no food in the car rule—you can have what you want as long as you don’t collapse again.’
In spite of her cynicism about rich playboys Melissa felt rather touched by Samir’s awkwardly expressed concern. It had been a while since someone had cared enough about her to fuss. Even if the fussing was being done in an off-hand, ultra-macho kind of way.
Samir connected his MP3 player to the car’s music system before they drove off. Melissa had assumed he’d be into rock or heavy metal, but surprisingly most of the tracks were ghazals or Bollywood oldies.
She hummed along to some of her favourite songs—she had a sweet and unexpectedly strong voice, and Samir found himself listening more to her than to the original song playing through the car speakers. She seemed so completely unselfconscious that he felt himself relaxing a little. It was a surprisingly liberating change, being with someone who didn’t have an agenda either to impress him or to get information out of him.
‘Who do you keep texting?’ he asked as he watched her type out her third or fourth message since she’d stepped into the car. ‘You’re like a stenographer on steroids, the way you keep hammering into that phone.’
The second the words were out of his mouth he realised that he’d let himself relax a bit too much. Making personal remarks to someone he hardly knew was completely uncharacteristic of him—no wonder she was staring at him as if he’d grown a third eye in the middle of his forehead like Lord Shiva.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said immediately. ‘None of my business—forget I asked.’
Melissa laughed, showing a perfect set of teeth, small, white and very even.
‘I’m texting a friend back at the hostel,’ she said. ‘We just passed the turn-off for that new amusement park that’s been built here. One of the girls is coming next weekend with her latest boyfriend—she wanted to know how long it would take to get here.’
‘Won’t it be more suitable for kids?’
‘No, there are rides for adults as well. And the tickets are quite expensive—it’s a rather cool place for a first date. For regular people, I mean.’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘As opposed to irregular people like me?’
Refusing to be embarrassed, Melissa said, ‘You know what I mean. If you took a girl out for a date you’d probably go to the theatre, or to a restaurant in a five-star hotel. The guys my friends date don’t even own cars—they don’t have many places to take a girl to.’
‘Where does your boyfriend take you?’ Samir asked, half jokingly and half because he wanted to know for sure that she was unattached. This asking questions thing was pretty addictive—especially when the other person was as cool about it as Melissa.
‘I don’t have a boyfriend,’ she said, but there was something rather weird in the way she said it, as if she was mocking herself.
Samir wouldn’t normally have given himself credit for being perceptive, but instinctively he knew he needed to change the topic.
‘Do you like your job?’ he asked, and she gave him a startled look.
‘Yes,’ she said cautiously, and then, ‘Why? Is there any chance I mightn’t have it any longer?’
This time Samir looked startled. ‘Not that I know of. I’m not making any changes in the agency structure—not for now at least. And when I do it definitely won’t be at your level.’
‘Too junior?’ she asked, giving him a cheeky wink. ‘Or is my salary not big enough to dent the profit figures?’
It probably wasn’t, but Samir could hardly say so without sounding impossibly condescending. He hesitated for a second, and she let him off the hook by jumping to another subject.
‘I just found a pack of candy in my purse,’ she announced. ‘I’d forgotten I had them. You want one?’
Samir shook his head.
‘They’re nice,’ she persisted. ‘Tamarind and sugar.’
He took his eyes off the road for a second and glanced at the small packet in her hand. ‘I haven’t seen that stuff in years,’ he said. ‘They used to hand them out on flights when I was in college—I used to stuff my pockets full of them.’
‘Does that mean you want one, then?’
‘Yes, please. But you’ll have to unwrap it first. I can’t take my hands off the wheel.’
She took a sweet out of its wrapper and waited for him to take it from her. They were near Lonavla now, and at a rather tricky section of the road. There was no way Samir could let go of the wheel, and the candy had begun to melt in Melissa’s palm.
‘This is going all sticky,’ she warned, and then, feeling very daring, ‘Should I pop it in your mouth?’
He nodded, and she immediately wished she hadn’t been quite so forward. He parted his perfectly sculpted lips a little and she leaned across to pop the sweet into his mouth. The candy stuck to her fingers for a few seconds and finally he sucked it off, the feel of his lips and tongue incredibly erotic against her skin.
Pulse racing, Melissa sat back and shot him a covert look. He was as unruffled as ever, but there was a slight smile playing about his lips. Until that instant she hadn’t thought of him as someone she could actually get involved with. There were so many reasons, but right now she couldn’t think clearly about them. All she could think about was how easy it would be to lean a little closer to him, breathe in the heady scent of his cologne, drop a kiss on his lips when he next turned to speak to her...
And probably make him drive the car into a road divider and kill them both. She sighed. Having a pragmatic side was all very well, but it did have a bad habit of popping up and ruining her best fantasies. So, all right, perhaps trying to seduce him while he was driving wasn’t a good plan.
She stole another look at Samir. He had the kind of good looks that grew on you. The first time she’d seen him she’d thought he looked gorgeous, but rather cold—not her type at all. But the more time she spent with him, the more she noticed things—like the way his smile reached all the way up to his eyes when he was amused, and how he pushed his unruly hair off his forehead in an unconsciously sexy gesture every few minutes.
* * *
At around the end of the expressway Samir pulled out an electronic tablet and handed it to Melissa. ‘I’ve plotted the route on this—the car’s GPS isn’t terribly reliable in this part of the world. Will you keep an eye on it to make sure we’re on track?’
Melissa looked at him in horror. ‘Don’t you know where you’re going?’ she asked.
He laughed. ‘Goa,’ he said. ‘We’ll get there eventually. Sooner rather than later if you’re a good navigator.’
She proved to be an excellent navigator—though more than once Samir found himself getting distracted by the way her hair fell across her face as she pored over the map, and the way her brow wrinkled up with concentration.
Even the first time he’d met her he’d thought that she had lovely eyes, but it was only now that he noticed the flawlessness of
