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“I’ll take your leave Sir,” Agastya said, feeling a little out of place in this family dynamic.
“Veda is marrying him?” her mother asked, ignoring his attempt to escape. “When did this happen?”
“Today.” Her husband seemed to have lost interest in the topic and wandered over to the couch dropping onto with a relieved exhale. “So.” He took a sip from his glass and eyed Agastya over the top of it. “When do we seal the deal?”
Seal the deal? This was his daughter’s wedding they were talking about. But then, it was a deal, wasn’t it? One that Agastya had proposed.
He glanced at Veda, but she was just looking at her father, her face composed and a lot less red than before.
“My parents will discuss the details of the wedding with you,” he replied, still watching his bride-to-be.
She was a beautiful girl, a classical beauty. Big expressive eyes, hair that fell in silky waves to her waist, a slender, lithe dancer’s figure, and what always got to him, the biggest, widest smile in the world. When she was smiling. Which wasn’t now.
They’d just got engaged and she wasn’t smiling.
The wrongness of the situation hit him like a brick. He was about to say something, he wasn’t even sure what when Naresh Anna cleared his throat to get his attention.
He glanced over to where his bodyguard stood by the door.
“Sir, Ganesh Sir is trying to reach you.” Naresh held Agastya’s second phone out to him.
He took it, silencing the ringer and accepting the call. “Ganesh.”
“It’s out,” the other man said tersely. “News of your engagement is already out.”
Agastya looked across the room at his soon-to-be father-in-law. Chaitanya Gadde’s eyes gleamed with victory and a suppressed glee. He looked entirely too pleased with his next move on the chessboard Agastya and he were locked in battle on.
“What’s wrong?” Veda asked, coming to stand beside him.
Agastya looked down at her pale, concerned face and then back at the man grinning like a self-satisfied chimp.
This game was far from over. And when it was time to say ‘checkmate,’ Agastya knew the only voice speaking would be his.
He wrapped an arm around Veda’s waist, pulling her closer to him, the warmth of her body and the lean lines of her frame igniting a swarm of sensation in him.
“It looks like the world knows our news before we’ve had time to announce it, darling,” he murmured. He felt her body jolt at the sound of the endearment even as she sighed in exhaustion.
“Nanna why?” she asked, not even bothering to ask for confirmation that her father had done this.
“I didn’t want him to back out.” Her father pointed at Agastya.
Agastya drew her in, letting the sweet smell of jasmine fill his senses. For as long as he’d known her, Veda had always smelt of jasmine. For a woman who never has flowers in her hair, it was an odd dichotomy.
He took another deep breath, dropping a kiss on the top of her head. Veda’s entire body went still, not a muscle moving.
“I have no intention of backing out, Mamagaru,” he drawled, calling the other man his father-in-law for the first time. His fingers curled into Veda’s waist, resting above her hip. He drew her into him, her back colliding with his chest, and his chin coming to rest on top of her head. “I can’t wait for Veda to be my wife. I can’t wait to be a part of your family. The sooner the better.”
The other man held up his glass in a toast. “The sooner the better,” he echoed.
Ten
VEDA
She was engaged, Veda thought dazedly, as she watched her brother escort Agastya to his car. Engaged to Agastya Kodela…How in the world had this happened? A day ago, he’d told her to tone her personality down a little. A day later, he was marrying her.
What in the actual fuck had gone down during that one day? Her glance wandered to where her parents sat, her father sipping his whiskey and her mother scrolling through something on her phone.
“Nanna?” Veda walked over to where they sat. “He’s marrying me so you’ll squash that story right?”
