The Dating Plan Read online

  Daisy could almost imagine him waving his hands in the air, dismissing what he didn’t want to hear. He’d said almost the same thing when Liam had disappeared, acted almost the same way.

  “I thought you were done with men after that Orson boy,” her father continued. “That’s why I found someone for you.”

  She was done with men. Life was easier without the messy entanglement of emotions. Orson had been a mistake, a rare foray into the relationship wilderness brought on by having to witness Layla falling in love. If she was honest with herself, Daisy had known from the moment Orson first asked her out that he would leave her. Everybody did.

  “I was done, but the aunties wouldn’t leave me alone. Every time I stepped out the door I was afraid one of them was going to pop out of a bush, so I handled it myself.” She bit into the muffin, silently cursing Priya for her incredible skill as the fresh pop of blueberries woke all her taste buds in a sugar-sweet burst. One wasn’t going to be enough.

  “Your aunties are worried for you,” he said. “Twenty-seven and unmarried. It’s like a red flag for them. They don’t want you to fall for the wrong man or wind up with no man at all. Now I fear they didn’t act fast enough.”

  Holding out her fingers, Daisy let Max take a little lick. Only rarely did he get human food, but when he did, his preference was for Jana Auntie’s pakoras over anything sweet.

  “He’s not the wrong guy. He’s just . . .”

  Absolutely the wrong guy. Without a doubt Liam Murphy was the last man on earth she should marry. Her aunties were right about that.

  “Did you know that eighty-five percent of young Indians prefer to marry the boy or girl chosen by their families?” Her father rattled off a slew of marriage statistics like he’d purposely memorized them for this very kind of conversation, which he probably had. “The divorce rate of arranged marriages is only one out of one hundred.”

  “This is what I get for having an economist as a father,” she muttered, half to herself. “Where did you dig up those conveniently biased statistics?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “What matters is that in the West, when couples choose their own partners, the divorce rate is fifty percent. Don’t you agree that a one percent chance of divorce is better than fifty?”

  “If I don’t get married, my chance of divorce is zero.” She grinned at Max, and he barked in approval.

  Usually when she won a point in an argument, her dad would laugh, but this time he was quiet for so long, her skin prickled. “I don’t understand, beta. Do you love this Limb boy? Are you getting married to him or not?”

  “It’s complicated. Can’t we just say I’m engaged so no one needs to worry about finding me a man? And if we’re still together when you get back, you can meet him.” Hopefully, by the time he returned she would have a new decoy to keep the aunties at bay.

  “Fine.” Her father sniffed. “Make your own decisions. In twenty years I’ll be gone, and you won’t have to worry about your old dad trying to make you happy by finding you the perfect man.”

  “Dad . . .” She didn’t have a chance when he pulled out the Indian parent guilt.

  “No. Be engaged to a stranger.” He gave a dramatic sigh. “Who am I to know best? Only your old dad with a lifetime of experience who cares only for what’s best for you and just wanted you to meet the boy I knew would make you most happy.”

  “Dad . . .” Daisy groaned. “Don’t do this.”

  “I have to go,” he said sadly. “Maybe Priya and I can make it back to the jungle before they do the bungee jumping into the gorge. She didn’t want to try it because the elastic looked frayed, but what does it matter if my life is cut short a few extra years? My job as a father is done. You don’t need the ol’ man’s advice.”

  “Okay, Dad.” She tipped her head back in frustration. “You win. I’ll meet him.”

  “Salena Auntie will call you to set something up.” His voice lightened in an instant. “You will love him. I hear the roar of wedding bells already.”

  “I think that’s a helicopter.”

  “So it is. Time to lift off. A new adventure awaits!”

  • 6 •

  TRIPLE shot latte on her right, another one of Priya’s muffin creations on her left, Daisy settled in at her workstation and turned on her computer. Tucked away at the back of the engineering floor, she could enter and exit each day with minimal human interaction. Since she was an introvert at heart, socializing with her colleagues was something she tried to avoid. It was better not to make connections when you knew you weren’t there for the long haul, and Daisy never usually stayed with any start-up longer than it took her shares to vest.

  Unlike the rowdy second floor where the sales, marketing, finance, and design teams were based, the third floor was generally calm and quiet. Everyone understood the need to protect the programmers’ flow state. Programming required focused mental concentration and that meant no interruptions, no conversations, no ringing phones, no deliveries, no noise of any kind. The floor was serene and silent, and her little shadowed corner was the most peaceful of all.

  As soon as her screens flickered to life, she put on her headphones, flicked to her playlist of dance music, and read over the cliff-hanger—a set of notes written in the form of code comments—she had written the night before to remind herself where she was in her thinking process when she had stopped coding for the day.

  The code bug that had been frustrating her since the night before had been solved by her sleeping self—a miracle given that every crack and creak of the too-empty house had made her jolt awake. Sure enough, she was right. The test dates were causing the problem. She slid easily into her flow state, ignited by the cliff-hanger and fueled by caffeine and music. After three intense hours of coding, she joined the other project engineers for the morning stand-up to discuss the project with the team.

