I have a NEW RELEASE DATE FOR TEMPT!

It's earlier than you think, Postmate!

Mahalo,

I’m writing this edition of The Writer Gal Letter listening to Something To Be by Rob Thomas just because I’m on a Matchbox 20 kick. (Unwell and If You’re Gone are both on the official Tempt soundtrack because they are sweetly melodic and angsty AF).

Imma keep this one super short because I am like dying from all the edits and release-time things.

Tempt Has An Updated Release Date

Mark your calendars for 30, April! TEMPT IS COMING TWO WEEKS EARLY! (And yes, I’m at work on Crave and refining Tempt even as I write this edition of TWGL! It is heartbreaking, Postmate! I surprise myself with what I put my people through). But anyway, this is a Tempt newsletter so YESSSS!

For everyone who has pre-ordered my little book baby (which is at a very respectable 300 pages) you should get it on 30 April, 2023. It’s a Sunday. So you know…no excuses for not diving straight in :d (I’m kidding. You come before any book I write so do you first!)

Here’s chapter two and meet Dr. Pehel Bhatnagar for your own self. Here’s the link to chapter two!

If you want the whole extended sampler so you’re ahead of the rest of the world when the book comes out in LESS THAN ONE WEEK, then click on the shiny pink button and get the extended sampler! :D

And now, without further ado, onto the words.

Tempt Chapter Two (Unproofed as yet)

At around the same time,

Edinburgh

“So, here’s the story so far,” Dr. Pehel Bhatnagar, third-year surgical resident at Edinburgh General and one of the brightest in her rotation, began quickly. Her doe-color eyes were manic because this conversation she was about to have in this hopping bar on Flanders Street was insane.

Unreal.

And if she had any kind of pride, she’d not even consider having it. But –

“My father, the great and Almighty Krishna Bhatnagar, died almost three months ago. Which, you know all about because you read the business papers like its holy scripture.”

The man sitting opposite her in the low-slung booth smiled softly. He did not take offense at the way she’d just made her declaration. She knew he knew how much she hated big business. How much antipathy she had for businessmen in general.  

“Yes, of course,” he answered.

“And I had to go back to the funeral. Of course. Because it’s what good, dutiful, only daughters of filthy rich businessmen do. Not rock the damn cart.” She spoke without any rancor. Because this was indisputable fact. She was good and dutiful. Always had been.  

“Horse,” the man supplied, taking a sip of his whiskey, single malt. “It’s not rock the damn horse cart.” He frowned, and it deepened the shadows on his cheekbones. “Or maybe it is apple cart.”  

“Exactly. This is about the horses. The Farm, actually.” She nodded eagerly. “I’m so glad I don’t have to go into detailed explanations with you.”

“But if you were to go into one…” His accent, polished British upper crust, peeked through at the vowels.

Pehel took a healthy gulp of her own beer. Tried to settle the nerves dancing the tango in her stomach. He was a friend, she thought acidly. Remarkably good-looking, tall, dark-haired, British playboy friend. Nothing more.

“This is humiliating, Ben,” she muttered. And finished the rest of her beer.

Immediately, Ben Everton – ex-troubleshooter for Root-Dunbarton Pharma Labs – raised one imperial hand and snapped the wait staff over. “The lady will have a refill. And I’ll switch to Perrier. Thanks.”

He didn’t take his eyes off Pehel and she felt the searching of his gaze to the bottoms of her soles. But, it was just that. Cold, intellectual scrutiny. Nothing hot. Nothing remotely sexual. Nothing approaching emotional.

Ben Everton was like her dad in that respect. He reserved his feelings for the inanimate. Insuperable corporate problems, in his case.

“Thanks,” she muttered. And toyed with the rim of her empty glass. “I need that.”

He stilled the nervous movement by squeezing her fingers. And now he really was her friend, Ben. Warm and kind and non-threatening. “Can you just stop fidgeting and talk to me like I’m a person, Pehel?”

