The Indian Tycoon's Marriage Deal Read online

  He muttered, almost to himself, ‘Such innocent eyes and yet…they hide something.’ His whispered words floated between them as the raindrops started to fall harder and faster. His mesmerising eyes could discover all her secrets in a moment, she thought as she licked the raindrops from her lips.

  Just as suddenly he strode away from her to the car and opened the door. ‘We should be heading back. In the hills, you never know when a drizzle can turn into a downpour. Besides, this is landslide country. You don’t want to get caught in one.’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THEY REACHED THE secluded cottage, nestled amidst towering pine trees, just as the magic hour set in. Romantic. That was the word that popped into her head as she got out of the car and walked towards the porch of the compact cottage, painted a bright yellow with red brick tiles. Multicoloured petunias were in bloom all around. A large peach tree was brimming over with fruit and the chirping of birds as they settled down for the approaching night was like music to her city-traffic-deadened ears. The Himalayan ranges in the distance were like a majestic backdrop that made Maya feel as if she had stepped into an ethereal world. And the rainswept weather enhanced its romantic quotient by several degrees.

  Inside, the living room, with its wooden beams and slatted windows, was stark in its cosy simplicity—a dining table, a well-worn couch, a couple of comfortable armchairs placed in front of a fireplace and a mantelpiece with some lovely antique knick-knacks. The main highlight of the room was a comfy window seat that overlooked the small garden in front and a spectacular view of the mountain ranges. Next to the living room was a bedroom with a four-poster bed, complete with a pull-down mosquito net, a teakwood closet and an antique writing desk.

  For Krish, it was a bittersweet homecoming. After his mother had passed on, he had only been here a couple of times. Those were short visits on the way to the resort sites, to check in with the caretaker and to make sure that the house was being maintained as per his instructions. For a moment, as he had stepped into the living room, he had felt a wave of nostalgia wash over him. He was glad that he had been able to preserve it the way his mother had wanted. But he had no intention of turning it into a mausoleum. And that was one of the reasons he had chosen to stay here for this trip. It would also give Maya a feel for the lie of the land and its local flora, which would come in useful when she started work on the resort landscaping designs. She’d already had a chat with the caretaker, about some of the trees she had spotted on the way, when he served them a simple but delicious meal of hot off the stove chappatis, a vegetable curry and a sweet carrot halwa.

  ‘Not quite on the same grand scale as the other Dev properties,’ Maya mused as she gazed at the framed watercolours that his mother had painted and hung on the walls.

  Krish raised an eyebrow. ‘You obviously don’t approve.’

  ‘No, I’m surprised, that’s all…It just doesn’t seem to fit in with the Dev grandeur.’

  ‘It was never meant to. This place belonged to my mother. She’d come here to get away from it all. And she loved it just this way. She wouldn’t let anyone make any changes to it.’

  A couple of framed photographs of a teenage Krish with his arm around his mother graced the mantelpiece. Even though the pictures had faded, the close relationship that mother and son shared was more than apparent. ‘You came here quite often?’

  ‘Only during the summer holidays.’ His succinct reply made it clear that the subject was closed.

  Krish looked out of the window at the few lights twinkling in the distance. It was almost as if he and Maya were the only two people in the universe. And the crickets had begun a raucous orchestra to celebrate their isolation.

  The space between them crackled with energy, making him edgy.

  She caught his look and felt tension coil deep within her in an immediate response. Spying a bunch of old LP records, she asked, ‘Mind if I take a look?’

  He reached for his laptop, pulled it out of its case and powered it swiftly. ‘Let’s go through the resort plans instead. It will prepare you for tomorrow’s site visit and give you some landscaping ideas. Come, sit here.’

  He patted the comfortable couch on which he sat, the computer on the coffee table as his shoulders hunched over it. Maya’s muscles tensed at the thought of making thigh-to-thigh contact with him on the cosy couch. The romantic charm of the cottage was getting to her, sending her body into high-alert mode. She tried to sound casual. ‘Wouldn’t it have been better if we’d stayed in a hotel?’

