Bollywood and the Beast (Bollywood Confidential) by Suleikha Snyder Page A

Haan , Mem ,” the housekeeper confirmed, telling her that strange calls had been coming in ever since the “ Chote Saab ”, Ashraf, had returned home with her in tow.
    “Weird. Something’s definitely going on, and I don’t like it.” She wrinkled her nose, leaning against the edge of the island. “Thanks, Usha Auntie.”
    “Welcome, Rocky Mem .” And, after a pause, the housekeeper smiled—with both her mouth and her eyes. A rarity around the Khan estate, at least when it came to the men. “Welcome home.”

Chapter Ten
    As always, the panic struck easily. Like a match catching on the side of the box.
    Fire raced up his legs, dancing up to his shoulder and licking his face with phantom tongues. The pain reduced him to blind flailing and fumbling as he reached for his pills on the night table. Then the bottle cap rebelled against him for minutes, making his fingers thick and unwieldy. “Shit. Goddammit.” When he finally tapped out two tablets and swallowed them dry, the worst of the shakes were already fading, leaving him with only the black-and-white memory of being trapped in the cramped Ferrari.
    The memory he lived with daily. Hourly. Reflected in every mirror he’d had torn from the walls, every window glass that he didn’t look into. And her eyes. Of course, he saw it in her eyes.
    You’re disgusting.
    Have you even kissed anyone in ten years without having to pay for it?
    Rocky Varma, so used to her handsome heroes, her many boyfriends back in the U.S.A. Where were they…and where was he? Reduced to a cowering heap in his bed with the afternoon sun still high, reliving terrors he’d experienced when she was still a child.
    Taj clutched fistfuls of sheets, willing his lungs to ease and the ghost echoes of his own screams to silence. Kamal was just down the hall, after all. It would do no good to have him come running—or bowing and scraping—and filling Taj’s head with a thousand passive-aggressive sir s. But his efforts were too little too late. His bedroom doors were pushed inward, and those quiet footsteps made their way across the floor.
    “ Hat jao , Kamal. I don’t need you,” he snarled.
    “Um, it’s not Kamal. It’s me.” Rocky . Her voice softer than he’d ever heard it. More tentative than even her steps. Oh, haan . Of course, his torment couldn’t be at an end. It was only beginning.
    “I don’t need you either.” He didn’t look at her. Couldn’t. Kept his head bowed to hide the weakness in his eye. “Get out.”
    “No. Are you okay?” Ah, there was her volume, her annoying insistence on staying where she wasn’t wanted. But before he could tell her he obviously was never going to be okay , she barreled on. “And I don’t mean in general. Ashraf already gave me that lecture. I mean right now. What can I do for you right now?”
    “You? What can you do?” Finally, he looked at her, relieved to let his shoulders shake with mirth instead of fear. “Are you a nurse now, little Rocky?”
    She wore white, a simple summer frock more suited to a day at the beach than this tomb of a house. Set a matching cap atop her loosely bound hair, and the illusion would be complete: his beautiful, naughty nurse, come to save him from himself.
    “You’re such an asshole.” She closed the few meters to his bed, sweeping the dark brown medicine bottle up from the mattress and putting wayward pills back into it before capping it and setting it on the table. “Are you nice to anyone ? Ever ?”
    “You don’t need me to be nice. You don’t need me to be good. You have Ashu for that. What does he give you alongside the lectures, Rakhee? Candles? Flowers?”
    “The flowers are all yours, Taj, remember?” Her voice was tart, but it couldn’t hide her sweetness. She had a long way to go before she could ever play a villainess. “No one’s allowed to pick the Beast’s roses.”
    He pretended he hadn’t heard her. “Does he ‘make love’ to you?” he asked, struggling to turn