Whatever, he’d finish up these cabinets, and then he would no longer have a reason to show up at the bar. It was for the best, he told himself. He didn’t need to be involved with someone he would end up hurting in the end. He just couldn’t shake the feeling that there had been something more in that kiss. Never mind. She was probably convinced he was some sort of creepy stalker, anyway. She was better off without him. Definitely. She’d told him how badly she’d wanted her baby; she clearly wanted to be a mother someday. That was the deal breaker. He should have backed off right then. He was better off, just trudging along alone.
Sure he was.
A child’s wailing caught his attention, and he went to open the door between the kitchen and the bar. A mother was desperately trying to calm her distraught son. Annika walked around to the front of the bar, holding a bubbly pink drink in a plastic to-go cup. She knelt down to the child, offering the drink and speaking quietly to him.
The little boy sniffled and his chest heaved, but he eyed the drink. Daniel found himself smiling as Annika handed the Shirley Temple to the little boy. She had a way with kids, that was for sure. He was frozen to his spot as Annika leaned against the bar and waved goodbye to mother and son.
Bobby was drying glasses behind the bar. “You’ll make a great mom one day.”
She turned to face him, and Daniel’s heart skipped a beat at the look of joy on her face. “I certainly hope so.” She grinned at Bobby, then caught Daniel watching her.
Heat blazed through him, powerful and unnerving as he caught her gaze. Her eyes hardened as her smile faltered, and she busied herself with collecting used glasses. Daniel noticed that she still had a small bandage on her left hand, but the splint was gone. The dressing looked fresh, so he was confident it was clean and without infection. Had the infamousSajanre-dressed it? Jealousy, green and ugly, boiled in him for a moment. He shook his head. He had no right to be jealous. Annika was not his.
Daniel took his cue and turned back to his work in the kitchen. She would make a great mother one day. A pit formed in his stomach as he shut down the whisperings of what could have been.
He would never have her.
Because he would never be a father again.
CHAPTER TWELVE
ANNIKA
ANNIKAPUSHEDASIDEthoughts of Daniel, yet again, as she walked into her aunt’s house without knocking. She just hadn’t expected her reaction to him when she caught him watching her at the bar. She was angry at him. There was no reason for her heart to leap like that when she saw him. And there was certainly no reason for her to be able to feel his eyes watching her, making her sweat like a teenager.
To his credit, he did not try to talk to her, which was probably smart, so the disappointment she felt was quite unreasonable. If Daniel had already lied to her—and he had—then the future could bring only more of the same. She shook her head as if she could physically knock out thoughts of him.
Sounds of laughter and music and the scent of freshly fried samosas greeted her like a childhood friend, cocooning her as she entered and took off her shoes. There were matching shoes to every kind of Indian outfit there was, but as soon as Indian people got anywhere, they took off said shoes. Yet she and Naya always had to have the perfect shoes to match the outfit.
Annika made her way to the kitchen, which was no easy feat, as she was greeted along the way by various aunties and uncles she hadn’t seen in some time. Everyone wanted to hear how the teaching was going, how she managed living in Baltimore. Most everyone was genuinely interested in what was going on with her; after all, she had grown up with these people. If it seemed like a few of the aunties were giving her the side-eye, well, it must have been her imagination.
“Oh, here’s the stranger!” A jovial voice, paired with twinkling eyes and a broad smile, stopped her pilgrimage just as she approached the kitchen.
“Mehul-kaka!” Annika grinned from ear to ear. Her father’s younger brother always had a special place in her heart. His accent was light but ever present, same as her father’s. He had shaved his mustache, and both brothers had long since given up oiling their hair.
And when things had gone bad—he was the one who spoke sense to her father. She threw her arms around him in a tight hug. “I’m not a stranger. I just saw you at Diwali.”
“That party was two weeks ago, beta.” He returned the hug with gusto. “And you were preoccupied with a certain young man.” He raised his eyebrows with a wink.
She did an internal eye roll. You couldn’t talk to a guy around here without starting the rumor mill. “Mehul-kaka, Sajan is just a friend.”
The eyebrows came down, and he shrugged. “Hmm. Can’t blame a kaka for trying to get information. My daughter tells me nothing.”
“When there’s something to tell, Naya will tell it.”
Mehul-kaka sighed, resting his arm around her shoulders as he escorted her to the kitchen. “In the meantime, make sure Kaki gives you hot-hot samosa.”
Annika rolled her eyes at the literal translation ofgaram-garam. The words actually meant hot-hot, but the connotation was fresh and hot. Her family loved the wordplay. Her kaka laughed and made eye contact with his wife. Veena-kaki’s eyes lit up at the sight of Annika. “Maybe she can bribe information from you with good food.” He chuckled and left her in the kitchen.
The kitchen was, as always, a hotbed of activity. Aunties sat or stood in small clusters around the room, depending on what part of the samosa they were working on. At one end, far from the stove, a couple of aunties rolled out the dough for flatbread that would be the outer covering. Next was the filling station, as Annika’s head interpreted it, which comprised another few aunties. The last station was the closing station, where the filled samosas were squeezed shut before frying. This task was usually given to ten-year-old girls who wanted to help. And sure enough, two young girls were sealing samosas and looking very pleased with themselves. A third girl did the work, a slight scowl on her face. She eyed the boys running around with a ball with more than a little longing. It was as if Annika was watching herself at that age.
Amid all this, small children ran around playing, marginally supervised by the socializing adults. Bollywood music played in the background, and somewhere, young teen girls giggled as they practiced Bollywood moves.
In all the time she’d dated Steven, she had not once brought him to one of these parties. It was difficult to explain the chaos and the camaraderie that was mixed in with the gossip and judgment. Though arrival and departure times were loose, children roamed freely, and people ate constantly, standing or sitting anywhere there was a spot, there were definite rules of etiquette that needed to be followed. He never would have understood, he never would have fit in, and he hadn’t really wanted to. And she had known it.
To be honest, sometimes these parties seemed more work and annoyance than they were worth, and when Annika was in her early twenties, the rebel in her took charge and she stopped going. The gossip and the judgment of her career choice was irritating, so she saw no point in it. She started coming back after the breakup with Steven and found she didn’t quite hate them anymore. There was a sense of comfort in being surrounded by people who have known you your whole life that Annika found healing.
She navigated her way around the clusters of people before finally making it over to her aunt. She hugged her tight and took in her calming scent, a combination of baby powder, Avon hand cream and frying oil. It was a scent as calming to her as her own mother’s. She deftly avoided the hot skimmer that kaki was using for frying samosas. Veena-kaki was rounder and shorter than her mother, but she and Naya shared those gray eyes that stunned anyone who saw them. She positioned her gray gaze on Annika now.
