ik baar jo hum nay commitment kr li (3)...( STRICTLY INVITES ONLY) - Page 55

Originally posted by: jas91

Hi Pinku 🤗

aaj u came jaldi😊

Originally posted by: AsyaManeet

Shanu i left?

Mujhe lunch karne jaana hai!!

Originally posted by: ...KSGmiAmor...

hahahhahhahhahhahhahaha

mera hans hans kr bura haal ho gaya hai 😆😆

Originally posted by: BelleAme

Kya baat hai Amna madam sudar Gaye hai 😛

Originally posted by: BelleAme

Hum aapke pyaar Mai Jaldi aane LAGE 😛

Originally posted by: BelleAme

Main bhi abhi karke Ayi hun 😉

Originally posted by: BelleAme

Me going now...bye 😊

Originally posted by: jas91

yippee we r happy 2 make u laugh

Mera bas chalta toh main yeh sare pics daal ke 1 updt ki demand karti😆

Part 53

Hamza was waiting, briefcase in hand, when Zoya walked into the lobby of Intercorp's building. "You look wonderful," he said, taking Zoya's hand in his. "Perfect. Calm and collected."

After an hour's deliberation that morning, Zoya had finally decided to wear a jonquil-yellow wool dress with a contrasting navy coat trimmed in jonquil, for the sole reason that she'd read somewhere that men interpreted yellow as being assertive but not hostile. In hopes of carrying that assertive impression one step further, she'd twisted her hair into a chignon instead of wearing it loose.

"Khan will take one look at you and give us anything we ask for," Hamza gallantly predicted as they walked toward the elevators. "How could he resist?"

It was the fact that Asad's last look at her had been when she was naked in bed with him that was making Zoya so excruciatingly uneasy about confronting him now. "I don't have a good feeling about this," she said shakily, stepping into the elevator in front of Hamza.

She stared blindly at the shiny brass doors, trying to concentrate on the memory of the laughter and quiet conversation she'd shared with Asad at the farm. It was wrong to think of him as her adversary now, she reminded herself. She'd cried in his arms over the loss of their baby, and he'd held her, trying to comfort her. That's what she needed to remember, so she wouldn't be so foolishly nervous. Asad was not her adversary.

The receptionist on the sixtieth floor stood up as soon as Hamza gave her their names. "Right this way, please. Mr. Khan is expecting you both. The others are already here."

The poise Zoya was clinging to took a minor blow when she walked into Asad's office and didn't completely recognize it. The wall at the left end had been slid back so that his office opened into a conference room the size of an indoor tennis court. Two lawyers were seated at the conference table, talking desultorily with Asad. He glanced up, saw her, and instantly arose, starting toward her with long, purposeful strides, his expression warm and relaxed. He was wearing a beautiful dark blue suit that fit him to perfection, a gleaming white shirt, and a handsome maroon and blue silk tie. For some reason, his formal business attire made her feel even more uneasy about this meeting. "Let me help you with your coat," he said, ignoring Hamza, who shrugged out of his own coat.

Too nervous and self-conscious to meet his gaze, Zoya obeyed automatically, turning slightly, trying to stop the compulsive shiver that ran through her as he lifted her coat and his fingers brushed her shoulders. Afraid he'd noticed her reaction; she bent her head and concentrated on stripping off her navy kid gloves and transferring them to the hand with her navy handbag. Hamza had walked over to the conference table to shake hands with the opposing counsel, so Zoya headed toward him, but when he would have introduced her to the other two attorneys, Asad suddenly arrived at her elbow and began to act incongruously, as if this were an intimate social gathering being hosted by him in her honor. "Zoya," he said with a smile in his eyes as he looked at her, "I'd like you to meet Jessica Pearson and Harvey Spector."

Aware of the subtly possessive, protective way Asad was standing beside her, Zoya tore her startled gaze from his and looked at them, extending her hand to each of them. They were both over six feet tall, impeccably dressed in tailor-made three-piece suits with an aura of confident elegance and decisiveness about them. In comparison to their height and distinguished looks, Hamza, who was standing opposite them, appeared small in stature and insignificant in appearance, with his thinning brown hair and studious horn-rimmed eyeglasses. In fact, Zoya thought nervously as Hamza introduced himself to Asad, Hamza looked outnumbered, outflanked, and outclassed.

As if he sensed her thoughts, Asad said, "Jessica and Harvey are here to safeguard your interests as much as my own." That remark caused Hamza to pause in the act of sitting down, and to give Zoya a look of unabashed derision that warned her not to believe that for an instant. Zoya saw the look and felt vastly reassured. Hamza might be younger and shorter than the other two, but he was neither fooled nor outflanked.

Asad saw the look too, but he ignored it. Turning to Zoya, who was about to sit down, he put his hand under her elbow to stop her, beginning to execute his plan. "We'd just decided to have a drink when you arrived," he lied when she was standing again, looking at him in confusion. He glanced pointedly at his attorneys. "What will you have?"

"Scotch and water," Spector promptly replied, understanding that he'd just been told to have one whether he wanted it or not, and obediently shoving aside the folder he'd been about to open.

"The same," Pearson echoed, taking her cue and relaxing back in her chair as if they had all the time in the world.

Turning to Hamza, Asad said, "What would you like to drink?"

'Perrier," he said succinctly. "With a lime, if you have it."

"We have it."

Asad looked to Zoya, but she shook her head and said, "I don't care for anything."

