Read Online The One She Was Warned About by Shoma Narayanan - Free Book Online Page B

left the better it would be for both of them.
    ‘I’m not really very hungry,’ she muttered, glancing down at the menu.
    Supposedly the food was Indian, but she hadn’t even heard of half the dishes before. Probably they were designed to appeal to the large number of foreigners who were thronging the place. Shweta cast a quick look around. Most of the tables were occupied by glitzy types, except for one where a bunch of older people were celebrating someone’s fortieth birthday. They were expensively but casually dressed, and seemed very comfortable in their own skins. The woman whose birthday it was caught Shweta’s eye and gave her a wink. Instantly she started feeling better.
    ‘I like the look of that group,’ she told Nikhil. ‘Especially the husband of the birthday girl. He’s cute.’
    ‘He’s twice your age,’ Nikhil said, following her gaze.
    ‘But so what? He looks nice. I bet he was quite a heartbreaker when he was younger. And look at him now—he’s so wrapped up in his wife, and she must be about the same age as him...’
    Nikhil reached across and firmly took her glass out of her hand. ‘I agree. They’re very cute. But you need to stop staring,’ he said. ‘And they’re forty—not eighty. It’s perfectly normal to be wrapped up in each other even at that age. I didn’t know you were such a romantic.’
    ‘I’m not romantic at all!’ Shweta gave him an indignant look. ‘And I’m not drunk either. So you can give me back my glass, thank you very much.’
    ‘I didn’t say you were drunk,’ Nikhil said, and gave her the glass back. ‘Shall I order for you? You’re holding your menu upside down.’
    ‘It makes the same amount of sense both ways,’ she said, and he laughed out loud.
    After he’d finished ordering and the waiter had gone away, he reached out and took her hand across the table. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘The evening’s not gone the way it was supposed to, has it?’
    ‘I’m not sure how it was supposed to go,’ she said, meeting his gaze squarely across the table. ‘But if it was supposed to be a date it’s not been very date-like so far.’
    Nikhil toyed with her hand for a few seconds without looking up. Then he lifted it and gently kissed her fingers one by one, his lips lingering against her skin. Completely taken by surprise, she watched him as if turned to stone. There was something incredibly erotic about the gesture—quite suddenly the date was living up to expectations after all.
    ‘Why did you do that?’ she asked when he finally looked up, and her voice was trembling slightly.
    He took his time answering, bending to press one more kiss on her palm before he spoke. ‘You looked like you could do with a kiss,’ he said. ‘And you’re too far away for me to kiss you properly. We’ll have to wait until we’re out of here for that.’
    She tried to be annoyed at being told that she looked as if she needed kissing, but she was so strung up at the thought of getting to kiss him properly later that she couldn’t bother to be upset. The rest of her appetite seemed to have disappeared as well, but she obediently picked at her food when it arrived. After the first few mouthfuls she discovered that the taste was out of the world—and that she was hungry after all.
    ‘I like watching you eat,’ Nikhil said. ‘You look like you’re enjoying the meal, not counting calories.’
    ‘I’ll probably be as fat as a tub by the time I’m forty,’ Shweta said.
    She said no to dessert, however, and Nikhil asked for the bill. Shweta was almost jigging around in impatience while he waited for his credit card to be swiped and then signed the charge slip.
    ‘Let’s go,’ he said finally, and she slipped her arm in his to walk out of the restaurant.
    ‘I’ll drop you home,’ he said. ‘But first...’
    The path to the car park was deserted, and Nikhil pulled her into his arms and kissed her very, very thoroughly. ‘I’ve been dreaming about