used to be a very straightforward person, and people don’t change fundamentally. So what I find difficult to understand is why you’d even contemplate marrying a man you don’t care two hoots about.’
Shweta glared at him. ‘You just said it isn’t any of your business, and I wholeheartedly agree,’ she said. ‘Why are you so bothered about me and Siddhant, anyway?’
‘Because I don’t want to feel guilty when I do this,’ Nikhil said, bringing his head down to hers and kissing her mouth very, very gently.
Shweta stood stock-still, frozen in shock. A kiss was the last thing she’d been expecting, but the sensation was incredible, his lips warm and teasing against hers. Her hands came up involuntarily to clasp him around the neck. Oh, but it felt so good—familiar, and wildly exciting at the same time. She clung to him as the kiss deepened, giving a little gasp of protest when he finally stepped back.
‘I’ve wanted to kiss you ever since I saw you yesterday,’ he said, the edges of his voice rough with desire. ‘It was all I could do to keep my hands off you.’
Shweta looked up at him, too shaken to speak. The kiss had awakened a swarm of emotions in her and she wasn’t sure how to react.
Nikhil gazed back at her, his dark eyes smouldering. It was taking all his self-control not to pull her back into his arms. Her inexperience showed, though, and until he was sure of his own feelings he didn’t want to go too far.
‘Maybe we should go back outside,’ he said, his voice softening as he put up a hand to touch her cheek. ‘I don’t trust myself alone with you for too long.’
Shweta felt like crying out in frustration. She wanted to be alone with him, to take the kiss further—but she could hardly say so. Mutely she followed him out on to the deck of the boat.
‘The others should be on the boats by now,’ he said. ‘Do you want to wait till they catch up with us or go on to the village?’
‘Go on to the village,’ she muttered.
The last thing she wanted was a bunch of her colleagues gawking at her—Priya at least would be sure to smell a rat. And Siddhant... She needed to make it clear to him that it was off between them. Only it would be a slightly difficult thing to put across, given that he hadn’t formally proposed in the first place.
Nikhil came to stand next to her, his sleeve brushing her bare arm as he leaned against the handrail. ‘The boatman says we’ll reach it in fifteen minutes,’ he said. ‘We’ll get some time to look around the village then.’
Except that they didn’t, because his new team head who was supposed to be managing the project had a sudden attack of nerves and Nikhil had to step in to avoid a crisis.
Left to her own devices, Shweta wandered around the little resort village, admiring the local handicrafts and watching a troupe of dancers rehearse their steps.
‘Nikhil Sir is calling you,’ one of the trainees said behind her, and Shweta turned to see Nikhil beckoning to her from the pier.
‘The boats are about to come in,’ he said as she joined him. ‘We have a little surprise planned.’
He slung an arm casually around her shoulders and she had to fight the impulse to lean closer into his embrace. ‘What kind of surprise?’
‘Look,’ he said.
The four large boats carrying the office gang were now lined up on either side of the narrow stretch of water.
‘Aren’t they docking?’ she asked, puzzled. The boats seemed to be waiting for something. Before Nikhil could answer her, she realised what they were waiting for. ‘The snake boats!’ she said. ‘But how’s that possible...? This isn’t the time of year for the races, is it?’
But the snake boats were there—immensely long canoes, with almost a hundred rowers per boat wearing T-shirts in their team colours over veshtis.
Shweta clutched at Nikhil’s arm in excitement. ‘I’ve always wanted to see the races!’ she said. ‘I used to watch them on TV when I was a kid, but this is the first time I’ve been to Kerala... Ooh, they’re off!’
Nikhil smiled down at her, amused by her evident excitement. The snake boats were a pretty amazing sight. The teams of rowers, working in perfect synchronization, propelled them down the channel faster than the average motorboat. He was about to point out the finer points of the race when something caught his eye.
‘Damn,’ he muttered. Releasing Shweta’s arm, he sprinted to the makeshift dais at the end of the pier which his team was using to make announcements from. The girl he’d put in charge was holding the microphone idly, her entire attention focussed on the snake boats.
Nikhil grabbed the mike from her. ‘Viewing boat Number Two—yes, you guys on my left—please don’t crowd near the guardrail. Your boat is tilting. We don’t want you to land up in the water. Especially since I see that many of you have taken off your life jackets.’
There were some squeals of alarm from the occupants of the boat and they stepped back from the rail. The boat was still tilting a little, though not at quite such an alarming angle. Nikhil cast a quick eye around the other boats.
‘Keep an eye on them,’ he instructed, handing the mike back to his hugely embarrassed event manager. ‘Don’t panic them, but make sure the boat doesn’t go over. And once everyone’s on land call for a quick team meeting—this shouldn’t have happened.’
‘It wasn’t her fault,’ Shweta protested as Nikhil rejoined her. ‘How was she to know that everyone would go thronging to one side?’
‘It’s her job to know,’ he said, frowning. He’d been so distracted by Shweta that he’d lost sight of why he was really here. He should be with his team, making sure that nothing went wrong, but he hadn’t been able to tear himself away from her side.
She was leaning forward a little now, her lips slightly parted as she watched the rowers put in a last furious effort to get the snake boats across the finish line.
‘I knew the purple team would win,’ she said, her eyes glowing with satisfaction.
Nikhil wished he could pull her into his arms and kiss her. Instead, he put a casual arm around her shoulders, pretending not to notice the slight quiver that ran through her. ‘There’s still one more race to go,’ he said. ‘I bet the yellow T-shirts win this time.’
‘Purple,’ she said, aware that she sounded a little breathless. Nikhil’s proximity was doing strange things to her pulse-rate.
‘Dinner with me in Mumbai if yellow wins?’ he said.
Shweta looked up at him. ‘And if they lose?’
‘If they lose I’ll take you out for dinner before we leave Kerala.’
‘A little illogical, that.’
‘Not really,’ he said, and his voice was like a caress.
Shweta acted as if she hadn’t heard him. Flirting was not something she was good at, and she suspected that Nikhil was only flirting with her out of habit. She knew she hadn’t changed all that much from her schooldays—her glasses were gone, and she had a better hairstyle, but inside she was still the studious, slightly tomboyish and totally uncool girl she’d been fourteen years ago. The kiss she couldn’t explain away. It had felt as if the attraction was as red-hot on his side as hers, but he’d pulled away and hadn’t tried to get her alone afterwards. Of course they’d been under the gaze of his entire events crew—not to mention four boatloads of her colleagues.
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