Page 30 of Claiming His Bollywood Cinderella

“Why such curiosity about all this, Ms. Menon?”

Heat claimed her cheeks. “I misjudged you. Some of it is the easy, casual cruelty with which we judge celebrities, delving into their private lives, standing on higher moral ground, combing through their every mistake, drawing satisfaction when they flounder. I honestly thought myself above all that.

“And some of it is just that I’ve come to...” Naina considered and rejected words that rose so easily to her lips, expressing feelings she wasn’t ready to examine “...respect you. I feel as if I owe it to you.”

“You don’t owe me anything,” he said, his gaze holding hers. For once, she didn’t understand the look there.

“Then I owe it to myself, I think.” Before he could analyze that, she said, “What do you regret?” In that moment more than any others, she wanted to call him Vikram. She wanted the feeling of intimacy it would give them, she wanted the right to demand answers from him.

She wanted...so much she couldn’t even put it all into words.

He combed his fingers through his hair, his shoulders tense. “Not regrets so much as niggles. Certain recent events...have made me realize that there are consequences to my actions that I hadn’t foreseen.”

“Like what?”

“Like the fact that taking control of everyone’s lives to fix a sinking ship has turned me into a control freak who can’t keep out of his family’s personal business. Like the fact that I seem to have lost my soul somewhere along the way in the pursuit of wealth and security. Like the fact that I...” He rubbed a finger over his temple and then shook his head. As if deciding that those niggles weren’t important. “I’ve become so arrogant that maybe I don’t even know myself anymore.”

“I’d venture that most of that arrogance is innate rather than a byproduct of all the problems you’ve had to fix,” she offered lightly, her heart heavy at the remoteness of his expression.

“Touché, Ms. Menon,” he said with a laugh. “Guess you think you know me very well now, huh?”

She said nothing, suddenly finding her breath far too shallow under his intent gaze.

“I’m too practical to pine over a future that never really existed for me,” he said finally. “Virat is the genius, the thinker who lives in alternate story lines and potential futures. I’m a hardheaded businessman. When you’ve had to make decisions for everyone, life-changing decisions at such an age as I did, it becomes a deeply ingrained habit. It becomes a part of you—that controlling nature, the arrogant assumption that you know best for everyone. You stop listening to anyone, you think yourself invincible. You...become distant from your family friends, maybe even your own heart.”

“But if you have this self-awareness now, if you know that you need to bend sometimes...”

Naina heard the self-deprecation in his laugh. How had she ever thought this man a one-dimensional cardboard cutout?

“Knowing that I’ve become a controlling, arrogant man is no help when it comes to changing, Ms. Menon. Most of the time, I think I’m too set in my ways to even want to change.

“Would you walk away from your stepmother and your stepsister even though they demand and take without a thought to your own happiness?”

She reared back from that softly worded comment as if it was a slap. “I told you. They’re not burdens. They’re...” She smiled once the sudden burst of anger died down. “This is what you’ve been talking about, isn’t it? This knowing what’s best for everyone. This belief in your own superiority? This is why Virat and Anya are often angry with you.”

He shrugged.

“Tell me then,” she demanded. “Tell me your opinion of my family. Of me. Of how I should be fixing my life.”

“No, Ms. Menon,” he replied calmly but with a hint of steel in his tone. “I’ve just crawled back into your good graces. I should like to stay there. Especially since we do make a rather spectacular team.”

She preened at the praise. And she knew she should heed his warning. But a desperate need to know what he thought of her took hold of her. A self-indulgent yearning for his regard. “I’m a big girl, Mr. Raawal, I can take it,” she said, mimicking his words from that first day. “Do your worst.”

“You’ll not like me for it,” he said, coming closer. And then, he sighed. “Why? Why are you so bent on hearing what I think of you?”

“Let’s just say curiosity is my number one sin.”

“You never got over your mother abandoning you as a child. And to be honest, maybe it’s not a thing one ever gets over. Add to that a father who at best sounds like the absentminded, messed-up sort, at worst, a man who should’ve paid more attention to his little girl instead of his own feelings of loss and devastation, and you had to grow up too fast.

“I know how that feels. I know what it means to have to take hold of the family reins when you don’t even understand yourself. Only our innate natures are such that it appears I have to control everything and everyone around me and you...”

“I...what?”

“You...you make yourself indispensable to everyone in your orbit. You’re afraid that if you don’t move everything to not only anticipate what your stepmother and stepsister need, but lay it at their feet, they will abandon you too. That they will stop loving you.”

“And what is it that you think I should do to fix it?” she demanded, thrusting her face into his, so angry that tears filled her eyes. “Cut them out of my life? I’m not like you. I can’t screen my family’s calls. I couldn’t bear it if they were mad at me. I couldn’t...” And just like that, she confirmed everything he’d said about her.

He came closer then, his fingers reaching for her face. Even knowing that she should jerk away from his touch, Naina didn’t move. He’d given her enough time to retreat from him. He clasped her jaw with such reverence that something inside her burst open.

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