Page 47 of Born in Sin (Phoenix #3)
Chapter Twenty-Four
CARA
We would have been happy.
Cara looked at him, her eyes filling with tears she had no intention of shedding. Virat took a step forward, toward her, when a knocking started on the glass again.
“Sir.” Shourya was back. “We really need to talk. The Calcutta client needs a word.”
Virat didn’t reply, still watching her with those tormented, beautiful eyes of his. “Go,” she said, quietly.
“The rest of the gang will be back here for dinner. They’re picking something up.” Virat shoved his hands in his jean pockets, his intense gaze boring into her.
“Oh,” she said, shifting uncomfortably. “Maybe I should leave then.”
“Will you stay?”
Cara froze.
“Just for tonight? Will you stay?”
She swallowed hard, finding it difficult to form words.
“Please Celi? Just for tonight.”
She nodded, still fighting the tears clogging her throat and threatening to spill from her eyes.
Virat hesitated near the door, looking like he wanted to reach for her but fighting himself. “You can call Kabir back also,” he offered. “If you’d like.”
“No.” She shook her head. “He needs his sleep. He’s been out almost every night of this week with the DD’s.”
Virat stepped aside, allowing her to precede him into the flat. Shourya heaved a sigh of relief, looking harried.
“I just have to take this,” Virat told her quietly, leading Shourya away while he talked nonstop about someone whose daughter was being blackmailed by an ex-boyfriend.
Cara wandered over to the screens, but it looked like Majid was sleeping off the afternoon’s drinks and drugs session.
Come to think of it, she’d seen him drink but she’d never seen him partake of the hard drugs the others did.
Several messages had come through on his phone, but none were relevant to them, and they all sat unanswered as he slept.
The front door opened and Amay and Dhrithi wandered in with paper bags of what smelt like Chinese food.
“Hi Cara.” Dhrithi smiled, hesitantly.
In another lifetime, Dhrithi had been her friend. Until life and the men they’d loved had dragged them down different paths. Now, Cara didn’t know how to be friends with the girl who was so tangled up in her painful past.
Her friendship with Kabir was uncomplicated by all these ties, a fresh start that helped heal her lonely, hurting heart. But now…as she looked at old friends, her heart ached to be able to go back to that time when their friendship had been the only uncomplicated part of her life.
“Hi,” she said now, sitting down in a chair at the dining table as Amay helped Dhrithi unpack everything they’d bought. “Can I help?”
“No, we’re good.”
The front door blew open and a tornado of sound and energy blew in.
Mayukhi and Ishaan were arguing about something.
As they got closer, Cara gathered that Mayukhi had scratched the door of Ishaan’s car while parking it on the roadside.
They’d been trying to park closer to the back alley entrance to the building they were using to get in and out unnoticed.
“It’s just a car,” Mayukhi grumbled.
“It’s a Porsche 911 Carrera GTS!!” Ishaan was outraged. “It’s not just a car!”
Cara winced. Kabir drove the same model and she could only imagine his reaction to her dinging it. For that matter, she doubted Kabir would ever let her get into the driving seat of that car.
Mayukhi rolled her eyes at Ishaan’s theatrics. “Whatever.” She dropped another paper bag on the dining table. “We got Cara and Ishaan’s rabbit food. Vir told us you’re joining us for dinner,” she explained to a surprised Cara.
“Oh! Thank you,” Cara said hesitantly.
Dhrithi slapped Ishaan’s hand as he reached for a prawn. “Use a fork!” she admonished. “We’ve only got paper plates,” she told Cara now as Amay pulled them out of another bag. “I hope that’s okay.”
“Absolutely.” Cara was starting to shrink into herself. The noise and chatter around the table was starting to make her feel conscious and uncomfortable. She was completely out of sync with the group dynamics, and her breath was starting to catch in her chest.
And then the door to the bedroom opened, Virat stepped out, his gaze immediately seeking her out and locking on to hers, and her breath rushed back into her lungs.
Amay slid a plate of salad over to her with a small smile. She took it gratefully, happy to have something to do with her hands. Ishaan picked up his own plate of salad and a can of Diet Coke and sat down beside her.
“Want one?” he asked, holding up the can.
“You know those are really bad for health, right?” she murmured, forking up some salad.
Ishaan paused, the can halfway to his mouth. “I do but I like drinking it when I’m pouting.”
Cara slid him an amused look. “Pouting about the car?”
“It’s not just a car!”
Virat slid into the seat beside her, a loaded plate of Chinese food in his hand, and the last of her tension left her.
She shifted slightly in her seat, so her thigh pressed up against his, needing the contact to stay grounded.
He stiffened for a second, his gaze dipping to hers, searching for an answer she wasn’t sure she had to give, before relaxing.
Cara glanced around the table but no one seemed to find them sitting close to each other strange and so she allowed herself to unwind too. She dug into her salad as Ishaan and Amay bickered over something. The word ‘trophy’ got her attention.
“What trophy?” she asked, venturing into the boisterous conversation taking place around the table for the first time.
Ishaan immediately launched into a loud complaint about…wait, was he saying Dhrithi and Amay stole his school academic excellence trophy? She honestly thought she’d heard him wrong.
“No,” Virat murmured, his lips so close to her ear that she shivered. “You’re not imagining it. They’re in the middle of a battle over the trophy. Ishaan and Mayukhi attempted a reverse heist a week or so back but failed.”
“I know you’re shocked that I could fail at anything,” Ishaan told her. “But it’s true.”
“Didn’t you fail physical education at school?” she asked, her brow wrinkling.
Mayukhi cackled, a wicked laugh that had Cara’s lips tugging up too.
“I didn’t fail. I almost failed.” Ishaan scowled. “Don’t get cheeky with me young lady. I’m the one who goaded Vir into getting in touch with you again, you know.”
“Well,” she murmured. “What took you so long, old man?”
The words were out of her before she could censor them. She felt Virat still beside her, a tuning fork that was set to only one vibration – her.
“But that’s not what I’m most shocked about,” she said hastily into the startled yet knowing silence that had fallen around the table. “What gets me is that these two,” she pointed her fork at Amay and Dhrithi, “Know how to steal anything.”
Mayukhi laughed. “I know right. Since when did the goody two shoes of the world start to rule our world of chaos.”
“You know who you need,” she told Ishaan conspiratorially, getting into the spirit of the game.
“I know,” he groused. “But Vir doesn’t want to help.”
“I’m Switzerland,” Virat said from beside her. “I’m not getting in the middle of this.”
“Not him.” Cara rolled her eyes. “You need Kabir. He’s the ultimate master of chaos.”
“Is that right?” Ishaan murmured.
Beside her, Virat stood up, taking his empty plate to chuck into the trash can in the corner of the room.
She watched him walk away in his fitted jeans and old, cotton polo shirt.
Old, out of style, and yet, they fit him to a tee, making her wish she could wrap herself around him and hold on forever.
“I don’t think Kabir’s the master of chaos, Cara,” Ishaan said from beside her. “Not when you sit so pretty on that throne yourself.”