  Krish tapped the keys of the laptop and opened a few files. ‘The resort site is another twenty kilometres uphill. It didn’t make sense to drive all the way from Dehradun, especially in this weather. You’ll just have to rough it out here for a day or two.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant,’ she shot back.

  He looked at her, the brooding intensity in his eyes making her skin tingle in warning. ‘So what’s the problem?’

  ‘Nothing!’ The real problem was this cottage—it had begun to feel more like a romantic hideout than the convenient business stop-over that he had in mind. The real problem was that her mind would seize up the moment she shared couch space with him.

  She didn’t realise that she was staring intently at the couch till Krish’s amused tone washed over her. ‘Are you practising voodoo on that couch? Not planning to burn it to cinders or make it disappear, are you?’

  Her voice wobbled a bit. ‘Oh, that would be inconvenient. Where would you sleep then? On the floor?’

  He eased himself against the couch and gave her a look that made her shuffle her feet in nervous agitation.

  ‘And what gave you the idea that I’d want to sleep on that couch and not in the bed?’

  ‘Clearly, you don’t have a chivalrous bone in you. Or you would have offered to sleep on the couch!’

  ‘What does chivalry have to do with sleeping arrangements?’ His eyes danced merrily. ‘And what’s so wrong about sharing a bed when we can both be comfortable?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ she exploded. ‘We have an agreement, remember? Besides, I don’t want…’ Her voice trailed off as she shied away from finishing the thought.

  He stretched out his hand and pulled her hard. She landed on his lap and squirmed to get away but he held her tight. She could feel the heat from his body radiating towards her. His delicious male scent mingled with his aftershave started a fresh assault on her senses.

  ‘Am I being ridiculous?’ He caught her hand and thrust it under his shirt. She could feel his heartbeat, strong and heavy, against his hard chest and his warm skin made her own turn soft and tingly. ‘Tell me you don’t want to touch me.’ His rich, gruff voice sent shockwaves of sensation rocketing through her.

  She felt as if she’d been jolted by a high-voltage current. She thrust at him with all her strength and leapt out of his arms. She could barely trust her legs to carry her to the far end of the room, but somehow she did and flopped down on the soft cushion covering the window seat. He was right—she wanted to touch him, all over. She yearned to wrap herself around him, feel his hands on her skin, the taste of his mouth on hers. It’s just a game for him.

  ‘You don’t know me well enough to know what I want,’ she said through gritted teeth. ‘I am not the kind of woman you’re used to.’

  Krish didn’t move a muscle, but she was aware of everything about him—every breath he took, the passion-drenched look in his eyes, the male scent of him and the husky edge to his voice as his tone sharpened. ‘What kind of woman would that be?’

  Maya took a deep breath. ‘The kind you bring here to enjoy your dirty little weekends.’

  His reaction came hard and fast. ‘Bloody hell!’ Krish cursed angrily. ‘You think that’s why I have brought you here?’

  But, before she could retort, he strode towards her and pulled her up to him, squashing her to his chest and leaving her breathless. She couldn’t pull her gaze away from his dark eyes.

  ‘Let’s get two thing
s very clear. One: I don’t believe in forcing a woman into providing sexual favours. Two: I have never brought anyone—man, woman or child—here. This was my mother’s private retreat and it has stayed that way. You’re the only person—apart from my mother and me—who’s been here.’

  ‘I…It’s just that you are so secretive about it.’

  His eyes were like blazing-hot coals. ‘Not secretive, just protective—especially when it involves my mother’s memory. Much as I would like to, I can’t forget the fact that certain people caused her so much distress and turned her into a figure of ridicule in the media. She could have had her say—demolished all of them publicly—but she chose not to. She was too dignified and detested public displays of emotion. But eventually the speculation, ridicule, gossip…destroyed her.’

  Maya was aghast. ‘And you thought I would go to the media with some scandalous story?’

