“Vansh, I’m not doing this with you right now. All I need from you is for you to call Mehta and tell him that you are not interested.” Surely he couldn’t be arrogant enough to think she’d let him get away with anything else.

“I can’t do that. Aren’t you at least going to ask me why I’m still in bed?”

“Do you ever get out of bed before noon?”

“I’m not dignifying that with an answer. But I was checking Hari into a hotel—”

“Your sex life is none of my concern and it only makes things worse.”

“Wow, you really have no respect for me, do you? You’re right, my sex life is not your concern. If it were, you’d know it never makes anything worse.” Of course he had to grin at that. “Hari is one of the guys who worked on Yash’s campaign, and I was checking him into a hotel.”

“What? Are you talking about Yash’s statistics guy? Why were you checking him into a hotel?” Had she missed that Vansh was gay?

“You’re totally trying to figure out my sexuality right now, aren’t you? Naina, Naina, Naina. Well, you can continue to objectify me freely. I am fairly certain I’m heterosexual.”

She would not groan again. “Shut up. What were you doing with Yash’s statistics guy?”

“Ah. So now you’re interested.”

“No, I’m really not.” She had less than zero interest in anything to do with Yash’s campaign. “But if it will get you to the point where you call Jiggy and refuse his offer because you don’t need it faster, then let’s get on with it.”

He was sitting up now and getting out of bed, and she really wished he would put on some damn clothes, because he’d propped the phone on his nightstand and she could now see all the way down to his low-slung pajamas. Which were red with white polka dots. And the muscle-cuts-on-muscle-cuts situation was not restricted to the upper half of his torso.

“Vansh!”

He turned to the phone. And it was like one of those DaVinci Vitruvian Man animations of muscles in motion.

“Naina! I am not going to refuse the funding, because you just gave me an idea. Thank you!”

The urge to sink her face into her hands warred with the urge to shake him. “I’m shuddering here.”

“Dirty girl, you’re making me feel naked.” Since when was it okay for him to talk to her as though she were one of his revolving-door girlfriends?

“You are naked, but I’m shuddering in fear of your idea.”