Twelve Hours of Temptation (10 page)

Hurtful? Melissa turned that thought over in her mind carefully, too surprised to stay upset. She hadn’t imagined that anything she said or did would have the power to hurt Samir. Apparently, she’d been wrong.

‘I thought it was...safer,’ she said after a bit. ‘We started off thinking it would be a holiday fling kind of thing, and then it got more serious. I wanted to make sure I didn’t read more into it than you wanted me to.’

Samir took her hand. ‘That was partly my fault,’ he admitted. ‘But I’ve never met anyone like you before. I’ve been trying to figure things out as we go along.’

‘That makes two of us,’ Melissa said, giving him a watery smile. ‘Maybe we should just try talking a little more from now on? Just a thought.’

‘It might work,’ he said, but when she started to reply he stifled the words against her lips. ‘Not right now, though,’ he whispered, his warm breath mingling with hers. ‘I can think of more exciting ways to make up.’

* * *

The next Monday morning, when Samir walked into the Mendonca Advertising office, he found Melissa busily clearing out her desk. For a second an icy hand clutched at his heart. Then he remembered that she was changing jobs. She’d be joining Nexus, Maya Kumar’s agency, next Monday—she was taking this week off to relax.

‘I’ll miss seeing you around,’ he murmured as he bent over her on the pretext of helping her put some of her things into a carton.

She blushed and said softly, ‘I’ll miss you too. But at least I won’t get distracted when I’m supposed to be working.’

The thought that he had the ability to distract her was hugely pleasing, he realised, barely able to stop a smile from spreading across his face. The weekend had been pretty amazing, once they’d sorted out their misunderstanding, and he knew Melissa had been quite as blown away by it as he was.

‘Are you coming to my farewell lunch?’ she asked. ‘Devdeep’s asked me a dozen times through the morning.’

‘I guess so,’ he said. ‘Where are they holding it?’

‘The Parsi café opposite the office,’ she said, and added quickly as she saw him frown, ‘Don’t ask them to change the venue, please. That’s where they’ve always held agency celebrations—it’s a bit of a Mendonca tradition. And Brian’s coming too.’

The restaurant was run by a pair of elderly, slightly wacky Parsi brothers who’d known Brian for years. In spite of its grungy appearance the kitchen was as hygienic as the average five-star restaurant, and the food was a dozen times better. Though most of Melissa’s colleagues seemed more interested in the bottles of ice-cold beer than in the food.

Melissa shook her head as Brian offered her a bottle. ‘I don’t like the taste,’ she said. ‘But you go ahead. I’m so thrilled you could make it, Brian!’

‘He wouldn’t have missed your farewell party for the world,
dikra
,’ said Cyrus, the older of the two brothers, as he leaned over her shoulder to plonk a plate of mutton
dhansak
in front of her. ‘And if he’d still been running that agency of yours I bet a million rupees you wouldn’t have left.’

‘Shh,’ Melissa said, casting an agonised look at Samir, but he seemed more amused than offended.

Darius, the other brother, chimed in. ‘Melissa, forget this whole agency rubbish and come and work with
us
. We’ll make this the best restaurant in town.’

‘What do you mean by that? It’s already the best restaurant in town,’ Cyrus huffed, but he gave Melissa an affectionate look. ‘Not that you wouldn’t be a whiz at running this place, Melly. We’re both getting a bit too old to manage it.’

‘Speak for yourself,’ Darius muttered.

Melissa stood up and hugged both of them in turn—she couldn’t help it. ‘I’ll come here for lunch every Saturday,’ she said. ‘And the day you give me a stake in the restaurant I’ll quit my job and come and join you.’

It was amazing, the way she developed a rapport with all kinds of people, Samir thought, feeling a little glow of pride as he watched Melissa. He himself found it easy to establish working relationships with most people, but he was close only to his own kind—the people who had been to the right schools, who spoke with the right accent.

Brian leaned across the table. ‘I can’t believe you’re letting her go,’ he said. ‘That girl’s a star.’

Samir looked back at him, his good mood evaporating immediately. ‘I have my reasons,’ he said evenly. ‘And I told you when I took over, Brian: I’m a businessman, not an ad man. I’m here to get the financials into shape before I hand over to someone who knows how to run the place.’

His annoyance with Brian persisted when on the way home Melissa said, ‘It was so good to see Brian again.’