  He gave her a hard look, dragging his fingers through his hair. ‘It’s been done before.’

  ‘You really are paranoid!’

  ‘You would be too…if you found your schoolmates poring over salacious titbits in the papers about your father and his latest squeeze.’

  ‘Oh!’ Anything she said would be grossly inadequate.

  ‘It was worse for my mother. Especially after Monica came into the picture. She flaunted every little detail about her affair with KD in the media. She hoped that it would resurrect her Bollywood career. But after a while even the press lost interest in her.’

  KD’s affair with Monica had devastated his mother. There had been many other women in KD’s life, but with Monica it was different. With her, he seemed to lose all discretion, revelled in the salacious gossip and took blatant pleasure in taunting his wife, almost compelling her to lose her dignity and hit back with angry tears instead of stoic silence. But his mother hadn’t exploded in tears and recrimination. Instead, hers had been an implosion—her rage had been icy-cold and directed not at KD but at herself. She had tortured herself instead of KD.

  The only person who had known about her self-inflicted torture was her mother’s trusted maid. One night she had been desperate enough to call him at his boarding school, despite his mother’s strict instructions to never bother Krish. He was appalled to hear that his mother had stopped eating, refusing to come out of her room or meet anyone. KD, of course, was away in Europe, uncaring of his wife’s condition. Krish had rushed home from Doon School to be with her. He’d made her promise that she’d never ever do this to herself again.

  A month after that incident, they had come to the Deovan cottage for the first time during Krish’s summer holidays. They had spent a month trekking all over the hills.

  ‘When we came here for the first time, I saw a new, carefree, spontaneous side to my mother…It was the first time that I’d seen her truly happy,’ Krish recalled.

  Maya wondered how a fifteen-year-old boy would have coped with tittering schoolmates and his parents’ complicated relationship. He would have shut out the outside world—mother and son would have bonded and sought strength from each other.

  Just like she and her father had. They shunned everyone—neighbours, relatives, acquaintances. Even Meena Mashi had stopped visiting them after a while. They only had each other for support—but for Papa that wasn’t enough.

  As his alcohol addiction grew, he began to withdraw from her too, cutting her out. Those were the times when she’d felt as if she was a huge burden on Papa. Maybe he’d felt it too…Did he think of her in those last moments in the hospital?

  Krish’s words jolted Maya back to the present. ‘It was she who inspired me to set up this project and when I started putting it together I decided to name it after her.’

  Krish was amazed at how cathartic it felt to actually talk about his growing up years. It was almost as if they had crossed some kind of invisible threshold in their relationship. So far he had been happy to share information with Maya on a need-to-know basis. And all of a sudden he had thrown the door wide open, letting her into a private space that had been locked up for years. What was it about her that made him go into a confessional mode? Never, once, in any of his admittedly brief relationships with women, had he felt the need to go beyond the physical.

  Krish walked back to the couch and settled down in front of the computer. ‘Right. I think we’ve had enough soul-baring confessions for one night, don’t you agree? Let’s get some work done, shall we?’

  She couldn’t have agreed more. Her thoughts were still in a whirl. Frankly, she had never imagined that Krish’s gilt-edged life could have been anything but glittering and the glimpse that he had given her into the darker side of it made her want to reach out to him. But that wouldn’t do. She had never felt so conflicted. She should be happy that he was beginning to trust her. But, at the same time, she didn’t want his trust, she didn’t want this camaraderie, she didn’t want any of this warm, soul-sharing, fuzzy feeling!

  ‘These are the conceptual drawings of the first resort that the architects have come up with.’ Krish’s words cut through her inner turmoil and she turned her attention to the computer screen. The drawings were an artist’s impression of a typical luxury resort with a swimming pool and other activity centres located in and around a main building.

  Maya scrolled through the drawings. ‘Have you thought of creating a complex of small buildings instead of having one main resort building?’

  ‘Can you tell me what you have in mind?’ he asked, interested in her idea.

