushion at my head, and thanks to the four mojitos I’d consumed my reaction time slowed and it hit me right between the eyes. Reminiscent of the lapis lazuli paperweight I’d thrown at Tate as I slammed out of his office that last time. Pity my aim wasn’t as good as Rita’s.
    Her scheme might be crazy but I knew I was doing the right thing. India would buy me some thinking time about what I wanted to do with my life.
    I dribbled the last precious drops from the mojito jug into our glasses and raised mine in Rita’s direction. “To Bollywood and back. Bottoms up.”
    …
    “Oh. My. God .”
    Shielding my eyes from the scorching glare of Mumbai’s midday sun, I ran across the tarmac like a novice on hot coals, seeking shade in the terminal yet terrified by the sea of faces confronting me. How many people were meeting this flight?
    A guy jostled me as I neared the terminal, my filthy glare wasted when he patted my arm, mumbled an apology, and slid into the crowd. I wouldn’t have given the incident a second thought if not for the way his hand had lingered on my arm, almost possessively. Creep.
    I picked up the pace, ignoring the stares prickling between my shoulder blades. Were the hordes ogling me, or was that my latent paranoia flaring already? There’s the imposter—expose her.
    I battled customs and fought my way through the seething mass of humanity to grab my luggage from the carousel. Caught up in a surge toward the arrival hall, c ulture shock took on new meaning as men, women, and children screeched and waved and hugged. On the outskirts I spotted a woman holding aloft a miniature Statue of Liberty, like Buffy brandishing a cross to ward off the vamps.
    I’d laughed when Rita told me what her aunt would use to identify herself at Mumbai airport; now that I’d been smothered by a blanket of heat and aromas I didn’t dare identify, jostled by pointy elbows, and sweated until my peasant top clung to my back, it wasn’t so funny.
    I used my case as a battering ram as I pushed through the crowd toward the Statue of Liberty. I’d never been so relieved to see that lovely Lady and her spiked halo.
    “ Namaste , Auntie,” I said, unsure whether to press my palms together in the traditional Hindi greeting with a slight bow, hug her, or reel back from the garlic odor clinging to her voluminous cobalt sari.
    She took the dilemma out of my hands by dropping the statue into her bag and wrapping her arms around me in a bear hug. “Shari, my child. Welcome. We talk English, yes?”
    Holding my breath against the garlic fumes, I