 She grinned sheepishly. And settled deeper into the booth. Feeling the give of her shoulders and spine. God, standing for twelve hours holding the suction pump while the attending performed a spinal resection on a twelve-year-old hit and drive victim so he could walk again was hell on a body.

“You’re not a person according to The London Times. You’re the scion of the Evertons looking to strike gold on his next big deal now that Root and Dunbarton’s merger has been successfully completed and market share has been monopolized.”

Ben raised a brow.

Pehe grinned again, cheekily this time. “I read the business papers too. Occasionally. When it suits me.”

“Indeed.”

The server placed their drinks on the table. Pehel smiled at the server and the man’s eyes narrowed in interest.

Pehel was aware of her spaghetti top and the amount of boob on display with it. But, damn it, she wanted to look her best as she negotiated this deal. And it was her body. She could wear whatever the fuck she wanted.

“Thanks, mate,” Ben said easily. His eyes flinty.

The interest fled the server’s eyes as he withdrew with a murmur.

Pehel gave him a grateful smile and took a sip of her beer. It was tangy and yeasty. Sure to add calories to her daily intake. But, fuck that.

“So?” Ben prompted.

“So, my dad basically wrote a sexist, sadistic will and ordered his children to marry and stay married in order to inherit the billion-dollar property and asset known as The Farm. Or everything is destroyed.” She finished letting it all out in a rush. 

Ben cocked his head. “What the fuck?”

“Yes, the fuck.” Pehel felt better now that she’d actually spilled the truth out. “Exactly the fuck. And, before you ask, yes, we had it vetted by three different lawyers. One of whom is named as the heir in my dad’s will. It’s unbreakable. Ironclad. Legal.”

“Damn, Pehel. I’m sorry.” He sounded halfway sincere.

“Yeah, me too.” Her sip this time was slower, contemplative. It went down easy though. Beer almost always did. Ever since Nashit had introduced her to it on her sixteenth birthday.

She smiled at the pleasant memory of sharing tiny sips of Budweiser Lite with him at midnight while the horses lowed and slept for the night.

“Your brother…he is racing for The Championship today in Riyadh, isn’t he?”

Pehel nodded so fast her neck snapped back and forth. “He is going to fucking win. Nihaal’s unbeatable this time around.” She smiled. “He wants to show off for his wife.”  

“Aah. So, that’s why your brother married Drake Fallahil’s EA, Milika Iyer, two months ago.” Ben didn’t frame it as a question. He was too damn sharp to not connect the dots between these events that had made Page 6 and gossip columns all over the world.

“Yeah. Although I think they actually have feelings for each other.”

“Like love?” Ben was scornful.

Pehel chuckled. “I’m not sure about that. But there is just a razor-thin line between…”

“Spare me the idioms, Pehel. And get to the point already?” Ben twirled his glass. A jerky movement on a collected man. “I should have asked for a refill too.”

“The point, dear Benjamin, is this. My dad died. He’s left all that he owned and was given, to Nihaal, Mili, and I. Apart from Glenmuir, the estate attached to Bhatnagar Farm, which goes to my mom if the conditions of the will are fulfilled. My share’s one-third of the billion dollars.”

“Congratulations, Pehel.” Ben raised his water glass in a toast.

“Not so fast, pal. The inheritance comes with strings attached.”

“The string being marrying someone to get the inheritance because imperialism is alive and well?”

“Yes.” Pehel’s lips twitched at his self-aware political reference. “While the estate is cleared by the probate court. There’s some other stuff about the assets of the inheritance not being sold by any of the heirs and operations going on as usual but that doesn’t concern me. Not really.”

“Three hundred and thirty-three million dollars does,” he said coolly.

****

“Nope.” Pehel felt not a twinge of remorse or greed when she said the word. “I have been supporting myself since I came to the UK for med school. That Farm can rot for all I care. My brother feels the same too.”

“But he’s married now, isn’t he? And to one of the other heirs.”

