"What are you doing here?" Shehnaaz paused on the threshold to the kitchen and stared at the big man who stood in front of the open refrigerator wearing only baggy sweatpants, without shoes or a shirt. He turned around slowly to meet her eyes and she swallowed past the huge lump in her suddenly dry throat, God he was so much more beautiful than she remembered. Shehnaaz, however, felt unattractive and sloppy in the pajamas she was wearing. She knew that she had a sleep crease down the side of her face and her hair looked like a bird's nest.
"I live here," Sidharth replied casually, one hand grasping a carton of orange juice and the other lazily rubbing back and forth over the rippled contours of his abdomen. Her fascinated gaze fell to that hand and she imagined her own hand replacing his. Shehnaaz shook herself slightly to rid herself of the erotic image and focused on her outrage at seeing him so casually standing in the kitchen.
"You're usually at work by this time," she pointed out.
"Yes, I am," he agreed. "But since you go to great pains to not be around when I head out in the mornings or come home at night, I figured the only way I'd know what the hell was going on with you was to stay at home today."
"You can't simply stay at home," Shehnaaz was appalled by that notion. "You're the boss."
"Exactly and if the boss can't take the occasional day off then there's really no point in being the boss," his voice was casual, light even but his eyes roamed over her small figure almost hungrily, taking in every single detail of her fuller face and rounder figure.
They had been living past each other for nearly three months, with Shehnaaz deliberately evading him when he was in the house. She tended to ignore his text messages and let the machine take his calls. He left little notes for her, sometimes asking her to dinner, sometimes asking after her health, he had recently stuck a Post-it on the fridge reminding her to buy new prenatal vitamins because he'd noticed that she was running out!
When she'd forgotten to buy the vitamins despite his reminder, she'd found a new bottle on the kitchen table and a Post-it, with a half-dozen exclamation marks drawn on it, stuck to the lid.
Sidharth never entered her bedroom uninvited and she never did any inviting. They still shared the bathroom that connected the two bedrooms which was how he had known that her vitamins were running low but Shehnaaz took great care to shower after he left in the morning or before he returned in the evenings. Now, after successfully avoiding him for nearly three months, finding him so casually standing in the kitchen, half naked and gorgeous, was a bit traumatic to say the least.
"Why are you even interested in what's going on with me?" Shehnaaz finally asked.
"We live in the same house, you're pregnant with my baby and I have no idea how you are. The situation is a bit abnormal to say the least, don't you think?"
"It works for me," Shehnaaz dismissed, casually turning away from him and toward a cabinet to fetch a cereal bowl.
"So it would seem," Shehnaaz heard the fridge door closing and tensed as she sensed him padding towards her, he came to a standstill directly behind her and reached up for another bowl.
Sidharth was standing so close to her that she could feel the heat coming off of his naked chest and his warm, musky scent enveloped her. Shehnaaz shut her eyes and tried to regain her equilibrium in the face of such overwhelming sexuality. Sidharth lingered behind her for much longer than he should have before abruptly moving away and leaving her feeling deprived.
When Shehnaaz turned back to face him, he was sitting at the wooden table in the sunny breakfast nook and shaking a huge amount of corn flakes into his bowl and when he realized that she was watching him, he lifted the box inquiringly. Shehnaaz sighed before carrying her bowl to the table where she sat down opposite him and watched as he sprinkled the flakes into her bowl, topping the dry cereal with strawberry halves and banana slices that he must have cut before she came downstairs.
