Take One Arranged Marriage… Read Free Page B

over her head.
    Vikram pulled to the side of the road, and waited patiently as she struggled. ‘Do you need help?’ he asked politely after a few minutes passed, and his prospective fiancée continued to wrestle with the sweater.
    ‘Darn thing’s caught on my earring,’ Tara panted, lifting a corner of the sweater to reveal her flushed face. ‘I should have taken the earrings off first. They’re like bloody chandeliers.’
    ‘Stop wriggling,’ Vikram said, clicking the car light on and reaching across to disentangle the earring. Tara obligingly leaned closer, andhe was treated to a sudden glimpse of cleavage. Despite himself Vikram found himself looking—he had to tear his eyes away and concentrate on getting the earring out of the delicate wool. ‘Done,’ he said finally, his voice coming out a little thicker than normal.
    In addition to the cleavage, there had been soft skin at the nape of her neck that he hadn’t been able to avoid touching several times. And she was wearing a perfume that managed to be sweetly innocent and madly tantalising at the same time—a lot like Tara herself, Vikram thought, before he shook himself. He’d been celibate too long, he thought cynically, if he was starting to get excited about touching a woman’s ear.
    ‘Thanks,’ Tara said, giving him a cheeky little smile. ‘I thought I’d be stuck inside that thing for ever, blundering around like a headless horseman.’
    ‘You’re welcome,’ he said, his voice sounding a little cold even to his own ears. ‘Now, where would you like to go for dinner?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ Tara said cheerfully as she tugged off the annoying earrings and deposited them in her handbag. ‘Dad always takes us to his club, but the food’s horrible and allthe waiters have known me since I was ten years old.’
    ‘There’s a restaurant in the new five-star hotel, isn’t there?’ Vikram asked, mentioning the only decent hotel he’d seen in the city. ‘I don’t know Jamshedpur very well. This is my first visit since my father got transferred here.’
    Tara was busy scrubbing the lipstick off her lips with a tissue. ‘I’ve never been there,’ she said. ‘It’s too expensive for the likes of us.’ A little too late she realised that the remark could be interpreted in several ways, and tried to correct herself. ‘I mean Dad doesn’t like eating out much. He says it’s a waste of money. And when we
do
go out …’
    ‘You go to his club.’ Vikram said. ‘You told me. How do I get to the hotel from here?’
    ‘You take the next left and go straight for around five kilometres,’ Tara said, sounding a little subdued.
    Vikram glanced at her. She had managed to get her hair out of the complicated-looking braid it had been in and was now finger-combing it into obedience. It was really lovely hair, he thought, as she bent her head to dig in her purse for a scrunchie, and it fell over the side of her face like a jet-black curtain. An auto-rickshawhonked indignantly, and he turned his eyes hastily back to the road.
    ‘What’s the news on your PhD?’ he asked.
    ‘I spoke to my supervisor again,’ Tara replied. ‘She said she’s willing to wait for me till January, but after that she’s going to take on the next research applicant on her list.’
    Vikram nodded, and she didn’t dare to ask him if he’d made up his mind. Presumably, as he was taking her out to dinner, he hadn’t decided definitely
not
to marry her. Or maybe he had, and he just wanted to tell her in person rather than on the phone. This was all very confusing, Tara thought, wrinkling up her nose and peeking quickly at his rather stern profile.
    ‘You look quite different now,’ Vikram remarked as Tara got out of the car at the hotel.
    ‘Different from yesterday, or different from five minutes ago?’ Tara asked.
    ‘Both, actually,’ Vikram said. ‘Though I meant your in-car makeover. An immense improvement, if you don’t mind my saying so.’
    It was. Unlike