Chapter 11.Zoya spent the rest of the week working like a fanatic at the office. At home she alternately thought about Asad and worried about her father's financial situation. The hospital was demanding half of the fee at once. The only thing she could think of doing was to sell her mother's splendid grand piano, but the thought broke her heart. It was her piano too, and here in Mumbai she missed it. She missed being able to play, to work out her frustrations and disappointments at the keyboard as she used to do. On the other hand, her father was far from being well, and if he needed to go to the hospital again, she couldn't risk having him turned away because his last bill wasn't paid.
Late Friday afternoon, Sushma stopped her in the public relations department. "Samar's birthday is next week, on Thursday," she told Zoya. "It's sort of a custom here to bring a cake for your boss." With an irrepressible grin she added, "Cake and coffee is a terrific excuse to quit working fifteen minutes early."
"I'll bring a cake," Zoya quickly assured her. She glanced at her watch, said good-night to Sushma and quickened her pace toward her desk. Abbas Siddiqui had called and invited her over for dinner that night, and she didn't want to be late.
On the way to her apartment to change her clothes, Zoya considered telling Abbas about the Kumar's deal. She felt uneasy about it, however. Before she interfered with anyone's reputation and job, she ought to be certain of what she actually knew. It occurred to her that Abbas might consider news of the Rossi project "valuable information," and that he might pay her the ten lakhs he'd offered, but her conscience screamed at her for even contemplating the thought. She decided to call to the hospital and offer one lakh. She might be able to borrow that much from a bank.
Over dinner later Abbas asked her if she liked her job at AAK Corp. When Zoya replied that she did, he said, "Have you heard mentioned any of the names I gave you?"
She hesitated. "No, I haven't."
Abbas sighed with disappointment. "The most important contracts we've ever considered bidding on have deadlines only a few weeks from now. Before then I've got to know who's leaking the information to AAK Corp. I need those contracts."
Zoya immediately felt guilty for not telling him about Kumar or Rossi. More than ever she felt confused, torn between her loyalty to Abbas and her desire to do the right thing.
"I told you Zoya wouldn't be able to help," Imran put in.
Zoya didn't know how she'd ever let herself get into this mess. In her own defense, she said, "It's too soon to know, actually. I've been reassigned to work on a special project on the eightieth floor, so I haven't been working full time for AAK Corp until yesterday, when Asad"Mr. Khan"flew to Italy."
Asad's name sent a bolt of electricity through the entire room, and all three Siddiqui's stiffened perceptibly.
Imran's eyes gleamed with excitement. "Zoya, you're fantastic! How did you manage to get yourself assigned to him? Hell, you'll have access to all sorts of confidential""
"I didn't manage anything," Zoya interrupted. "I'm there because I happened to put down on my application that I speak Italian, and he needed a temporary secretary who was fluent in it to work on a special project."
"What kind of project?" Abbas and Imran demanded in unison.
Zoya glanced uneasily at Dilshad, who was watching her intently over the rim of her glass. Then she looked at the two men. "Abbas, you promised when I agreed to work for AAK Corp that all you would ask me to do was tell you if I overheard one of those six names. Please don't ask me about anything else. If I tell you, I'll be no better than the person who's spying on you."
"You're right of course, my dear," he instantly agreed.
But an hour later, when Zoya had left, Abbas turned to his son. "She said Khan flew to Italy yesterday. Call that pilot friend of yours and find out if he can get access to his flight plan. I want to know exactly where in Italy he went."
"Do you really think it's that important?"
Abbas studied the brandy in his glass. "Zoya obviously thinks it's very important. If she didn't, she would have told us about it without a qualm." After a pause he said, "If we can trace him, I want you to send a team of investigators over there to pick up his trail. I have a hunch he's working on something big."
Zoya glanced outside the window of her bedroom as she pulled the curtains. Despite the sunny autumn Sunday afternoon, despite her luxuriously furnished apartment, she felt lonely and isolated. Shopping for Samar's birthday present would give her something to do, she decided. She was debating what to buy him when the sudden shrill ring of her doorbell interrupted her thoughts.
