“Vansh!” She stopped in the middle of the corridor and he almost ran into her. “How can you show up at a meeting without a plan? And need I remind you, you’re trying to steal my funding. What makes you think I’m going to help you come up with a plan? I’m not going to help you steal from me.”

“That word is really ugly, you know that? Really, really ugly.”

She wanted to punch him. “What you’re doing is ugly.”

“Trying to solve—”

“If you say the words solve homelessness in my place of work, I will throw you out.”

He grinned. Of all things.

“I’m immune to those dimples. Put them away.”

He leaned into her, grinning even more widely, knowing exactly how to make the deep, deep dents sink into his cheeks over his smoothly shaven jaw.

“I have dimples?” he asked, and she’d be damned if he didn’t do a very masculine version of batting his eyelashes at her, bountiful as they were. “I hadn’t noticed. And I do know what my project is. I’m a little light on the details. You’ve done this fundraising thing for so long there’s no one who’s better at details than you are. I saw one of your proposals in Sripore. Incredible stuff. I was hoping that you’d help me.”

What kind of person went to the person they were stealing from to ask how to steal from them? “You want me to help with the details?”

He blinked his pretty eyes at her again. Which part of immune was hard to get through his thick head?

“You do realize that what we do in this office is figure out how to build facilities that provide basic lifesaving healthcare to women with no access to any across two hundred villages serving seven hundred thousand women. Then we make sure that they are sustained on the money they generate so we no longer have to fund them. Then we plan to replicate that success in another two hundred villages and then another two hundred. And even with this funding, that’s ambitious. If you take any part of our money it will essentially mean us having to start from scratch and figure everything out again.”

He was watching her like he’d never seen her before. “You are one impressive woman, Knightlina.”

“If you call me that again, I will dismember you.”

He laughed out loud. A deep belly laugh that was just so . . . what was the word for it? Happy. She had to suppress a smile, and that made her frown.

She started walking toward her suite again.

He followed again.

Naina raised a hand when Mariel started to say something as they walked in.

It was going to be hard to live it down with her team, but she shut the door after Vansh followed her into her office.