Page 24 of The Surprise Bollywood Baby

Was she hoping Virat would somehow make their relationship permanent? She couldn’t be so foolish as to fall for a man who hadn’t even called her after their evening together, was she? A man who was already turning her upside down in a pretend relationship.

No, she couldn’t. She couldn’t let him have this much control over her emotions.

If he was determined to see her as nothing but a convenient lay—and that was what she had suggested when she’d begged him to make love to her—then that was how she’d have to treat him, too. She wasn’t going to run after him, begging him to acknowledge her presence. To let her explain about the past.

She would be professional if it killed her. She was going to lock away all these confusing emotions in a box, bury them under the ocean and focus on her role.

Work was the only thing she could trust. Work was the only thing that would never let her down.

CHAPTER SEVEN

TWODAYSLATER, Virat found himself strolling into the vast dance studio on the lower floor of the luxury hotel where Vikram and Zara and three more of their other stars had been staying, just as the clock in the expansive lounge of the hotel struck 6:00 a.m. The rest of the team were bunking down in the rooms provided at the thousand-acre studio, where they were shooting.

One of the dance numbers from the biopic blared out of the speakers as Zara and six background dancers practiced a long, fast number. Virat leaned against the far wall, loath to distract her attention.

In a pink tank top and black leggings, withghungrootied at her ankles, her hair in a messy bun on top of her head, Zara looked just as beautiful as she’d done last night at the team dinner, all dolled up in a yellow sundress that showed off so much of her smooth, silky skin that he’d felt permanently singed standing there with his arm around her.

They’d both performed the part of engaged lovers to perfection last night. But the tension in her body, the wary resignation when she looked at him... Virat felt like an absolute heel. Behaving like a spoiled jackass who was blowing hot and cold with the woman he desperately wanted left a foul taste in his mouth.

So here he was...with no particular plan. It had been easy to pretend she didn’t exist for ten years. But now that he was getting to know Zara again, now that he found himself admiring the woman she’d become...he couldn’t stay away.

While he also had a suite here at the hotel, he preferred to stay on the ground at the studio. He liked having instant access to any and all of the team members. Like last night, when he’d needed their costume designer—which was his sister—to make some last-minute changes to one of Zara’s outfits. Having finished the designs almost six months ago, Anya hadn’t been happy with his “unreasonable” demands, as she called them.

But since the outfit—something Zara had to dance in for this particularly fast number—had ended up being far too heavy for her to move in comfortably, Anya had relented and gone back to her drawing board. Or her sketchbook.

Staying at the studio also gave him a convenient excuse to not share his lovely fiancée’s suite here at the hotel. The way he was feeling, he had no doubt he’d end up in her bed, all common sense gone. There was something about Zara that made him wary, that made him think too much. Feel too much.

The wooden floor thrummed with the energy of the fast number that it had taken his friend and the film’s music director, AJ Kumar, two months to perfect.

As he watched Zara and the other dancers move across the vast ballroom in complicated twirls and impossibly difficult-looking poses, so many reflections of her in the floor-to-ceiling mirrors that covered the four walls of the studio, a jolt of satisfaction filled his veins.

Zara looked as if she’d been dancing kathak all her life. But it wasn’t just the technicality of her steps or the poses she’d finally mastered. Or the grace she imbued into those steps.

No, this was Zara shutting up any critic who might have suggested Virat should have picked a younger actress to play this role. This was Zara fulfilling the promise he’d seen in her even in those first days when they’d met on a movie set, both of them desperately looking for a place to belong.

God, she’d been sweet and funny and fragile and had him utterly twisted in knots. She’d been the first and only woman to have made him look inward, that made him want to be better at everything. That made him want to change the world.

He’d been second assistant to the cinematographer—a glorified errand boy position he’d gained on his own merit. At least, that was what he’d told himself until he’d discovered years later that his mother had demanded the man take him on. Because she’d overheard Virat in an argument with his brother that the only man he’d ever even consider working for would be that cinematographer.

Leaning back against one of the mirrors, Virat groaned now. His mother had always interfered in his life in those days. Still tried to, today.

To compensate for her guilt, he had no doubt, and for her inability to stop his father from blatantly treating him differently from Vikram and Anya. Even back then, Virat had never blamed her if she’d taken a lover during one of their spectacular breakups. For seeking haven from a husband who’d resented her talent and her success while his own career had faltered and flickered out.

What he’d always been unable to forgive was her inability to walk away from a man who’d thoroughly traumatized his children.

The cinematographer, one of the few people Virat still respected in the industry to this day, had told his mother in no uncertain terms that all Virat was good for right then was to bring him cups of chai and clean his equipment.

Virat hadn’t minded at all—he’d always wanted to forge his own path.

The memory of his first meeting with Zara burst into his mind like a showreel he’d resolutely packed away for ten years but still shone like yesterday in front of his eyes, now he’d finally given it the light of day.

Zara had had the role of the heroine’s best friend—a young woman who appeared in two scenes with no lines.

He’d noticed her on set before, wide-eyed and quiet and stunningly beautiful. A little wary around men. She’d had a presence even then, almost stealing the show whenever she appeared with the bland heroine in their scenes together.

They’d finally met standing in line for coffee. When he’d asked how her day was going, she’d quietly told him that the director had just bitten her head off for acting too much.

“How can you act too much in a dying scene,” Virat had asked between howls of laughter.

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