Mayur FF - Yet Another Fairy Tale- 31/8- chap 2 - Page 6

TWO

He came out from around the car, dressed in black sweats, a white vest and incredibly old white sneakers. His broad body was beautifully proportioned, but it didn't matter. Nupur knew about proportion from art class, but she knew about men from life. Yes, he's pretty, but forget it, she told herself. He kicks cats. He drives an evil black car. And Dia says he has track lighting. Definitely not somebody she wanted to spend time with. Still, she did need to be nice to keep her cat. She hit him with her megawatt smile again. He grinned back, immune. Oh, well.

N-"Thank you so much for saving my kitten, Dr.Sharma. If there's ever anything I can do in return…"

M-"There is. I have a business proposition for you." His smile disappeared. "Strictly business."

Nupur snorted mentally. It would be strictly business. He probably didn't have the imagination to make a pass. Which was a relief, because when she turned him down, he'd probably kick her cat.

N-"Business, Dr.Sharma?"

M-"Mayank." He stepped closer and took her elbow. "Why don't we go in and talk about it?"

Oh, great. He was an elbow taker. A steerer of women. Nupur removed her elbow from his grasp. N-"How about my place? Adrak ki chai?" He closed his eyes

M- "Wonderful," and followed her into the house. Mayank stopped inside the apartment door. The place looked as though it had been ransacked. There were drawers open, papers everywhere, lampshades askew, books on the floor, and a huge black cat sprawled out in the middle of the mess, doing an excellent impression of death. Mayank waited for Nupur to scream and call the police, but she just dropped the little calico cat into an overstuffed chair full of yarn and clothes and stepped over the black cat to move toward the kitchen. It must always look like this. How could she stand it? She pulled her bright blue velvet hat from her head, and her thick hair fell down in tangled little kinks, dark waves with deep glints of red against the bright, bright blue of her loose top. Below the top she wore a knee-length skirt checked in hot pink and electric blue. Mayank winced at all the color. Then she opened the refrigerator and got him a breezer, and her approval rating rose. He took it gratefully.

M-"No Adrak chai?" Nupur grinned at him, a nice, cheerful , genuine grin with none of the dazzle of her earlier beam.

N-"I thought you'd prefer this."

M-"I do. Do you have an opener?" Nupur took the bottle back and looked around absently for an opener. Not finding one, she hooked the cap on the edge of the counter and smacked it with her hand to pop it. Then she handed the bottle back. Mayank checked to see if there were glass chips on the top. Remember, you need her. Be polite. "That was very..ahem..efficient. Thank you." He sat opposite her at the big round wooden table. She turned on the stained glass lamp that stood to one side, and it cast a Technicolor kaleidoscope on the wall and ceiling. More color. Everywhere he looked, color and clash. How did she sleep in this place?

N-"A business proposition." she tilted her head at him. "I'm not a businesswoman."

Mayank studied her in the lamplight: masses of dark hair, big dark brown eyes over a blobby cute nose, a wide, rosy, generous mouth. This woman was gorgeous, provocative and innocent all at the same time, she could sell snow to an Eskimo. If he put her in a real dress instead of clothes three sizes too big for her, she would look really good. She wasn't his type—he liked elegant women—but she would definitely convince Mathew. He cheered up considerably.

M-"I need a favor." Mayank leaned forward, exerting all his charm. "A practical, extremely confidential business favor." He saw her draw her eyebrows together at the word "confidential," and added, "It's not illegal. And I'll pay your back rent." The eyebrows flew up.

N-"That's fifteen thousand." Mayank nodded.

M-"I know. I'm desperate. I need a fiance for twenty-four hours." That sounded a little odd, so he clarified it. "Only a fiance. A platonic fiance."

N-"I understand that you're not propositioning me." Nupur folded her hands on the table like a polite child. "You can stop making that clear." Mayank relaxed a little.

M-"Good." He took a swig of his drink, amazed at how much more difficult this whole thing was than he'd imagined. It wasn't just the embarrassment of admitting what he'd done. It was also Nupur Bhushan. There was something about dealing with this woman that reminded him of the way he'd felt messing around with the chemistry set he'd had when he was a kid. Volatile. Unpredictable. Her voice broke his train of thought.

N-"Why do you need a fiance?" He took a deep breath and told her, haltingly at first but then becoming more confident as he explained, and she didn't throw him out or go off into fits of laughter. "You're in a mess," she agreed when he was finished. "But I don't see how you think I could help you. I'm hardly the wifely type."

M-"No, but you could be for twenty-four hours. I'll pay for some new clothes. All you have to do is pretend to be the wifely type for the space of a speech and a cocktail party. I'll have you out of there by Friday at midnight and back home by Saturday afternoon." Her laughter spurted, something between a giggle and a snort.

N-"So you pick me up out of the gutter, and I get new clothes, and I pretend to be something I'm not, and then at midnight I run away and turn back into a pumpkin." Her grin widened. "It's a Cinderella story."

M-"I guess so." Whimsy was not Mayank's strong suit.