  Josh Saldana, another senior software engineer, joined her as she refilled her Avengers mug at the coffee bar. Despite her attempts to keep to herself, Josh had latched on to her from the very first day—pulling her away from her desk at lunchtime, chatting with her over the office messaging service, and trying to drag her out for Friday night drinks. A fellow Marvel superheroes fan, he was friendly and upbeat, and now he was a permanent fixture in her otherwise impermanent life.

  “No muffins today.” He looked sadly at the empty basket. “I’m going to starve. I know things are tight, but how I am supposed to work without sustenance?”

  “There’s fruit.” Daisy pointed to the display.

  “Fruit isn’t food.” Blessed with strong, even features, full lips, and eyes almost as dark as his thick, wavy hair, even a frown on Josh looked sexy. He was six feet of tall and lanky and a favorite with the staff on the second floor, but not so much with the other programmers. He had a tendency to roll his own code and would magically find his way off a project if he wasn’t permitted to build in his preferred language.

  Daisy laughed and handed him a plastic container. “I might have brought a few of Priya’s muffins in case of a shortfall.”

  “This is why I love you.” He took the container and peeked inside. “And I especially love you today because the blueberry ones are the best.”

  “The stand-up was supposed to start three minutes ago.” Daisy glanced over at the door. Their project manager, Andrew Daly, was even more particular about time and schedules than her. Not once since she’d started working at Organicare had a stand-up ever started late.

  “I heard a rumor something big was going on.” Josh took a healthy bite of muffin. “My guess is that Tyler either got funding, and he sent Andrew out to buy gourmet muffins, or he didn’t get funding and I should steal all the apples and sugar packets so I have something to live on when I get laid off.”

  “I thought you said fruit wasn’t food.”

  “It isn’t.” His nose wrinkled in dis
gust. “I’m going to sell the apples. I’ll tell people they’re organic, free range, grain fed, and watered with melted snow from Everest. I’ll make enough money to buy at least three months’ worth of muffins.”

  “Nice.” She lifted an eyebrow. “You’re going to lie.”

  “And steal.” He slipped a sugar packet into his pocket.

  Daisy folded her arms. “If I’d known you were such a moral degenerate, I would have thought twice about agreeing to let you be my emotional support person.”

  Josh laughed through another bite of muffin. “It’s too late now. You need me and all my moral corruption.”

  “I need the stand-up to start.” She glanced down at her limited-edition Captain Marvel watch, a gift from her father when she got her first job. “I was deep into the flow and I don’t want to lose it.”

  “You’re in luck.” He gestured to the door. “Our supreme leader has arrived.”

  Dressed in pair of red flip-flops, baggy blue shorts, and a purple shirt bearing the words Byte Me, Andrew held up his coffee cup to quiet the noise as he walked to the front of the room. Cranky and prone to using profanity, the veteran software engineer had been with Organicare since its inception, and chewed through product managers as quickly as Max chewed through squeaky toys. He was perpetually in need of a haircut, and his thick brown beard and moustache were streaked with gray.

  Silence descended instantly on the room. Andrew didn’t tolerate interruptions and no one was willing to get on his bad side, especially when the glare in his eyes was a clear warning that he was in a bad mood. Even Tyler was afraid of Andrew.

  “I have bad news . . .”

  Josh grabbed a handful of sugar packets and stuffed them in his pocket.

  “You all know Organicare has been trying to secure additional funding, but it’s a long process and the time has come to cut some costs.”

  Daisy’s heart sank. She’d never expected to stay at Organicare long term, but it was the only start-up she’d ever worked at where she’d been excited about the company’s products, admired the company’s mission, and—she glanced over at Josh—started to make friends.

  “To try and save jobs, Tyler has decided to sublet the second floor,” Andrew said. “That means Finance, Marketing, and whoever the hell else works downstairs will be moving up here with us. We tried something like this when we first started the company and it was a total failure. But no one had any other bright ideas, so we’re stuck with it.”

  “We’re going to have to barricade ourselves in the corner and throw sugar packets at anyone who comes near us or we’ll never get into the flow state with all the noise.” Josh tore open a sugar package and poured it into his mouth. “At the very worst, we’ll leave here on a sucrose high.”

  After answering a few questions, Andrew moved straight into a war story about how the project before this one had been messed up and how management couldn’t handle the stress. Daisy only half listened, her mind churning over the news. How many people were going to move upstairs? Where were they going to sit? Would she have to leave her cubicle and where would she go? What if they put her in the middle of the office?

  By the time the stand-up was over, her anxiety had ramped up so high she could barely breathe. She returned to her desk, but couldn’t get into her state of intense flow. The problems seemed harder, her hands were shaking, and even that second cup of coffee wasn’t enough to fuel her brain now that she was stressed about the imminent invasion. This was the exact situation she tried to avoid. Unplanned and uncontrollable. It was why she had Max.

  She pulled out her phone and flicked to a picture of Max on her bed, staring up at her with his adorable fluffy face. Mehar Auntie had offered to look after him during the day while Daisy was at work. A middle school teacher who taught Bollywood dance classes on the weekend, she was happy for the company during her summer vacation.

