14
Rahul
Present day
Present day
Kimi had brought Rahul a chocolate bar once from one of her stays in Switzerland. It was smooth chocolate wrapped around this sticky hard toffee filled with silky mousse. All these layers of melting softness folded in with toughness that almost took out his teeth. He’d teased her that it reminded him of her. She’d countered that it was all still sweet and that’s what mattered.
She was such a mix of soft and tough that Rahul never knew where she was going to fall on any given day. Okay, so he was lying, he always knew. Ever since her surgery he had tried to convince himself that she only fell on the side of tough, but that wasn’t true. She was just protecting herself after he had hurt her.
He wasn’t proud of it. But when she had come to him with all her feelings in her eyes, with her metaphorical heart in her hands when the new physical one in her chest had barely decided if it wanted to stay, he hadn’t been able to lead her on. She was his best friend, his only friend. But that’s all he could ever feel for her. That was all they could ever be.
He watched her watch Nikhil and Nikki pack up the last of their bags with eyes he could only describe as hungry. She looked like Mohit when Aie told him not to touch the sweet wheat laddoos she had made because they were on order for a customer. Nikhil was trailing Nikki, anticipating her actions and trying to calm her. The bastard seemed to have no trouble putting how he felt about Nikki; about his first wife, Jen; about the whole bloody world right out there where everybody could see it. It didn’t even seem to strike him that he was exposing himself.
Rahul had witnessed firsthand the mess Nikhil had been after Jen’s death. How the man could be like this again, after he had lost it all once, Rahul would never know. The discomfort in Rahul’s belly had decided it was recklessness and wouldn’t let him acknowledge that it might very well be something else entirely. Nikki seemed much more comfortable with Nikhil’s single-minded brand of attention than she had been when Rahul had first become friends with them just months ago.
After that incident when he had shot Asif and put him in a coma, Rahul had spent a lot of time interrogating both Nic and Nikki and also trying to get answers for them. Somehow it had been easy to become friends with them, and to hang out in Nikki’s flat. It had been a long time since he had felt so at home around someone. How the hell did Khan know how to pick on the people Rahul cared most about?
Thank God, Nikhil and Nikki were headed to Chicago today to visit Nikhil’s family and attend his niece’s naming ceremony. A police escort was going to take them to the airport and, hopefully, once they got on that plane, Asif would not be able to reach them. He wished he could take them to the airport himself, but taking Kimi back there was out of the question, and leaving her alone wasn’t happening either.
“We’re going to get a doggie when we come back,” Nikki’s little boy, Joy, said to Rahul in that way kids had of throwing out random thoughts that were weighing on their minds. “Right, Dr. Nic?”
“That’s the plan,” Nikhil said, snapping one of the suitcases shut as Joy ran circles around him.
“What kind of doggie?” Kimi asked Joy.
“A golden retriever!” Nikhil and Joy both said together.
Kimi frowned. “A golden retriever is too big and hairy for an apartment this size,” she said in her Kimi-the-Know-It-All voice.
Joy and Nikhil matched Kimi’s frown.
Nikki smiled at Kimi. “Thank you!”
“Are you a doggie expert, then?” Joy was clearly not thrilled with Kimi the Know-It-All. He was usually completely thrilled with everyone.
Kimi looked undaunted by the disappointment on Joy’s face.
“No, but I did an interview with an expert last month and I did a lot of research.” She did love her research. “I can help you find a dog who will be happy and healthy in a flat.”
The disappointment on Joy’s face lifted a little. Nikhil winked at him. “Ah, an expert! I don’t think Mamma can say no if an expert picks out the dog.”
Nikki narrowed her eyes at Nikhil, but Joy ran up to Kimi, picking up on Nikhil’s cue like a pro. “Can it be brown? I want a brown doggie.”
Kimi pulled out a little notepad from her humongous, also very purple, handbag and started taking notes. “I think that can be managed. Other requirements?”
“Cute.”
“Doable.”
Before she had finished jotting down his list, which included things like “can bark really loud,” Joy was perched on Kimi’s lap and pouring out his considerable excitement about traveling to America to her.
“Maybe we should cancel our trip,” Nikki said to Rahul, keeping her voice low enough that Joy wouldn’t hear. “It feels wrong to take off like this. What if you need us?”
“What’s he going to need us for?” Nikhil asked. “You’re not sticking around where that psychopath can find you.” He pulled her into his lap. “Stop worrying. Rahul’s got this.”