N-"And you get the job of your dreams and the time to finish your book." She tilted her head. "I like this story. Everybody wins."

M-"Even Govind, He'll get your back rent."

N-"And I get to keep Annie." she smiled at him, warm with gratitude. "That was nice of you to tell Govind you didn't mind, since you didn't know whether I'd do this or not, and you hate cats." He looked at her, puzzled recovering from the trance of her smile.

M-"I don't hate cats." Nupur's smile cooled.

N-"I saw you kick Liz once." Mayank frowned at her.

M-"Liz?" Nupur nodded to the black cat curled up among the debris on the floor. It hadn't moved at all since he'd been there. Maybe it was dead. He fought back an urge to poke it with his foot to see if it was breathing, and that brought back his earlier encounter. "Oh, yeah. I didn't kick it, I just nudged it out of the way with my foot. It was lying on the steps." Her smile disappeared completely.

N-"The nerve of her." Oh, great. Now she was off on a tangent, mad at him for something he hadn't even done.

M-"Forget the cat. Will you do it?" She thought about it, setting her jaw, and Mayank had a sinking insight into how stubborn she could probably be. Then she said

N-"Yes," nodding sharply. "For 40,000 bucks." Mayank jerked back.

M-"40,000?"

N-"That's what I need." she smiled at him, the smile that had probably sunk a thousand ships in her lifetime. "I'm not really going to be Cinderella unless you rescue me completely, you know." When she smiled at him like that, it was hard to think. Imagine what that smile could do in Xaviers. Make a note to have her smile a lot there, he told himself, and gave in.

M-"All right. 40,000." She stuck her hand across the table, and he took it. Her grip was firm and warm.

N-"It's a deal, then," she said. "A Fairy tale deal."

M-"Great," he said through clenched teeth. Just what he needed, a child bride who still believed in fairy tales. "Are you free tomorrow afternoon about one so we can rehearse this story?"

N-"For 40,000, I can be very free." Said and nodded

M-"Good." He stood up and patted her on the head. "I'll see you tomorrow, then."

Nupur was still glaring at the door when he'd closed it behind him. A cat kicker. An elbow grabber. A head patter.

When Mayank picked Nupur up at one, he'd been having qualms all morning, and the sight of her outfit didn't help relieve them. She was swathed in a baby doll bright yellow dress that hung down her knees and hid completely whatever shape she had, and her hair was mashed under that damn blue velvet hat. Where did she get those huge clothes? She was little but still. He held the passenger door open for her, and she looked at his car as if it were road kill.

M-"What?" he asked her. "What's wrong now?"

N-"This car is evil," she told him in a thrilling voice. "This car needs an exorcist." He looked at her dumbfounded.

M-"This car is a Mercedes convertible. 1 rebuilt it myself. This is a great car."

N-"It's black and long and low and it looks like hell on wheels." Nupur shook her head. "I can't believe a college professor would drive something like this." This wasn't a new thought; everybody who saw the car started from the same place, which was that it wasn't his type of car and how the hell could he afford it. The truth was, Mayank had found the car while he'd been working in a garage during grad school and, in a moment of absolute insanity brought on by his disbelief that anyone could have thrown away something that beautiful, bought the frame by promising to work off the debt. And that, of course, had been only the beginning. It had taken five years and more money than he wanted to think about to get the car running again. And now that it was his proudest possession, this woman was sneering at it.

M-"After Friday, you'll never have to ride in it again," he told her. "Get in."

N-"Yes, but I'll have to look at it. It's like living upstairs from Ravana."

M-"Thank you," he said, and when she got in the car, he slammed the door. Some women had no appreciation for the finer things in life, and God knows it was no surprise she was one of them.

N-"Where are we going?" she asked when they were on the road. He fished in his jacket pocket and handed her a note that said "Ring. clothes. Lunch."

M-"We need a ring," he told her, used to repeating everything to his classes even though they had a syllabus in front of them. "And a dress. And then we'll have lunch so we can talk about this." He looked over at all her yellow and blue fabric and winced. "We'll get a white salwar."

N-"I like color." Nupur scowled. Mayank looked back to the road.

M-"For this weekend, you're wearing white." He shot a glance at her for her reaction and caught her scowling harder. "And quit doing that. You could curdle milk with that face."

She sighed and smoothed out her frown.

N- "I'm beginning to regret this." For some reason, that made Mayank clutch a little.

M-"Think of the money," he told her, remembering how grateful she'd been the night before. She nodded.

N-"And Annie." The cat again.

M- "Listen. I would have let you keep the cat anyway."

N-"Really?"

M-"Sure. You look like you could use a friend." Nupur lifted her chin.

N-"I have a friend. Several."

M-"Sorry. You just never seem to have much company." He looked over at her and saw her scowling again. "Cut that out." She obediently smoothed out her face.

N-"Rahul didn't like company. And after a while my company didn't like Rahul, so they didn't come back."

