Arshi SS Tumult :: Completed Pg81 :: 17/01 - Page 55

"I am happy you didn't choose the red one after all," he smirked wolfishly at her confused frown. "You are looking very very very beautiful, Doc, but if you had worn something red, I don't think I would have been able to hold myself very long. And since we are not home..."

Khushi [earrings] coloured up violently and looked around them to see if someone had heard. "Aren't you ashamed of speaking like that? What if someone heard you?"

"They'd think that Arnav Singh Raizada is still very crazy about his wife," he whispered suggestively and she smacked him on the shoulder.

"But she has to go now," she patted his cheek with a little pout. "My shift starts in an hour. I have to go home and get ready. Tell Nate that I'm really sorry and it was a beautiful wedding."

He nodded, his expression serious now. "Do you want me to drop you?"

"Don't worry, Arnavji, I'll be fine. You enjoy, it's been so long since you've met your friends and work has been keeping you very busy and stressed up. Just don't drink too much and stay away from those lecherous witches," she muttered, throwing disgusted looks at the skimpily dressed women who were mentally undressing her husband.

Arnav grinned like a cat at his wife's blatant possessiveness. It was not everyday you'd see Khushi Singh Raizada act like that. He grabbed her by the waist to kiss her soundly, making the women burn up with jealousy while his cute lady flared up with outrage. "I won't touch alcohol, your Highness. And if someone tries to rape me, I can defend myself, thank you."

Flustered at his sudden display of attention which had made more eyes turn onto them, she pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes. "I'll see how you do that when I'll try to murder you." But he merely gave her a wink that melted a shy smile out of her before she left.

"I still wonder how she lives with an incorrigible man like you!" Arnav turned around to find the newly married Nathaniel Knight striding to him.

"Hey!" he gave his old friend a brotherly hug and a pat on the back. "Congrats, Nate, and best of luck. Not everyone is as lucky as me to get a wife like Khushi, you know?"

"Don't worry, man. Magda is very flexible," he winked suggestively to convey his underlying meaning, which made Arnav guffaw.

"Shut up! I don't want the details of your sex life, okay?"

Nate patted him on the shoulder. "Come, let's walk. It's been ages since I saw you. I even thought you wouldn't come to the wedding. How are you?"

"I'm great. And the business is doing well too."

"You don't miss the rink?"

Arnav smiled sadly with a shrug. "I do... Khushi makes it a point to take me skating at least once a week though."

"But it's not the same?"

"But it's not the same," he sighed.

They finished the walk in an awkward silence, avoiding the subject, and Arnav left as soon as Nate got busy in his wedding lunch. He sat in his car, eyes closed for a moment as he desperately tried to close the wound NK had just unknowingly re-opened.

***

"You're back?" She looked up with her puffy, red eyes and a fresh sob erupted from her. he frowned worriedly and sat down on the couch next to her curled up form and cupped her face gently, kissing her damp cheeks. "Hey? Doc? What happened?"

She sniffed and snuggled up close to him after having kept her tub of ice-cream away. "You remember that girl I had told you about? The one who needed a heart transplant?"

"Yeah, honey, what about her?"

"We saved her..."

He smiled at her curious reaction. "Then... why are you crying?"

She pulled away and wiped her face furiously even as she wept a bit more. "I don't know... She was so little and so sweet... We almost lost her..."

"Aww," he groaned, pulling her back to him. "I think your heart is too soft to be a surgeon, Doc."

"Yes, maybe... But I still love my job." Smiling widely, he brushed his lips against her neck, feeling her fingers run through his thick hair. "Anyway," she sniffed. "Forget about me, how was your evening?"

He winced and turned his concentration to drawing invisible patterns on her fleece pyjamas-clad thigh. "Fine."

Khushi sighed and made him look up at him. "I'm sorry I left you to face that alone... I had to go to work and you couldn't not attend that wedding. Nate had been your best-friend for so many years. You have not spoken to any of them since..."

His eyes closed painfully and he rested his head on her chest, allowing her to run her hands in his hair to massage his scalp and smooth his nightmares away. "I know..."

Five years ago, when Khushi had returned to India for the summer shortly after reconciling with Arnav, she had not yet decided what she would do next. Would she even return to Boston? She had been trying to decide on something when Arnav Singh Raizada had landed on her doorstep without warning and asked her hand in marriage. Of course it had taken him a lot of pains to get her family to agree and when she had tried to say something, the expression on her mother's face had been enough to shut her up. For the Guptas, a love marriage was completely out of question and Khushi would have no say in it. But she had sneaked a lot behind their back, sometimes to help him win her parents over, sometimes to go on clandestine dates with him and they had succeeded in the end, with the help of his family too, and he had insisted upon marrying her right there, right then.

Things had been perfect until that fateful match, barely two years after their marriage, where Arnav had gotten himself seriously injured. It had required several agonizing surgeries for him to recover completely but the doctors had advised him not to return to the rink if he wanted to stay alive; the next time, it could as well kill him... Arnav had been miserable after that but having Khushi by his side had made him survive it. She had encouraged him to find something he would really want to do and he had started his own business. Three years later, he was going better, he was out of depression and his new business was doing well but that accident had still left its scars on him.

"Oh," he straightened himself with a smile - not an overly bright smile to fool her, it was a sincere smile that pulled one out of her too. "I got a phone call when I got back home. I had told you about the Irish investors I had been trying to bag, right? The O'Briens? I got them!"

"Congratulations, Arnavji! That is great news! And I almost forgot! Lavanya had a boy!"

"Yes, Aman called to tell me. He is going crazy with joy at becoming a father. Hey, Doc?"

"Hmm?"

He flashed a wolfish smirk at her. "It's been a lucky day, today, eh? You saved your patient, I got my investors, NK got married, La and Aman had a baby... Should we try our luck too? It's not midnight yet."

Her tears rose again. "We've been trying for more than one year... What if...?"

"Khushi," he crooned at her softly before kissing her lips gently. "You are fine. I am fine. The two of us her perfectly healthy to make a baby. Your colleague confirmed that, didn't she?"

"But we have been trying for so long!"

"Yeah, and we'll keep trying, honey. Sometimes, it takes just once and sometimes it takes time. Doc, you do know that you will yourself lower the chances if you stress because of this, right? Now come, let's try to make a baby on this lucky day's lucky night."

He pulled both of them to their feet and started lugging her upstairs to their room. "One day, I'll be playing hockey with my son," he grinned.

"What if it's a girl?"

"Well, I will teach her too, then! And she will be my little princess who will get whatever is best in the world... Although, if someday, a guy stalks her like I stalked you, I will be breaking his jaw."

Khushi giggled, but her dread was not gone yet. She tightened her hand around his. "And what if there is no baby?" she breathed reluctantly.

Arnav paused to look at her. "Baby or no baby, I love you, Khushi. I always have and I always will. Just like you do... It's okay, you don't say it often but I understand. I know. You don't have to tell me because I can see it every day in your eyes, in your smile, in your worry, in your anger... Remember that. Baby or no baby, I can't stop loving you." Eyes full, she sniffed and hugged him snugly, extracting a small smile from him as he kissed the top of her head. Hurriedly blinking away the dampness from his own eyes, he resumed his seductive tone, lifting her so that she stood with her feet on his while he continued walking. "But you will not have to worry about that because we are definitely making at least one baby tonight!"