‘It was hardly a surprise,’ he said stiffly. ‘I don’t suppose he has much to do—he must have been looking forward to this lunch for weeks.’

‘You don’t like him much, do you?’ Melissa said slowly.

Samir shrugged. ‘He’s all right. To be honest, I’m a little irritated by the way he kept telling me that I shouldn’t have let you leave. He knows perfectly well that there were personal reasons behind the decision. And left to himself he’d have run the agency into the ground—each and every one of you would have been out of a job.’

‘But he didn’t let that happen, did he?’ Melissa said. ‘He sold the place to Maximus even though he hated the idea.’

‘He made a pot of money in the deal,’ Samir snorted. ‘Though, knowing how impractical he is, he’ll probably give most of it away.’

‘We’re squabbling again,’ Melissa said, suddenly conscience-stricken. ‘And I was so sure we wouldn’t, after that talk we had.’

Samir laughed. ‘It’s natural to squabble,’ he said. ‘The same way it’s natural for me to feel a bit jealous of Brian. I know you wouldn’t have changed jobs if he was still in charge.’

Completely disarmed by the admission, she leaned across and hugged him, narrowly missing sending the car into a ditch.

‘Whoa—careful,’ he said, putting an arm around her and giving her a brief hug.

‘You’re amazing,’ she said. ‘Have I told you recently how amazing you are?’

Samir grinned. ‘Not recently enough,’ he said. ‘Looking forward to the new job?’

Melissa nodded. ‘I am. I won’t be working directly with Maya, of course—she’s way too senior—but she was so encouraging at the interview that I can’t wait to join.’

This time Samir didn’t voice it, but he felt a little left out in her enthusiasm for the move. He’d been a bit surprised at her decision to change jobs—especially when the hours at her new place were likely to be so much longer.

‘What are you planning to do this week?’

‘Work on my book project, mainly,’ Melissa said. ‘I won’t get much time once I start the new job, and Maya said she wanted to take a look at it. I’d like to do another round of edits before I show it to her.’

Samir frowned. ‘Is that a good idea?’ he asked. ‘She’s your new employer, and at least at the beginning you should come across as being fully committed to your job. I mean, writing a book isn’t the same as writing copy for ads—she might think you’re not concentrating on what she’s employing you for.’

‘I didn’t think of it that way,’ Melissa said. ‘It came up in the interview and she wanted to tell me about an opportunity to do a short story for a magazine.’

Maya Kumar had actually been very encouraging—she’d asked to see samples of Melissa’s work, and she’d actually read the stories and given her feedback on them. Melissa found she didn’t feel like telling Samir those details, though. Evidently, he didn’t think her important enough for someone like Maya to be interested in her work, and anything she said would only come out sounding as if she was trying to blow her own trumpet.

‘I still think you should keep the book thing a little low-key for now,’ Samir said. ‘But it’s great that she’s interacting with you directly, given how senior she is.’

‘Yes, it’s brilliant,’ Melissa said, unable to keep the sarcasm out of her voice.

Samir looked up immediately. While Melissa was supremely confident about her copywriting abilities, she could get incredibly touchy and secretive about her book. Every time he’d tried discussing it with her he’d found himself inadvertently treading on her toes. He needed training from Maya on how to handle the topic, he thought wryly. She’d evidently hit exactly the right note—Melissa seemed to have elevated her to fairy godmother status.

‘I’d like to read your book some time,’ he said, trying to backpedal out of the mess he’d got himself into. ‘You haven’t even told me what it’s about.’

‘You wouldn’t like it,’ she said. ‘I’m writing it from a completely feminine point of view.’

‘I think I can handle it,’ he said, but she was already shaking her head.

‘Anyway, it’s not complete yet. I don’t want anyone to see it until I’m happy with what I’ve done.’

Anyone other than Maya Kumar, evidently, Samir thought, but he didn’t say anything. There was no point getting Melissa upset, though he was now feeling very curious about the book. He didn’t pretend to be a literary critic, but he knew good writing when he saw it. So far he’d only seen Melissa’s advertising work, which was uniformly excellent, but he knew that being a superb copywriter didn’t necessarily mean you’d make a good author.

Melissa’s book could be brilliant, but it could equally well be trash—and she herself didn’t seem confident about it. Hopefully he’d be able to convince her to let him read it soon so that he could form his own opinion.

