“They don’t believe me, Mish-Mash!” Vansh pointed at Naina’s face. “This person, she scoffs! We should show her.”

As if on cue, the lights dimmed and the volume of the music rose. The crowd started to move toward the huge dance floor at the far end of the room. Mishka and Vansh looked absurdly delighted and grabbed Naina’s arms, one on each side.

Wait, what?

No! Naina did not dance.

Before she could verbalize her protest, they started dragging her to the dance floor. Fighting them with this particular audience would have been mortifying, so Naina went, like a lamb to the slaughter.

Once on the large circular parquet floor, she threw a look over her shoulder. If the confusion on the faces they’d just left was the frying pan, Vansh and Mishka’s clueless grins were fire.

She disengaged her arms from their holds. “Do you know what I hate more than coming to parties like this dolled up in clothes my mom gets made for me?” Naina hissed at Vansh as Mishka ran off to get them some dandiya sticks.

“I have a feeling you’re about to tell me.” Vansh made his look-at-me-I’m-disinterested face. Beneath all the charm, the scene they’d just left behind seemed to have disturbed something inside him.

“Dancing. I hate dancing.”

“How can you be Punjabi and not like to dance?” He did a Punjabi accent and made an exaggeratedly confused face.

“How can you be Yash’s brother and like to dance?” She made an even more exaggeratedly confused face.

“Touché. Have you noticed that you bring my brother into every conversation with me? I wonder what that’s about.”

She threw a glance at where they’d left the Raje peanut gallery across the room. That should have been explanation enough, but Vansh didn’t seem to be in the mood for subtlety, so she added, “I was with him, Vansh, for ten years. He tends to come up in conversations. Plus, he’s, you know, Yash.”

He studied her, eyes turning unusually guarded. Fortunately the dance floor was starting to pack around them with dancers forming two concentric circles of partners facing each other. The only good part in all this was that there were now several bodies between them and their families, who were no doubt craning their necks to catch a glimpse of what was going on.

“What?” she asked.

“I can’t figure out if that’s hurt hurt, or hurt.”

“Oh, that totally makes sense.”

He smiled. His real smile, not his look-at-my-dimples-and-let-them-distract-you smile. “I mean you and Yash. What exactly happened?”

She flicked a piece of lint off her shoulder. “I’ll forward the link. He explained it pretty well at the press conference, to the entire world.”

Vansh’s thick, perfectly arched brows drew together. Sympathy. A pretty standard reaction. One Naina was only too used to, but from him she hated it.