"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 was a bad thing.
"It was a very good university."
"I'm sure. Only the best for a princess in the making."