The first and foremost thought in my mind right now is how much I would like to see JW stand up and deal with his won situation, by not compromising or let anything affect the three people who mean everything to him, his wife and two kids. But no, nothing that sort could ever take place with Ekta's brainless creative's around KS and claiming how much effort they're putting into handling KS's current issue and the ugliest concern that's on its way.
I no longer feel writing too romantic update right now, as I'm in the mood to create the JW I would like to see take revenge from ADbhooth. Therefore, 'YAOU' will be updated whilst I create a new circumstance and mighty JW who desires a big retribution from ADbhooth and satisfy me all the way till the last stage of his battle.
You're not forced to comment unless you want to, and you certainly will not enjoy reading than I did writing' please ignore any mistakes and excuse beforehand.
Is it me, or I'm begining to enjoy this story before it begin...?
One last thing, a part of this story had been abirthday gift from someone very dear and so close to my heart.
"Aesthetic emotion puts man in a state favourable to the reception of erotic emotion. Art is the accomplice of love. Take love away and there is no longer art." (Remy de Gourmont)
Jai scowled his displeasure as the intercom on his desk buzzed, totally interrupting his roving thoughts. He should have told his secretary he didn't want to be disturbed for a couple of hours. After four months of careful planning, he was now on the brink of achieving his goal, and had been sitting behind his desk in his penthouse office overlooking the Themes, relishing that thought in peace and solitude.
Four months. It had seemed longer. Much longer. But to have rushed in four months ago, without giving the problem his usual careful attention, wouldn't have made the revenge he was now planning half as sweet.
Revenge, he had once been told, was a dish best eaten cold. He was cold now, icily so, and intended savouring every minute of the downfall of the man who had wounded his pride four months ago, when he had taken Bani from him.
Jai turned his chair from the magnificent view outside to press the intercom, the irritation audible in his transatlantic drawl. "Yes?"
"Mrs Walia on line one." Jai sir. Jennifer, his stalwart secretary informed him, totally unconcerned by his obvious impatience with her interruption.
His stepmother was phoning him?
Although why the hell she still called herself Walia, when she had been married and divorced twice more after divorcing his father twenty five years ago, Jai had no idea.
"Tell her I'm busy." He rasped.
"I did. Jennifer came back unruffled. "But she says it's urgent.
He sighed his annoyance. "Remind me to forget your Christmas bonus this year. He muttered, cutting off Jennifer's knowing chuckle as he accepted the call.
"Pernali. He stretched tersely. "Whatever it is, can you make it quick? I have'
"Jai."
Everything stopped. Movement and breathing.
Just his name, uttered in that sexily husky tone, was still enough to bring his well-ordered world briefly to a halt. He hadn't seen or spoken to Bani in four months, and he had no idea why she should be telephoning him now. Although the coincidence of it, when he was so close to exacting his revenge, didn't escape him'
"Jai?"
Not his stepmother, after all.
But the woman whom until recently, he had called his wife. Who was still his wife. Even if she had left him to be with another man. The man Jai was so relishing bringing to his knees.
He drew in a sharp breath, and his dark gaze narrowed. "Bani." He acknowledged abruptly.
Bani easily recognised that coldly forbidding tone. The ice man was what she had called him during the argument that had preceded the end of their brief marriage. Argument?
No, there hadn't been an argument; she acknowledged heavily, only Jai's coldness and her own disbelief at his accusation.
Her hand tightened defensively about her mobile. She hadn't wanted to make this call. She would rather have done anything than make the first move after these months of silence, aware that Jai had hated her when she'd left, and knowing him well enough to realize that his hatred would only have increased during that time.
"Well?" He snapped his impatience with her silence.
It was the same old Jai, she thought. He was always impatient, always caught up in some business deal or other, never having the time to listen, to even try to understand her.
Her shoulders tensed before she quickly shook off these negative thoughts. There was no point in going there. Nothing had changed. She hadn't. And Jai certainly hadn't.
