Married For One Reason Only by Dani Collins

CHAPTER ELEVEN

ITWASN’T VIJAY’Sworst nightmare, precisely, but he really wasn’t thrilled when a man—the man—opened the door of his wife’s flat.

Reve Weston was handsome, rich. At home. Smug.

“Vijay!” Oriel leaped to her feet.

Reve stepped aside, and Vijay saw Oriel’s double stand and smile in a tentative greeting.

The resemblance was eerie and an easy mistake in a photo. In person he knew immediately which one was his wife. There were small, obvious differences. Nina’s teeth were not quite perfect, and was that a streak of pink in her hair? She was a tiny bit shorter, but she was every bit as beautiful as Oriel.

Even so, rather than inciting a spark of sexual attraction in him, he only felt endeared toward her for her close resemblance to someone he loved. He didn’t feel a gut-deep hunger and overwhelming need to connect or a stark, protective urgency to touch and reclaim intimate space the way he did toward Oriel.

“This is a plot twist, isn’t it?” He moved into the sitting area and greeted Oriel with a light kiss on her cheek.

When in France, he conveyed when her lashes flicked up at him.

He hovered close enough to inhale her scent and absorb the light brush of her body against his.

She dipped her chin and rolled her lips together, indicating their conflicts were not resolved, but she stayed in the arm he looped around her waist. Her gaze up at him was not hostile, merely vulnerable and deeply uncertain.

He had hurt her. The knowledge squeezed his guts in a cruel fist.

“Vijay, this is Reve Weston and Nina Menendez.” He heard the catch in her voice. Her joy was so visceral, it cracked something open in him. “My twin.”

“That’s what the birth records would suggest, at least,” Nina said with shaken laughter as she took his hand.

“And anyone with eyes,” Reve drawled.

“Still.” Nina glanced back at him. “I imagine Lakshmi’s family has been inundated with people claiming to be her daughter. I’m happy to do a DNA test.”

“It looks like it will be redundant, but I’ve already connected with the lab we use here,” Vijay said. “They have someone who can take the samples and rush the results. I’ll make that call shortly, but...” He looked at Oriel, and whatever was in his face made her pupils expand and her lips tremble. “I need to speak with my wife.”

“You should speak to your family, Nina. Things are going to get very chaotic when the jackals at the door downstairs realize there are two of you.” Reve sounded grim enough that Vijay was put on high alert to threats he couldn’t see.

Nina bit her lip and nodded with agreement, maybe remorse, but she smiled as she reached for Oriel. “I didn’t mean to impersonate you. I’ve been trying to stay under the radar, but they’re relentless.”

“Vijay, you should arrange protection for her,” Oriel said, looking to him.

“Already in the works,” he assured her.

Reve shot him a glare that warned him to stay in his lane.

Vijay didn’t flinch, and only said, “Do you think I’m going to let anything happen to my wife’s sister?” He reached for his phone. “I’ll have one of my guys lead you out through the maintenance entrance that I used to come in. Tell your car to meet you on the south side.”

While he and Reve exchanged information, Nina asked, “Will you come for dinner? Now that I’ve found you, I don’t want to miss another minute.”

“Me, either,” Oriel said emotively, but she looked to Vijay as if she knew they had things to talk out, too. “I’ll text you in a little bit?”

“Perfect.” They hugged each other so tightly, it added another layer of ignominy to Vijay’s guilt over suspecting she’d lied to him.

The pair left, and Oriel stayed at the closed door, chewing her bottom lip as she regarded him. The space between them was a cavern of vipers and land mines, and the valentines of love she had sent him, which he had crumpled and stepped on.

“I apologize,” he said sincerely. “I should have trusted you. I knew you wouldn’t hurt me like that. In here I knew it.” He tapped his chest. “Up here...” He tapped his temple. “But I won’t let that happen again. I love you, Oriel.”

He saw her jerk and heard her breath hiss in, but her expression only grew more anguished. His heart lurched as he realized he might have done irreparable damage to something that was becoming increasingly precious to him.

He took a step toward her, and she put up a hand.

“I’ll give you a pass because there’s no way you could have known I had a twin, but the fact is, you don’t trust me, Vijay. And I can’t fix that.” She shrugged with despair. “And I can’t spend my life worried about how you’ll interpret everything I do, especially when there are people out there who will use my image and cast doubts and—”

“Shh. Stop.”

