“Okay, so maybe there is another option,” he said. “We can work something out. I can’t very well walk away from his offer.” He threw a pointed look at her painfully pink office with its pink striped wallpaper and the dramatic, also pink, local artists’ canvases. “The man literally has a Ferris wheel on the ground floor. Have you seen that?”

“Yes, Vansh, it’s a giant Ferris wheel. It’s a little hard to miss.”

“Have you been on it, BTW?” He used letters instead of saying “by the way” like normal adults.

“Do you need me to answer that question?”

“I don’t know, you’re pretty badass. I can picture you slow-blinking and filing your nails on Space Mountain.”

“Hah. That shows how well you know me. I would never file my nails in a public place.” She extracted her laptop from her handbag and hooked it into her docking station.

“It’s a figure of speech. Admit it, you’re entirely unaffected by roller coasters.”

How wrong he was. “I’m busy, Vansh. So if there’s nothing else . . .” Sounding firm while settling into her glittery pink chair was hard, but she did it.

He strolled over and leaned a denim-clad hip into her desk as though he were planning on going nowhere. “What’s that face? What did I say? Oh!”

“What?”

“You’ve never been on a roller coaster.”

“My family wasn’t exactly the amusement-park-visiting demographic.” Her mother had asked to go once, but her father had deemed it frivolous. They’d gone to Yellowstone instead. Which was gorgeous, so she didn’t care that she’d never been on a damned roller coaster.

“Not even Six Flags in Vallejo?”

She shrugged. When her father had refused to take them to Disneyland when Mummy asked, Naina had decided the joke was on him because it wasn’t somewhere she wanted to go anyway.

“It just isn’t something I’ve ever been interested in.”

He opened his mouth and shut it. He’d probably just been about to tell her that his family had always had an annual pass to both Six Flags and Disneyland. Yash had asked her innumerable times to go when they were kids. Mina Auntie used to make him take Vansh actually, and Yash had always wanted the company. But Naina simply refused to ask her parents to let her go.

After the briefest knock, Mariel popped her head into Naina’s office. “Mr. Mehta’s here to see you.” She said the words in a professional tone but widened her eyes at Naina, as if to say, What is going on with you today? This was not on the calendar.

Didn’t Naina know it! She never deviated from her calendar. This was an important week. Her focus was on getting the interviews for the medical staff scheduled. Completely unexpectedly, they had almost fifty applications.