She hadn't been absolutely sure when she'd made the call that he was in New York at the moment, but she could picture him now, sitting behind the glass-topped desk in his luxurious ultra-modern office. The building he worked in was spectacular recognition of the highly diversified multimillion-US Walia's empire Jai had made. As well as owning his own JKU airline, a television company in Indi, a casino in the South of France and a new cosmetic company US, he also had exclusive hotels in all the major capitals of the world as well as in all the commercial cities in the global.
Yes, she could picture her husband now, with his dark, slightly not overlong hair, brooding brown eyes that could turn black during strong emotion, arrogant slash of a nose, and fine sensual-chiselled lip above a squarely determined jaw. His wide shoulders, tapered waist and strong long, legs would be dressed in one of the expensively tailored suits he bought from Italy, while his shoes would be handmade from the same country.
Just thinking of the way Jai looked was still enough to make her heart beat erratically and the palms of her hand become damp'
"Either tell me why you called, Bani, or get off the damned line; I have a work to do." Jai barked uncompromisingly.
"So, what's new?" She retorted.
"Well?" His impatience was barely suppressed now as he refused to respond to her sarcasm.
But hearing Bani's voice again like this, completely out of blue, was not conductive to pleasant conversation. Not that there had been any chance of that anyway where Bani was concerned. None of his emotions had been lukewarm where Bani was involved. Fierce desire the first time he looked at her. Cold fury when she walked out of his life into the arms of another man.
"I... need to talk to you, Jai." She told him quietly.
His mouth twisted. "Isn't it a little late for talking? I received the divorce papers a month ago." He added harshly.
He had received them, and put them away in his desk drawer unanswered. But maybe that was what she wanted to talk to him about? Was she really in so much of a hurry, so desperate to legally end their marriage, that she was even willing to speak to him personally in order to get a positive response? Because she already had husband number two lined up'?
Aparajit Dev, of course, the man she had left him to be with, who was no doubt willing to give her everything Jai couldn't. Was Bani actually thinking of marrying another man before the ink was dry on their own divorce papers?
He should never have actually married her; having never thought of marriage was in his plans for the future at all until he met her. After witnessing the breakdown of his parents marriage and the mess his father and stepmother had made of their own marriage, plus the subsequent third one of his sister, Jai had never considered getting married himself, and had certainly never wanted to bring a child into to that minefield of emotions. His own childhood had been a nightmare of watching his mother's tears as they drop like rain drops and fake stepmother who didn't lasted very long though she'd quite and quickly managed to bring his step brother into the world so easily.
But around fourteen months ago he had saw Bani in the same flight he'd boarded from Frankfurt arriving at NY and then met her again the same day of the following week at a party in NY to celebrate the opening of yet another Walia's hotel. He own party and she arrived there, he'd discovered later, for her friend's sake. It had taken just one look at the not-so -short, elegant, internationally famous Fashion Designer for him to decide he was going to have her in his bed. Her beauty was classically dazzling as well as her simplicity, her virtue and innocent sensuality enough to send his pulse racing. He'd discovered, as a woman reputed to remain aloof from any sort of affair, she had been a challenge.
Jai had dined her, becoming more intrigued by her every time he had seen her. As he had got to know her better and desire her to the point of madness, he'd also come to realize the reason for her lack of physical involvements. Despite Bani's elegance and, high-profile lifestyle as one of the highest money maker Fashion designer in the world, underneath it all she was still just the girl from the small city Mt Abu of "Rajasthan" in western India. Where her parents lived and Bani and her two young sisters had been born before they moved to Toronto "Canada" of North America twenty years ago and her family where still living there for all this time. The sophistication was just a facade and what she believed in, and was waiting for was that elusive happy-ever-after.
It was a fact that had been completely borne out when he had tried to seduce her and discovered that she'd still been a virgin, and saving herself for Mr. Right, who would be her forever husband. She had no intention of becoming involved in a short-term or long term affair, with him or any other man powerful than him.