They were almost home, and there was a brief pause as Samir negotiated a complicated three-point turn to get the car into the apartment complex.

‘Dreadful planning,’ he muttered as the car shot across the road at right angles to oncoming traffic. ‘It’s a wonder there hasn’t been a car crash here yet.’

‘My cabbie always goes straight down the road and takes a turn at the signal,’ Melissa said, her lips curving into a smile. ‘He says that only careless rich people can afford to take the risk of getting their bumpers dented here.’

Samir, who’d got used to her chatty friendships with everyone she met, grinned. ‘So did you tell him that your boyfriend’s one of those careless people?’

‘Of course not,’ Melissa said in her best shocked tones. ‘That would have ruined my street cred completely!’

EIGHT

The landline was
ringing when Melissa let herself into the flat, and she dragged her cartons in and dumped them by the door before she went to answer it. Samir had dropped her by the lift and gone to park the car, and Kamala had taken the day off, so there was no one else in the flat.

‘Hello?’ she said.

There was a brief pause before a woman’s voice said, ‘Hi. Could I speak to Samir, please?’

‘He isn’t at home,’ Melissa said. There was something vaguely familiar about the voice, but try as she might she couldn’t place it. ‘Can I take a message?’

‘No, that’s all right. I’ll call him on his cell phone later. Is that Melissa?’

‘Um, yes,’ Melissa said warily. If this was one of Samir’s ex-girlfriends she really didn’t want to get into a conversation with her.

‘I’m Bina,’ the woman said. ‘Do tell Samir I called, OK?’

‘I will,’ Melissa replied, wondering if she was supposed to know who Bina was.

She’d sounded pretty authoritative, actually—not like an ex, more like an older cousin, or Samir’s boss or something. Only, if she was his cousin or his boss wouldn’t she have called him on his cell?

Giving up on figuring it out, Melissa went back to the living room to fetch her cartons.

* * *

‘The more I think about it, the more I realise how much I’ll miss you at work,’ Samir said when he came in a few minutes later.

‘You’ll get over it,’ Melissa said unsympathetically. ‘One of those spreadsheets you keep slogging over will suddenly show that Mendonca’s making a profit and you’ll be so excited that you’ll forget all about me. And, in any case, aren’t you going back to Maximus in a couple of months?’

‘Well, I’ll miss you for those couple of months,’ he said. ‘And you’re completely wrong about the spreadsheets—Mendonca’s already showing profits. Devdeep’s doing a good job, and it helps that Brian’s not around, taking on commissions for peanuts and then giving away most of the money to noble causes.’

Melissa was about to spring to Brian’s defence when he took the wind out of her sails.

‘Though I must say in all the years I’ve been working I haven’t come across anyone who’s as genuinely generous as Brian is.’

Melissa’s brows flew up. ‘Wow, that’s a complete volte-face,’ she said. ‘Did the lift man slip you a tolerance pill on your way up?’

Samir shrugged. ‘He’s still a terrible businessman,’ he said. ‘A guy like Brian would be better off running an NGO.’

Feeling suddenly contrite about the bitchy way she’d reacted, Melissa made an apologetic face. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Volte-face is another one of those swanky phrases I’ve never used before in real life.’

‘At least you’ll not get bored with me until you’ve had a chance to use your entire French vocabulary,’ he said lightly.

Melissa ran across the room to him. ‘I’ll never get bored of you, and I’ll miss you at work too,’ she said, in a rare burst of candour about her feelings for him. ‘I’ll be thinking about you all the time.’

Samir swung her off her feet effortlessly and strode towards the bedroom. ‘We’ll need to make sure we make the best use of the time we have at home,’ he said, depositing her carefully on the bed. ‘We wouldn’t want you getting bored when you think about me.’

* * *

It was a while before she remembered the phone call. ‘Someone called for you,’ she said, pulling away and frowning in an effort to recall the name. ‘Bina.’

Samir groaned. ‘On the landline?’

‘Well, yes. She’d hardly have called you on my cell.’

‘You don’t know my mother,’ Samir said grimly.

Hang on—his
mother
? Melissa stared at him. ‘That was your mum? But...she sounded so young! And she didn’t
say
she was your mum.’

‘She wouldn’t.’ Samir’s smile was wry. ‘She’s been dying to talk to you ever since she found out about your existence. And anyway she always introduces herself by her first name. She works for a European embassy and she’s picked up some of their ways.’

