He turned around. Nisha looked as determined as a tornado ready to lift up a house in Kansas and toss it across a rainbow. If she went anywhere near Naina with that unleashed determination, she would devastate Naina and any chance he might have of convincing her that they might have something. That realization was enough to calm him the fuck down.

The shrug he gave his sister was bored, almost lazy. “Really? How did I miss that? Does anyone else know?”

“Stop being a brat.”

“Stop being a bully.”

“Caring about my little brother does not count as being a bully.”

“Your brother is not little anymore, if you haven’t noticed. I have no earthly idea what you’re insinuating. Naina is someone I’ve known—we’ve known—our entire damned lives. She’s family. She’s always been there for us. She’s the only one who helped me when I was struggling with school and you all ignored it.”

Nisha looked horrified.

“I understand why you did it. I’m not blaming you for it. She sat by Yash’s bed the entire time he was recovering from the accident. You might have dropped her like a hot brick because you blame her for something our brother is just as guilty of. I, however, happen to believe that she and Yash were both being idiots and never meant to harm anyone. She’s also a colleague. One who shares my love for the work we do.”

“And there’s nothing more.”

“What the hell, Nisha! When did you turn into such a nosy auntie? There’s this new thing going around: men and women working together, being friends. It’s also, you know, the twenty-first fucking century!”

She narrowed her eyes. “Oh, so you’re just colleagues. Friends.”

He narrowed his eyes back at her but didn’t dignify that with an answer and started walking again.

“Well, good, then you can act like that when we’re at dinner.”

“What does that mean?”

She shrugged.

“Actually, I don’t want to know. You’re acting like someone I don’t know at all.” He ran up the stairs and she followed him back into Yash’s apartment, where Naina was studiedly chugging red wine to avoid the silence in the room.

Trisha and Ashna were doing the same. All his life he’d been proud of how empathetic and unjudgmental his family was. Even Ma and HRH, for all their Bollywood-star-meets-royal-prince vibe, worked hard to be open-minded and fair. They’d never had patience for bigoted or patriarchal behavior, HRH’s attitude toward his youngest son’s shortcomings notwithstanding.