Somewhat what madness had possessed Jai when she'd told him this, he still wasn't sure. Perhaps it had been a need to possess, to have someone who was unique in his previous world of transient relationships that meant nothing to him or the woman involved, a need to know that no other man had had, or ever would have, Bani. All he knew for certain was that the burning need for Bani to be his had intensified to the point that even his business had suffered from his lack of attention as he'd seemed to think and dreamt of her day and night, something he had never allowed to happen before. It had been a situation he'd known couldn't continue, which had left him with one solution. Marriage'
Why not? He had reasoned once he'd got over the initial shock that he had even been considering of taking such a move. He'd never be stupid enough to fall in love, and so leave himself open to the pain and disillusionment one of his parents had inflicted the other over the years of their marriage or even his sister and brother in law.
He was thirty seven years old, he had reasoned at the time and taking a wife, especially a beautiful and accomplished Fashion Designer Bani Dixit, as well as putting her in his bed, would also be an astute business move. The fact that he wasn't in love with her, and that he was determined never to love any woman, had never come into his calculations. It was something he'd come to regret only nine months after they were married when Bani had left him for a man who obviously could give her what she wanted.
From her part, Bani was glad this conversation was taking place over the telephone, relieved Jai couldn't see the pallor of her face, and the strain around her eyes and mouth created just from talking to him again. She had taken one look at Jai and fallen in love with him and had been completely knocked off her feet when he'd returned that interest and wooed her. The two of them had been inseparable for the following few weeks, before Jai had totally surprised her by purposing her and then whisking her off to Paris in his private jet for a few days and then marrying her.
She had felt a momentary flash of regret at the time that her parents and sisters couldn't be at the wedding, knowing that her family would be disappointed too. She was sure her parents had always thought she would have a similar tradition Hindu wedding, to the one her young sister had had when she was married. But she'd been so much in love with Jai and had secretly longed to be his wife that she had quickly forgotten those regrets in the wonder of having her dreams come true as they had spent two weeks completely alone on the Caribbean island that he owned.
What she had failed to realize for some months after they were married was that, although Jai had asked her to marry him he didn't actually return her love. He'd only lusted after her and considered her a business asset as much as anything else. How cruel it had been discovering that fact had been the worst moment of her life.
And none of these painful memories was helping her situation now. "I didn't call to talk about the divorce, Jai." She told him softly.
"No?" He came back scathingly. "It's been four months, Bani. Haven't you persuaded Aparajit Dev into proposing yet?"
She flinched at his sarcasm, wondering how she could ever have fooled herself into believing this man was in love with her, could been in love with her. But she had no intention of getting into any sort of slanging match where Aparajit was concerned. Jai had refused to believe in her innocence four months ago where the other man was concerned, and from his tone of voice now she knew he still didn't believe her.
"I'm still married to you, in case you forgot." She reminded him wearily.
"Only just." He reminded her tersely.
Yes. Only just. Once those divorce papers had been signed and witnessed and there was a legal recognition of their parting, maybe she might be able to once again get on with her life. Although, that idea certainly didn't involve marrying anyone else. How could she when she'd never stopped loving Jai?
She loved him but she also knew she was unable to live with him when he could never feel the same love for her. As his wife she'd only ever been a useful body to warm his bed and an ornament in his well-ordered life.
"I need to talk to you properly, Jai, and I can't do it over the telephone."
"You are not suggesting the two of us meet, are you?" He snapped, the scorn clear in his voice.
Bani sighed, feeling no more eager to see him again than he obviously was to see her. It would be so painful to see him again and know that he never had loved her and would never love her in the way she loved him.
But she knew Jai's reluctance to see her again was vastly different from her own. She represented the one failure he had had in his life. And failure, she knew only too well, was something Jai Walia refused to recognize. In fact, she'd been waiting the last four months for some move of retribution on his part for her ever having dared to leave him. When it hadn't happen she had decided that perhaps his silence was his vengeance, with him quite capable of imagining her apprehension and relishing the fact.
"I need to see you' to ask you' something." She amended carefully. Despite their situation, she ached to see him, but not the coldly distant man, the ice man of their last meeting, the man she could tell just from the tone of his voice that he still was. "I need to ask a favour, Jai." She explained slightly breathlessly, wincing at the admission.