"In that case, will you help me carry the drinks?" he countered, determined to get the chance to speak privately with her. "These three attorneys have faced one another across conference tables before, I'm told. I'm certain they'll be able to find something to talk about while we get their drinks." Having thus instructed Spector and Pearson to keep Hamza occupied, he put his hand under Zoya's elbow. Behind him, Spector was already launching into an animated dialogue about a controversial trial in the newspapers, with Pearson contributing additional remarks"all of it done in sufficiently loud voices to give Asad the cover of privacy they understood he wanted with Zoya.

The bar was a deep half circle made entirely of narrow, vertical strips of beveled mirror, and because it was recessed into a wall, Asad was out of sight of the men at the conference table the moment he stepped around the counter. Zoya, however, was stubbornly hovering on the opposite side of the counter, gazing fixedly at the beveled mirrors as if hypnotized by the reflection of colored light dancing off crystal glasses. Removing the top of the ice bucket, Asad put ice into five glasses, then he pulled the stopper out of a crystal decanter and splashed scotch into three glasses, and vodka into another. Glancing at the refrigerator that was beneath the counter on his side, he casually said, "Would you mind getting me the Perrier?"

She nodded, and he watched her move with visible reluctance around the bar to do as he asked. Scrupulously avoiding his gaze, she took out a bottle of Perrier and a lime, and put both on the counter, then she started to turn. "Zoya," Asad said quietly, putting a detaining hand on her arm, "why can't you look at me?"

She jumped at his touch and he let go of her arm, but she lifted her eyes to his, and when she did, much of the tension drained from her elegant face. She even managed a rueful little smile as she admitted, "I don't know why exactly, but I'm finding this whole ordeal excruciatingly awkward."

"It serves you right," he teased, trying to divert her with humor. "Didn't anyone ever tell you it's not nice to leave a man in bed with nothing but a note to say good-bye? It makes him wonder if you still respect him."

She swallowed a startled giggle at his pointed quip, and he grinned back at her. "Leaving you that way was foolish," she admitted, and it didn't occur to either of them to wonder why, no matter how long their separation, or how tense the circumstances surrounding each meeting, they fell easily into conversation with each other. "I can't explain why I did it. I don't understand it myself."

"I think I do," Asad said. "Here, drink this." He handed her the vodka and soda he'd made for her. When she started to decline and give it back to him, he shook his head. "It will help make this meeting a little easier to endure." He waited until she'd taken a sip and then he said what he'd gotten her over there to say. "I'd like to ask a favor of you now."

Zoya heard the sudden solemnity in his voice, and she looked at him closely. "What sort of favor?"

"Do you remember at the farm"you asked me for a truce?"

She nodded, remembering with poignant clarity the way she'd stood beside his bed, watching his hand close over hers.

"I'm asking you for the same thing now"a kind of a truce, a cease-fire, from the time my attorneys begin talking until you leave this room."

Alarm tingled through her, vague and unfocused, and she slowly put her glass down, warily searching his unreadable features. "I don't understand."

"I'm asking you to listen to the terms of my offer and to remember that, no matter how"" Asad paused, trying to think of a suitably descriptive word for how his terms were likely to strike her. Infuriating? Outrageous? Obscene? "No matter how unusual my terms may seem, I'm doing what I honestly believe is best for both of us. My attorneys are going to explain my legal alternatives if you refuse my offer, and you're bound to feel backed into a corner at first, but I'm asking you not to get up and walk out of here, or to tell the three of us to go to hell, no matter how angry you become. Last, I'm asking you to give me five minutes in here alone with you, after the meeting, during which time I will try to convince you to go along with what I'm suggesting. If I can't do that, you're free to tell me to go to hell and walk out of here. Will you agree to that?"

Zoya's alarm escalated to new heights, and yet he was only asking her to stay there, and stay calm, for an hour or so.

"I agreed to your terms at the farm," he reminded her, "Is it so much to ask that you agree to mine now?"

Unable to withstand the quiet force of his argument, Zoya slowly shook her head. "I suppose not. All right, I agree. Truce," she said, then watched in surprise as Asad held his hand out to her just as she had held hers out to him at the farm, except that he turned his hand palm up. Her heart gave an inexplicable little bump as she laid her hand in his and his fingers closed tightly around it.

"Thank you," he said.

It hit her that she had said exactly that to him. Amazed that this moment at the farm had obviously seemed poignant to him, too, she tried to smile back at him as she echoed his former words: "You're welcome."

Fully aware of the ploy that Khan had used to draw Zoya away, Hamza permitted the two attorneys to carry on their barrage of diversionary conversation while he mentally ticked off the amount of time necessary to fix five drinks. When that time had elapsed, he swiveled around his chair, rudely turned his back on Spector and Pearson and, without bothering to hide what he was doing, he craned his neck to see the occupants of the bar. He half expected to see Khan trying to badger Zoya; what he saw was a couple in profile, captured in a pose so thoroughly startling that Hamza felt momentarily disoriented. Far from trying to badger her, Khan was holding his hand out to her, looking at her with a somber smile that struck Hamza as decidedly ... tender. And Zoya, who was almost always completely composed, was putting her hand in his and looking up at him with an expression that Hamza had never seen on her face before: a vulnerable expression of naked caring.

Abruptly, he pulled his gaze from the couple and turned to the attorneys, but he still hadn't come up with a suitable explanation for Zoya's expression a minute later, when she and Khan brought the drinks to the conference table.