A Scandalous Proposition Read online

  A Scandalous Proposition

  AN INDIREADS NOVELLA

  MM George

  Version 1.0

  Copyright © MM George 2013

  Published in 2013 by

  Indireads Incorporated

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.

  The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this book. This is a work of fiction and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  ISBN: 978-1-927826-03-4

  Cover Illustration by Zain Mursaleen

  DEDICATION

  To the two men in my life, who had to be coerced into setting aside their guns-and-murder regulars to read my first foray into chick-lit!

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I would like to acknowledge the huge role my parents have played in encouraging me to write since I was six.

  NOTE TO THE READER

  A Scandalous Proposition is an Indirom novella published by Indireads. As a young publisher that aims to bring the best popular fiction from South Asia to readers everywhere, we are keen to hear from you—our readers.

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  CONTENTS

  Dedications and Acknowledgments

  Note to the Reader

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  About the Author

  About Indireads

  More from Indireads

  Prologue

  “Mira?” The voice on the phone was hard, authoritative, a voice that sent shivers down her spine. “We have to meet.”

  “Why?” Even to herself, she sounded petulant.

  “There’s a problem.”

  “What problem?” she cut in.

  “We’ll talk about it when we meet.”

  “I so do not want to meet you.”

  “Well, you’ll have to,” said the voice grimly. “It concerns Reema.”

  “Reema? What about her? How do you know her?”

  “5 o’clock at the Costa in Vasant Vihar. I don’t like being kept waiting.” The phone clicked abruptly.

  Mira spluttered in irritation. What could Ranbir Dewan possibly have to do with her sister, Reema? Where could he have even met her? Ranbir moved in the kind of social circles one reads about in newspapers and magazines. And how did he get my mobile number? Could Dhruv have given it to him? Mira wondered.

  She sighed. She would have to go and meet Ranbir. Where her beloved baby sister was concerned, she could take no chances. She opened her purse. She had just enough money to take an auto and get to Vasant Vihar on time, if she left immediately.

  ***

  An hour later, Mira walked into the Costa Coffee cafe. It was relatively empty for that time of the day. Ranbir Dewan sat at a table at the far end, an empty espresso cup before him. She felt goose bumps form on her arm when he looked up at her. He was so utterly sexy. A pity he was also so arrogant, so contemptuous of the world around him.

  “You’re late,” he said curtly.

  “Some of us have to rely on public transport,” Mira said, wiping her face with her dupatta and pushing back wet tendrils of hair. “You might have noticed it’s raining out there?”

  “Always ready with an excuse, aren’t you, Mira?”

  “With good reason, usually.” Two could play this game, she fumed inwardly. “Why have you called me here?”

  “A situation has developed…” Ranbir’s brows knit together as he frowned, his attention apparently focused on the stirrer he was systematically breaking into small pieces.

  Mira momentarily wondered how those fingers would feel caressing her and she shook her head to drive it away. “Why are you so destructive?” she asked instead, using belligerence to cover up her disheveled thoughts.

  “I am not being destructive. I’m thinking. The stirrer would have gone into the dustbin in any case.”

  Mira looked at him in surprise. Ranbir was not usually given to explaining his actions, at least not the Ranbir she thought she knew.

  “So, what’s this big emergency that made you call me here?” she asked.

  “My cousin Tarun told me two days ago that he’s in love with your sister Reema.”

  “What? How on earth?! Where did they meet?”

  “Well, she seems to have dug her claws properly into him. He declares he cannot live without her.”

  “It’s more likely that your cousin set out to seduce my sister.”

  “He wouldn’t be talking marriage if seduction were all that he had in mind. I did advise him to bed the girl and get it out of his system, but he seems to think it’s true love.”

  “Reema is not that kind of girl,” Mira replied, color blazing into her face. “She hasn’t said anything about meeting Tarun.”

  Even as she said it, though, Mira remembered that Reema had seemed a little withdrawn in the last few weeks and had begun keeping to herself. She had noticed a soft smile on her sister’s lips when she thought no one was looking at her. She had put it down to the strain of commuting and the long hours she had to keep at work. Was it possible? Reema and Tarun? It was too fantastic a notion.

  “So,” drawled Ranbir, frowning at the confusion on her face, “we have a situation.”

  “What do you want to do? What can we do? They are both old enough to get married if they want to.”

  “Personally, I don’t care who my brother marries so long as he is happy. Your sister may really love him, or maybe it’s his money she’s after. If that's what it is, I can take care of that with a proper pre-nuptial agreement.”

  “She is not a money grabber,” spluttered Mira. “She must really love him if...”

  Ranbir’s eyebrow lifted a fraction. “Just a minute ago, you said you didn’t know about this.”

  “Of course, I didn’t…I don’t, I mean…oh you know what I mean!”