"From me?" Jai couldn't keep the surprise from his voice.
He clearly remembered Bani assuring him, on the day she walked out of his life, that their marriage was over and she would never ask him for anything ever again. She didn't need to. Except for a divorce, of course.
His mouth tightened. "You have a bloody nerve thinking that you can just waltz back into my life after four months and ask me for anything."
"Jai, please. "
"No, you please." He cut in forcefully. "You walked out on me, Bani. On our marriage. Straight into the arms of another man! And now you want me to do you a favour?"
"I did not leave you for another man!" She came back just as strongly, knowing he didn't believe her, that he never had, but determined never to stop declaring her innocence.
"I happen to know differently." Jai rasped.
"You don't know the first thing about me, Jai." She sighed. "You never did."
The first shock of hearing from her had passed now; her conversation such that, Jai was pretty sure this call was just a coincidence. After all, Bani had no idea that the sword of Damocles, a blow entirely of Jai's devising, was about to drop on her lover's head.
"I'm not' the favour I have to ask isn't for me." She came back sharply. "Well' not really." She amended impatiently. "Maybe." She muttered uncomfortably.
"Perhaps you had better let me be the judge of that, Bani." He decided tersely. "Tell me what is it you need, from me?" He used the words deliberately. "And I'll tell you if I'm willing to give it."
"Not over the telephone." She insisted determinedly. "I need to explain a few things to you first, to help you understand, Jai. Could you meet me for lunch?"
His brows rose at the suggestion. Talking to her on the telephone was one thing, but actually seeing her again, being close to her breathtaking graceful shape, was something else. "Today?"
"Well, of course." She broke off her impatient response. "Yes, today." She resumed more reasonably. "If that's possible." She added.
Jai looked at the open diary on his desk-top, unnecessarily so, already knowing that he was free for lunch today. "I'm afraid it isn't." He said smoothly, totally ignoring the blank space in his dairy. "But I'm having dinner at Karuna's at eight o'clock this evening, if you would care to join me there?"
Bani winced her apprehension at the thought of having a dinner with him, tonight or any other time. It meant none of the informality of crowded lunchtime restaurant that she'd been going to suggest, but instead dinner at one of the exclusive restaurants that they had quite often gone to together as husband and wife'
"Couldn't I jus meet you for a coffee in DG's cafe before you go on to dinner?" She suggested, frowning. "What I have to ask will only take a few minutes and '"
"Scared, Bani?" Jai interrupted tauntingly.
She bristled. "Of you?" Hardly! She dismissed scathingly, knowing that wasn't quite true. Although she wasn't scared of Jai himself, she knew that, with his wealth and power, the sort of retribution he was capable of could be immense. "I just don't see that point of completely ruining both our evenings, that's all."
"Just mine, hmm?" He mused scornfully. "You're the one that asked for this meeting, Bani not me." He reminded her. "In the circumstances, I believe I'm allowed to set the terms for that meeting. In which, it's dinner this evening or nothing at all." He stated.
She'd a feeling he was going to say that. "Then I suppose I will have to agree to that, won't I?" She snapped, the hours, instead of minutes, she would now have to spend in Jai's company looming before her like a deep, dark chasm.
"Don't sound too eager, Bani." He taunted. "I might get the wrong idea."
"I wouldn't if I were you." She retorted back tartly. "Nothing has changed. I just need to talk to you, that's all." She added huskily.
"It must be something really big, Bani, if you're willing to see me again." He mused, finding himself smiling at Bani's obvious frustration with situation. It was the sort of relaxing smile he hadn't given for months. Four months, in fact. Since Bani had left him'
His smile evaporated as quickly as it appeared. Bani had left him, had walked out on their marriage because, she had claimed, he was incapable of feeling the love she'd for him for her. Thus, and after only nine months of being married she simply couldn't live with him any more.
But her claims that it had been his lack of love for her that had ended their marriage had all been a lie, a tale in an effort to hide the affair she was involved in with Aparajit Dev.
