The First Kitchen Test

"The first meal a new bride cooks in her husband's house decides the next fifty years of the marriage," Dadi Sa announced at breakfast, sliding a printed recipe card across the table toward me like it was a legal summons. "Suji halwa. Simple. Auspicious. Don't embarrass us."

I stared at the card. I can drape a saree in six different styles, I can draft a lehenga pattern from memory, I can haggle a fabric vendor down to half his price in under two minutes.

I cannot cook. At all.

Veer, sitting across from me with his architect's coffee and his infuriatingly perfect morning hair, looked up from his phone. "Dadi, Aaradhya has a job interview today. At Rathore Textiles. Design department. Remember? I told you last night."

"You told me she was thinking about it," Dadi Sa corrected. "Thinking is not doing. Cooking is doing. Halwa first. Interview second."

Aditya didn't look up from his newspaper. "Let the girl breathe, Dadi."

"She's not a girl, she's a wife," Dadi Sa said, crisp. "And wives in this house know how to feed their husbands."

Veer opened his mouth. Closed it. Looked at me, a question in his eyes — want me to fight this?

I shook my head, tiny. I could handle burnt sugar. I'd handled an accidental husband for five days. Halwa was easier.

"I'll do it," I said. "After breakfast."

Dadi Sa nodded, satisfied. "Good. The whole family will taste it. For blessings."

Veer choked on his coffee.

---

Three hours, two smoke alarms, and one small kitchen fire later, the halwa looked… brown. Very brown. The kind of brown that usually means you should call a priest, not serve it to one.

Sunita didi, the cook, hovered in the doorway, torn between horror and pity. "Memsaab… maybe I just… fix it a little?"

"No," I said, stubborn, scraping the blackened bottom of the pan with a spatula that was now also black. "Dadi said I have to cook it. So I'm cooking it."

"It is cooked, memsaab," Sunita didi said gently. "It is… very cooked."

The kitchen door swung open. Veer, in a soft grey shirt with his sleeves rolled up, stopped dead at the smell.

"Wow," he said. "Did something die in here?"

"Out," I snapped, waving smoke away from my face. My eyes were watering. My hair smelled like burnt ghee. "This is a sacred bridal ritual. No husbands allowed."

"Husbands plural? How many do you have? I thought I was the only one."

"Veer."

He grinned, then stepped fully into the smoke, completely ignoring my glare. "Move," he said, nudging me aside with his hip. "You're going to set off the sprinklers and flood my blueprints. Again."

"Again? That was one time, and your blueprints were on the dining table —"

He was already at the stove, turning the flame down, scraping the one salvageable corner of halwa into a clean steel bowl. "Taste," he ordered, holding out a spoon.

I tasted. Immediately regretted every life choice that had led me to this kitchen.

"Oh my god," I whispered. "It tastes like regret and charcoal."

"It tastes… earthy," he lied, completely straight-faced. "Rustic. Artisanal. Very Jaipur boutique."

I laughed despite myself, a real, startled laugh that surprised both of us. He froze for half a second, spoon still in his hand, looking at me like he'd never heard that sound before.

"What?" I said, self-conscious.

"Nothing," he said quickly. "You just — you never laugh. At me. Usually you're threatening to murder me with a sketching pencil."

"Still considering it."

"Noted." He scooped the burnt halwa into a proper serving bowl, garnished it with a handful of almonds like that would help, and handed it to me. "Come on, Mrs. Rathore. Let's go poison the family together."

"Don't call me that."

"Sorry. Force of habit. I've been calling my brother's ex-fiancée 'Mrs. Rathore' in my head for months and now the universe is just messing with me."

---

The whole family was waiting in the dining room. Dadi Sa at the head, Aditya to her right with his laptop open — working through a family ritual, classic — and two aunties I vaguely recognized from the wedding, whispering behind their tea cups.

I set the bowl down with all the confidence of a woman walking to her execution.

"Pehli rasoi," Dadi Sa announced. "Blessings for the new bride."

Sunita didi served everyone a small portion. The halwa was… visually committed. Dark brown, slightly smoking, almonds sliding sadly off the top.