  “Do I look like I care? This little love story has a long way to go before it reaches a happy ending. Tarun’s mother, my Chachi, will not take kindly to her son choosing a wife for himself. Even now, as we speak, she is probably on the hunt for the daughter-in-law of her dreams.”

  “So what can we do then? Help them run away?”

  “Life is not a TV soap opera, no matter what you may think,” he said caustically. “The Dewans do not elope. We have to find a way to introduce your sister to my aunt and make sure that she sees her ideal daughter-in-law in her.”

  “Reema would be an ideal daughter-in-law in any situation,” retorted Mira.

  “Possibly, but Chachi doesn’t realize that yet. We have to get her there.”

  “What are you proposing to do?”

  “First of all, I think your sister should give up her job in that shop. It would not go down well with Chachi to learn that Tarun’s intended bride is a salesgirl.”

  “What’s wrong with being a salesgirl? She’s earning an honest living,” M
ira’s voice crackled with anger.

  “She could be working as a bar girl for all I care,” Ranbir interjected impatiently. “But this is Chachi that we have to work around. Stop going off on a tangent, will you? All I am trying to do is help my cousin. Our goal here is to get Reema and Tarun together. And I need your cooperation to be able to do that.”

  Mira nodded a mutinous assent. The man had a point. “So?” she asked.

  “Dadi is looking for a girl to help her, a social secretary. I suggest we get Reema the job.”

  “What’s wrong with your grandmother?” she asked curiously.

  “She has acute arthritis and can’t write or handle phone calls. She had a girl helping her, but she’s left to get married, so we need someone new. If we can get Reema to be with her, Chachi will see her every day and, provided your sister behaves herself, we should be able to swing this.”

  Mira nodded. Her mind was whirring with all the information it had just absorbed, so much so that she ignored the bit about Reema behaving herself.

  She stood up abruptly, lifting her hand to smooth her hair back. “I’ve got to go now. First of all, let me talk to Reema and see whether she’s really in love with Tarun or this is just a spoilt, rich boy’s passing fancy.” She couldn’t resist the return thrust, but he seemed not to notice. He was, she realized, busy watching her.

  She blushed and tried to bring her hand down, but her dupatta was caught in her earring. She pulled at it impatiently, but it refused to budge. She was just about to tear it away recklessly, when she heard the scrape of a chair and then felt his warm breath on her neck as a long finger extricated the flimsy material from the little bell in her ear. She closed her eyes to quell the thudding that started suddenly in her heart.

  “You still haven’t learnt how to get yourself out of sticky situations, have you?” said a soft voice in her ear. She shivered suddenly as Ranbir caught hold of her hand, forcing her back against him, his fingers rubbing softly on the sensitive skin of her inner wrist. “These are the Dewans you are tangling with, Mira. Be very careful.”

  ≈

  ONE

  Some Months Ago

  Mira stood at the door of the train, looking eagerly around her. “Mausiji, Mausiji! Here we are!” She waved frantically at the plump woman making her way towards the compartment. She jumped down and hugged her aunt, then turned to help her mother out of the train. “I’ll go get the bags out.”

  In the taxi to her Mausa and Mausi’s home, Mira gazed excitedly out of the window. Delhi had always held a keen fascination for her the few times she had visited her aunt. Now they were here to stay. She just wished the circumstances had been happier. Her father had been killed some months ago in a riot that had broken out in the Meerut locality where they ran a little grocery store. The shop had been gutted. Her mother, Veena, who had been in it at the time, had also been badly hurt. Luckily, the insurance money from the shop had covered her medical expenses, but there really wasn’t enough left to keep the three of them going any more.

  Renu Mausi and Dhiru Mausa lived by themselves in a two-bedroom flat in Mayur Vihar. They had no children. So when they heard of Veena's plight, Renu and her husband invited her and the two girls to live with them. “There’s enough place in this flat, Veena, and we will enjoy having the girls here,” Renu Mausi had assured her weeping sister, when she had gone to Meerut some weeks after the funeral. Reluctantly, Veena and her two daughters had moved to Delhi.

  Sitting in the taxi, squeezed next to Reema, Mira was hopeful of the future. Surely, somewhere in this big city, there would be jobs for the two of them? Mausa and Mausi had been more than large-hearted in offering them a roof over their heads, but they would need to earn so that they weren’t totally dependent on them.

  ***

  Four days later, Mira stood gazing with trepidation at a chrome and glass building in Gurgaon. “44, Kotak Chambers,” she said, gazing at the scrap of paper she held in her hand. “This must be it.” She was still unnerved by the long trip she had undertaken from Mayur Vihar to here. The Metro station had befuddled her with all its noise and clamor and the long queues for tickets. The trains themselves were alarming, whizzing along as they did, at such speed and stopping for barely seconds. What if she got caught in the doors?