He sobered completely at the thought of the other man in Bani's life, and in her bed. He knew that, despite all the things she'd said about the fidelity of love and marriage, she'd been involved with another man for weeks before their marriage had finally come to its bitter end.
But now, it seemed, she wanted something from him a 'favour' she said. The revenge he'd planned was for Aparajit Dev alone. He knew that the shock waves of the other man's fall from power would ultimately shatter Bani's world too. But now Bani had brought herself willing back to his life.
It was like the spider and the fly'
Chapter Two
"Woman was taken away from man; not out of his head, nor out of his emotions; but out of his side, under his protective arm, and near his heart where she was loved."
Bani had no idea what she was doing sitting in a restaurant waiting to have dinner with Jai Walia, her almost ex-husband. He was late. Deliberately so, she was sure, in an effort to unnerve her. As if she didn't feel nervous enough about this meeting already.
A fact Jai would be well aware of. Just as he had to be aware that any situation serious enough for her to have the need to call him in the first place had to be such that she couldn't just walk out of here before he deigned to arrive. Which was why, she was sure, he was knowingly keeping her waiting.
Much to the interest of the other dinners, not that they expressed it overtly. The face of Bani Dixit was well known from the Asian Fashion & Lifestyle magazine earlier on, and recently from the announcement of her share in 'A' Fashion & Lifestyle magazine in addition of her new collection launch as she appeared in on the worldwide television and international fashion magazines. She gave an exclusive interview just before the break up of her marriage with Jai. She was selected as the face of 'A' Fashion & Lifestyle magazine a week ago and was pleased of her triumph, despite her unhappiness underneath.
Bani Dixit, international Fashion Designer, sitting on her own for the last fifteen minutes at a table set for two, obviously having been stood up by her date for the evening.
No doubt this was Jai's idea of a joke, a minor punishment for her having walked out on him, but favour or no favour, if he didn't turn up in the next three minutes she was walking out of her.
He had just walked into the restaurant!
Bani realised, even if she hadn't seen him enter, she would have known of his arrival. She could feel the familiar ripple of awareness down her spine at his proximity, and the warmth of her breasts as they began to tingle, while an even sizzling fire began in the pit of her stomach.
It hadn't gone away then, her complete physical awareness of Jai. Not that she had ever thought that it would. It was just distressing to once again be confronted with the proof.
He looked amazing, Bani acknowledged, in his dark tailored suit and white silk shirt. She imagined the long muscular length of his powerful body underneath, and watched his flashing dark hair as his head moved, hair that she remembered burying her fingers in as she drew his head down to hers and...
He wasn't even looking her way, damn him. She watched him looking perfectly relaxed as he paused to talk to the matre d'.
Her stomach felt as if it were churned up into knots, and she was suddenly struck by the enormity of what she was doing. But what choice did she have?
Really?
None!
He was walking over to their table now, acknowledging several acquaintances along the way, seemingly completely unaware of her presence. Or that he was late almost twenty minutes.
"I hope I haven't kept you waiting." Jai said coolly as he took his seat opposite hers at the table, looking just as devastatingly handsome as he always had. As devastatingly handsome as she had imagined while talking to him on the telephone earlier today more like. "I was... unavoidably detained." He drawled.
He'd seen Bani as soon as he'd entered the restaurant, and had been shocked how just looking at her could still render him momentarily speechless. His mouth had gone dry, and he had deliberately paused to talk to the matre d' in order to give himself time to get over his initial response.
Bani looked beautiful this evening. Stunningly so, with her long dark hair loose down her spine, the well designed figure-hugging... visible, dark sari with thin strap brown blouse she wore, revealing bare satin shoulders and the creamy swell of her breasts. The two brown diamonds of her silver armlet on her right arm seemed almost an exact match in colour for the deep brown of her eyes, eyes surrounded by the darkest, longest lashes Jai had ever seen, and her full lips held the promise of a zeal he had come to know intimately.
But Bani wasn't just beautiful; she had something else, a grace, an natural sparkling passion that was apparent to him in evening stillness, like now.