Melissa digested that carefully as Samir swung his feet over the side of the bed and stood up. To her surprise, he didn’t reach for his phone immediately. Instead, he opened his wardrobe and pulled out a set of tennis clothes.

‘Think I’ll go and play tennis for a bit,’ he said.

‘Why? Didn’t you get enough exercise?’ Melissa asked waspishly before she could stop herself. Who did he think he was? A world class tennis player?

Samir laughed. ‘I did...I did. I just feel like some fresh air.’ He hesitated a little. ‘Would you rather that I don’t go?’

‘Aren’t you going to call her back first?’ Melissa asked, and when he gave her a blank look, said, ‘Your mum?’

He sighed. ‘I’ll call her. Not right now, though.’

Knowing she should let it go, Melissa couldn’t help asking, ‘What if she calls again?’

‘Tell her that you gave me the message and I said I’d call her back.’

The front door of the flat closed behind him with a firm thud, and Melissa was left staring after him. There had been something definitely odd about the way Samir had reacted, she thought. Come to think of it, he hardly talked about his immediate family—she knew he had a younger brother, and now she knew that his mum worked in an embassy. There had been that one time when he’d told her about their escaping to Delhi when the trouble was at its height in the valley, but other than that he didn’t seem to talk about them at all.

On impulse, she picked up her phone and typed ‘Bina Razdan’ into a search engine. Her jaw dropped at the number of hits thrown up.

‘She works for a European embassy’ had been an understatement, implying that she had some kind of clerical job—from what Melissa could see, Samir’s mother was a pretty senior diplomat.

It was the first time Melissa had tried to find out more about Samir’s family than what he’d voluntarily told her, and she mentally contrasted the picture on the internet of Bina in a silk sari and pearls talking to a powerful politician with her own mother.

Theresa D’Cruz had been a regular mum, wrapped up in her kids and their studies. She’d helped out in her husband’s restaurant, and she’d used to sing in the church on weekends. If you’d asked her if she wanted a career, she’d have thought you were pulling her leg.

Trying to imagine what it would be like to have a high-flying diplomat for a mum, Melissa wondered who had picked up Samir from school and helped him with his studies, done the hundred little things mothers were supposed to do.

Then she shook herself. Bina having a career didn’t automatically mean that she was a bad mum. In any case, Samir had spent the first ten years of his life in Kashmir—his mum had probably been at home then. And it looked as if his father was a pretty rich businessman—they must have had a luxurious life even after they’d moved to Delhi, because she remembered Samir telling her that his father had moved most of his investments into the capital city when the trouble in the valley escalated.

Slipping off the bed, Melissa went into the bathroom for a quick shower before changing into running shorts and a T-shirt. Time she went and got herself some fresh air as well, she thought. Samir’s apartment had a very well-equipped gym attached, but Melissa preferred jogging on the track that ran around the building.

It was almost dark when she hit the track, and it took her a while to settle into a rhythm. There was hardly anyone in downstairs—Melissa had discovered that most of the neighbours spent their evenings either in front of the TV or eating out at expensive restaurants. One would have expected the place to be eerily silent, but it was actually quite the opposite.

Like most of the new high-end apartments in central Mumbai, Samir’s building occupied former mill land. The mills were long gone, but the tenements that had housed the mill workers were still there. Most of the workers were now drivers or cleaners for the rich people who lived in the buildings, and Melissa still found the divide between the rich and the not so rich very unsettling.

It was the first day of the annual Ganpati festival, and the nearest set of tenements had set up a huge marquee where people were in the process of installing a seven-foot-high clay idol of the elephant-headed god. Music blared out from loudspeakers, people were dancing on the roads outside, and a troupe of drummers was enthusiastically giving the dancers their money’s worth.

Melissa automatically found her feet hitting the ground in time to the drums. Maybe this could be the next big thing after Tai Chi and Pilates, she thought, grinning to herself—running to the beat of the
dhol.
For a few minutes she was tempted to go out onto the street and watch the Ganpati being hauled into place, but she knew that she’d need to be properly dressed to do that.
Kameez
over jeans at the very least, if not a proper
churidaar kurta
or a sari.

She was still thinking about the Ganpati festival when she rounded a corner and heard a very familiar voice. So Samir hadn’t gone to play tennis after all—or if he had he’d ended the game early. He was standing in the car park and speaking into his cell phone. Melissa automatically slowed down, but he was standing with his back towards her and didn’t see her.