Pehel nodded. “That’s because the will states clearly, in case of non-compliance by the heirs, the assets of the farm and Glenmuir, especially the horses will be shipped off to our competitors and the land, including the house my mom lives in, will be given to build a veterinary hospital, rendering all the people who work and live at The Farm homeless and jobless.”

“Jesus Christ and Joe cocker.” Ben whistled through his teeth.

“Precisely. You get it now.” Pehel sighed and wished that her Guinness was stronger. But she had a shift to get back to in less than twelve hours and so she couldn’t afford a high blood alcohol count. “I don’t want the money, but I can’t live with all that loss on my head. Even Nihaal, hard-hearted as he is, couldn’t.”

“And so…matrimony to the leggy lawyer,” Ben said. “Who he wants to impress by winning an elite sports championship.”

“Yep.” Pehel studied her Guinness. It was bitter and tangy and yeasty. Edinburgh didn’t make it as good as Dublin but she couldn’t complain. “That’s about it.”

“You don’t mean…” Ben sat up straight in the booth. Knocking his mile-long knees with her much shorter ones. “Pehel, you cannot be serious.”

Pehel gave him a misery-filled glance. “I wish I wasn’t. I don’t want to be serious.”

He gave a strange half-laugh. “You could ask anyone you wanted, Pehel. You’re a great catch. A filthy rich one at that. Any man would die to marry you.”

She dropped her eyes to the pint glass again. Remembered the aborted, ill-fated conversation she’d had with Nashit about this same exact subject when she’d been back home for her dad’s funeral and Nihaal’s shotgun wedding.

“Nihaal and Mili are done. They picked each other…Want to pick me, sweetie? Make it a double wedding?”

And the way he’d smiled at her. All teeth. No heart. Never any heart with her. As if the boy who’d got her drunk on her sixteenth birthday, who’d given her linseed ointment for her period cramps, been her best friend for her childhood had been taken over by an alien.

If she’d not been braced for it, his smile would have broken her heart in two.  

“You don’t want me. You never did. No thanks, Dr. Pehel.”

“Not any man,” she murmured. A phantom twinge shooting in the region of her heart, right between her second and third ribs. “And I’m not asking any man, Ben. I’m asking you. How long have we been friends now?”

“Two years,” Ben answered with a wry smile. “Ever since my idiot brother blew up most of his pinkie finger and came to your hospital for emergency treatment. And you ended up saving his pinkie and the rest of his hand.”  

“Exactly.” Pehel nodded triumphantly. “You’ve known me for a long time. So, you know when I’m joking and when I’m dead serious.”

“But…why me?” He was honestly bewildered. Then it turned into outright horror. “You don’t fancy me, do you, Pehel?”

Pehel laughed out loud. She couldn’t help it. “Would you say yes if I said I did?” She asked between giggles.

When he continued staring at her in distress, she decided to put him out of his misery. “No, I do not fancy you. I never did. Even though you’re top-class fancy material, Everton.”

“Then? Why me?” He asked feelingly.

She could see him just itching to mop his sweaty brow. “Because, I want it to be my choice,” she said softly. “Anyone who chooses to be with me back in Alipur won’t know me the way you do. And he won’t be someone I trust. Not like I trust you.”

“So just because we know each other we should get fucking married?”

Another woman, with a shred of pride would have felt unbearably hurt at his obvious disgust at the notion. But Pehel didn’t have the luxury of pride anymore.

As it was, between trying to summon grief for her autocratic father, form a relationship with her brother who was almost a stranger to her and the upheaval these two events continued to cause in her life, she was all out of feelings.

“Why not, Ben?” she asked him quietly.  

“Because, Pehel, I don’t fancy you too.”

“Fancying me is not in the list of conditions to be fulfilled by the damn will, Ben. Just a willing, sentient being. Which you are.” She tried a flirty wink to go with her bald, awfully business-like proposition.

 “What the fuck are you proposing, then?” He stared at her like she’d just given him a diagnosis for an inoperable neuroglioblastoma.  

