He shoved her back again. “Damn it, can you let me do my job?”
His job... to protect you.
Nobody, save Kenneth and her aunt, had ever tried to protect her before. Krish stood at attention, gun at his side, stance ready. As the car approached, he raised the gun slightly, his eyes watchful.
Fuck, that was hot.
Sejal realized her hand was on his wide back, and there was no reason for it to be there. But she didn’t drop it, not even when a dark green Jeep drove slowly into the clearing and bathed them in its headlights. She squinted against the light, but didn’t close her eyes. If this was how she was going to go out, she wasn’t about to miss it.
The engine cut, but the headlights remained on. The passenger-side door opened, and a diminutive shadow stepped out. Krish muttered a low curse.
Sejal let out the breath she’d held. “This is the caretaker?” she whispered to Krish.
“No,” he said grimly, and lowered his gun. “That’s my mom. And stepfather.”
Sejal inhaled again. This was hisparents’house? What had Krish been thinking?
If she’d waited a few seconds, she wouldn’t have needed Krish to clarify the relationship, because the person approaching them was obviously his mother.
She looked like Krish in miniature, with a strong, sharp nose and a head of silver and black curls. She was dressed like it wasn’t the middle of the night, in jeans and a button-down flannel shirt with a green suede jacket thrown over it. Her dark brown eyes shone in the light from the car. “Krish?” she asked, and in her voice was the befuddlement Sejal would expect of a mother greeting her son in the middle of nowhere, disheveled woman in tow. “What on earth are you doing here?”
“What areyoudoing here? You’re never here.”
“Just checking in on things,” his mom said.
The driver’s-side door was shoved open, and a mountain clambered out. He was handsome, white and muscular, with a big bushy beard and hair, and he looked about a decade younger than Krish’s mom.
His rosy cheeks split with a wide grin. “Good to see you, young man. Come here and give us a hug.”
Krish hesitated for a moment, then tucked his gun in his waistband and walked over to his mother. Un-self-consciously, Krish hugged her first, and then he hugged the man.
Sejal tucked her hands in her elbows to hide her awkwardness. She wasn’t great with any kind of display of affection, but parental love really threw her for a loop. Her parents hadn’t exactly been the most welcoming or affectionate. Her mother had birthed her as a cover for her real identity and abandoned her as soon as possible. Her father had seen her as a tool to be used. Her aunt...well, her aunt had loved her, Sejal supposed. But then again, she’d also turned out to be a con woman, so who knew if the whole loving-her-niece thing had been a con.
She’d had surrogates, of course, and Ken and his husband had had hearts so big that Sejal had wanted to crawl into them, but she hadn’t belonged to them, either, not really. What was it like? To be loved like that? To be adored by older people?
It was one thing to have mommy or daddy issues, but having both? Well, Sejal was aware that she was an outlier.
She looked around, wondering how to get out of this. She hadn’t signed up to meet the parents tonight, damn it.
Neither had Krish, it seemed. Krish gently extricated himself from their hold and took a step back. “What are you doing here?”
“I could ask you the same thing.”
“We needed the house.”
“That’s fine. Come.”
“No, not while you’re here. We’re... we’ll find another place to stay.”
“You absolutely will not. It’s the middle of the night.”
“There are people after us—”
“Hush, let’s get back to the house, and we can talk about what brought you out here.”
What had brought them out there was partially her evil ex and his henchman, who had made it clear he didn’t care about inflicting collateral damage. Sejal shifted. “Um, actually, we really don’t want to lead anyone to you.”
His mother stepped to the side, so she could see Sejal better. “And who is this?”