  Daisy sent a quick text to her aunt to tell her she was going to pick up Max early to take him for a walk on Ocean Beach. He loved to play in the off-leash areas, and the soothing sound of the ocean would help take her stress away. Andrew didn’t care what hours they worked so long as the work got done.

  After letting Josh know she was leaving, she took the elevator down to the bright, modern lobby. Located in the South of Market district, her office was in start-up central with some of the biggest tech companies in the buildings around them.

  Hand wrapped tight around the giant multicolored Marvel tote bag that served as both as a handbag and a dog carrier, she stepped out of the elevator looking forward to a relaxing afternoon. Her moment of anticipatory pleasure was cut short when she saw Liam standing in the lobby, looking like he’d just stepped out of Sons of Anarchy in his worn leather jacket, thick leather boots, and black Destructor T-shirt, a motorcycle helmet in one hand.

  Their eyes met and something shifted inside her, loosening the knot of tension in her chest. Liam had always had that effect on her. No matter how bad her day, the moment Liam had walked in the door with Sanjay, she had felt like she could breathe again.

  “I was just coming up to see you.” He walked over to her, his smile fading as he studied her face. “What’s wrong?”

  Damn. He knew her so well. For the briefest second, she was tempted to share. Liam had always been a good listener, especially when she was upset.

  Steeling herself against the urge, she scowled. “Ten years didn’t last very long.”

  “I wanted to talk to you, and I had a feeling you wouldn’t take my calls.”

  “You were right.” She walked past him, focused on the door where a security guard was posting a sign advertising the vacancy on the second floor. She could do this. Walk away, keep a physical distance between them, because in her current emotional state she didn’t trust herself to get too close.

  Liam followed her into the sunshine. “I just need five minutes.”

  “And I needed a prom date.”

  He jogged ahead of her, blocking her way. “I’m sorry, Daisy. Things happened that I couldn’t control and I was in a bad place that night. What can I do to make it up to you?”

  “Nothing.”

  Liam opened his hands. “If you’d give me a chance . . .”

  “That’s not going to happen.” She dropped her gaze, trying to keep her composure under that intense blue stare.

  His gaze flicked to the door behind her. “I’ve been looking for office space,” Liam mused. “We’re in a temporary location right now. Maybe I could . . .”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “The location is perfect, and it would give us a chance to see more of each other. I could explain, and you could forgive me. And you could invite me to have dinner with you and your dad . . .” He trailed off when she shook her head. “Is he away on a new adventure?” A wry smile slid across his face. “I’ll bet he is.”

  Daisy pressed her lips together and studied her boots. Unlike Liam’s boots, which were worn and faded, hers were polished to a shine with chrome button top rivet details. They made her feel badass while she pounded away on her keyboard. And they were waterproof. Not that she was planning on riding a motorcycle in the rain, but it didn’t hurt to be prepared.

  “I’ll take that as a yes.” She heard, rather than saw the amusement in his voice. “What is it? Volcano boarding in Nicaragua? Downhill mountain biking on Bolivia’s Death Road? Freshwater cave diving in the Yucatan Peninsula?”

  “Jungle expedition in Belize,” she muttered under her breath.

  Liam chuckled. “I’m only surprised you aren’t with him. You two did all sorts of crazy things together.”

  That had been before Liam had disappeared. Before her mother had returned, knocking out the foundations of her carefully ordered life and destroying what little self-esteem she had left.

  “I don’t go with him anymore.” She lifted her gaze and forced her face into a tigh
t smile. “He has a new girlfriend, Priya. She’s the one who gets dragged out on all his adventures now.”

  “How about Sanjay? Is he around?”

  Her heart swelled with pride for her older brother, and she couldn’t help but share. “He’s a doctor now, working with Doctors Without Borders. He goes from one war-torn country to the next. He hasn’t been home for three years, but he stays in touch over Skype when he’s in a city with Internet access.”

  Liam’s face softened. “I always knew he could do great things.”

  “He’ll be happy to know you’re alive,” she said dryly.

  “What about you?” He tipped his head to the side and gave her the puppy dog eyes that once had her giggling and snorting milk through her nose at the dinner table.

  Classic Liam. He could charm his way into anything, and had never been above capitalizing on his wicked allure.

  She gave a half shrug. “I don’t care one way or the other.”

  “And yet here you are talking to me.” He opened his hands in a placatory gesture.

  “I wouldn’t be talking to you if you weren’t in my way.”

  He stepped to the side and gave a gentlemanly bow. “Can I walk with you?”

  “No.” She walked away, conscious of his gaze on her ample behind. Fighting back a smile, she gave a little wiggle. Ten years later, she wasn’t the girl she’d been at eighteen; she was so much more.

  “Dinner?”

  “No.”

  “Jalebi ice cream sandwich?” he called out, referring to one of her favorite childhood treats.

  Her betraying lips quivered at the corners. “No.”

  “How about a snack? French toast crunch? Scooby Snacks? Trix with extra sugar? Pakoras and pretzels? Roast beef on rye with mustard and three thinly sliced pickles with a side of chocolate milk?”

  Laughter bubbled up inside her. He had done this almost every day to guess the after-school snack even though she had always taped the weekly family meal plan to the refrigerator door.