When she opened the door she stared in amazement at the man whose tall frame seemed to fill the doorway. Dressed in an open-collared cream shirt with a rust-colored suede jacket hooked negligently over his shoulder, Asad looked so unbearably handsome that Zoya could have cried. She forced herself to sound composed and only mildly curious. "Hi. What are you doing here?"
He frowned. "Damned if I know."
Unable to suppress her smile she said, "The usual excuse is that you happened to be in the neighborhood and decided to drop by."
"Now why didn't I think of that?" Asad mocked dryly. "Well, are you going to invite me in?"
"I don't know," she said honestly. "Should I?"
His gaze traveled down the entire length of her body, lifted to her lips and finally her eyes. "I wouldn't if I were you."
Breathless from his frankly sensual glance, Zoya was nevertheless determined to abide by her decision to avoid all personal involvement with him. And judging from the way he had just looked at her, his reason for being here was very, very personal. Reluctantly she made her decision. "In that case, I'll follow your advice. Goodbye, Asad," she said, starting to close the door. "And thank you for stopping by."
He accepted her decision with a slight inclination of his head, and Zoya made herself finish closing the door. She forced herself to walk away on legs that felt like lead, reminding herself at the same time how insane it would be to let him near her. But halfway across the living room she lost the internal battle. Pivoting on her heel, she raced for the door, yanked it open and hurtled straight into Asad's chest. He was lounging with one hand braced high against the doorframe, gazing down at her flushed face with a knowing, satisfied grin.
"Hello, Zoya. I happened to be in the neighborhood and decided to drop by."
"What do you want, Asad?" she sighed, her blue eyes searching his.
"You."
Resolutely she started to close the door again, but his hand shot out to stop her. "Do you really want me to go?"
"I told you on Wednesday that what I want has nothing to do with it. What matters is what's best for me, and""
He interrupted her with a boyish grin. "I promise I'll never wear your clothes, and I won't steal your allowances." Zoya couldn't help starting to smile as he finished, "And if you swear never to call me Jammy again, I won't bite you."
She stepped aside and let him in, then took his jacket and hung it in the closet. When she turned, Asad was leaning against the closed front door, his arms crossed over his chest. "On second thought," he grinned, "I take part of that back. I'd love to bite you."
"Pervert!" she returned teasingly, her heart thumping so much with excitement that she hardly knew what she was saying.
"Come here and I'll show you just how perverted I can be," he invited smoothly.
Zoya took a cautious step backward. "Absolutely not. Would you like some coffee or a Coke?"
"Either would be fine."
"I'll make some coffee."
"Kiss me first."
Zoya shot him a look over her shoulder and walked into the kitchen. As she made the coffee, she was acutely conscious that he was standing in the kitchen doorway, watching her.
"Do I pay you enough to afford this apartment?" he asked casually.
"No. There's a burglary problem here, so in return for watching the place, I get to live here free." She heard him start toward her, and she hastily turned to the table and put out cups and saucers. When she straightened, she knew he was standing right behind her, but she had no choice except to turn around and face him.
"Have you missed me?" he asked.
"What do you think?" she evaded smoothly"but not smoothly enough, because he chuckled.
"Good. How much?"
"Is your ego in need of boast today?" she countered lightly.
"Yep."
"Really, why?"
"Because I got shot down by a beautiful twenty-three-year-old, and I can't seem to get her out of my mind."
"That's too bad," Zoya said, trying unsuccessfully to hide the joy in her voice.
"Isn't it," he mocked. "She's like a thorn in my side, a blister on my heel. She has the eyes of an angel, a body that drugs my mind, the vocabulary of an English professor and a tongue like a knife."
"Thanks, I think."
His hands glided up her arms, then curved around her shoulders, tightening as he drew her to within a few inches of his chest. "And," he added, "I like her."
His mouth was making a deliberately slow inclination, and Zoya waited helplessly for the touch of his lips covering hers. Instead he bypassed her lips and began to explore the creamy skin of her neck and shoulder, his warm mouth nuzzling the sensitive area, then slowly wandering upward along her neck toward her ear. With the kitchen table behind her and Asad's body in front, Zoya was incapable of doing anything except standing there, a mass of quivering sensations. His mouth left a burning trail of kisses up to her temple, then slowly began to drift toward her lips. A fraction of an inch above hers he stopped and repeated his earlier command. "Kiss me, Zoya."
