40 Chapter 40

After speaking to her parents, he came to the den where Sneha sat like a tiger ready to pounce. But nothing she did could prepare her for this. Rohan walked right into her personal space. Close enough for her to see the redness in his eyes. Close enough to smell the aftershave he must have used not more than an hour before. And then he did it. He got down on his knees and clasped his hands together in prayer. Sneha was paralyzed with confusion. The man whom had wanted to extinguish her life was now before her on his knees.

She had heard a few words he said but they swirled around her head amidst snippets of their past conversations and clips of their shared but brief history. And then he did the unthinkable. He touched her. Rohan touched her arm. It felt like a bundle of silk to her but it might as well had been a chain of boulders the way it tore through her carefully orchestrated defenses. And when he proposed marriage to her the very same way she had seen in British dramas, she had completely forgotten why she was even upset.

Being able to be defeated by something so simple as a man's touch embarrassed her as an independent woman. Sneha had accomplished so much in her life. Not only had she graduated from medical school at the top of her class, she also took care of her autistic brother, and worked to help out at home. Overcoming obstacles was a talent she developed and honed since childhood. How could a man's love knock down her defenses so easily? She hoped Rohan never knew the power his love held over her. It frightened her.

As they arrived at the hotel Sneha shook her head then laid her cheek on his arm, which was still resting upon her shoulder.

"Welcome to Rebak Island Resort. Will you be checking in?" the concierge asked.

"No actually we were told that you had a spa which had couple massages," Rohan explained.

"Oh yes we do. We have a special massage for newlyweds in our garden room. Right this way."

Rohan whispered to Sneha, "I wonder how he could tell we were newlyweds."

"You two are still touching each other," their concierge answered. Sneha and Rohan giggled all the way to the Garden Room where four stout women were waiting outside.

Hand in hand, Rohan and Sneha stepped past the drawn layers of muslin onto a thatch-covered pier with near 360-degree views of the jungle-covered mountain islands and the Indian Ocean. The beauty of Nature before them silenced them both.

One of the masseuses peeked inside. "Undress now please," she asked with a smile before drawing close the curtains. Unable to focus at the task of undressing for the massage, Rohan and Sneha stumbled about running into the massage table and nearly knocking over the table of oils. Rohan clumsily tried to keep the oils from falling on the ground.

"No love in room!" belted a masseuse. Sneha gasped at the suggestion as Rohan stuttered an incomprehensible explanation. The masseuses filed in, drew the curtains and prepped their four hundred and sixty-fourth couple for the year in their usual silence. As the masseuse with her face covered in traditional tribal tattoos lit a small bundle of dried herbs and fanned the snaking smoke, a pungent scent of jungle air and exotic plant life filled the curtain-enclosed room.