Natasha squinted her eyes. “What do you mean?”
“She is very close to Janak Sehgal, my grandfather. In fact, she’s one of his angels.”
“I don’t understand.”
Sameer let out an exasperated breath and started to explain.
“You know my cousin Kabier, right?” Sameer asked.
“Yeah, he got married a few months back, didn’t he?”
“Kabier’s wife, Keya, Kabier’s younger sister, Sheena and Raashi are best friends and they are very close to my grandfather. They are his angels or Janak’s angels as he calls them. So you see, as long as she has my grandfather protecting her, no one can do a thing to her. I suggest you drop the idea or it will leave you embarrassed.”
“My God! You knew her all along.”
“Hmm,” he said in response.
“And yet you didn’t acknowledge each other. In fact, she was quite hostile towards us. Makes me wonder why.”
A few seconds passed and Sameer realized that Natasha was watching him pointedly, waiting for a response.
“Let’s just say we don’t see eye to eye anymore,” he told her with finality, closing the subject.
2
Raashi stayed on longer than usual at the restaurant. She didn’t want to be alone. Being alone meant that she’d have time to think of him. She had thought that she was over him, over the effect he had on her when he was around. One touch was all it took and she was back to being a sucker for his practiced charm.
The restaurant was closed for the night and she had no option but to head home. She got into her car, a brand new Black Honda Civic and drove back. She had only recently gifted herself this car. It was on her best friend, Sheena’s insistence that she had bought the car, a self-assurance booster after the disastrous damage that her self-confidence had borne following that fateful night with Sameer.
Resignedly, she entered her house, a comfortable apartment that she and her sister, Jiya, had inherited after their grandmother’s death. But Jiya was away in New York, studying, and Raashi was on her own. She missed her sister. But more than anything else she missed her best friends, Sheena and Keya.
They were her pillars of support, her advisors, her critics, her everything. It had never mattered that Sheena came from a very affluent family or that Keya was an orphan or that Raashi was from a middle class background because what they had together was beyond special. They were her dearest friends and she was theirs.
She dropped her keys on her nightstand and dropped down on her bed. Tonight of all nights she really needed them. It used to be so different back when both Sheena and Keya had been unmarried. She could pick up the phone and call either of them or just drop by their houses whenever she felt like it. Now, with them busy in their married lives, neither was right to do, so late at night.
Facing Sameer Sehgal tonight had been so difficult for her. Sighing, she lay down on the bed. No matter how hard she had tried to erase their night together from her memory, she couldn’t. She had experienced heaven with him that night and then he had just left. That one night was the biggest mistake of her life.
Sameer Sehgal! She said the name out aloud to herself. The Golden Boy of the Indian Real Estate and Hotel industry, Director, Sehgal Corporation, Managing Director of the Sehgal Real Estate & Hotels group. His work titles were impressive. His residential projects were some of the most exclusive and sought after in the country. He had bought and turned around some of the oldest hotels in India into massive money making ventures. Where he went, success followed. Like King Midas, what he touched, did turn to gold.
Well, some part of his success had to be attributed to his family. He was after all Janak’s grandson. He had been genetically gifted with the finest business acumen and had learnt from the best. Janak Sehgal was one of the most successful businessmen in the country today and he had ensured that hisgrandsons had attended the best schools first in the country and then in England. Only last year, with retirement on his mind, had he distributed the reins of his huge business to his grandsons, the hotels and real estate to Sameer, the automobiles to Sameer’s younger brother, Rishi and the telecom and software to Kabier, his eldest grandson and now the head of the Sehgal business empire. Janak himself handled only the media business now. Janak’s own son, Jai Sehgal, Sameer’s father, headed the legal side of their business.
But more than anything else, Janak Sehgal was the dearest old man in the whole world. She loved him like her own grandfather and he loved her in return. She was one of his angels. She, Sheena and Keya − he called them ‘Janak’s angels’. They were as close to him as they were to each other. He had been there for her as long as she could remember.
She was thirteen when her parents had died in a fatal car accident. Her grandmother was trying to run the restaurant they owned after her son and daughter-in-law had passed away. She had enrolled her and Jiya, her younger sister, in a prestigious boarding school in Dehradun. Raashi had met Keya and Sheena in the school and they had become best friends over a period of time. Through Sheena, she had met Janak and he had made a place for himself in her life and in her heart, always being there for her, listening to her, helping her. He was her friend and her mentor. She went to him for advice, almost always. The only instance she hadn’t gone to him was when she had the fiasco with Sameer. She couldn’t bring herself to confide with him on that matter.
She shut her eyes and recalled the first time she had met Sameer. It was six months back, but she could recollect the incident as clearly as if it had happened yesterday. She had gone to fetch Sheena from her house. Sheena was getting late and instead of waiting up with her, Raashi had decided to get thecar started and ready to leave as soon as Sheena showed up. She was reversing her car from Sheena’s driveway when a monstrous four-wheel drive had zipped right behind her, causing her to brake suddenly. Her heart beating and head buzzing from narrowly missing an accident, she had got out of the car to see who was driving so rashly. She had seen him and called out to him.
He had left his car in the driveway and was walking coolly towards the house, completely unaware of what he had done.
“Hey, I am talking to you,” she had yelled.
He had turned around and then stood where he was, silently staring at her.
“Who the hell do you think you are? You almost cost me my back fender, not to mention the fact that I could have been badly injured,” she had screamed at him.
“Well, you could use more common sense while reversing,” he had replied back, calmly folding his arms together.
His response had infuriated her. Instead of regretting his own hasty and careless entrance, he was blaming her.
