Not just your first match, the first match you brutally dumped. Text-gate.
She’d done a good job of banishing her father’s voice from her head, but he whispered now. The problem is, Mira, you freeze and you hesitate. Your brain always needs to be faster than your body.
He wasn’t wrong. Only a minute had passed since Naveen had entered the room, but it was far too long of a minute. She checked those glass containers where she’d bottled up her emotions, made sure they were secure, and lifted her chin. Running into an ex right now might be bad timing, but she could fake composure and pretend like she belonged. She was good at that. “Naveen. What are you doing here?”
He kicked the door closed behind him, never taking his gaze off her. She catalogued the changes in him as quickly as possible. His body had filled out in the three years since they’d dated, but his face had grown slimmer. His shoulders were broad, his head barely clearing the door. His hair was longer. The soft curls fell over his forehead with boyish charm, a contrast to the rough planes of his face. Threads of silver glinted at his temples.
His hands flexed on his files. He wore a gold ring with a small square black gemstone. It was his father’s ring, and his father’s Rolex on his wrist. She’d helped him put that Rolex on more than once, after a night together.
They may have only been together for six months, but they’d had a lot of nights together.
She shivered. Not now. Don’t you dare think of those nights now.
“I work here.” He took a step toward her, and she took one back. The room already felt too small.
“You work at Miller-Lane.” As a hotshot corporate attorney. He’d been busier and more ambitious than her, and that was saying something. Back then, she’d been determined to make senior status, and he’d been determined to make partner.
“I used to. Now I work here.”
“Your name’s not on the door.”
He raised one thick eyebrow. At some point over the past few years, he’d taken care of his faint unibrow. She hadn’t minded it. It had given his face a brief reprieve from perfection.
“Ravi Ambedkar is my grandfather. This is his office. I’m handling his cases while he’s out.”
She vaguely recalled him speaking of his grandfather fondly. She hadn’t met the man when they’d dated, but that was mostly because she’d usually traveled to see him up in San Francisco. The rest of his family had been up north, in an exclusive gated community. His mother’s sprawling house had had two staircases, crystal chandeliers, and a piano nobody played. Talk about too rich.
Mira had sent her now infamous text driving away from that mansion. Good times.
The wheels that had stilled in her brain at the sight of him started to move, clumsy and squeaking. “Wait . . . are you my aunt’s . . . attorney?”
“I am, now, I suppose.” Naveen checked the file in his hands. “Your aunt became my grandfather’s client over a year ago, when he was still active in the practice. He’s basically retired now.”
Again. What. The fuck. Was happening.
Mira glanced around the small room. It wasn’t dirty or dingy, but she’d done enough forensic accounting work that she’d spent time in expensive law firms. This was a solo practice, geared toward the community it served. The waiting area had contained one worn couch and a tired armchair. The elevator was broken, with a sign on it in English, Hindi, and Urdu, directing her to the stairs. This conference room had one window, and it was up high on the wall, no chance of a view possible.
Rhea would have never gone to a big law firm.
True. Rhea had never been about outward appearances. She’d parlayed what had been a small inheritance from Mira’s grandparents into a well-funded nonprofit and lived comfortably off the relatively small salary she’d drawn from it. Meanwhile, Mira’s dad, her younger brother, had turned that inheritance into a day at the blackjack tables.
But still, why this solo practitioner? What were the odds that of all the attorneys in the world—or even in California—her aunt would choose one Mira knew? “Why would she pick your grandfather?”
“He’s been doing estates in this area for fifty years. If she wanted to support a local business, he’d be the first one she’d turn to.”
“She wasn’t even from here. Why would she care about supporting local businesses?”
He cast her a sideways glance. “Because the city doesn’t want to recognize or promote this place as Little India and we’ve gotten a lot of press for our street dying out? If she cared at all about the culture, she probably wanted to help.”
Plausible. Rhea Auntie had run a nonprofit and she’d always been fairly into supporting locals in their own community. This could be another one of those cosmic jokes. But still . . .
There was something her dad had liked to say, about how there were no coincidences.
Mira had told Rhea about Naveen. Her birthday had been the week after the breakup, and she’d been moping harder than she should have been as someone who, covered in head-to-toe stress hives, had sprinted away from the man. Rhea had called, as she always did on her birthday, and Mira had spilled her guts in a very un-Mira-like fashion.
Had she mentioned his name? Maybe his first name. Had she given any other identifying information? Enough for Rhea to track him down and give him her business years later?
For what purpose, to reunite you with your ex from beyond the grave? Absurd. She never even met Naveen when you dated him.
And unlike the rest of your family, she wasn’t exactly a master manipulator.
So, what? It was all a coincidence? Fate was real? No way. “And you don’t think that’s weird?” she persisted.
He paused. “What I do find weird is that we dated for half a year, I introduced you to my family, we discussed marriage, and in all that time, I knew you as Amira Patel. Not Mira Chaudhary.”
Ahhhh. In her shock, she’d forgotten the name he’d uttered when he walked into the room.
The silence stretched between them and he took another step. This time she didn’t back away. “That’s so weird, Mira. Isn’t it?”
One syllable. She’d deliberately picked an alias that was one syllable off from the name she’d been called for the first eighteen years of her life. A lot of people had naturally shortened Amira to Mira, including Christine, before she’d learned about Mira’s past.
So why did it send a shiver down her spine to hear Naveen utter her birth name?
“Patel is my mother’s maiden name.” True. “I go by that.”
“And you go by a different first name, as well?”
Mira bit the inside of her cheek. “Yes.”
His frown caused deep furrows between his eyebrows. “Huh.”
“It’s not that big of a deal.”
“Isn’t it? I’d say it is. I don’t have an alias. No one I know does.”
Behind her back, she clenched her hand into a fist. “My birth name was too long. Amira sounds more professional to my ears, and it was what my mom wanted to name me. Since she died when I was a baby, I figured I’d go all the way to honor her.” She kept her voice and eyes steady.
He studied her for a long moment, then dropped his gaze to the file in his hand. “I see.”