Naina was the only other person with a glass, and she chugged her wine and held it out for a fill.

“Hey, everyone,” Rico said as though getting caught with his hands and his tongue all over his girlfriend with a large majority of her family watching was the most ordinary of things. This perfectly described Rico Silva.

Ashna was their cousin, but Vansh didn’t ever remember thinking of her as anything but his sister. After Ashna’s parents’ separation, she’d pretty much grown up here, on Vansh’s parents’ estate in Woodside. Sometimes Vansh thought Ashna was more one of the siblings than he was.

Face flaming red, Ashna snatched the glass from Vansh and took a mighty gulp. “Where’s Trisha?” she asked calmly enough.

Vansh’s other sister, Trisha, was the only one who was missing from the now crowded alcove. All eyes turned to the corner, as though everyone expected Trisha and her boyfriend, DJ, to appear.

“I’m calling her,” Nisha said. “She’s probably running around trying to find us to keep the aunties and uncles from cornering her and DJ and asking when they’re getting married and making babies.”

A phone started ringing and they all looked down at their pockets and purses. Then everyone seemed to register that the ringing was coming from inside the pool house. Just as that realization sank in, the door pushed open and out stepped Trisha and DJ.

Trisha had obviously been unable to pat down her always-wild hair after whatever DJ and she had been doing in there. Next to her DJ looked as cool as any man trying his damnedest to appear cool could. He took the glass of scotch that was circulating around the crowd and drained it.

“Macallan eighteen has a tad bit too much smoke, if you ask me,” DJ declared in his British-chef voice. He was one of those chefs who probably thought about flavors and hints of this and that in his sleep. Also, it was evidently what he fell back on when caught in a compromising situation with his girlfriend by her zero-boundaries family.

“So you’ve all been defiling the pool house all these years and no one bothered to tell me.” Vansh filled the glass up again, and yes, he sounded sulky as hell at being left out. Vansh was a good five years younger than Ashna, who was the closest to him in age. Between the age gap and the fact that he had gone off to boarding school in India at sixteen, he should have been used to the feeling by now.

“Eeew,” all his sisters said at once.

Nisha took the glass out of Vansh’s hand again. “It’s a good thing we let you drink when you’re underage.”

He was twenty-six and they all knew it.