“Are you kidding?” Zara tipped her glass toward him in a mock toast. “You need a woman to straighten you out. Now I’m even more committed to finding your match.”
? 11 ?
Zara met Parvati a few blocks away from her father’s gallery after miraculously finding a parking spot on her fifth drive around the Mission.
“I don’t know why I let you talk me into these things. I don’t know anything about art.” Parvati brushed a hand down her slightly rumpled black dress. She kept it in the back of her car for last-minute dates, emergency drinks, and tonight, Zara’s father’s art exhibition.
“You don’t need to know anything,” Zara said. “You just need to be there to show support. He’s been working on this collection for two years. It’s so secret he wouldn’t even show it to me.”
“I’m a terrible liar,” Parvati said. “If he asks what I think, I might just blurt out the truth.”
“He’ll be too busy to ask. I’ve invited dozens of people. Friends, relatives, everyone at my law firm, random people on the street . . . I didn’t want him to open to an empty gallery.”
“And I don’t want to show up with low blood sugar.” Parvati gestured to a nearby food truck. “I need food. I’ve only had a sandwich and a chocolate bar since four a.m. this morning.”
Zara followed Parvati across the street. “Bushra Auntie gave me a copy of the guest list for the wedding next Saturday. I think there are a few potential matches for Jay if he and Indra don’t get along.”
Parvati studied the menu on the side of the truck. “Are you serious? After what he said to you in the restaurant? Forget the stupid deal you have with him. You can find your own celebrity clients.”
“I think I rattled him.” Zara waved a dismissive hand. “People get defensive when you expose their pain. Besides, he apologized. In fact, he groveled, and very nicely, too. I’m totally over it.”
Parvati knew her too well to believe the lie. “There’s something else. What didn’t you tell me?”
Zara toed the ground with her shoe. “There was a moment on the dance floor when I was hugging him . . .” She shrugged it off. “It was nothing.” Another lie. She could still feel the raw heat of him, the muscles hard beneath her hands, the strong arms holding her tight, the warmth of his breath on her lips as he bent down to give her a—
“Obviously it wasn’t nothing or you wouldn’t have tried to hide it.” Parvati’s sharp voice pulled her out of the fantasy. “Spill.”
“There was a . . . bump.”
“A bump?”
Zara’s cheeks heated. “You know . . . when a guy is . . . liking . . . to be hugged.”
“An erection?” Parvati’s lips quivered in amusement. “Is that what you’re trying to say? I’m a doctor. I know what an erection is. What I don’t understand is what it was doing there. I thought you two didn’t get along, that you were complete opposites. Didn’t you call him cold, arrogant, egotistical, and cocky?”
“Yes . . . but there’s more to him than what’s on the outside.” What if she hadn’t run scared? What if she’d closed the distance between them and tasted those lips? Or what if she’d imagined it, and he’d been leaning down to tell her that their food was getting cold?
Parvati ordered her sandwich, a side of fries, macaroni-and-cheese egg rolls, and a soda.
“How are you going to eat all this before we get to the gallery?” Zara helped by carrying the second tray of food.
“Resident trick. Eat fast or die. It’s a known fact that anytime a resident sits down to eat, there’s a code blue or some other dire emergency.”
“I think the emergency is your total lack of nutrition. I don’t know anybody who eats worse than you. And you’re a doctor. What kind of message does that send to your patients?”
“They don’t know all my secrets.” Parvati grinned. “And they never will.”
* * *
? ? ?
Indra’s gallery was in a reclaimed brick building that had once been a garage. Plateglass windows had replaced the folding doors, and the concrete floor had been polished to a shine. Spotlights on the exposed ceiling were pointed at the sheet-covered paintings on the wall. It was her father’s biggest exhibition. Zara counted at least twenty paintings around her, and that didn’t include the overflow that was hanging in the annex out back.