Married For One Reason Only by Dani Collins
EPILOGUE
“I LOVETHAT she thinks I’m you, but she’s hungry, so...” Nina spoke ruefully as she handed Lakshmi, whom they all called “Lucky,” to Oriel.
The six-month-old began to nuzzle and root at Oriel’s cheek. Thankfully, Oriel’s sister, the genius designer, had been immersing herself in their roots by studying the construction of traditional Indian clothing. She had sewn Oriel’s celebratory saree and included nursing snaps in the blouse. Oriel adjusted her pallu and settled her squirming daughter to latch on.
“Also, I have somewhere to be.”
“Oh?” Oriel was teasing her, and Nina knew it. Her sister was an open book at the best of times, but they had a wonderful ability to read each other very well.
“Don’t ask me,” Nina pleaded with exasperation and beckoned someone from across the marquee tent.
Oriel chuckled. “Don’t worry. I don’t know what Maman has planned, only that it will be spectacular.”
For anyone else, the bringing together of all these people for Oriel and Vijay’s wedding reception would have been enough, but Madam Estelle was determined to outdo herself and make it a memory that would be talked about for years. Nina’s family were here, along with Jalil and Kiran and other treasured connections from around the globe, all dressed in a mix of Western and Indian garb.
The courses of French and Indian cuisine had been amazing, and the tribute to Lakshmi had been heart-wrenchingly sweet. The marquee was draped in silk and strings of flowers. Everywhere there were tropical plants, a wild abundance of color, and spices lending fragrance to the air. There had been speeches, a song from Estelle, and a toast from Oriel’s father that would live in Oriel’s heart forever.
It was already a night of pure enchantment.
“Did you need me?” Vijay asked, his warm hand descending on her shoulder.
“No, I—”
“Yes,” Nina corrected her. “Sit.” She nodded at the spot on the love seat that had been Vijay’s for most of the evening. Nina had stolen it when he had moved to the bar with Reve.
“She’s more and more like my sister every day,” Vijay remarked to Oriel as he retook his seat and brushed a light greeting across their daughter’s curled fist.
Nina laughed, then poked her tongue out at him before she disappeared.
“What’s happening?” Vijay asked.
“I have no idea, but I suspect we’ll need...”
He was already fishing into the diaper pack for the baby earmuffs. He slipped them onto Lucky’s head as the lights began to swerve all over the tent, gathering everyone’s attention.
A firm thump-thump sounded on a tabla drum. A flute and sitar strings drew people in colorful sarees from all sides of the tent.
As Madam Estelle began to sing in Hindi, the dancers settled into a precise formation on the dance floor, beginning a slow, undulating walk. They were Oriel’s cousins and Nina with her sisters, and there was Kiran among them, spinning her chair and raising her arms in a graceful ballet, giving her shoulders a shimmy before clapping her hands to pick up the tempo.
Vijay’s arm closed around Oriel’s shoulders, and he drew her tight into his side. She felt his chest expanding with laughing emotion, but they both had tears in their eyes.
“I could not feel more loved,” he told her sincerely.
“Me, either,” she admitted, deeply touched that her mother would go to all this trouble to celebrate this side of her daughter’s life.
The energy picked up, and the dancers moved into more of a hip-hop style until the music abruptly cut off with a group clap.
A dozen people in suits abruptly stood. They wore serious expressions as they popped their collars, then pretended to spit on their palms before they smoothed their hair back on both sides. The music resumed in plucked strings as they sidled onto the dance floor.
“Will there be a rain machine?” Vijay asked.
“Don’t put it past her.”
It was a dance-off between gowns and suits, full of push and pull, defiant head tosses and waved scarves, straight out of a Bollywood musical.
Dying with delight, Oriel fell into her husband. “This is too much, but I never want it to end.”
“It won’t,” he promised her. “The credits will roll, but we’ll continue to live happily ever after.”
“Promise?”
“I do.”
She believed him.