‘
Why
did you call Melissa?’ Samir was saying heatedly into the phone. ‘Mum, I need you to stay out of this—please. It’s very early days, and I haven’t made up my mind yet.’

His mother was obviously saying something, and it sounded as if he was cutting her short.

‘No, you can’t come down to Mumbai right now. Let me figure things out first, OK?’

Figure
what
out? Melissa was standing stock-still now, her face very pale. She could no more have stopped herself from eavesdropping than she could have stopped breathing.

Samir’s voice had softened now.

‘I’ll try and come down to Delhi next week. Yes, I miss you too. I’ve just been very busy... And it’ll be great to see Dad as well.’ There was another pause, and then he said, ‘God, you’re such a
woman
!’ But he sounded indulgent now, not annoyed. ‘It’s difficult to describe her like that. She’s very pretty, and she’s bright—not the academic type, really, but feisty and street-smart.’

There was yet another pause.

‘I don’t know if I’m in love with her, Mum.’

Melissa bit her lip.
Of course
he didn’t love her. What had she expected? That he’d confess to having been secretly in love with her since the second he’d clapped his eyes on her?

His mother was evidently still firing questions at him, because he went on.

‘I haven’t met her family, except for her brother. Seemed a nice enough chap—typical middle-class Goan, runs a restaurant with his dad and plays drums for a local band in his free time. Her mother’s dead.’

It wasn’t said in a callous way at all, but his last words still cut deep. She hadn’t talked about her mother with Samir except the one time he’d asked about her. It wasn’t something she spoke about much.

She started walking again, picking up speed as she tried to get away from Samir’s line of vision as quickly as possible before he turned around and saw her.
Her mother’s dead. Typical middle-class Goan.
Both true, and logically there was no reason for her to be upset. What he
hadn’t
said was,
Not our kind of people
,
though the implication had come through loud and clear. It matched up with what she’d found out about his family—they were leagues ahead of hers, both in terms of social status as well as wealth and power. Things she’d never ever given importance to because they hadn’t directly affected her before.

Her footsteps slowed again once she’d put enough distance between herself and Samir. She felt bewildered and heartsore. Ever since Samir had told her that he was doing his best to make it work between them she’d relaxed her guard and let herself believe that they had a future together. Evidently she’d been fooling herself. Perhaps what had got Samir riled up after their trip to the art gallery was her stubborn insistence that theirs was a short-term affair—presumably the length was something that
he
wanted to dictate.

It was the first time that someone she cared about had made her feel that she was
lacking
in some way. She’d been the youngest in her family—not pampered, exactly, but always valued. Michael and her father had been quietly indulgent during her teenage years, and when Michael had got married, Cheryl had become the older sister Melissa had always wanted. Until, of course, Melissa had ruined everything by taking up with Josh.

For a few seconds Melissa missed home so badly that it was like a physical pain. In spite of the past two years being rocky, she knew that her father and brother loved her deeply. Michael had been calling regularly, and he’d dropped enough hints for her to figure out that her father had been keeping track of her through Liz and Brian ever since she’d left Goa. Maybe that was what she needed to do, she thought—go back and make peace with her ‘typical middle-class Goan’ father, and come to terms with her own identity.

Reinventing oneself was all very well, but in the instant that she’d heard Samir describe Michael she’d known that if she had to choose between turning into a snooty rich bitch lookalike to stay with Samir or remaining her regular self and doing without him, she’d choose the latter. However much it hurt.

Still feeling a little shaky, and definitely not confident enough to go back upstairs, she veered off the jogging track and went to sit on a bench in one of the little artificial gardens next to the swimming pool.

Think
, she told herself sternly. She’d already admitted to herself that somewhere along the line she’d fallen in love with Samir. Well, that couldn’t be undone now—but what she
could
do was make sure Samir never figured it out. Which meant she’d either have to put on a front all the time, or leave as soon as she possibly could.

Her heart twisted within her at the thought of leaving, and she wondered if she wasn’t jumping to conclusions. Maybe Samir just needed some time—there was nothing to say that he wouldn’t decide to continue with their relationship. After all, he’d just told his mother that he hadn’t made up his mind yet. Miserable as the hope was, it buoyed up her spirits temporarily, and she got up to go back to the flat.