  ‘Every building could have its own reception area but would be dedicated to a similar group of activities. So the décor of each building would be different, though there would be some broad synergy.’

  ‘That’s a thought,’ he murmured.

  Maya forged ahead. ‘One could think of the resort as an interconnected network of spaces. I’m just thinking aloud. What if there were themed spaces within the overall resort theme of rejuvenation? For instance there could be a “nature-lover’s space”. So those who want to come to the resort to do bird-watching treks, and other “nature” oriented activities, the look of the building and the flora around it would be distinct from the other parts of the resort.’

  ‘Rejuvenation of the body, mind…’

  Maya finished his thought, ‘…and spirit…Is there any lake or body of water near the site?’

  ‘Yes, there is an old dried up lake. But right now it’s in a pretty sad state.’

  ‘A lake is a great way to jazz up a place.’ She shared an incident about a client for whom they had created an artificial pond. ‘It was amazing. Over the next few months, the place turned into a sanctuary for birds. The whole ambience of the place was transformed.’

  ‘So, from just a bunch of bricks and mortar, it becomes a living, growing thing,’ Krish mused.

  ‘Exactly,’ she said forcefully. ‘And, for a resort like this one, we should landscape it in such a way that it blends seamlessly into the environment.’

  Krish loved the way her eyes sparkled and danced with excitement, her mouth soft and upturned as she tried to keep pace with her mind, which was churning with ideas. ‘Let me show you something.’

  He stretched across to get to his laptop case and his arm brushed against her skin making her blood sizzle. She tucked her hair behind her ears, trying to regain her composure as Krish pulled out a bunch of photographs. ‘I commissioned a photographer to take pictures of the local wildlife and he came up with these.’

  ‘Wow!’ She looked at a photograph of a Crimson Sunbird. ‘Look at these colours. We could have creepers climbing up the outer façade with blooms in shades of pink and crimson, intertwined with the bright blues and purples of the morning glory.’

  She grabbed her handbag and took out a notebook and a pen and started to sketch furiously. Krish watched with wonder as her fingers flew over the paper.

  ‘Is there a local nursery where I can check out some of the local varieties of plants?’ Maya was too absorbed in putting her idea down on pape
r to notice Krish’s look of admiration.

  ‘Oh, yes. We can stop on the way to the site.’

  She finished the sketch and thrust it at him. He was impressed at how quickly and instinctively she had created a concept and a design for it. As he looked at the sketch, she chewed at the end of her pen. ‘You don’t like it?’

  ‘I love it. I’m amazed that you came up with this idea so quickly.’

  The uncertain look in her eyes disappeared and her enthusiasm sparkled through. ‘This is just one possibility. Once I have seen the location, I will be able to give you a lot more choices. Why are you looking at me like that?’

  ‘I’m fascinated. You have given me more ideas in ten minutes than our architects have been able to come up with in three months. You’re not an architect by any chance, are you?’

  ‘Nope.’ She laughed. ‘I picked up the basics of gardening from Papa. Later, of course, at Evergreen, I read up on whatever books I could find on the subject. And a lot of them were on architecture. What I love to do is put things together…you know, like mix and match…’

  ‘You really do have a talent for this. I can’t wait to see what you come up with next.’

  Maya’s cheeks flushed at the praise. ‘Oh, it’s always easy to come up with ideas for new projects where you start right from scratch.’

  ‘You are being too modest. Hey, why don’t you go through those pictures while I make us some coffee? Sound good?’

  She nodded. ‘I’d love some coffee. Do you need help?’

  He gave her a self-deprecating smile. ‘At least let me impress you with my coffee-making skills.’

  She felt herself go warm. She couldn’t believe how comfortable she felt brainstorming with him. Normally, she liked to work alone. At Evergreen, she’d been diffident about sharing her ideas with her colleagues, especially the ones that she hadn’t thought through. And, realising this, Kavita had given her the space to do it her way.