“I feel safe with you, Ben,” she admitted. “I know you have no designs on me. Just like I’m not at all attracted to you. I know that your sex life is colder than a monk’s because you want to prove yourself all over again. Now that Root-Dunbarton doesn’t need you anymore.”

“So?” Ben was understandably wary. “What are you proposing?”

Ben’s restlessness was not common knowledge outside of immediately family. That Pehel was astute enough to know it meant he’d underestimated her.

She hoped he knew that. That he respected her smarts enough to see her as an equal in their partnership.

Because now that she had played her opening gambit, she was going to move in for her checkmate.

“No one knows of this except my mother, the lawyer who drew up the will, and me. My father added a special codicil to the will for me,” she said softly.

“A codicil?”

Pehel nodded. And remembered with revulsion, the exact words Vivek Sen, the lawyer had given her. “Any spouse of Pehel Bhatnagar is entitled to three percent of her inheritance upon receiving it.”

Now Ben was utterly still.

“I am not good at math but three percent of three hundred and thirty million is a lot of money, isn’t it? Maybe not enough for you to immediately conquer the world but you could capture a small-sized nation with it, right?” Pehel gave him a small smile.

It did not reach her eyes. Because, it had taken her some time to figure it out, but the codicil was the final humiliation her father had left for her. It had reduced her worth to a single number. Three percent. To be given to whichever person tolerated her enough to marry her. It was offensive on so many levels, she still didn’t know how to deal with it.

So, she didn’t.

She just used it to her advantage with one of England’s most eligible bachelors.

Ben’s eyes shuttered. Became snake-bright. “That’s the catch for me. What’s in it for you? Why me, specifically, Pehel?”

Pehel expelled a breath. “Fine. You’re my escape card. The will specifies that I have to stay in Alipur, at Glenmuir, for the duration of the estate being settled. But if I’m married to you, you can always plead work and we can escape together. We don’t even have to stay in the same damn room once the ceremony is done.”

And she, very much, did not want to stay in Alipur. She couldn’t stay there and hope to escape with her sanity intact. Not when she knew what the outcome of all her hope would be. Devastation.

“This is positively Machiavellian,” Ben muttered. “What’s even more unsettling is that it makes a twisted kind of sense.”

“What do you say, Ben? Will you come back to Alipur with me to talk to my mama so we can get married and you’ll become kinda-sorta rich for it?”

Ben shook his head. “I was wrong about you,” he said conversationally. “You are definitely the most ruthless person I know now. You’ve even sacrificed yourself for a cause you don’t believe in just because it is the right thing to do.”

Unexpectedly, tears pricked her eyes. No one had ever understood her in as few sentences as Ben had just done. It felt nice to be seen. To be acknowledged. “I think it makes me pathetic. Not ruthless.”

“They aren’t mutually exclusive, Pehel.”

“That’s not why I’m doing it anyway.”

“I know.” Ben held up a hand. Immediately, the server materialized at their table. “Champagne. Krug, from the 90s. We’re celebrating,” he murmured. And slowly raised Pehel’s hand to his lips.

“Wait,” she protested. “You still have to come back with me. Talk to my family and make your intentions known before we can be engaged.” Pehel gave him a worried look. “Will that be a problem?”

“Nothing a fuckton of money won’t eventually solve, Pehel.” Ben smiled, with just a little bit of heart. “I’m in this with you, okay?”

Pehel gave a shaky sigh while her heart, that thing she’d shoved into a corner of her body while she had this conversation, woke up with a vengeance. And it wanted a pair of changeable, hazel eyes to look at her. To say those words to her.

To mean them.

Her damned heart wanted the impossible.

“Thank you,” she whispered. “I’ll owe you forever for this.”

“You’ll owe me three percent and no more,” Ben murmured.

And that, Pehel figured, was as good a proposal as she was ever going to get.

That is all I have for this edition of The Writer Gal Letter, Postmate. I’ll be back next week with TEMPT’s RELEASE NEWS!!!

Till then, hydrate and wear sunscreen

Xx

Aarti