"No," she whispered shakily.
He shrugged and began leisurely kissing her other cheek, stopping to linger sensuously at her ear, his tongue tracing every curve and hollow. He nipped her earlobe, and Zoya lurched forward in a startled movement that jolted their bodies together. A current leaped between them, and they both stiffened with the delicious shock of it. "God!" Asad muttered under his breath, and his lips began to trail down her neck to her shoulder.
"Asad, please," Zoya whispered weakly.
"Please what?" he murmured against her throat.
"Please put us both out of this misery?"
"No!"
"No?" he repeated silkily, raising his head. "You don't want me to kiss you, and undress you, and make love to you?" His lips were tantalizingly close, and Zoya was almost faint with the desire to feel them crushing down on hers. Instead he bent his head and lightly brushed his mouth over hers, first in one direction, then the other. "Please kiss me," he coaxed huskily. "I dream about the way you kissed me in Alibaug, about how sweet and warm you felt in my arms..."
With a silent moan of surrender, Zoya slid her hands up his muscular chest and kissed him. She felt the tremor that ran through his body, the gasp of his breath against her lips in the instant before his arms closed around her, and his mouth opened passionately over hers.
Desire was racing through her like a wild fury by the time he finally dragged his mouth from hers. "Where's the bedroom?" he whispered hoarsely.
Zoya pulled back in his arms and lifted her eyes to his. His face was dark with passion, and demand was blazing in his gray eyes. She remembered the last time she had looked into those insistent eyes and had yielded to his fiery passion. Memories flashed through her mind in chilling sequence: he had made love to her in Alibaug, had held her and caressed her as if he couldn't get enough of her, and then he had coolly sent her home. She had learned to her own shame and anguish that he was completely capable of making tender, passionate, shattering love to a woman for the sheer physical pleasure of it" without feeling the slightest emotional involvement with her.
He wanted her more now than he had in Alibaug"Zoya knew that. She could feel it. She was also half convinced that he felt more for her than just desire, but then she'd foolishly believed that in Alibaug too. This time she wanted to be certain. Her pride would not permit her to let him use her again.
"Asad," she said nervously, "I think it would be better if we got to know each other first."
"We already know each other," he reminded her. "Intimately."
"But I mean... I would like us to know each other better before we... before we start anything."
"We've already started something, Zoya," he said with a hint of impatience in his voice. "And I want to finish it. So do you."
"No, I"" She gasped as his hands cupped the thrusting roundness of her breasts.
"I can feel how badly you want me," he told her. His hands swept around her grasping her hips, holding her tightly against him and making her forcefully aware of his hardened manhood thrusting against her. "And you can feel how much I want you. Now, what else do we need to know about each other? What else matters?"
"What else matters?" Zoya hissed, pulling free of his arms. "How can you ask me that? I told you I couldn't handle a casual, unemotional affair with you. What are you trying to do to me?"
Asad's jaw tightened. "I'm trying to get you into that bedroom so that we can ease the ache that's been building inside us for weeks. I want to make love to you all day until we're both too weak to move. Or, if you prefer it more blunt than that, I want to""
"And then what?" Zoya demanded hotly. "I want to know the rules, dammit! Today we make love, but tomorrow we're no more than casual acquaintances, is that it? Tomorrow you can make love to another woman if you want to, and I'm not supposed to care"right? And tomorrow I can let another man make love to me, and you won't care"is that right?"
"Yes," he snapped.
Zoya had her answer"he didn't care about her any more now than he had before. He merely wanted her more. Tiredly she said, "Coffee is ready."
"I'm ready," he said crudely.
"Well, I'm not!" Zoya stormed in mounting fury. "I'm not ready to be your Sunday-afternoon playmate. If you're bored, go play your games with someone who can handle a casual fun in bed with you."
"What the hell do you want from me?" he demanded coldly.
I want you to love me, she thought. "I don't want anything from you," she said. "Just go from here, leave me alone."
Asad's insolent eyes raked over her. "Before I go, I want to give you a piece of advice," he said icily. "Grow up!"
