Arjun Kapoor, the man who negotiated our engagement as a “strategic arrangement” and who refers to our physical contact as “controlled and appropriate,” is standing in a stone archwaylooking at another man's hand near mine with an expression that would not be out of place on the face of a Viking watching someone caress his longship.
My heart does something that’s both physically impossible and medically inadvisable.
Because if Arjun is jealous, then this isn’t contractual. If Arjun is jealous, then the pillow wall and the morning extractions and the “profoundly adequate” and the three-second composure failures are not professional courtesy. If Arjun is jealous, then the time on the plane and the hand in the kitchen and the way his body finds mine every single night in the dark is not a strategic arrangement.
If Arjun is jealous, then he feels something. Something real. Something that looks exactly like what I feel, except locked behind glass and guarded by thirty-three years of emotional barricades and a mother who weaponizes astrology.
I file this information in a category I've been building for two years, the category labelled “evidence that Arjun Kapoor might love me back,” and the folder, which has been slowly, cautiously filling with scraps and fragments and three-second glimpses, suddenly has a magnificent centrepiece.
“Casey.” Rohan leans forward slightly, his knee almost touching mine. “You must come riding with me tomorrow. The polo grounds are magnificent. Do you ride?” He says it perfectly innocently. Technically. But the way his eyes hold mine when he says the word “ride,” and the way one corner of his mouth lifts, suggests that Rohan Mathur has never said a perfectly innocent thing in his entire life.
“I've been on a horse exactly once. It was at a petting zoo for my cousin Mike’s birthday. I was seven and the horse bit me.”
Rohan's grin widens. “Perfect. I'll teach you. It'll be tremendous fun.”
“Casey has a full schedule tomorrow,” Arjun says, and his voice has dropped into a register I've only heard him use in theoperating room when a resident has made a critical error. Low. Precise. Lethal.
“Do I?” I ask, looking at him.
“Yes. We have...” He pauses. The gears are turning. I can see them, the surgical mind racing through its database for a plausible schedule conflict, and finding nothing, because there is nothing, because tomorrow is open and he knows it and I know it and Rohan definitely knows it. “Family obligations.”
“Family obligations,” Rohan repeats, his smirk now so wide it could be classified as a public hazard. “Of course. How terribly convenient.” He stands, brushing an invisible speck from his linen suit. “Well, the invitation stands. I'll be at the stables at nine. Tight jodhpurs provided. I have a feeling you'd look spectacular on a horse, Casey.” He pauses, letting that image settle in the air like a lit match. “All that power between your thighs. It really is something.” He holds my gaze for one beat too long, then looks at Arjun, and the undisguised enjoyment on his face at whatever he sees there could power the entire estate for a month.
He nods to Priya, kisses the air near Arjun's cheek in a gesture that makes Arjun look like he's swallowed a live wasp, and strolls off across the courtyard toward the guest wing, whistling something that sounds suspiciously upbeat.
The terrace is quiet in his wake.
Priya looks from Arjun to me and back to Arjun. She picks up her notebook, tucks her pen behind her ear, and stands.
“Well,” she says, with the precision of a woman who has just watched something extremely interesting and is choosing to deploy exactly one word about it. She pats Arjun on the arm as she passes. “Well.”
She disappears into the corridor.
Arjun and I are alone on the terrace.
“So,” I say. “Rohan seems nice.”
The look Arjun gives me could strip the paint from walls.
“He is a calculated provocation in a linen suit,” Arjun says, through teeth that are very nearly clenched. “He is here to destabilize.He is here to gather intelligence for Dev. And he is here to...” His jaw works. “To be charming. At you.”
“At me.”
“Yes, that is what I said.”
“You seem bothered by that.”
“I am not bothered. I am making an important observation about a potential threat to our cover.”
“A vital observation.”
“Yes.”
“About a man being charming at me.”
“Casey.”
“Because that sounds a lot like being bothered.”