The first time he had looked at her he had felt as if someone had punched him in the solar plexus. Today, under totally different circumstance, he felt the same painful blow as he studied her beneath hooded lids.
None of that emotion showed in the harsh arrogance of his face as he looked across at her. "You're looking well, Bani." He told her distantly as he nodded his thanks to the wine waiter who was pouring two glasses of the wine Jai always ordered when dining here. "Obviously taking a lover suits you." He added harshly.
"Letting your overactive imagination run away with you again, Jai?" She bit out tartly, firmly ignoring her awareness of him as she tossed the long length of her hair back to meet his gaze firmly.
She had dressed carefully for their meeting this evening, choosing to wear her hair down the way she knew Jai preferred it, and a glamour dark sari that showed off the perfection of her petite figure. She was going to need every weapon she could find to withstand the scorn Jai now felt for her, and she had decided that she wouldn't try to detract from the fashion designs which she had made her fortune from, but emphasize them instead with the natural beauty and her feminine figure. If only to show Jai what he had given up when he had chosen to let her walk away rather than sitting down with her and sorting out their differences.
Bu the coldness of his dark gaze, as it moved slowly from the top of her head to the slenderness of her waist, didn't show any regrets for that loss.
Twenty-eight and a successful Fashion Designer for the last six years, she never had been able to withstand the coldly analytical gaze that gave away none of Jai's thoughts or emotions.
If only he had any emotions. Besides physical desire, that was. She had certainly never seen love shining in those dark depths, not for her or anyone else.
"I prefer not to imagine anything where you and Aparajit Dev are concerned." He snapped as he picked up his glass to take a sip of his white wine. "I was merely stating that the demise of our marriage doesn't seem to have affected your beauty."
"Oh, let's be precise." Bani muttered with inner resentment for his cool control. If Jai had seen her a month ago as she had sat for hours by her father's bedside at the hospital, just willing him to live, then he would have seen that she didn't always look beautiful or dressed glamorous, that sometimes she just looked emotionally distraught.
"Fine." She dismissed tersely. "If I could just explain to you why I need to talk to you..."
"I would like to order my food first, if that's okay?" He cut in with smooth determination, the tone in his voice telling her it wasn't a question at all but a statement of intention.
He might have left her with no choice but to agree to meet him here at the restaurant, but she really didn't think she could actually eat anything. Seeing him again, realizing she still loved him as much as she ever had, and knowing there was no return of love for her in his cold, unemotional gaze.
She swallowed hard. "Go ahead. I won't, if you don't mind." She closed the menu she had been given without even looking at it, her dark lashes sweeping low over the paleness of her cheeks.
Jai studied her silently for several seconds, knowing Bani had never been one of those women who were obsessed loosing weight that had to starve themselves to stay thin, that her slenderness was as natural as her beauty. He reached out to cup her chin in his hand and lift her face so that, unless she actually closed her lids completely, her gaze had to meet his.
She'd become more adept at hiding her emotions in last four months, he realized as she easily withstood his searching look. Yet as he continued to study her he could see very slight change in her. There was a strain in her dark brown eyes; her face seemed pale beneath her make-up, and her curvy slenderness now that he had the time to look more closely, bordered on fragile.
"What's happened, Bani?" He demanded as he released her chin to sit back in his seat. "Surely Aparajit Dev hasn't failed to live up to your exacting expectations, too?"
She gave a weary sigh. "Why haven't you ever believed me when I tell you I have never been involved with Aparajit on a personal level?" She shook her head.
Why? Because Jai knew exactly how the other man had pursued her five months ago, desperate to get Bani as the 'New Designer' for his company's new line products.
And with the rift that had recently developed in their marriage, Jai knew it had been all too easy for Aparajit Dev to seduce Bani, and to persuade her into being a part of his life as well as contracted to his company.
He knew all these things because Aparajit Dev had personally taken delight in relating them to him. "Where does Aparajit think you are this evening?" He challenged. "Not out to dinner with me, I'm sure?" He taunted.
Bani drew in a sharp breath before releasing it in a sigh. "I didn't come here to discuss Aparajit with you. Actually I haven't seen him for several weeks. My father has been ill, you see, and..."