M-"Rahul." Mayank remembered. "Thin tall guy. Played the stereo too loud." Nupur nodded. N-"He's a musician. He's got hearing problems from standing too close to the speakers onstage. That's how I met him. Somebody turned the amps up at a concert one night and he fell off the stage at my feet and cut his head, and I had a Band-Aid, and he said he'd never met anybody who'd brought a Band-Aid to a rock concert before."

Mayank looked over at her, amazed. This had to be a story.

M-"You're making this up." Nupur scowled at him again.

N-"I am not. We started exclusively dating a week later." Mayank moved his eyes back to the road, feeling exasperated. After one week she let some complete stranger become an important part of her life. This woman had no common sense. Not that it was any of his business. Come to think of it, though, what they were doing was pretty much Rahul's business. Mayank had never been in an exclusive relationship, but if he ever did, he certainly wasn't going to let his girlfriend pretend to be somebody else's fiance.

M-"Will Rahul be upset about this thing you're doing for me?"

N-"He's gone." Mayank glanced at her, but she was obviously not going to explain.

M- "Well, thanks for turning down the stereo. I really appreciate it."

N-"Rahul took it with him when we broke up." Nupur looked out the car window, oblivious of his reaction. It was none of his business, but he had to ask.

M-"Was it his stereo?"

N-"No." Mayank shook his head. Rahul must be a fool. A gorgeous girl with Band-Aids who didn't care if he was deaf because he'd been too dumb not to move away from a speaker. And then he'd stolen her stereo. How had he found it in that mess of an apartment? Her life was as big a mess as her apartment. He pulled up in front of a small jewelry store.

M-"Try not to lose your grip in there," he told her. "I'm a college professor, not a millionaire." She nodded obediently and followed him into the dim coolness of the store.

Nupur bumped into Mayank when he stopped in front of the case that held the diamonds. She peered around him. The stones sat there like ice on black velvet, and she shook her head and moved on.

N-"Too cold. I like pearls."

M-"Thank you," Mayank said, and she knew he thought she was saving him money. The truth was, she just liked pearls. The pearls were much better, warm and glowing and real. Mayank pointed to one ring immediately, an old-fashioned carved band with a circle of small pearls surrounding a tiny sapphire center. "This one, the daisy." he told the clerk. Then he turned to Nupur and said, "It's a natural. Old-fashioned. Mathews will love it." Nupur restrained herself from pointing out that he should give it to Mathews, then, since it wasn't her style at all. Her style was the one next to it, a heavy chased-silver band holding twisted free-form pearls. Still, he'd told her to develop some tact, and she was working on it. God knows he was paying enough for it.

N-"Yes, that one is nice." She smiled at him. "But I like this one." She pointed to the silver band. "I like freshwater pearls."

M-"Forget it. The daisy ring," he told the salesclerk. The clerk frowned at Mayank, and Nupur saw it. The light was dim in the store, and while he took her ring size, the clerk treated her as if she were an abused child. People had mistaken her age in dim light before, maybe she could get away with it here too. It was worth a try, if only to show this control freak she was nobody to mess with. She slipped her hand through Mayank's arm.

N-"All right, we'll take that ring now, honey." She beamed up at him innocently. "But when I'm eighteen, can I have the other one? Please, please?" She batted her eyelashes at him. The clerk frowned even harder, and Mayank looked dumbfounded. Nupur transferred her beam to the clerk. "He's so good to me. I can't think why Mama and Daddy don't like him."

The clerk shook his head in disgust and went to ring the sale. Nupur met Mayank's eyes as innocently as she could. He wasn't amused.

M- "Listen, cupcake, you're cute, but there's no way you can pass for eighteen. Stop causing problems." Nupur smiled at him sunnily.

N- "You haven't seen anything yet. That guy thinks I'm underage. You pervert." Mayank scowled harder.

M-"Part of the deal is that you cooperate."

N-"In Xaviers," she pointed out. "We're not there yet." Back at the car, Mayank held the door for her and checked his watch, frowning. Evidently they were off his timetable. Nupur gritted her teeth; she hated schedules because all they produced was efficiency and guilt, two of her least favorite things. And Mayank didn't help things any when he got in the car and said,

M-"Can we get you something to wear without you losing your grip on reality?" Nupur met his eyes.

N-"You never know."

M-"That's what I hate about this," he said, and put the car in gear.

Shopping for an outfit took exactly fifteen minutes. Nupur pulled Mayank into a tiny seconds shop and took a white-on-white embroidered salwar suit off a sale rack at the back of the store. She walked toward him, watching as he surveyed the place, realized everything in it was fake, and said

M-"No," but she was ready for him. She'd been hanging out with him for only a very short time, but already she knew him like a book.

N-"Trust me," she said. "I tried this on once and put it back because it makes me look like a dweeb-brained goody two-shoes. It'll go great with the ring." She surveyed him with contempt. "It'll fulfill all your fantasies." The thrift store clerk looked at Mayank with disgusted interest.

like always u r back with amazing concept

both the parts were superb

cont soon n thanks for the pm