“How on earth did China manage to bag Frederico Silva anyway?” Yash said with entirely uncharacteristic gushiness. “And is that Zia Malik? No way!” Yash being a fan was hilarious.

Ashna refused to make anything of the huge relief that had washed over her when Rico’s friend had walked into the studio. The fear that he might have no one visiting him today had been unwarranted and she felt silly for letting it worry her.

“How are things on the campaign trail? The polls are looking good.”

He let her ungainly change of topic go. “I’m doing fairly well in Northern California. San Diego is going well too. I might crack Orange County, crazily enough, and Death Valley, but LA is kicking my butt. They love Cruz.”

Yash’s closest opponent, Davis Cruz, was a popular actor and was selling himself as the next Schwarzenegger, if not Reagan. Cruz had ramped up his Latino outreach on one hand while slamming away at Yash’s being an “outsider” and West Coast elite.

Yash was still beating him in the polls, but the California primary was coming up in two months and the gap was too close for comfort and had to be widened.

“You’ve been there every week. You’ll turn them around.”

Nisha and Mina Kaki walked over with a photographer and they took some family pictures. Mishka, Nisha’s nine-year-old, was too busy being starstruck by Danny El to come spend time with her family and it made Ashna smile. Speaking of being starstruck, Ashna’s eyes wouldn’t stop seeking out the baby-carrying Rico. She caught him watching Yash as Yash shook hands with the crew, and the strangest excitement brightened his face.

“Enjoying the view?” Nisha asked.

Seriously, Ashna was going to scream the next time someone said that.

Chapter Nineteen

Of course, Rico knew that Yash and Ashna were cousins, but still, seeing them together was strange. Most people’s body language was different when they were around people they were close to, but Ashna took that to a whole new level. She was one person when she was around strangers and an entirely different person when she was with those she let in. There was a naked vulnerability to her with those she was close to. Until this moment he hadn’t realized quite how much he had missed that degree of connection.

When China announced that their families would be visiting the set today, Ashna had looked like she’d been shot. It had made Rico search the room for her father, the last person on earth he ever wanted to see. He forced himself not to relive his meeting with the man, or the fact that Ashna had sided with him. Fortunately, it seemed that he had decided not to visit his daughter today.