addition to the cleavage, there had been soft skin at the nape of her neck that he hadn’t been able to avoid touching several times. And she was wearing a perfume that managed to be sweetly innocent and madly tantalising at the same time—a lot like Tara herself, Vikram thought, before he shook himself. He’d been celibate too long, he thought cynically, if he was starting to get excited about touching a woman’s ear.
‘Thanks,’ Tara said, giving him a cheeky little smile. ‘I thought I’d be stuck inside that thing for ever, blundering around like a headless horseman.’
‘You’re welcome,’ he said, his voice sounding a little cold even to his own ears. ‘Now, where would you like to go for dinner?’
‘I don’t know,’ Tara said cheerfully as she tugged off the annoying earrings and deposited them in her handbag. ‘Dad always takes us to his club, but the food’s horrible and all the waiters have known me since I was ten years old.’
‘There’s a restaurant in the new five-star hotel, isn’t there?’ Vikram asked, mentioning the only decent hotel he’d seen in the city. ‘I don’t know Jamshedpur very well. This is my first visit since my father got transferred here.’
Tara was busy scrubbing the lipstick off her lips with a tissue. ‘I’ve never been there,’ she said. ‘It’s too expensive for the likes of us.’ A little too late she realised that the remark could be interpreted in several ways, and tried to correct herself. ‘I mean Dad doesn’t like eating out much. He says it’s a waste of money. And when we do go out …’
‘You go to his club.’ Vikram said. ‘You told me. How do I get to the hotel from here?’
‘You take the next left and go straight for around five kilometres,’ Tara said, sounding a little subdued.
Vikram glanced at her. She had managed to get her hair out of the complicated-looking braid it had been in and was now finger-combing it into obedience. It was really lovely hair, he thought, as she bent her head to dig in her purse for a scrunchie, and it fell over the side of her face like a jet-black curtain. An auto-rickshaw honked indignantly, and he turned his eyes hastily back to the road.
‘What’s the news on your PhD?’ he asked.
‘I spoke to my supervisor again,’ Tara replied. ‘She said she’s willing to wait for me till January, but after that she’s going to take on the next research applicant on her list.’
Vikram nodded, and she didn’t dare to ask him if he’d made up his mind. Presumably, as he was taking her out to dinner, he hadn’t decided definitely not to marry her. Or maybe he had, and he just wanted to tell her in person rather than on the phone. This was all very confusing, Tara thought, wrinkling up her nose and peeking quickly at his rather stern profile.
‘You look quite different now,’ Vikram remarked as Tara got out of the car at the hotel.
‘Different from yesterday, or different from five minutes ago?’ Tara asked.
‘Both, actually,’ Vikram said. ‘Though I meant your in-car makeover. An immense improvement, if you don’t mind my saying so.’
It was. Unlike the sweater she’d worn to the station, the plain grey one she was wearing now was clingy, outlining her slim curves perfectly. After several unsuccessful attempts at tying up her hair she’d let it hang loose—that and the kohl that she’d wisely not tried to rub off made her look older and way more sophisticated than she had earlier. Though a lot of the effect was neutralised by the way she now stared at the water feature in the foyer of the hotel. Vikram had the distinct feeling that if it weren’t for his hand under her elbow, steering her towards the restaurant, she would run up to it and stick her hands under the shimmering cascade of water.
‘This place is cool,’ she said, her eyes sparkling as she slid gracefully into a chair opposite Vikram.
He nodded, oddly touched at her excitement. He’d been to scores of restaurants, with scores of women, but none of them had been so genuinely pleased with so little. She went through the wine list carefully, but shook her head when he asked her what she’d like to drink.
‘Just a Coke please,’ she said. ‘I don’t drink. I was just looking at the names of the wines.’
Even the waiter smiled indulgently as he wrote her order down. Vikram had been about to order a Chilean wine that he was rather fond of, but he changed his mind and ordered a mocktail instead.
‘I’ll get straight to the point,’ he said after the waiter left. ‘Are you really serious about marrying me to get to Bengaluru and do your PhD?’
She nodded. ‘I’m sorry about yesterday,’ she said awkwardly. ‘You must have thought I was crazy, accosting you like that. But your parents happened to mention that you didn’t want them meeting your train, and I thought that was the only opportunity I’d get to speak to you alone.’
‘I’m glad you came,’ he said. ‘It just took me a little while to understand what you wanted. Your father’s still absolutely against your studying further, is he?’
Tara nodded. ‘You saw him today,’ she said. ‘Getting me married off to a good South Indian man is currently topmost on his priority list. If he isn’t able to manage that, he’s OK with me taking up a teaching job while he continues with the manhunt.’ She looked straight into his eyes. ‘Look, I don’t want to put you on the spot,’ she said. ‘If you don’t want to marry me that’s perfectly OK. I understand.’
Vikram glanced away for a second. His motives for wanting to get married were complex, but his requirements were extremely simple. Pretty much any nice-looking, reasonably well-educated girl would do—Tara fitted the description, and he genuinely liked her.
‘I think marriage will work for us if we’re both clear about what the other person wants,’ he said finally. ‘I’m the first one to admit that I’m going about this in a rather cold-blooded way. At your age you probably expect romance and candlelit dinners and a fairytale wedding.’
Tara smiled, her face taking on an uncommonly wise expression. ‘People have been getting married in India for centuries without even meeting each other before the ceremony. I guess we’re lucky we’ve been born into a generation that has some choice. Or at least you do—I don’t think my dad has quite realised which century he’s living in.’ She took in the look on Vikram’s face and grinned. ‘The short answer is no, I’m not looking for romance. Though I wouldn’t mind a candlelit dinner now and then.’
‘You haven’t considered leaving home and striking out on your own?’ Vikram asked. He found it a little difficult to believe that a girl as confident as Tara was so closely controlled by her father. Her body language when her father was around didn’t suggest that she found him intimidating in the least.
‘Oh, I have,’ Tara said. ‘Until you appeared on the scene it seemed to be my only option. But my dad would have cut me off from the family completely—and though he’s a pain I wouldn’t like that to happen. My mum would be lost without me.’
The last bit was believable, Vikram thought. Her mother was definitely under her father’s thumb, and he could imagine Mr Sundaram making her life miserable if Tara left home against his wishes.
The waiter came up with their drinks, and Tara’s eyes lit up as she saw the mocktail. ‘Ooh, that looks cute,’ she said, pointing at the little umbrella
