Annika's Pride

ANNIKA’S PRIDE

Kennedy Claire

First Edition, February 2017

Copyright© 2017 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: Romeo & the Ignoramous

Chapter 1: Love & Oatmeal

Chapter 2: Salt in the Wound

Chapter 3: A Party to Forget

Chapter 4: Sex Will Make it Go Away, Right?

Chapter 5: The Road to Hell is…

Chapter 6: …Paved with Good Intentions

Chapter 7: Fiancées & Blonde Barracudas Don’t Mix

Chapter 8: Always Bring an Umbrella

Chapter 9: No Looking Back

Chapter 10: Court is in Session

Chapter 11: The Proposition

Chapter 12: Do NOT Leave Your HBD Unattended

Chapter 13: Annika Pleads Her Case

Chapter 14: The Audacity of Them Both

Chapter 15: Misplaced Anger Feels Good…at First

Chapter 16: One Reality Check Coming Up

Chapter 17: Finally, Kiran. Finally.

Chapter 18: The Truth Stings like a Mother

Chapter 19: Turns Out There are Better Things than Justice

Chapter 20: Jumping In Together

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Prologue

Romeo & the Ignoramus

There are a few things good girls never do. They don’t kiss on the first date, wear low-cut shirts with high-cut skirts (one or the other but not both!), touch up their make-up at the dinner table—a faux pas of the highest degree—or let boys into their room at night for passionate and explicit sex while their parents sleep near by.

Well, that last one’s not exactly set in stone, Annika Bashir convinced herself, staring out the window, happy she had on her favorite silky pink nightie and not the dreadful—but highly comfortable—cotton PJ bottoms she sometimes wore alone.

The pebble clinking against Annika’s windowpane was a happy surprise in the middle of a restless night of sleeping alone. Kiran Patil, her hot billionaire doctor fiancé—or HBD for short (the acronym she used when bragging to her girlfriends)—wasn’t supposed to be in Texas for another week, but he surprised her by showing up outside her bedroom in the middle of the night. She guessed he must have known she decided to stay with her parents rather than her lonely, empty apartment in the city where there was no one to cook her pecan waffles in the morning with hot chai.

She would endure her overbearing mother for a good meal any day.

Annika made a quick check in the mirror and adjusted her nightie so her perky, round breasts were perfectly aligned and nicely displayed, then she opened the window. A waft of his spicy cologne drifted up to her with the early spring breeze, cool and crisp on her skin, making her nipples hard and highly visible, which was what she wanted. Texas had the best springs—almost worth enduring the hellishly hot summers.

Well, almost.

Annika arranged herself half-sitting on the low windowsill and leaned out of the window as Kiran tried to get a foothold on the side of her parent’s two-story colonial. You know you can use the front door, she whispered.

He looked up and flashed a mischievous smile, his teeth flashing white in the shadows, the moonlight casting shadows on his perfect bone structure and dark, deep-set eyes. Yes, my love, and then I’ll have to exit by the front door. Your mother will see to it. She doesn’t trust me to leave her daughter alone for the night. He heaved as he lifted his body up the trellis, grabbing the thick wisteria vines for leverage.

Obviously she has reason not to. Annika smiled, biting her lower lip in anticipation while feigning protest. She liked his plan. It was the best plan ever hatched in all of human existence. They had been apart for two weeks while he attended to business in India and she wrapped up loose ends in Texas. They were engaged now and wanted to be married as soon as possible. Being apart was torture akin to the fires of the deepest level of Hell.

She glanced at the massive emerald-cut diamond on her finger, sparkling bright even in the dim evening light. He could have presented her with a plastic ring bought from a vending machine for all she cared. She loved him, and now that she knew what love felt like, she realized what was truly valuable.

A penny for your thoughts, Kiran uttered, halfway up the side of the house. You’ve gone quiet all of sudden.

"A penny? Is that all they’re worth?" Annika retorted.

Okay, a million then, he offered in his perfect British-accented English, acquired from attending English schools for his entire childhood, and then getting his medical training at Oxford.

That’s more like it. She grinned, trying not to burst from sheer happiness. I’m thinking about how I can’t believe I was engaged to…

Who was that again?

Kareem Raman, he offered, blithely.

"Yes, Kareem. Anyway, the point is that I was going to marry him and I didn’t even know that I was about to doom myself to a life without love…or passion."

She briefly thought of her former fiancé and how she broke it to him just weeks before their wedding that she had fallen in love with a doctor from India and was, in fact, a changed person. He took it well, she thought. I mean, he was quiet and didn’t say much…a little tight-faced, now that she thought about it for more than two seconds. He’ll go on with his life and forget about me, she reassured herself.

But there was something about his reaction that seemed to lurk under the calm surface, like the moments before a killer shark breaks the water to rip into an innocent sea lion enjoying his contented life of nibbling on fish, basking in the sun and reading the latest issue of Vogue—or, er, playing in the water (because that’s what sea lions do).

Actually, Kareem’s dark eyes kind of reminded her of a shark’s dead, soulless pupils, but that was beside the point. He was last year’s spring issue of Glamour Magazine, completely irrelevant to what should be worn in the new year and good for only proving that floral maxi-dresses have a two-year shelf life at best.

Who wants that when you have the latest issue of Hot Billionaire Doctor climbing up the side of your house?

Kiran reached the window, breathless, his eyes bright with the vigor and exuberance of a young man finally reaching the woman he loves. He leaned into her room and caressed her cheek with his free hand, the other holding onto the window frame. I missed you, my gazelle.

I missed you more, she answered, then she closed her eyes for the kiss that was coming—the kiss that would simultaneously quench and increase her desire for him. Could she ever get enough?

His lips touched hers, gently at first, his perfect fullness lingering briefly, then pressing against her intently, hungrily, with greedy purpose. She kissed him back, eyes tightly shut, balanced on the windowsill, her body responding readily, temperature rising in the cool breeze. She was home in all the ways that mattered.

And then she wasn’t.

His lips changed, familiar but different, less full and less skilled. Suddenly she wasn’t kissing her proficient and adept lover, but someone else.

Someone she’s kissed before…who wasn’t very good at it.

Is it?

Annika’s eyes shot open. The man she saw before her caused her to jump back and let out a small scream. It wasn’t Kiran anymore.

It was Kareem.

But how?

The jilted ex-fiancé wasted no time but crawled into the window and lumbered into Annika’s personal space. She was too stunned to scream or move.

You look surprised to see me, baby. He smiled like a devil about to claim a damned soul.

"I thought you were Kiran. What are you doing here?"

You didn’t think you could just break off our engagement and run off with some other guy you hardly know, leaving me humiliated in front of my family and the entire city, do you? You really thought it would be that easy?

Annika stammered for words. I, uh, you were, uh, you seemed fine when I told you. What else could she say? She squeaked out a half-hearted and confused, Sorry?

That only seemed to enrage him more.

He grabbed her arms and squeezed, his face nearly touching hers, so close she could smell the scent of the cinnamon Tic-Tacs he compulsively consumes. Sorry? That’s all that you think you owe me, Annika?

Annika pulled away, but he closed the gap between them causing her to stumble onto the bed. He pushed her down and pressed his body onto hers.

Get off of me! You can’t have me. I don’t love you. I don’t want you, she pleaded, her mind going to dark places. Was he going to rape her in her parent’s home? Was that