Aditya took one bite. Paused. Set his spoon down with surgical precision. Said nothing. Which was, somehow, worse than saying something.

The aunties exchanged a look.

Veer picked up his spoon.

"Wait," I whispered, kicking him under the table. "Don't. You'll actually die."

He ignored me completely. Took a massive bite. Chewed. Swallowed. Smiled — a big, easy, devastating smile aimed straight at Dadi Sa.

"Best halwa in Jaipur," he declared, loud enough for the staff in the kitchen to hear. "Seriously. Dadi, can we get the recipe framed? I want to eat this every morning for the rest of my life."

The aunties blinked. Dadi Sa's stern mouth twitched.

"Really?" one aunty asked, suspicious, poking at her own portion.

"Really," Veer said, and took another huge bite, holding eye contact with me across the table the entire time. "My wife is a genius."

My wife.

He said it so casually, so easily, like it was true and not a six-month contract with an end date circled in red on both our calendars.

My face went hot. I stared down at my own untouched bowl, heart hammering against my ribs for absolutely no reason.

Aditya cleared his throat. "Veer. My office. Ten minutes. The Mehra Boutique merger files."

"Can't. Busy dying of halwa-induced happiness," Veer said, not looking away from me.

"Veer."

"Fine." He stood, finally, and ruffled my hair as he passed — quick, brotherly, completely inappropriate for a fake husband to do to his fake wife in front of his real family. "Save me leftovers, jaan."

He was out the door before I could murder him.

Jaan. He did NOT just call me jaan.

Dadi Sa watched the whole thing, saying nothing, missing nothing.

The front doorbell rang.

Sunita didi hurried back in, flustered. "Dadi Sa, Naina Kapoor ji is here. She says Mr. Aditya called her in for the merger PR."

Aditya stood smoothly, closing his laptop. "Send her in."

The woman who walked into the dining room looked like she'd stepped out of a fashion magazine — sharp black blazer, sharper heels, sharper smile. Late twenties, confident, expensive. She kissed Dadi Sa's cheek, hugged Aditya — a little too long, a little too familiar — and then turned her perfectly lined eyes on me.

"And you must be the new Mrs. Rathore," she said, smile not reaching her eyes. "I'm Naina. Naina Kapoor. Head of PR, Rathore Textiles. And Aditya's — well. We go way back."

She held out a manicured hand. I took it, halwa spoon still in my other fist, burnt sugar under my fingernails, hair smelling like smoke.

"Nice to meet you," I said.

Her gaze flicked down to my mangalsutra — thin, gold, Veer's — then back up to my face. Something cold and assessing slid behind her smile.

"Likewise," she said sweetly. "Aditya's told me so much about you."

Aditya hadn't told anyone anything about me. We'd barely spoken three sentences since the wedding.

Before I could answer, Veer walked back in, tie half-knotted, late for his meeting. He stopped dead when he saw Naina.

"Naina?" he said, surprised. "What are you doing here? I thought you left for Mumbai last year."

"Aditya called me back," she said, eyes still locked on me. "For the merger. Someone needs to manage the narrative around the new Mrs. Rathore, after all. Wouldn't want any… confusion about which brother she belongs to."

The room went silent.

Veer's jaw tightened. "Careful."

Naina laughed, light. "Relax, Veer. Just a joke."

It wasn't a joke.

I set my spoon down with a soft clink. "I'm Aaradhya," I said clearly. "Veer's wife. Nice to meet you, Naina ji."

The ji landed exactly how I meant it to — polite, distant, territorial in a way I had absolutely no right to be.

Naina's smile sharpened to a point. "Oh, I'm sure we'll be seeing a lot of each other."

Yeah. I was sure we would too.

Behind me, Aditya watched the whole exchange without saying a word, his expression completely unreadable.

Veer caught my eye across the table and mouthed, you okay?

I nodded once, fingers curling tight around my mangalsutra — his mangalsutra — suddenly very aware of exactly whose name I was wearing around my neck.

Who was she?

And why did she look at my husband like he belonged to her?

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