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When a California veterinarian, a Japanese-American tour-guide and the son of a well-known Tokyoite businessman get together to help save the Taiji dolphins, trouble brews in a society where conformity is favored over individuality. Tessa Walker sticks out in Japan’s homogeneous society. Akira Nakano has to tread lightly if she wants to keep her job as a tour guide. And Toshiro Yokoyama needs to find a way to distance himself from his family in order to find himself. As the three join a demonstration to protest the slaughter of dolphins, the wealthy owner of global aquariums is alarmed and is determined to stop them. But Tessa and Akira are resolved to push forward and help protect these cetaceans from brutal slaughter, and Toshiro is determined to help them in order to escape his humdrum life. 

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Read an Excerpt from The American Outsider

Tessa took a slow deep breath, got up off the bathroom floor and made her way to the kitchen. She thought back to that August day a few weeks earlier when she had told her father that she was going to Japan.

“Why Taiji?” her father had asked her when he found out that Tessa was planning to go to Tokyo, Kyoto, Taiji, and Osaka for two weeks in September. 

Tessa was seated on the patio of her parents’ four-bedroom house off of Montana Avenue, an upscale neighborhood in West L.A. She sipped on her lemonade as turmoil brewed inside her. 

“I mean, we have plenty of animal abuse in our own home country,” Jeff shrugged. At seventy-four, he was a successful real-estate broker with a muscular body and a buzz cut. He didn’t like the idea of meddling in other countries’ affairs even though when he served in Vietnam, he followed orders without asking questions. He was eventually discharged due to his symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. Years later, he realized that he was unhappy about some of the decisions his superiors had made. 

Tessa stared at him in disbelief and blurted, “I like dolphins. There are many causes in the world, and I chose this one. It’s not possible to stand up for everything if you want to make a change. But if you chose one thing and see it through, then you have stood up for something.”

Meet Dev Arya & Avni Desai

The bell tinkled again and a pretty young girl in a peach salwar kameez walked in. She went straight to the hottie by the window.

“Dev?” she asked.

“Nisha, I presume?” He smiled up at her.

My breath caught. My God, the man was lethal. Peach salwar looked similarly dazzled. She fumbled for the chair in front of her and sat down like her legs had given out. I didn’t blame her. That smile must have leveled everyone in the vicinity.

Checking that Diana and Sehar had things under control with the drink on the floor fiasco, I walked up to the hottie’s table and held out a menu to the girl.

“Would you both care to order?”

She took the menu and held it out to him. “Would you like to choose first?”

Hottie just looked back at her, his hands folded in front of him. “I’m afraid you’ll have to read it out to me. Unless,” he tilted his perfect profile in my direction. “You have a Braille menu?”

“I’m sorry.” I flushed. “We don’t but I can read the menu out to you if you require?”

“A Braille menu?” Peach Salwar frowned. “Why do we need that?”

My pen froze over my order pad. I darted a cautious look between the two. Hotties lips tightened.

“Your family didn’t tell you?” he asked.

“Tell me what?”

Okay. Peach Salwar was a little dumb. I started to slowly back away.

Hottie pulled his dark glasses off and looked at her. “That I’m blind.”

He had ink dark eyes framed by the most gorgeous thicket of eyelashes. This man’s looks would have made angels weep in heaven.

I wanted to weep. I wasn’t entirely sure why but the tears were filling quite rapidly in my own normal, average looking eyes.

“Blind?” Peach Salwar breathed. “You’re blind.”

If his lips tightened anymore, they would disappear from view completely. All around us, the café was silent. It seemed even the air held its breath.

He slipped the dark glasses on and held up his very snazzy looking cane. “Even if your family didn’t tell you, surely you didn’t miss my accessories?” The bitter note had something twinging in my heart.

“I can’t,” she quavered. “I can’t do this.”

What was this exactly?

“I can’t marry a handicapped person.”

Oh. It was that.

The man didn’t move. All around us, people stared, nobody dared make a noise.

Finally, he nodded. “I understand.”

Wordlessly, Peach Salwar stood up, shoved her chair aside and ran from the café like he was going to keep her there by force.

“Wow,” Diana breathed from behind me. “That was crazier than one of my scripts.”

It had been a really long day. My feet hurt. My head hurt. My heart hurt.

And yet…

I walked up to where he sat all alone staring at the table in front of him. He either heard my footsteps or sensed my presence because without looking up, he said, “I don’t think I’ll be ordering anything. I’m sorry.”

“My tiramisu is exceptional.” I righted the chair Peach Salwar had toppled in her hurry to leave and sat down in it. “Would you like to share one with me? On the house?”

“Feeling sorry for me, are you?” His smile was bitter and seemed to echo the pain in my heart.

“You and me both,” I said, frankly. “I’ve had a bad day too.”

“I doubt whatever happened to you is half as humiliating as this just was.”

“My boyfriend of five years and partner in this café just got engaged to someone else. I found out on Instagram.”

His head whipped up. I knew he couldn’t see and yet, that gaze seemed to look right through me.

“Okay. You win. But I want my own tiramisu. I don’t like to share.”

About the Author:

Shilpa Suraj wears many hats - corporate drone, homemaker, mother to a fabulous toddler and author.

An avid reader with an overactive imagination, Shilpa has weaved stories in her head since she was a child. Her previous stints at Google, in an ad agency and as an entrepreneur provide colour to her present day stories, both fiction and non-fiction.

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A scandal-averse Maharaja.
A free-spirited actress.
What do you get when throw them together and add a fake engagement to the mix?
Depending on whom you ask, you either get a match made-in-heaven or a royal disaster.

Will this be their second chance at love or will their broken past ruin their hope for a shared future? 

Read an Excerpt from The Maharaja’s Fake Fiancée