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His Highness Randheer Singh Shekhawat, Maharaja of Trikhera.
I was over him, I reminded myself as I forced myself to breathe slowly. I was not a naive twenty-one-year-old anymore. I was nine years older and wiser, and completely indifferent to his existence.
And yet, my heart leapt into my throat and my hands began to shake. I thought I was going to faint under the force of my emotions. It was just Dheer, I tried telling myself. The man who had broken my heart.
But my heart couldn’t see beyond the fact that it was Dheer. The only man I had ever loved.
What was he doing here? But that was a stupid question.
I should have anticipated that Dheer would be invited to such a high-profile party. He was a very successful industrialist. Moreover, he was one of the most famous and eligible royal bachelors in the country. Was he looking for a bride at this mixer?
I bit my lip hard enough to draw blood and kept my gaze on the man in front of me, who was droning on about his latest interest - animal photography. My mother was clearly up to her old tricks because she was desperate to get me married off. That was why she had arranged for me to meet Ayush at this party.
It had taken me nine long years to break the shackles of my sheltered upbringing because it had taken my parents that long to accept that I wasn’t going to settle down into yet another marriage that they arranged for me.
I had wasted the first twenty-one years of my life training to be the next Maharani of Trikhera, and after that dream came crashing down so spectacularly, I had to learn to live for myself. That was a hard lesson to learn, and I wasn’t going to throw it away on any other man. Not even if he was the billionaire son of a mining baron.
“I would love to take a picture of you with a king cobra wrapped around your neck. You’d have to be topless, of course,” said Ayush, leering at me.
I wondered if I was hearing things. Seeing Dheer had thrown me off balance and maybe I had misheard Ayush because even he wouldn’t be stupid enough to suggest something so offensive.
As it turned out, he was that stupid.
“I beg your pardon?” I asked faintly.
“A huge king cobra wrapped around you,” he repeated. “It will have to be defanged, of course. Think how glorious you’d look.”
I beat back the urge to hurl at the vile image. This wasn’t the wild sixties. I couldn’t imagine anyone defiling a beautiful creature for the sake of a bloody photograph.
“I don’t think so,” I said as firmly as I could.
Anger flashed in his beady eyes and I realised that Ayush Goel wasn’t used to hearing the word no.
“Hmm. Did I tell you that I don’t like curly hair, Diya?” he asked peevishly. “You’ll have to straighten it if you want to be with me.”
Over my dead body, I swore to myself. In the past few minutes, this asshole had informed me that according to his mother, I was too skinny, too dark-skinned, and too opinionated to be the Goel bahu. Well, they could go fuck themselves.
I didn’t know why he was still here if he didn’t like anything about me. Then I sighed as I remembered that for all my faults, I was an heiress. My fortune mattered way more than my looks.
I knew I could eviscerate this dumbass with just a few words, but I bit my tongue because I had promised to give him a chance. It wasn’t easy, though. Especially, when I could feel Dheer’s gaze burning into my skin like a brand.
I knew he was still staring at me. I could always tell when Dheer was looking at me. His gaze used to send tingles up the back of my neck and force me to turn around and look right back at him. Not anymore, I told myself sternly, straightening my spine.
But it was as if my head had a mind of its own and turned around slowly, quite against my will. When I met Dheer’s fiery gaze, it was as if the past nine years ceased to exist. His eyes drew me in and held me trapped in a moment in time when I had every right to be lost in their caramel-like depths. When all that mattered was Dheer.
My heart stuttered and my breath hitched as I remembered that those days were long gone, and it was all his fault. I forced myself to look away again.
Why the hell was he still staring at me?
I took another deep breath and forced down the bile that rose in my throat as Ayush tucked my hair behind my ear. I don’t know why he had been treating me like his personal doll all evening, but I hated it.
I leaned away from his touch as discreetly as I could.
His mother watched us like a hawk from the other end of the room, and I knew everything I did would be analysed and reported to my mother. And I didn’t want to give her any more ammunition against me.
Someone hailed Ayush and he turned away to greet them. I exhaled in relief at the brief respite and turned to Isha who had reappeared by my side. She looked as if she’d rather be anywhere but here.
“Remind me again why I allow my mother to put me in such situations,” I whispered.