  She was late for her appointment, thanks to a confusing turn at the Rajiv Gandhi Metro station. Renu Mausi’s neighbor, Mrs. Bansal, had told her about a vacancy at an office cafeteria in Gurgaon since she had heard that Mira loved cooking and was an excellent cook. “She watches all the cooking shows on TV and tries out most of the recipes at home,” Renu Mausi had said. “After doing her degree course in English literature, she attended several cookery courses in Meerut.”

  Now Mira was here, interviewing for her first job. “It seems the perfect opportunity,” she whispered to herself as she walked into the vast expanse of the lobby where a huge gleaming brass plaque proclaimed, ‘Dewan Group of Industries’. She frowned at the scrap of paper where the ink was smudged at the edges thanks to her sweating hands—did it say floor six or eight? “Let’s go for eight,” she thought, hitching up the strap of her bag and walking to the bank of elevators to the right of the lobby.

  When the elevator doors opened, she gasped at the vista that unrolled before her. Four smartly dressed girls manned the large reception desk, two of them speaking on the phone, the other two busy with their computers. To the left was a huge open-plan office, cubicles marked out in cobalt blue and leaf green partitions, set against pristine white walls. It hummed with life, people click-clacking on their computer keyboards and talking on their phones. To the right was a row of doors painted in the same blue, each with a steel nameplate on it.

  Mira stood on one foot, the other rubbing nervously against her calf. Did she really dare enter this place? Would she be able to speak to anyone here? A woman in a well-fitting black skirt and ruffled white blouse hurried out of one of the blue doors and came up to her. “There you are at last. If you want to work here, you have to learn to be punctual. Mr. Dewan doesn’t like to be kept waiting. Come along now.”

  “But,” Mira began in protest. She was here to see a Dhruv Gupta, not a Mr. Dewan. But the woman had already entered the blue and silver room, elegantly furnished in blond wood office furniture. Behind the most massive desk she had ever seen sat a man, his eyes narrowing at the interruption.

  “Ranbir, the typist is here. I’ll be off soon,” said the woman in the black skirt and moved aside to let her in. Typist? Mira frowned. She stepped into the room and immediately tripped over the rug. Strong arms appeared out of nowhere to brace her. She was uncomfortably aware of the warmth emanating from the broad chest pressed close to her breasts, the warm breath that tickled the top of her head. Her heart was racing so fast, she was scared she’d stopped breathing.

  “Look where you’re going,” said the man, releasing her abruptly.

  A deep flush spread over her face and she stammered, “I...I'm...er...sorry...I...”

  “You realize you’re late?” asked the voice rather brusquely.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. ...” she stuttered, still shaken by his presence. How had he reached her side so quickly? She looked at him, her breath catching as she took in the figure in front of her. Ranbir Dewan was tall—at least six feet two inches, she guessed. And she could vouch first-hand for how broad and muscular he was. His face was chiseled and he had full, sensuous lips. For a moment, she was beguiled by the thought of how those lips would feel on hers. She blushed at the thought and shook herself back into reality as he pushed at his unruly mop of black hair impatiently with one hand and asked, “Have you got the Dictaphone from Jasmine? No? Take it from her and type out the letters I’ve dictated into it.”

  “Jasmine…?”

  “The woman who brought you here. You’ll find her in the anteroom you passed outside my office. I want the letters done by lunch-time.”

  “Mr. Dewan, there’s been a mistake…” But Ranbir was already speaking int
o his mobile.

  Mira walked out of the room and found Jasmine packing papers into her briefcase and clicking it shut. She turned around with a small machine in her hand.

  “Here’s the Dictaphone and here’s the computer. Tomorrow, you’ll have your own computer, but today you can use mine.”

  “Jasmine, I…” Mira tried to stop the flow of instructions to clarify her position, but Jasmine was already picking up her handbag and briefcase.

  “I’m going to be out all day, busy with arrangements for the annual conference next month. After you finish, ask Mr. Dewan if he wants you to do anything else for him. If he doesn’t, you can leave. But be here at nine sharp tomorrow morning.” And that was that.

  Mira sat down in the chair Jasmine had just vacated and let out her breath in a long whoosh. What had happened here just now? She had come for a job in the cafeteria and here she was being asked to type out letters. She fingered the keyboard gingerly. She could, perhaps, handle the computer…she knew the basics. And she had been for typing classes, thanks to an enlightened father who believed that girls should work and be fully self-sufficient. The Dictaphone was another matter, though. She picked it up and studied it before pressing ‘play’. Ranbir’s voice filled the cubicle, arousing memories of the few moments she had been pressed against his chest. She felt an unfamiliar tightness in her breasts at the sound of his voice and shut off the machine quickly. She took a deep breath and switched it on again.

  Two hours later, the door from the office opened. “Are you done yet?”

  Ranbir’s voice sent her pulse hammering. She looked up miserably, “No…”

  “How much have you done?” He stepped up to the computer to take a look. Her breath caught as he drew close. “Not even one yet? What have you been doing all this while?”