Crush - KarEena

Chapter 23

"So, you would stop mauling me"

"Mauling you?" Karishma repeated in a raised voice, "Mauling you?"

"The night we met. No, the night you arranged for us to meet, I told you then, straight out and in language, a child could understand that I wasn't interested in ... all that"

Female Pride or ego kicked in. Karishma rounded the work island so it would no longer be between them, "Well that's a switch for you, isn't it? One kiss and I'm mauling you, but back in Lucknow, you were quite the party girl. What did you call it then?"

Haseena recoiled as though Karishma had struck her, but that initial reaction lasted only a second before her facial expression turned hard, "You must have had a locker-room chat with your pal Detective Sharma"

"Only after I heard everything about you from folks in Janpad. You're remembered there, sweet cheeks. Because you used to do a lot more than kiss the locals, didn't you?"

"You're so well informed, why ask me?"

"You did considerably more than kiss"

Haseena backed down and looked away, "I'm not like that now"

"Why not? Seems to me like you were having one hell of a good time. Tongues in Janpad are still wagging about your drenched white Kurti cruise through town in your red Mustang convertible. But I get your desire rise and you freak out"

Haseena tried to go around Karishma, but she executed a quick sidestep and blocked Haseena's path, "You had all those horny cowboys at the rodeo panting after you. And their girlfriends, and probably their daddies"

"Stop it!"

"And you knew it, too, didn't you? You liked keeping 'em steaming in their jeans"

"You don't know-"

"Oh, yeah, I do. People know. We have ugly names for girls like you, Haseena. Doesn't stop us from wanting what you advertise, though. How many hearts were broken when you set your sights on Ranjan Chadha?"

"Don't-"

"Then when that affair went south, you shot and killed him. Is that what turned you off mauling?"

"Yes!"

Her shout was followed by a sudden, reverberating silence. Haseena turned away from Karishma and leaned forward against the counter. She put her hand to her mouth and kept it there for several moments. Then, very unsurgeon-like, she seemed at a loss what to do with her hands. She crossed her arms over her midsection and hugged her elbows; she wiped her palms on her thighs; she finally picked up the baking dish of chicken and placed it in the oven. After setting the timer, she returned to chopping tomatoes.

Karishma continued to watch her with the single-mindedness of the vultures that had circled the carcass of the bobcat. She refused to drop this subject. She felt entitled to peel away just one of her multiple layers. She wanted at least a glimpse of who she was and what had made her so compulsively neat, what had made her so disinclined to touch another human being except in the sterile security of an operating room. She wanted to see if only for an instant, the real Haseena Malik.

"What happened in your father's study that day?"

The knife came down hard and angrily on the chopping block, "Didn't Santosh share the details with you?"

"Yes. And I read the police report"

"Well then"

"It didn't tell me shit. I want to hear what happened from you"