“Fine.” He stretched the word out with all the petulance he could muster, but she saw through him too, saw how he did this, made things okay for her. She wanted to hate it, but she found herself suppressing a smile again, because his eyes were teasing again. “I won’t bring it up. But, just so you know, you are really good at sucking the fun out of things, Knightlina!”

Chapter Seventeen

Vansh slipped the box of muli parathas J-Auntie had made for Hari into his backpack. As Vansh had predicted, Hari was doing better now that he had something solid to work on. Vansh loved being right. At first Naina had been skeptical about Hari’s being up to the task. But she was slowly but surely coming on board.

There were currently two thousand tech companies in Silicon Valley. In the past week, Naina and Vansh had made contact with at least half of them. Naina may not have been entirely convinced that the app was going to generate the kind of interest and results Vansh believed it would, but she’d been willing to examine, albeit grudgingly, whether they were onto something.

Their strength would lie in which companies signed on. The tech industry was about reputation, and these days reputations for social consciousness were precious currency. Naina hadn’t been able to argue with that. Truth be told, she’d been kind of impressed with him for it. As she should be.

Vansh needed to find a PR platform that would make the app attractive to the giants. Something splashy that got the media excited, went viral.

They were presenting the app concept to Jiggy today. Vansh shot a text to the team telling them he was bringing breakfast.

Yay, boiled eggs? Naina texted. Funny.

Before he could respond, Nisha walked into their parents’ kitchen, Ram fast asleep in his baby carrier.

Vansh squatted in front of the love of his life, his perfect nephew, and reached for him. Nisha smacked his hand. “Don’t you dare wake him up. If you wake him you take him.”

Vansh scooped him up, and his guy, who smelled like vernal spring buds and milk, nuzzled into him. “Don’t tempt me. I’ll cancel work and take him, and a boy and his favorite uncle can paint the town red.”

Nisha pretended to dab Ram’s perfectly undrooly mouth with a washcloth. “So, this work thing . . . it’s been a few weeks, right? Is it . . . um . . . are you seriously working with Naina?”

Vansh threw her a look. He didn’t like her tone. “She doesn’t think I’m working seriously enough.”

Nisha frowned, maybe because he’d sounded far more fond than he’d meant to. “Did you want me to find you something to do in Yash’s administration? If you’re, you know, looking for work.”