Zoya felt as if he had slapped her. Infuriated past reason, she struck back at his ego. "You're absolutely right!" she blazed. "That's what I should do. Beginning today I'm going to grow up and start practicing what you preach! I'm going to sleep with any man who appeals to me. But not with you. You're much too old and too cynical for my taste. Now please leave!"
Asad pulled a small velvet box from his pocket and slapped it onto the kitchen table. "I owed you a pair of earrings," he said, already striding out of the kitchen.
Zoya heard the front door slam behind him, and with trembling fingers she picked up the little box and opened it. She expected to find her mother's small golden hoops, but instead there was a pair of glowing pearls in a setting so fragile that the pearls appeared to be two large, luminous raindrops suspended in thin air. Zoya snapped the box shut. Which of his girlfriends had lost those in his bed, she wondered in angry loathing. Or were they her "present" from Italy?
She marched upstairs to get her purse. She would go shopping for Samar's birthday gift exactly as she'd planned, and she would put the last hour out of her thoughts"permanently. Asad Ahmad Khan was not going to haunt her anymore. She would erase him from her mind. She jerked open her bottom drawer and stood looking down at the beautiful gray sweater she'd knitted for that... that bas***d!
Zoya removed it from the drawer. Samar was almost exactly Asad's size, and he would probably like it very much. She would give it to him, she decided, ignoring the sharp stab of anguish that shot through her.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Zoya walked into the office the next morning wearing a chic burgundy suede suit and a determinedly bright smile. Samar took one look at her and grinned. "Zoya, you're gorgeous"but aren't you supposed to be upstairs?"
"Not anymore," she replied, handing him his mail. She had assumed that because their "game" was over, Asad would no longer want her upstairs in the mornings.
She was wrong. Five minutes later, as they were discussing a report Zoya was working on, the phone on Samar's desk rang. "It's Asad," he said, passing the receiver to her.
Asad's voice was like a whip crack. "Get up here! I said I wanted you here all day and I meant it. Now move!"
He hung up on her, and Zoya looked at the receiver as if it had just bitten her. She hadn't expected Asad to sound like that. She'd never heard anybody sound like that. "I"I think I'd better go upstairs," she said, hastily standing up.
Samar's face was a study in incredulity. "I wonder what the hell has gotten under his skin?"
"I think I have." She saw the thoughtful smile that slowly spread across Samar's attractive face, but she had no time to ponder it.
Only a few minutes later Zoya tapped on Asad's door and, with an outward calm she didn't feel, walked into his office. She waited a full two minutes for him to acknowledge her, but after having practically shouted at her to get up there, he continued writing, ignoring her presence. With an irritated shrug she finally went over to his desk and held the little velvet jeweler's box toward him.
"These are not my mother's earrings, and I don't want them," she told him nervously. "My mother's earrings were ordinary gold hoops, not pearls. They weren't worth a fraction of what these are; their only value was sentimental. But to me they're priceless. They mean something to me, and I want them back. Are you capable of understanding that?"
"Perfectly capable," he replied icily, without looking up. He reached out and buzzed for Mary to come in. "However, yours are lost. Since I couldn't get them back for you, I gave you something that had sentimental value to me. Those earrings belonged to my grandmother."
Zoya's stomach knotted sickly, and the resentment left her voice as she said quietly, "I still can't accept them."
"Then leave them there." He nodded curtly toward the corner of his desk.
Zoya put the box down and went back to her temporary office. Mary followed her a minute later, closed the door to Asad's office behind her and came over to Zoya's desk. Smiling kindly, she relayed the instructions Asad had obviously just given. "Sometime during the next few days he's expecting a call from Mr. Rossi. He wants you to be available to act as translator whenever the man decides to call. In the meantime, I would be very grateful for your help with some of my work. If you still have time to spare, you could bring some of Samar's work up here to do."
During the next three days, Zoya saw sides of Asad that she had only imagined existed. Gone was the teasing man who had held and kissed and pursued her so relentlessly. In his place was a powerful, dynamic businessman who treated her with a brisk, aloof formality that thoroughly intimidated her. When he wasn't on the phone or in meetings, he was dictating or working at his desk. He arrived before she did in the morning and was still there when she left at night. Acting as his auxiliary secretary, she grew petrified of displeasing him in any way. She had the feeling he was merely waiting for her to make a mistake so that he would have a legitimate reason to fire her.
