Dark Night Dawning

Chapter 4

Khushi realized it was not her imagination when the safety pin she was trying to pin her pallu with poked her, making her wince as it slipped out of her hands. What was he doing here?

Arnav was mesmerized. He had come up thinking which colour of the rainbow she would have chosen to wear tonight. But, when he saw her he was zapped. She was draped in the most beautiful wine coloured saree. But all he could see was her back. Except for the two narrow strips of cloth brought together by a jewelled clasp, he could see her entire back. There was something very sexy about her back. His body hardened just looking at that sight. One day she was driving him up the wall with her pativrata avatar. The next day she was a siren. Which one was she? Whatever it was, he'd better get her out to that restaurant fast or else he would be tempted to drag her to their bed right now and that was closer!

'Khushi, hurry up, will you?' he said, his voice rough, 'We are already running late.'

Khushi quickly pinned up her pallu, surprized at his sudden change of behaviour. One moment, it looked like he was going to devour her and the in the next, he was ordering her about.

'What are you doing here?' she asked anger rising at his tone, 'I thought you had an important meeting.'

'I am Arnav Singh Raizada,' he said haughtily, 'I don't revolve around meetings, it's the other way around. So if you are done with your interrogation, we should be on our way.'

Khushi sat in the car miffed with Arnav. She had disliked the tone in which he had talked earlier. Why did he have to be such a Laad Governor all the time?

'Where is Di?' she asked looking around for Anjali.

'Di left early so that we don't lose the reservation,' he said, 'God knows how much more time you would have taken to dress up.'

'The reason I was running late was because Di asked me to go back and change from my suit into this saree.' she explained irritated.

So Di had planned all this, he thought. She just won't stop meddling, will she?He had called her in advance to let her know he was joining them for dinner.After thinking about it the entire day at work, he had finally decided that he had to go to this dinner at any cost. He would have to pull a few strings to reschedule that meeting but he'd be damned if he let Khushi go all alone anywhere in the vicinity of Shyam. He remembered how his hands had itched to punch him right in the face when he had slyly persuaded Anjali to bring Khushi along for the dinner. The slime ball!

**

When they reached the hotel building, he called Anjali to let her know that they were in the parking lot and would be up in a few minutes. They got in the elevator and pressed the button to the 13th floor. When they went up to the 2nd floor, a little boy got into the elevator all by himself. They were wondering if he was lost when suddenly he pressed a bunch of buttons from 3 to 9. Just when Arnav was about to ask him what he was doing he got off on the 3rd floor and ran away.

Arnav was so irritated with the little boy when the lift started stopping at each and every floor. Finally after the 8th floor, the lift gave a lurch, and began to creep upward.

'What's happening?' asked Khushi, when the floor beneath her stuttered, swayed and stopped. The door remained closed.

'I think the lift is stuck between two floors,' he returned. He tried pressing the alarm button and checked the signal on his phone. 'The alarm button doesn't seem to be working and there is no signal here. We will have to wait until someone comes along to fix it.'

He went to the far corner of the lift and stripped off his coat jacket. He had worn a white shirt inside. Khushi loved to see him in white. He looked very sexy. She wished she could walk up to him and run her fingers through his hair and undo couple of his buttons....... What was she thinking? She remembered what she was going to tell him.