The Maharajah's Billionaire Heir Page 4

  She glared at his profile, irritated he insisted on misunderstanding. "I don't expect my wedding to be a farce."

  "You expect happily ever after with again, a complete stranger?"

  "I don't expect happily ever after at all." She was no fairytale princess and she'd lost too many people to believe in stories of love and lifelong happiness. "My parents adored each other and doted on their only daughter."

  Their love had been a tangible thing in her life until it was gone and then it had been a wound that never healed.

  "Which is only another reason you should want the same thing."

  "Or not. All that happy, all that love? It was no protection against death. Not theirs, not anyone I've cared for. I stopped believing in happily-ever-afters the day of the car accident."

  Her mother had still been alive, in a coma, but ten-year-old Eliza had known, somewhere deep inside she did not understand, that her mom wasn't going to ever wake up.

  She'd been right. She'd been told of her mother's death not quite a week after learning her father was gone forever.

  Rajvinder made a noise of understanding. "I've never believed in them."

  "Then we have that in common."

  "I suppose we do."

  The trip to the restaurant was shorter than she'd expected. "I always heard California traffic was horrific, but it's a lot less congested than Mumbai."

  "This is San Diego, not Los Angeles. We get our traffic jams but it's nothing like it is up there." She was surprised he offered the information without making her feel stupid.

  But that surprise was nothing compared to what she felt as he pulled into a parking lot attached to a mall. There was a Bloomingdales right there, and several other stores she recognized.

  "You're taking me to a mall for dinner?" she asked, unable to disguise her shock at the idea.

  She wasn't a snob. She wasn't. But she'd never eaten in a mall.

  She'd had snacks from street vendors in India, but never even that in a mall.

  Malls were for shopping, buying clothing from the stores that carried her favorite designers. Not for eating.

  Particularly not for eating dinner.

  "The restaurant is in the mall." He cast her a sidelong glance that wasn't exactly condescending, but it was close. "Real life people eat here all the time."

  "I'm just as real as you are."

  "Are you?"

  "Don't be rude."

  His laugh wasn't mean, but it wasn't warm humor either. "You may not be a princess by blood, but there's no question you've been raised in a palace."

  "I spent as much time at boarding schools." Her time away from the Singhs had helped Eliza maintain an emotional distance living with them would have made more difficult.

  "As did I, but no question my mother had more influence on how I tuned out than the teachers at the school."

  "She is your mother, of course she did."

  "And were not the Singhs your de facto parents?" He pulled his car into an open spot not anywhere near the entrance.

  Eliza couldn't quite believe he was just going to park there. She had to think back to focus on the question he'd asked. "They are (were in Adhip uncle's case) my guardians."

  "So, this marriage of convenience has nothing to do with family duty?"

  "You know that it does."

  "So, the royal family of Mahapatras dynasty are your family."

  "I never said they weren't."

  "You claimed you were not a princess."

  "I will not be a princess until we are married."

  "You will like this restaurant." He opened his car door without addressing the possibility of marriage between them. "They serve farm to table, organic Asian fusion. It's very good."

  She had no idea what that meant. Wasn't all food farm to table?

  He came around to her side of the car and opened the door, offering his hand. She took it, feeling things she'd never felt with Dev at that one simple touch. How was that possible?

  Eliza didn't know this man. Not really, no matter how much she might have read about him.

  They started walking away from his car, like it wasn't a two-hundred-thousand-dollar vehicle that looked like he'd just driven it off the lot.

  He saw her expression and laughed. "It's not going get carjacked while we're inside."

  "Are you sure? Wouldn't it be better to use a driver?" They would not have had to park so far away from the mall entrance either.

  Eliza didn't mind walking, but she was used to more care being taken with her safety. Surely the man who had built a multi-billion-dollar business should have his own security and be more cautious.

  "I prefer to drive myself. Besides, I had a feeling we were going to discuss things we didn't need a driver witnessing."

  "But surely your employees are accustomed to being circumspect." Servants gossiped, but they knew the topics that were off limits.

  "You really were raised to see the world like a princess, weren't you?"

  "I suppose." Because she would never have gone to the mall without a driver, and at least one guard to accompany her.

  No wonder Grandfather had been so worried.

  "Your parents were American," he pointed out.

  She wasn't sure apropos to what? "They were."

  "And despite being a foreigner and not a princess by blood, the Singh family find you good enough to be married to their heir? Heirs," Rajvinder corrected himself and acknowledged her commitment to marry Dev.

  They stopped in the courtyard outside the restaurant. The parking lot had been full, but it wasn't crowded, though she noticed through the windows that several tables were occupied. The Christmas décor gave the mall a festive air.

  Maybe all the people were busy shopping for the upcoming holiday.

  She realized that Rajvinder was looking at her expectantly and she had not yet answered his question.

  "I'm outside the caste system." Only, really, she wasn't exactly. Her role as ward to the Singhs gave her special status. Surely, he realized that and it did not need to be spelled out.

  But Rajvinder frowned. "You're foreign. That's got its own stigma."

