Page 136 of His Arranged Wife
"Somewhere without your family or mine." He pushed off the doorframe and came into the room, stopping in front of her desk. "Somewhere with no family dinners and no staff and no one requiring anything from either of us."
She studied him. "You planned a holiday."
"I planned a honeymoon," he corrected. "Since we never had one."
Something soft moved through her chest.
"We never had a proper anything," she said.
"We're fixing that." He rounded the desk, pulled her up from her chair, and held her face in his hands. "Two weeks. Just us. Bruno."
"You're bringing Bruno on our honeymoon."
"He'll feel left out."
"He's a dog."
"He's family." The word came easily, completely naturally. "Pack light. Everything you'll need is already there."
She looked at him—at this man who had been so determined not to need anything and had built an entire secret language of care while convincing himself he wasn't.
"Where are we going?" she asked.
"You'll see when we land."
"Samarth—"
"Trust me."
She did.
That was the thing she'd learned, over a year of watching him from a distance and the past weeks of being let close—she trusted him. Completely. It had happened without her quite deciding to, like most true things.
"Alright," she said.
Private Island, Lakshadweep - Day One
The island was small enough to walk across in twenty minutes and large enough to feel like the only place in the world.
The villa sat at the center of it, open-sided and draped with white linen that moved in the sea breeze. The beach was white sand that went pink at sunset and silver at night. The water was the particular blue of something too clean and clear to be real—the blue of absolute clarity.
Nimisha stood at the water's edge in the early evening of the first day and felt, for the first time in longer than she could accurately remember, completely and entirely at peace.
Bruno was thirty feet down the beach, investigating something with the focused intensity he brought to all things, his dark coat glossy in the last of the sunlight.
Samarth appeared behind her and handed her a glass of something cold.
She took it without looking. "It's perfect," she said.
"Yes." He was looking at her. "It is."
She felt his gaze and turned.
"You're not looking at the island," she said.
"No."
She leaned back against him, his arm coming around her waist, her head resting on his shoulder.
