The Reluctant Matchmaker Read Online Free

same age group as Nayak—men who had ended up working for him instead of competing against him.
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    And I didn’t know of a single businessman who hadn’t made a few enemies along the path to success.
    It was only natural for a woman like me, who weighed not an ounce over eighty-five pounds in my heaviest wool suit, to feel a bit anxious about meeting a big and powerful man. But I was ready. In fact, I told myself, I was looking forward to the meeting.
    The elevator doors opened. I forged ahead, my thoughts entirely occupied with what I was going to say in the meeting and how I would handle tough questions.
    In the next instant I collided with something that could have been the front end of a truck. Before I knew what hit me, my feet slid out from under me.

Chapter 3
    I went down with a sickening thud. The breath left my lungs for a second. Agony ripped through my foot. “Ow!” I knew for sure that I’d broken it.
    God knows how long I lay there. It felt like a lifetime, while I heard shocked gasps and people talking all at once, footsteps hurrying from various directions, making the floor beneath me vibrate. Someone said something about the police ... ambulance. . . doctor. I was too stunned to pay close attention.
    I heard a deep, male voice yell, “Can someone call nine-one-one?”
    A female voice answered. “I called Dr. Murjani’s office on the first floor. The doctor’s on his way right now.”
    â€œGood thinking,” said the male voice.
    Suddenly a man’s face appeared above mine. The darkest, most penetrating eyes I’d ever seen peered down at me. His nose was huge, dense eyebrows drawn in a V right above it. The expression looked almost ferocious.
    â€œI’m sorry, Miss Shenoy,” the man said. It was the same deep voice I’d heard a moment ago. “Are you all right?”
    I wasn’t all right, but I blinked at the stranger, the pain and shock rendering me speechless.
    â€œIt was all my fault,” he said.
    â€œIt wasn’t all your fault, Prajay,” said Paul’s voice from somewhere nearby. “Meena kept marching forward without looking.”
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    Thanks a lot for the support, Paul. I grimaced, trying not to dwell on the pain radiating from my foot. So this was Prajay Nayak, the guy I was supposed to meet in a formal conference room, with a professional handshake.
    I met him all right. In a collision.
    â€œNo, it is mostly my fault,” insisted Nayak. “I was rushing down the hall, and the elevator opened suddenly. I couldn’t stop in time.”
    I was afraid to move my head, but I could see a bunch of people gathered around me. I knew my legs were completely exposed—nearly all the way to my crotch. My position was only a notch above lying on an examination table at the gynecologist’s office—with my feet in stirrups.
    Tears began to sting my eyes, and my lips started quivering. I bit my lower lip, but I couldn’t stop it from trembling. The pain in my foot was turning to agony, and the humiliation of falling on my behind in front of the CEO and every other executive and a couple dozen others was even worse. I wished I’d pass out so I wouldn’t have to see and know what was happening to me.
    The elevator doors behind my head whooshed open, and a man demanded, “Where’s the patient?”
    The doctor had arrived. Some in my riveted audience moved aside to make way for him. I’d seen Dr. Murjani in passing, since his office was located in the building. Nayak’s face was replaced by the doctor’s familiar, middle-aged one with its cocoa-brown skin, gold-rimmed glasses, and thinning gray hair.
    He squatted beside me and placed a bag on the floor. “So, young lady, you fell on the floor?”
    â€œUh-huh,” I whispered. Wasn’t that as obvious as the mole on his cheek? Why else would anyone in his or her right mind be sprawled over the floor of