  "It's the twenty-first century, not the eleventh."

  "So everyone keeps telling me." He turned and headed toward the door to the restaurant.

  She followed behind, refusing to rush. "You don't sound convinced."

  "I'd say the way both the Acharya and Singh families reacted with medieval prejudices when my mother got pregnant with me would say otherwise. At least for those two families."

  "But even that was thirty-five years ago."

  He didn't reply, opening the door for her to precede him into the building.

  "I'll take your word for it." But his tone said that was only until she proved herself a liar.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The restaurant was surprisingly nice. Its open floor plan with beautiful wood tables and modern Asian influence in the décor felt like it could be any of the nicer eateries the family gave their patronage.

  Eliza waited until the host showed them to a high booth style table in the back of the restaurant, after Rajvinder asked for something private and quiet, before adding further to their conversation. "Grandfather said Adhip uncle could not marry outside the caste."

  "My mother may have been of the Vaishnav caste, but her family are not only better off than the Singhs financially, but also politically influential in the province. How was she not good enough?"

  Despite having lived with her Indian surrogate family for most of her life, Eliza still found the caste system mysterious and often confusing.

  So, she said what she could. The truth. "Grandfather admires your mother greatly. I don't think it has anything to do with good enough, more like hidebound restrictions they simply could not let go of."

  "They were no better seventeen years ago."

  "You shocked Adhip uncle with your arrival." She remembered well the time after Rajvinder had come to visit, so indelibly imprinted on he
r mind by being so close to her parents' deaths.

  "He made that clear," Rajvinder drawled sardonically, sounding very American right then. "And he let me know there was no place in all of India for me to be his son either."

  "I'm sorry." At the time, Eliza had been so lost in her own grief, what was happening with Rajvinder's visit did not really register. Only later had she realized that Adhip uncle had rejected his only biological child. "He always regretted his reaction to you. You refused any contact after that."

  Rajvinder ignored the menu in front of him and waived away the waiter before he reached the table. "My sperm donor had two opportunities to do the right thing. He failed utterly both times. Life isn't baseball, he didn't get a third swing at the bat."

  She wondered if anyone ever got a chance to let this man down more than twice, or more likely one time. She was beginning to understand that his arrival in India at the age of eighteen had been out of character for him and a chance Adhip uncle should never have expected.

  "Tabish auntie was very angry at him for rejecting you back then." Eliza had never, in all the years she'd been their ward, heard her auntie speak sharply to Adhip uncle, except then.

  "She told you that?" There was no mistaking the disbelief in Rajvinder's tone.

  Eliza shrugged. "We are very close." Or as close as Eliza allowed them to be.

  Over the years, her auntie had shared more of her heart than Eliza had ever been willing to do. "She wasn't able to give him children. Tabish auntie's own sense of failure would have been mitigated if he already had a son."

  "And you claim that family lives in the current century and not the middle ages?" Rajvinder asked with pure sarcasm.

  But in her mind, it was misplaced. "Plenty of modern women feel a sense of failure when they cannot conceive."

  "Oh, really?"

  "I have been studying science since my first year at university. You might be surprised what gets discussed among the scientists and pre-med students."

  "Perhaps I would. I focused on business."

  "To great effect."

  They took a moment to look over their menus and she ordered a fish dish with ancient grains and vegetables. He got some kind of pasta with mushrooms and chicken.

  She was a little startled when her dinner arrived to discover the fish was not cooked. Dipped in the sauce it came with, it was delicious though.

  They'd eaten in surprisingly companionable silence for a few minutes, when he said, "You're more honest than I expected."

  The approval in his voice was as unanticipated as how easy a companion he'd been thus far.

  "Tabish auntie despairs about what she calls my terribly American blunt nature." Though privately, Eliza had always thought her auntie secretly approved her tendency to open candor.

  The older woman reproving comments had always come out more teasing than anything else.

  Rajvinder narrowed his eyes. "You seem very Indian to me."

  "I've spent more of my life under the Singh's guardianship than I did living with my parents." The words still caused pain, but were true nonetheless. "It would be odd if my outlook remained entirely Western."

  "Perhaps, but even dressed as you are, you have an aura about you." The look he gave her said the modest designer dress she'd chose to wear might not be as sedate as she'd thought, the heat in his gaze finding a corresponding, if unfamiliar, fire inside her.

  "It's the attitude," he said, as if coming to a conclusion. "You remind me a lot of my mother. She's quietly subversive too."

  "I'm a little more in-your-face, if not subversive." She might be introverted, but Eliza stood up for what she believed and wanted.

  Hence her having this discussion with Rajvinder, rather than Dadaji.

  Rajvinder deserved to know that truth. Because Eliza had no intention of playing unassuming, yes-woman, in her marriage, arranged, or not.

  "Are you?"

  "I'm here with you, aren't I?" Alone. Without Grandfather.

  "You are, but you show what I consider a typical, deferential respect for Trisanu. At least outwardly."

  "Because I do respect him. I show the same respect for the housekeeper." Which was also true, but in her heart, she acknowledged that she might express fewer of her own opinions with the older members of the Singh family. "When it matters, I speak my own mind."

