Annika's Passion

By Kennedy Claire

Now that her best friend has found happiness, Annika Bashir is bursting in anticipation for her own happily ever after. Just one problem: Spoiled, shallow and utterly vain Annika is engaged to a boorish, “family-approved” lawyer who wouldn’t know how to please a woman with an illustrated set of detailed instructions in hand. He’s perfect on paper, but a real letdown in reality. But as long as he keeps handing over his Black American Express card for her frequent shopping excursions, she doesn’t seem too bothered by the lack of passion between them.

Enter Dr. Kiran Patil, a handsome, stoic surgeon at a charity hospital who rocks Annika’s world—and entire worldview—when she breaks her ankle during a short trip to India. But this doctor doesn’t do shallow, and scorns vapid women with an affinity for Gucci handbags and extravagant shopping trips.

Will he scorn Annika also? Or will he become seduced by the woman she has become during her trip to exotic and mystical India, which seems to have the power to peel back her shallow layers and reveal intense passions buried deep down inside?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kennedy Claire
• Release date: Jul 3, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311419545

Kennedy Claire

Kennedy Claire grew up in Northern California but left to see how normal people live, so she mistakenly settled in Austin,Texas among pseudo-cowboys, pick-up driving oil tycoons, and George W. Bush.There, she was one of the last to study print journalism at the University of Texas, naively ignorant of the fact the print-anything would soon die a cruel, painful death at the hands of Amazon Kindle. Regardless, Kennedy was more interested in state politics, so she took a job at the Capitol and helped craft legislation which she believed would eventually foster world peace.That didn't quite work out the way she planned.Burned out on politics and George W. Bush, she married a Cuban, had a few babies, RVed around the country, learned how to double-fry patacones in Panama, and started writing down all the stories floating around in her head. Knowing her place was in writing, Kennedy penned the contemporary romance "My Best Friend's Brother,” the first novella in the thrilling and intriguing Bashir Family Romance Series.There is nothing she loves more -- other than chocolate, coffee and foot massages -- than interacting with her readers, so please visit her at http://www.Kennedy-Claire.comP.S. She is still waiting to see how normal people live.

Book preview

ANNIKA’S PASSION

Kennedy Claire

First Edition, April 2015

Copyright© 2015 by

Kennedy Claire

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced nor used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for use of brief quotations in a book review, interview, or article.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Table of Contents:

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Also by Kennedy Claire

About the Author

Book Extras!

P.S.

Prologue

"I have to go to India, Kareem. My mom is going to literally die from stress if we can’t locate my brother, and then she won’t be able to make the wedding, and I won’t be getting married if she’s not there."

The short, stocky man with the prematurely balding head said nothing for a few moments and she could feel the extreme irritation radiate off his stiff body inside of the tailored business suit. Annika had asked if they could meet at his apartment for lunch, so he had dutifully cancelled all his appointments with the promise of some alone-time with his very desirable fiancée.

Obviously, he wasn’t expecting this.

Annika could tell that announcing she needed to leave the country just as their event-of-the-year wedding was ramping up was not what he wanted from her during his precious lunch hour. He seemed pissed and she was getting nervous.

But she wasn’t leaving without getting her way. It was too important. She realized it was bad timing, but Annika needed to get out of Texas. Something besides finding her brother was pulling at her and she just knew she would literally suffocate if she didn’t go right away. So directly after her weekly mani-pedi at Screaming Angels Salon & Spa, she rushed over to her fiancée’s apartment to make her case. And if she happened to smudge a flawlessly painted fingernail, then so be it. She was willing to make the ultimate sacrifice.

After a few chilly moments passed, the beautiful young woman tried to wrinkle her perfectly arched eyebrows into a stern look, but not so stern as to impair her feminine allure—he wasn’t marrying some angry, nagging wench after all. When her fiancé didn’t look up from the dark mahogany wood floor, his face tense and strained, she wondered for a quick moment if she should allow a tear or two to fall down her cheek.

Would crying be too much? She asked herself, scrunching her face in serious thought as if assessing an Algebraic equation.

Kareem glanced up at her and seemed to weaken with a look of compassion seeing her obvious distress. He looked away and furrowed his brows, obviously straining to stand firm against her feminine powers.

You can’t go right now. It doesn’t make sense. We can send the private investigator instead. His voice was sure and confident.

Annika didn’t hear him because she was busy readying the waterworks by imagining the saddest thing she could think of: Coco, her beloved miniature Pomeranian dog. Though the little white bundle of fluff was very much pampered and probably at home licking up stray morsels of gingered rice fallen from her mother’s stovetop, in Annika’s imagination, she was forced to suffer a cruel fate and become a convenient sacrifice when the moment called for it. She found that when she wanted her way and needed to call in the tears, it was what worked best.