She pushed Nic’s hair off his forehead, the gesture so intimate Rahul looked away. He caught Kimi across the room throw her head back and laugh at something Joy said. Her usually perfect ponytail had slid a little askance on her head. Trying to run from a bomb would do that to you.
“Nikhil’s right. I think you’re safer out of the country,” Rahul said. It would be three fewer people to worry about.
Across the room, Joy asked Kimi if she had ever been to America.
She threw a quick look at Rahul, turning away when she caught him watching her, and started telling Joy about her Almost American College Experience. Rahul tried not to feel that familiar kick of anger in his gut. How could she talk with such ease about all the things she had missed out on and lost? But she could and she proved it by filling Joy in on all the details with a smile on her face, and then went on to describe all the fun things he could do in Chicago. There was that research again.
So, yes, the sight of her chatting away with Joy on her lap with her too-wide smile reaching her too-wide eyes messed with Rahul’s theory about her having turned hard. Truth was she still fell squarely on the side of soft, much less these days than she used to, thank God, but still far too much for his liking. Sometimes it made him want to throw himself between her and the world and shield her somehow, made him want to tell her to hide her feelings away and build some armor. But he had sworn to help her live on her own terms, with complete freedom. He had let her go. Except, here they were with her in need of protection again and hating him for it.
He hated himself for it too.
“How long have you been in love with her?” Nikhil asked looking very amused with himself. At least he had the good sense to lower his voice.
Rahul had liked Nikhil much more when he was grumpy as shit and Rahul could barely get a word out of him.
“She’s a friend, Nikhil.” That’s all he was going to say. Because people loved to invoke the theory of overprotestation.
“Right,” Nikhil said with no more than a smirk and turned to more important matters. “So we go off to Chicago today, and then what?”
“Then you stay there until that bastard is inside a hole in the earth.”
This was the difference between men and women. Nikhil knew Rahul didn’t want to talk about something and he let it go. If Nikki or Aie or, God forbid, Kimi, asked him a question to which she thought she already knew the answer, they’d be going around and around in circles about it all day.
Nikki looked like she might pick it up again, but Kimi walked over to them. She had just shown Joy an encyclopedia of dog breeds on his new laptop, and he seemed to have forgotten how to blink.
Nikki smiled at her. “Thanks,” she said and threw Joy a look that reminded Rahul of his aie. “You know we’re going to have to get him a dog now.”
“Sorry,” Kimi’s smile was wide enough that those crooked canines made an appearance. He hadn’t realized how much he had missed them.
“Sure you are,” Nikhil said, smiling in a way Rahul wished he could still smile at her. “It was only a matter of time anyway. And he’s not going to look up from that thing on the entire plane ride, so thanks, seriously.”
Nikki threw Rahul a tentative look. “Once Asif is gone, much as I want him dead, we’ll never find out who was behind everything we went through.” She got off Nikhil’s lap and sat down next to him. “We’ll never find the man who blackmailed me and sent me after Nikhil.”
“Is Asif the only person who has that answer?” Kimi asked. “No suspects or clues as to who the person might be?”
“I’ve never seen the man’s face,” Nikki said through barely clenched teeth. She wasn’t one for displays of emotion, but between her tightly controlled anger and Nikhil’s wide-open rage, the atmosphere in the room visibly darkened. “All his interactions with me were over the phone. Then after Asif got shot, the man all but disappeared.”
“And he hasn’t called you again since Asif escaped?” Kimi laid a soothing hand on Nikki’s arm.
The gesture seemed to melt through all of Nikki’s stoicism, and for a moment her eyes seemed to fill before she squeezed Kimi’s hand and got a hold of herself. “No he hasn’t.”
Rahul went to Nikki and squatted in front of her. “He knows that you have no idea who he is. He also knows that you gave the evidence to the police and there was nothing to implicate him in the evidence but enough to put Asif away. If he’s as smart as we think he is, he isn’t going to contact you again. Asif on the other hand is a loose cannon who’s entirely unpredictable. So, I’m glad you’re leaving.”
Nikhil moved in closer next to her. “Our flight leaves in a few hours. Everything’s going to be all right.”
“So after all he’s done, he’s going to get away with it. With protecting Asif Khan’s organ-stealing operation and allowing hundreds of people to die.”
Kimi put her arm around Nikki as though she’d known her all her life. Her eyes shone with fierceness. “I have a feeling we’re going to find out who the man is. Rahul put five bullets in Khan and he’s still alive. I think everything happens for a reason. We have to believe that Khan survived for a reason. You will find out who did that to you. Rahul will make sure of it.”
And for all her anger at him, her voice held not a shred of doubt.