  "Do you?"

  "Very much so. I told you I was the one who suggested to Grandfather, the time had come to invite you back into the family."

  "To come back, I would have had to be a part of the family and have left. I was never accorded that opportunity."

  "Well, you are being offered the chance now."

  "If I marry you."

  "Oh, I think ultimately, the family would come to accept you without the marriage, but it would cause a lot of hard feelings."

  "Is that why you're willing to go through with it?"

  "I'm willing because I think it makes a lot of sense and because I promised someone I cared a lot about that I would take care of the family. This is me doing my best to keep that promise."

  "So, you say."

  His words that put her motives into question shocked her. "You really are not very trusting."

  "Few men in my position are."

  "Because of your childhood?" she asked, trying to understand. Was he that bitter?

  He laughed, the sound wholly amused. "I hope I'm not so molded by events I could not control. I'm talking about being the COO of a multi-national multi-billion-dollar business."

  "I thought your mother's husband was your business partner?"

  "He's CFO."

  "My education is in chemistry. What do the acronyms mean?"

  "A COO is Chief Operations Officer. I'm in charge of acquisitions, new projects and continued expansion."

  Okay, that sounded impressive. "And CFO?"

  "Jamison is Chief Financial Officer."

  "Are you equal partners?"

  "No."

  "You have the bigger portion, don't you?" Even though the other man was older and a successful businessman.

  "I do."

  "You're not going to tell me by how much."

  "It's not a secret."

  But also something he wasn't interested in discussing. Good to know. He was a huge business success, but Rajvinder didn’t feel the need to feed his ego spelling it out for her.

  "Are all mall restaurants this nice?" she asked, prepared to change the subject.

  His sardonic smile said he knew exactly what she was doing. "You've never been to a mall?" There was no mistaking the shock in his tone.

  "Of course, I have. I've just never eaten in one." Didn't he realize it was far more shocking that a billionaire had done?

  "Not even a snack?" he asked, still sounding ridiculously astonished.

  Feeling uncomfortable as the recipient of his slide-under-a-microscope glance, she shrugged, but could feel the heat of a blush climbing her neck and warming her cheeks. "Does it matter?"

  "Just how sheltered have you been? Your parents lived a pretty normal life, despite their wealth."

  Her parents had been in his stepfather's league, not Rajvinder's. And they hadn't been Indian royalty. Even though the title of Maharaja, and more common shortened version Raj, had become nominal only, there was still an entirely different set of expectations for lifestyle that came with it.

  Still, it stung that he was so dismissive of her life experience. "I went to university. In America."

  "An all-female university, I bet. Are there still one sex universities in the USA?" he asked, sounding like he wasn't sure there were.

  "Yes, there are several very good ones." Finding a female only institution with a good chemistry program had been harder. "I pursued both my Masters and Doctorate at a coed institution."

  But she'd been too busy with her studies to do something as prosaic as date. Besides, she'd been promised to Dev.

  "But you got your bachelors from an all-female institution." He said it like that wa
s a bad thing.

  "It was a very good university."

  "I'm sure. Only the best for a princess in the making."

  Eliza frowned. "Tabish auntie supported my decision to get a degree in chemistry rather than go to finishing school. I had no issue with her choice of university."

  "How much of your life have you allowed them to control?"

  "You sound very American right now," Eliza said with a small smile.

  "I am American."

  "You were born to a traditional Indian family. You can't tell me your mother didn't maintain certain norms." Hadn't taught him about duty to family.

  "Of course, she did. I grew up appreciating and understanding my Indian roots, but Maan also allowed me to learn how to fit into the country I was born in." Rajvinder's handsome face turned cold and stern. "But I did learn one thing from my childhood and the circumstances of my birth, duty to family is not, and never will be, the deciding factor in how I live my life."

  Disappointment rolled through her. "Grandfather believes you will ultimately be led by duty to the family, but he's wrong isn't he?"

  "I feel no loyalty or duty toward the Singhs, or the Mahapatras dynasty. I love my mother, but what she wants for my life can only be weighed in my decisions, it cannot prompt them."

  Eliza sighed, accepting his words, even as her mind scrambled with a way to convince him to accept his role in the Mahapatras palace. "I understand your lack of feelings of duty to a family that has never acknowledged you."

  "But you feel that duty very deeply, don't you?"

  There was no point skirting the truth, besides she wasn't ashamed to feel a debt of gratitude toward people who had given her a place of safety when her entire world imploded. "Very much so."

  They'd given her a family when she lost hers, raised her to be part of royalty though she carried none of their blood, protected and cared for her.

  She owed them so much, but even more, she owed Dev, the one person she'd trusted implicitly since losing her parents.

  The substantial inheritance that became hers upon her thirtieth birthday, or marriage, whichever came first, was little enough to give. Money meant nothing to Eliza. A sense of family and belonging was everything.

  Because while she might never want to love as she'd loved her parents, Eliza was mature enough to realize she had needed, and continued to thrive under, the security she found as part of the Singh family.