On Wednesday, Zoya made the mistake she'd been dreading: she left an entire paragraph out of a detailed contract Asad had dictated to her. The moment his summons snapped over the intercom she knew her time had come, and she walked into his office with limbs shaking and hands perspiring. But instead of lashing out, which she could see was what he wanted to do, he pointed out the error and shoved the contracts toward her. "Do it again," he snapped, "and this time get it right."
She relaxed slightly after that. If Asad hadn't fired her for that blunder, he obviously wasn't looking for an excuse to get rid of her. He must need her at hand for that call from Rossi no matter how poorly she performed.
"I'm Tanu Baig," a breathy voice announced to Zoya at noon that same day. Zoya looked up to see an incredibly glamorous woman standing in front of her.
"I happened to be here in the city and decided to stop by and see if Jammy"Mr. Khan"is free for lunch," she informed Zoya. "Don't bother announcing me, I'll just go in."
A few minutes later, Tanu and Asad strolled out of his office together, heading toward the elevators. Asad's hand was resting familiarly at the small of her back, and he was grinning at whatever she was telling him.
Zoya swung back around to her typewriter. She hated Tanu Baig's drawl; she hated the possessive way she looked at Asad; she hated the woman's laugh. In fact, she loathed everything about her and she knew exactly why"Zoya was hopelessly, completely, irrevocably in love with Asad Ahmad Khan.
She adored everything about him, from the aura of power and authority that surrounded him, to the energetic confidence in his long strides, to the way he looked when he was deep in thought. She loved the way he wore his expensive clothes, the way he absently rolled his gold pen in his hand when he was listening to someone on the telephone. He was, she decided with an aching sense of tormented hopelessness, the most forceful, compelling, dynamic man in the world. And he had never seemed further beyond her reach.
"Don't worry too much, my dear," Mary D'costa said, getting up to leave for lunch. "There have been many Tanu Baig's in his life in the past. They don't last long."
The reassurance only made Zoya feel worse. She'd suspected that Mary not only knew everything that had happened between Asad and herself in the past, but that she also knew exactly how Zoya felt about Asad now. "I don't care what he does!" she said with angry pride.
"Is that right?" Mary retorted with a smile, and left for lunch.
Asad didn't return until afternoon, and Zoya wondered furiously whose bed they had gone to"his or Tanu's.
By the time she left the office, she was so overwrought with jealousy and so filled with self-loathing for loving such an unprincipled man that she had a splitting headache. At home she wandered aimlessly around the elegant living room.
Being near Asad was hurting her more every day. She had to leave AAK Corp"she couldn't bear to be so close to him, to love him as she did and have to watch him with other women. To have him look at her as if she was a piece of office equipment whose presence offended him but whom he was obliged out of necessity to have nearby.
Zoya had a sudden wild longing to tell both Asad Ahmad Khan and Abbas Siddiqui to go to hell, to pack up and go home to her parents, her friends. But of course she couldn't do that. They needed...
Abruptly she stopped pacing, her mind seizing on a solution that should have occurred to her before. There were other large corporations in Mumbai that needed good secretaries and that paid high salaries for them. Beginning immediately she would start looking for another job.
In the meantime, she would phone Aman, whom she had studied under for the past year, and offer to let him buy her grand piano. He had wanted it the moment he'd laid eyes on it.
Despite the dull ache she felt at the prospect of selling it, Zoya felt peaceful for the first time in weeks. She would find an inexpensive little apartment and move out of this place. Until then she would do the best job she could at AAK Corp"and if she happened to hear one of the names Abbas had given her, she would forget it just as soon as she heard it. Abbas was going to have to do his own dirty work. She could not and would not betray Asad.
NOTE: I have not been able to reply to some of the comments because of my posts problem š” (When will I be able to post without worrying about maxing out š ) I have read all the comments though and will reply as soon as I can. I am so happy you guys are enjoying this story. Love u all š¤ Edited by iluvasya - 9 years ago
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