"Nishikant has?" Jai echoed sharply, waving away the waiter who came to take their food order, too interested in what Bani was saying to even think about food. Especially the part where she said she hadn't seen Aparajit for several weeks.
He also wanted to hear more about Nishikant. He had only found the time to meet the old man three times during his marriage to Bani, but he had liked him and had to admire the easy way he had survived being the only male member of a household dominated by his wife and three daughters.
Bani swallowed hard. "He wasn't feeling well for some months, and a month ago he had a heart attack."
"Why the hell didn't you let me know?" Jai questioned immediately.
She blinked across at him in surprise. As she'd learnt to her cost, Jai didn't 'do' family. Coming from a family that had been split apart when he was only twelve and then presented with a gold-digger stepmother before loosing both his parents in car crush accident ten years later, he could perhaps have welcomed the close-knit family Bani had brought into their marriage. But he hadn't, he didn't trust or want a family including his own, and had kept his emotional as well as physical distance from all of them.
And only his emotional distance from Bani, she remembered achingly. "Why on earth would I do that?" She prompted in credulously. "You never showed any interest in my family when we were married, so why would you want to be bothered now that we're divorced?"
"Separated." Jai corrected harshly. "I haven't signed the divorce papers yet." He reminded her.
No, he hadn't, although Bani didn't understand why not. She had thought he would be glad to get rid of her and the marriage he wished had never happened. But weeks after they had been sent, as far as she knew the papers remained unsigned as well as unreturned.
In the circumstances, perhaps that was as well. It certainly made it a little easier to come here and talk to him this evening. Just a little.
"Technicality." She accepted heavily. "I..." She broke off as a waiter put plate of hors d oeuvres in centre of the table before making a discreet exit.
Jai turned to give the waiter a rueful smile, appreciative of the fact that the other man had realized the tension bouncing of this table meant there would be no meal ordered here this evening. Or perhaps he was just another person who found Bani's fresh beauty enthralling.
Bani seemed to have been monetarily knocked off balance too. "How is your own family?"
He gave a rueful shake of his head. Bani had met his young sister Jigyasa and stepbrother Nachuket only once as well as his ex-stepmother, in which meeting his brother had been warm feeling and his sister had been interested in learning where it was from her outfit and who designed her jewelleries and what products Bani used to maintain her natural loveliness.
Bani had dealt with those meetings with cricket chat and adoring hug for his brother, warm interest chat of the fashion industry and some worthy style tips for his sister, and kindly smile for his stepmother. She had impressed Jai at the time, he grudgingly acknowledged, particularly considering that they had been overly interested in his marriage, even when he had told them he and Bani had separated. She knew of no one else of his family or close relative.
"The same." He answered dismissively. "And stop trying to change the subject, Bani. Tell me about your father."
She absently picked up a prawn confection from the plate and popped into her mouth before answering him.
Jai found his attention caught by the fullness of her lips, lips that he had kissed, lips that had kissed him and pleasured him to new heights. God, how he still wanted her. And how dearly he wished that he didn't.
Her tongue moved to moisten those lips as she chewed, her gaze once again shadowed. "He had a heart attack." She repeated evenly.
Jai knew what a blow that must have been for the Dixit women, for Kiran, his wife of thirty years, for the youngest daughter Ranu, for Pia and for the eldest daughter, Bani. Nashikant was adored by all of them.
The eldest daughter Bani... who had once been Jai's wife. Who had come to him now to ask for his help in some way, though reluctantly. But what help could he possibly be to her? Bani was extremely rich in her own right, and could afford to give her father the best medical care available, so what could Jai possibly give her that she didn't already have?
Bani knew it was time to stop evading, that Jai would either help her or he wouldn't. It was better to know sooner rather than later. She drew in a deep breath. "My sister Ranu is going to be married on Saturday. Ranu wanted to cancel the wedding until my father is feeling better, but my father's adamant that those arrangements not to be changed."
Jai frowned. "And you want me to send her a wedding gift?"
