women give him the once-over and then glance across at her to see who he was with.
‘Here you go,’ Neil said, reaching across the table to set her cappuccino in front of her.
He settled into the sofa opposite her and Shefali couldn’t help but notice the breadth of his shoulders and the way his T-shirt strained across his muscles as he leaned back. She looked quickly at his hands. No rings. She definitely wasn’t in the market for anything serious—not for a long, long while—but some harmless flirting wouldn’t do her or her self-esteem any harm.
‘So, tell me more about what you do,’ Neil said. ‘College professor? Coaching sweatshop?’
Shefali shook her head, laughing.
‘All through college I wanted a teacher who looked like you—I never was lucky enough,’ he said.
‘I work with kids,’ Shefali said. ‘Who don’t care how I look. But I’m not really a teacher any more—it’s more administrative work.’
‘Do you like kids?’ Neil asked.
Shefali hesitated. All her life she’d made a point of saying the correct thing. It had been drilled into her so thoroughly that it had become a part of who she was. Maybe it was time to start saying what she actually thought for a change.
‘I hate that question,’ she said. ‘No one asks Do you like adults? do they? I love working with children, and I like most kids just the way I like most adults. But kids are human beings too, and there are some who’re perfectly obnoxious.’
Neil laughed. ‘Well, that’s honest, at any rate,’ he said. ‘And where are you working now?’
Shefali leaned forward. ‘Let’s not talk about work,’ she said. ‘It’s unlikely we’ll meet again—you’ll be out of here when your shoot is done, and I’m going to live here for a while—let’s talk about stuff we wouldn’t discuss with anyone otherwise.’
Neil raised his eyebrows. ‘Like...?’ he asked. He was always wary of women who tried to get too close too quickly. So far one of the main attractions Shefali had for him was that she wasn’t throwing herself at his head the way most women did.
Shefali picked up on his hesitation and said, ‘Don’t worry—I’m not talking about a Freudian psychoanalysis session. Just general stuff. Nothing personal. Like what I told you about not always liking kids.’
Neil relaxed a little. OK, not so dicey, then. She was just amusing herself. Just as well—he was beginning to find her quite disturbingly attractive, and the lighter they kept things the better.
‘You first or me?’ he asked.
‘You first,’ Shefali said. ‘One deep dark secret that you’ve never told anyone else.’
‘I’m petrified of dogs.’
Shefali laughed. ‘Come on—you made that up! You’re the outdoorsy kind. There’s no way you’d be scared of a dog.’
Neil shook his head solemnly. ‘When I was about two years old I was playing in a sandpit and this massive Alsatian came along and knocked me over and put its paws on my chest. I was lying there for some five minutes before someone noticed me and called the dog off.’
Shefali’s eyes softened. ‘That must have been awful!’ she exclaimed. ‘Poor you! No wonder you don’t like dogs—that experience must have traumatised you for life.’
‘Actually, it didn’t,’ he said, his grey eyes dancing with amusement. ‘My mum was the one who was traumatised—I dusted myself off and went away to play on the slides.’
Shefali gave him a playful punch in the arm—involuntarily she noticed the strength of the muscles under the warm velvety skin. ‘You wretch!’ she scolded. ‘For a minute there I actually felt sorry for you.’
Neil raised his hands. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘It was too good to resist.’
‘OK, a real one now.’
He leaned back, his long strong body stretched out against the sofa. ‘Let me think. I like pink.’
‘Very poetic,’ she scoffed. ‘Come on, Neil, be serious here!’
He grinned. ‘I’m not good with parlour games.’
Bedroom games were probably more his thing. The thought popped into Shefali’s mind out of nowhere and she gave herself a quick mental shake. That line of thinking wasn’t going to get her far. Perhaps spending time with Neil wasn’t such a good idea after all—he was a little too good-looking to be a soothing companion.
‘OK, here’s one thing,’ he was saying.
Shefali stopped thinking to listen.
‘And it’s really something I’ve never told anyone before.’
She raised an eyebrow enquiringly.
‘When I was fifteen I watched this movie about a diamond heist and it was pretty inspiring, I guess you’d say. So I thought I’d stage a mini-heist of my own. I crept out in the middle of the night and broke into a neighbour’s house. Only I didn’t have the guts to steal anything valuable so I raided their refrigerator instead.’
‘I hope you had a good meal,’ Shefali said gravely.
‘I fed the food to the cat,’ Neil admitted. ‘That’s one more thing—I grew up in Bengal but I hate fish. And that’s all they had in their fridge.’
‘Aren’t you Bengali?’ Shefali asked, surprised. ‘Your surname sounds pretty typically Bengali.’
‘Dad is,’ Neil said. ‘Mum’s British.’
That explained the light eyes and chestnut hair, though his skin was as tanned as any Indian’s.
‘Did they meet in Kolkata?’
Neil shook his head. They’d met in Oxford, apparently, where Neil’s father had been studying, and they’d had an extremely tumultuous courtship. When they’d finally got around to getting married they’d returned to India to look after the tea estates that belonged to Neil’s father’s family.
Neil told the story well—not surprisingly, given that he made his living talking into a camera. She hardly noticed the time go by, and it was dark when they finally stepped out of the coffee shop.
‘The restaurant I know is not too far,’ Neil said. ‘Are you OK with walking, or do you want to take the car?’
‘Walking’s fine,’ Shefali said. ‘I’m a bit tired of sitting around anyway.’
She was acutely conscious of his nearness, of his arm brushing lightly against the sleeve of her kurta, and the smell of his woody cologne. The pavement wasn’t too well-lit, and Shefali stumbled slightly at one point. Neil put a hand under her elbow to steady her and she shivered at the unexpected contact.
‘You OK?’ Neil asked.
She nodded, hoping he didn’t