It had to be done.

As Kareem fumed silently, she focused on an image of Coco, cold, wet and abandoned, sifting through garbage in a dark alley to find a morsel of food for her grumbling thimble-sized tummy—and sneezing from some illness…from Canine Bronchitis maybe.

Poor Coco! She thought to herself, finally feeling some real emotion bubble up into her throat and warm her tear ducts. Who said that the method acting class she took during her junior year in high school wouldn’t pay off in droves?

Finally, just as the determined man met her eyes again, she squeeze out a hard-earned and perfectly timed drop of saline from her large brown eyes. She could tell by his expression that he knew he wasn’t winning this one. She had pulled out the big guns.

She was crying.

With a sigh of defeat, Kareem put his hand tentatively around her delicate arm and rubbed it softly.

Don’t cry, Annika. Of course you can go—if you have to. But my parents aren’t going to like it. The governor was scheduled to attend. A lot of work—and money—went into this engagement party.

She tried hard not to smile in her triumph and kill the magic of the moment. She knew better than to celebrate too early. She had to now demonstrate an equal amount of remorse, understanding and gratefulness to seal the deal.

This wasn’t her first tango after all—the feminine craft of manipulation had been practiced on her sweet, dear ol’ father since she was two-years-old and she couldn’t recall a time when she had failed to get what she wanted from him. She was a pro. In fact, persuading people to do things they otherwise wouldn’t do was her job as a marketing executive for an advertising company.

Manipulation was like breathing for Annika.

It wouldn’t be any different with her husband-to-be, and this made her content in some small way. But would it be enough happiness to sustain a marriage?

She wouldn’t even entertain the question. He was wealthy, ambitious, from a good Indian family who worshipped at the same mosque. All the requirements were met and her parents couldn’t be more pleased, especially after surviving through Dev’s engagement to Scarlett.

But that was over now. As her mother always said, marriage is a practical arrangement. If it isn’t practical at the heart of it, it won’t last.

And although some might perceive her as shallow, vain and flippant at times, underneath it all, Annika was the most practical woman alive.

Annika stroked Kareem’s chest covered by a neat pinstriped dress shirt and turned her big, wide innocent eyes—still full of tears—to his. "Thank you, sweetie! I know how difficult this will be and I’m so sorry, I really am. But I— my mother—just can’t sleep at night without knowing Dev is alright. And I’m the one she wants to send."

It was a lie. Her mother was fine sending an investigator, but Annika insisted she should go instead.

Just a little, harmless lie, though, she thought to herself quickly to assuage the teeny, tiny, infinitesimal pang of guilt that seemed to shrink the more she practiced her deceptions.

Kareem put his hand over hers and held it steady in a gesture of control—maybe to make up for the helplessness he felt at that moment. Annika knew she looked especially attractive with her heaving breasts tightly outlined beneath a thin pink dress, and she could see in his eyes that he suddenly felt like he was owed a reward for his extreme understanding in this situation—a nice reward befitting the cancellation of an expensive engagement party attended by the Governor of Texas.

He kissed her hard on the mouth, his lust rushed and clumsy. Annika recognized the look in his eyes and the urgency in his body, and tried to mirror his desire, though she felt nothing.

But she could pretend. She was good at that.

And for the next twenty minutes, as their naked bodies rolled around on his bed, she kept up her act—one worthy of an Academy Award.

When they were finished—or rather, when he was finished—she lay there proudly reflecting on the perfectly executed performance while Kareem rushed into the bathroom for a quick shower before his next meeting.

Alone, she raised her left hand into the air and allowed the light from under the bathroom door to reflect off of the large, flawless princess cut diamond. Its sparkle was intoxicating and she found it to be a fun hobby looking at it from different angles, at different times of day and with different light sources.

Nope, it doesn’t get any better than this, she reassured herself, trying to angle it in just the right way to make it beam brighter. But a small voice inside her head—which seemed to be getting louder as the wedding date moved closer—whispered back:

Does it?

~1~

Annika nearly choked on the pungent smell of curry, air freshener and body odor inside the dilapidated taxi cab at the Goa airport. It was a thirty-minute ride to the touristy beach town in the southwestern region of India, and it was either wait another forty-five minutes for a hired cab with air conditioning and clean seats or reluctantly hire the rust-bucket already waiting at the curb.

She preferred to wait rather than sit on the sticky, peeling vinyl on the backseat, but her best friend, Scarlett, was in a hurry to get the hotel. She seemed severely affected by the 23-hour plane ride and Annika was a little concerned, so