"No, of course not." She sighed impatiently; if only it were that simple.
"You surely don't want me to give Ranu away in your father's stead?" He taunted.
"You're being ridiculous now." Bani said, exasperated. "What I want, what I need from you. This isn't easy for me Jai." She groaned, her eyes, those incredible dark brown eyes, filled with tears now.
He gave a shake of his head, his gaze guarded. "I'm afraid I cant help you there." He rasped.
No, he couldn't, could he?
During the months they had been apart Bani had had plenty of time to realize that it wasn't completely Jai's fault that their marriage had been such a disaster.
He had never lied to her, having always been completely honest about his feelings for her, and had never once, either before or after they were married, said that he was in love with her, or that it was ever more than her body that held him in thrall. It had only been her own deep love for him, she had come to realize, her romantic ideal of what marriage should be, and that had convinced her otherwise. Until faced, irrevocably, with painful truth.
She swallowed hard. "The thing is... Jai, what I do need is for you... for you to come to Ranu's wedding with me on Saturday!" She looked up at him now, needing to see his reaction.
To say he was stunned was an understatement, although he quickly masked the emotion, he narrowed his gaze once again, questioningly now. Whilst his razor-sharp brain was working behind guarded appearance, evaluating, assessing. But this time not reaching a logical conclusion...
Jai gave a shake of his head. "Why?" He prompted economically.
This was so like Jai. Blunt. To the point. And it would be better if Bani answered him in the same way. "Because they all expect you to be there."
"Why?" He repeated firmly.
"Because... because I've never told my family that we're separated." The words came out in rush, her face once again pale as she looked at Jai.
Jai frowned. Bani's family didn't know their marriage was over, that it had been so for four months?
The news papers, thankfully, didn't seem to have picked up on the rift in their marriage yet. The fact that both of them often travelled abroad, necessitating lengthy partings, probably accounted for that. But why hadn't Bani told her family at least, was another very interesting matter.
What possible reason could she have for not telling them? Considering Bani had left him to go to another man, this oversight didn't make a lot of sense to him.
Her father had had his heart attack a month ago, Bani had said, which was before she'd had the divorce papers sent to Jai.
After, he would risk a guess; otherwise she would surely have told her family the truth by now.
Bani couldn't meet the intensity of Jai's gaze now, knowing that not telling her family of their estrangement was stupid, and that her hope that their separation wouldn't last had been even sillier.
But for weeks she had hoped. She had simply refused to believe that Jai couldn't return at least some of the love she felt for him, and that once they were apart he would come to realize how much he really did love her. She also hoped he would acknowledge that his accusations concerning her sexual involvement with Aparajit Dev were completely untrue.
It was because she had longed for a reconciliation, that she'd decided there was no reason to tell her family of the estrangement yet. It hadn't been all that difficult to keep it from them either. She had been away in Paris for almost a month after she and Jai had parted, and redirecting her mail, using her mobile whenever she called them, had been an easy way of concealing her change of address. None of her family had questioned why Jai wasn't with her when she'd visited her family, knowing how busy he was and how much he travelled on business. Her explanation that he was in Sidney... Australia when her father had become ill had been easily accepted by all of them.
But she had waited in hopeless for Jai to realize he cared for her after all, even the serving of the divorce papers eliciting no response from him, at which point she had had no choice but to accept that he really had never loved her, and that their marriage was really over.
Which by then she'd known she had no choice but to tell her family the truth. But before she'd been able to do so her father had had his heart attack, and for the last month she had forgotten everything but willing him to get better. Which he had. And the doctors were hopeful that, with time and no undue stress, he would make a full recovery.
In the meantime, her sister's wedding was on Saturday, and her family still had no idea that she and Jai were no longer together.
The doctors had said her father needed no undue stress. Thus, it was definitely not the time for him to learn that the marriage of his eldest daughter was going to end in divorce!
Which was why, she had no choice but to ask Jai 'if, for two days or even one day only; he would agree to pose as her husband.
Now...
The real question was, would he agree to do it'?
Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi 2
CID
