Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 68515 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 343(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 228(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68515 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 343(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 228(@300wpm)
I arrived at her car to find her staring at me with a sympathetic expression on her face.
“That’s why we came here, isn’t it?” I asked softly.
We got into the car together just as I heard my name called.
I slammed the door closed and tried not to look in the rearview mirror as I did.
“Yes,” she grumbled softly. “I wanted you to see.”
I felt my stomach seize, and a wave of nausea hit me.
The motorcycle that’d been idling suddenly shut off, and I knew that I’d finally been seen.
“Go,” I whispered urgently. “Go, go, go.”
Anisa went.
She peeled out of the parking lot like the hounds of hell, or even worse, her father instructing her she was to marry now, was on her heels.
To distract myself from the crippling pain that was filling my chest, I said the first thing that was on my mind. “Do you hate your soon-to-be husband?”
Anisa inhaled deeply, then exhaled.
“I don’t hate him,” she murmured. “I dislike the fact that I’m having this choice taken away from me. I dislike that my father is staying true to his ‘old ways’ and that I now have to live a life with a man that I’ve never gotten to know.” She turned her blinker on before stopping at the red light for the next person in line to go. “Taj is beautiful, and all growly, and I think that I would’ve been very, very interested in him had he not been placed in front of my path.”
“You want to be a lawyer,” I said. “Are you sure that Taj will stop you from doing that?”
She crept forward as the people in line continued to inch toward their turn.
“I think that he wants babies, and his parents want babies, and my parents want babies,” she said. “I’m afraid that I’m going to be barefoot and pregnant, doing everything that my husband wants me to do, and I won’t get the chance to fulfill my dream.”
I didn’t see Taj doing that.
I’d met him twice now, and both times he seemed very conservative and quiet. But he looked as if he was in awe of Anisa.
And who wouldn’t be?
She had all that bronze, perfect skin. Long, black hair that was so thick and silky that it was breathtaking, and the body of a goddess.
Yet, Taj hadn’t seen any of that yet.
Anisa dressed in traditional Indian garb. She had yet to show him her hair, or anything besides her face and hands, as per her traditional culture demanded.
Or possibly her father.
It was really cute, though.
Taj was extremely generous with Anisa. He showered her with gifts, listened to her every word, and gave her everything he thought she would ever desire. And even some things that she didn’t.
Honestly, I loved Taj. And I thought the arranged marriage thing was pretty darn cool, even if she didn’t.
“Babies aren’t a game changer anymore,” I told her pointedly, thinking about another man that thought babies were a game changer, and that it would be the end of life as he knew it if he happened to have one with a certain ex-wife of his. “You can have a career and babies.”
She finally got to the turn, looked both ways, then headed back toward our duplex.
Speaking of duplexes…
“When you get married, where will you live?” I asked.
She swallowed hard. “He bought a place not too far from here. It’s massive, and ostentatious, and I hate it. But he bought it with me in mind, and I think I might kind of like that.”
Might kind of like it.
Snort.
The girl loved it, and we both damn well knew it.
I’d been best friends with her for a while. I knew her better than she was willing to admit.
She loved that he showered her with gifts.
She also loved him.
They’d known each other for going on two months, but in that two months, they’d gotten to know each other well.
She just refused to admit that she cared for him because she hated that her dad forced her to marry him.
The sound of a motorcycle beside us made me flinch.
Refusing to look over, I said, “Is it him?”
There was a long pause and then, “No. But he is part of their club. The one that looks like a Viking. Rawr.”
I snorted and turned my head so that I could look, and sure enough, it wasn’t the man that I was currently trying very hard not to think about.
The man looked over, frowned at me, then looked away.
“Grumpy.” Anisa snickered. “Do you want to stop and eat?”
Of course I wanted to stop and eat.
There was only one way to get rid of negative feelings, and that was to eat your weight in chocolate.
“Let’s go.”
• • •
To say I wasn’t expecting the knock at my door would be a lie.
Only, I’d thought it would be Anisa, not who it actually was.