24

KAAVI

Four Days before the Wedding

My mother treats even the simplest of parties like the queen is coming to tea, so I had no doubt she would go over the top for this “small get-together,” as she and my dad called it. When I got back, the house was overrun with service staff and setup crew and extra hired help.

“For god’s sake, child, where on earth have you been?” My mother descended on me the moment I stepped inside. “Never mind. Just go and take a look at the table decor. Tell the florist whether you like it. I personally think it should be taller, but he keeps saying that guests get annoyed when they can’t see past them when they are sitting down.”

I didn’t really have time to dwell on this news about Spencer. I had to deal with flowers, and then table setup, and then my mother wanted to talk to me about the layout of the buffet. I wanted to tell her to just get on with it. It was fine. It was all fine.

But it wasn’t all fine.

My fiancé was lying to me.

Sure, we didn’t have the most rock-solid relationship to start with. But I’d thought we could have been a team. I mean, look at my mum and dad—a strong example of teamwork if I ever saw it. Sure, I’d never seen them so much as hold hands, let alone kiss, but they’d built this fantastic life for me and my sisters. Maybe it wasn’t what you saw in the movies, but it was a hell of a lot easier than ugly crying and chugging down bottles of wine when you got your heart broken.

But now this sneaky little shit was hiding things from me. Things like being broke. I mean, I honestly didn’t care about the money—my dad had plenty of it for me, for him, and for our entire neighborhood if necessary. It was the lying that truly pissed me off. Well, that, and what the fuck was I supposed to do if it got out?

How the hell was I supposed to deal with this? The wedding festivities had started. It wasn’t like I could call all of this off. My mother would kill me. Hell, my family’s name would be dragged through the mud—I’d let her kill me.

Spencer and I had been doing a delicate little dance from the moment we got engaged. We made the necessary public appearances, of course, but we also kept a careful distance. In true Sri Lanka style, all this was easier because it was unheard of for him to stay at our house until we were officially married. He visited daily, but it was mostly to have tea or watch cricket with my father. He gave me a chaste kiss on the cheek whenever he saw me, and he was a fucking dream whenever there was an aunty around. We were cautious, as we should have been, given how, oh, you know, we were never really dating to begin with.