He came forward a few more steps, but she kept her hand up to hold him off.

“I promised to come back and I will. Look around. I’m packing!” She waved at the full boxes on the floor, and at the bare walls. “I’m selling this flat. I’m going to live with the father of my child. I hope we can repair this marriage of ours, but you didn’t even trust me to come back. Instead you’ve chased me here, and what did you think when Reve opened the door? That he’d just left my bed?”

“I thought I should have been here,” he said fervently. “Because I made a promise to you when we learned you were pregnant that I would be here for you through all of this. I meant all of it. Not just the baby, but this. Learning who you are. You told me once that you always wished for a sibling. The minute I realized that’s who she was, I knew you would be so excited, but also rocked to the core. I have questions, Oriel. You must be...”

His heart hurt for her, for all the anger and confusion she must feel at having been torn from the woman who gave birth to her and the sibling she should have had in her life all this time.

“Somewhere in there, you’re wondering if you should have known that Nina was out there, aren’t you? You think you should have found her long ago, on instinct or something.”

“I think she knew before I did, but she didn’t reach out. She said it was because she thought I wouldn’t believe her, but...”

“I know.” He came close enough to gather her in. “You feel cheated. And also guilty for wishing you’d had that other life where you grew up with her and Lakshmi.”

She nodded while tears tracked down her cheeks.

“See? I know you, Oriel. More importantly, I love you. It kills me that I hurt you so badly, you felt you had to come here and face this alone.”

Her eyes were leaking more tears. “I’m used to doing things on my own. I’ve told myself it was the way I liked it, but from the moment I left Mumbai, I’ve been thinking that I want you here with me, even though you can’t do anything.”

“I can do this.” He folded his arms around her and held her, just held her and rubbed her back as she trembled.

Slowly she wound her arms around his waist and leaned on him, sighing out a lifetime of pent-up grief. He closed his eyes in gratitude.

“I love you, Oriel. I should have said it the first time you did. I’ve been sick with myself that I didn’t. I know my heart is safe with you. I know that. It wasn’t you I didn’t trust. It was love. It hurts to love. It bloody hurts to love someone this hard. But I forgot that it heals, too. It gives a reason to hope and to push on when the rest of life is too bleak to face.”

Vijay’s hand stroked her hair, and his stubbled jaw rested against her cheekbone. A bubble of hope was trying to crack open her breastbone.

“Can I also say,” his voice rumbled next to her ear, “that even though I understand your sense of urgency to meet Nina, and that you were hurt and angry with me, if you had trusted me just a tiny little bit more, you might have held the plane and let me come with you?”

She sniffled back her tears and looked up at him, chagrined. “Guilty.”

“You probably would have had more faith in me if I’d told you I love you.” He slid her hair behind her ear. “I do. So much.” He looked at her as though he was beholding something magical. “I’ve had to beat and claw my way into the life I have. It didn’t seem like being this happy should be this easy, but I won’t give you a reason to doubt my feelings again.”

“Me, either.”

He touched her chin, and their mouths flowed together in the simple, inevitable way they had between them. Perfect and tender and now an expression of that wider, deeper, heart-expanding emotion.

He took great care as he tightened his arms and swept his mouth across hers, but his love was so tangible in that kiss, she shook under the force of it.

“Come,” she invited him, taking his hand and drawing him into her bedroom.

They settled on the bed fully clothed, sharing soft, soothing kisses that held no urgency because this was love in its purest form. It was touch and acceptance of their human flaws and celebration of their perfection. Of their divine connection.

They were a special combination, though. One that couldn’t help but create passion when they were together. Soon it was snapping like flames around them, burning away a fold of collar so kisses could extend down a throat. Demanding layers be removed so they could rub their bodies together in the exquisite friction of animal desire.

But even when he slid into her with a carnal groan and her body responded with a sensual clench, their coupling was imbued with the intense love that emanated from their pores. She petted his spine and he sucked on her earlobe, but sweet light shone behind her eyes. His voice was hoarse with joy as he moved, telling her raggedly, “I love you. We belong like this. Always. Together.”

That was how they crested the final peak. Together. Shattering in unison. Destroyed, yet rebuilt with pieces of the other embedded within their souls.