Valley of Flowers

Chapter 4

ARNAV woke to the sound of chirping birds at his bedroom window as sunlight sliced through the gap in the curtains and bathed his eyelids. He walked up to the window to jerk the curtain back in place when he caught a figure in blue walking through the shrubs of jasmine and hibiscus that had flowered in the huge backyard garden of the Raizada house.

Khushi.

He hadn't been able to stop thinking about her since the moment he laid eyes on her in the party. A small look from her had made his heart beat faster, something he hadn't felt in a long time. He wanted to be so angry with her. But he couldn't. His insides had completely melted when he had watched her dance. There was no doubt she had become an accomplished dancer. Earlier, where there was exuberance of her youth, now there was a sort of passionate abandonment in her movements. He hadn't seen that before. Was NK responsible for this change in her? He couldn't bear that thought.

He knew he had to keep away from Khushi. God was witness to the number of times his mother had drilled it into her children's heads, about the ill effects of associating with people of lower strata of society, her own marriage being a disastrous example of one. And he had no intention of getting on her wrong foot. He didn't believe much in relationships anyway. So it didn't matter to him one way or the other.

That is exactly why he was nonplussed by his compulsive need to walk about in front of Nani's room, hoping to catch a glimpse of Khushi, when there were millions of other places in the Raizada house. For a guy whose concentration level was so high, he wouldn't hear a blender running in the same room he had no idea why his senses were on full alert when he heard the tinkling of her anklets or the clinking of her bangles.

Luckily for him, Khushi had kept away from him after the incident with the phone and the orchids. Her idiosyncrasies had made it easy for him to avoid her. She was just a frivolous girl, not to be taken seriously. Why then, did he feel as restless as a cat on a hot tin roof?

One of the days, he found her tending to some plants in the back yard. 'What the f@#$ do you think you are doing?' He yelled making her jump up in fright. 'I told you not to touch those!'

'Those orchids were the rarest kinds and cost me a fortune. But how would you understand? You are just bent upon killing them aren't you?'

She had run away from him with tears in her eyes ,and to his disbelief he found his orchids looking fresh and healthy. Had she nursed them back to health somehow?

The next moment, he felt a spray of water soaking through the shirt at his back. Khushi was hosing him down, holding the garden pipe in her hand.

'Khushi!'

'I think you need to cool down Mr Raizada!' she called out angrily.

'Khushi stop!'

'No!'

He strode toward her in anger. 'I said stop!'

Khushi scrambled back in fear, but unfortunately stepped into the wound up water pipe and began to fall. Acting on reflex he had stretched out his hand and caught her but in the process he got his own feet caught on the same pipe and they both fell on the ground in a heap on the wet mud.

In a move to get off him, she tried hauling herself with her hands only to fall back as her dupatta wrapped itself around his body, effectively trapping her to him. In a panic to pull the dupatta from under him, she ended up smudging mud all over him.

In a fit of anger, he caught her hands and quickly rolled her under him, pinning her with his body.

Khushi became agitated and began to squirm under him, alerting him to the position they were in. In one swift moment, he got off her stretching out his hand to help her get up. The pipe having been stuck between them soaked them both to the bone.