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“Hmm,” Lakshmi Aunty muttered. “I know what brought that headache. It was that nonsense in the community hall last night, wasn’t it?”

Nandini winced. Great. Here we go again.

That one line was enough to ignite her Grandpa’s fuse.

“Exactly!” he barked, folding the newspaper he had picked up and slamming it down. “That arrogant, disrespectful man! Does he have no manners? Publicly accusing me of being abandoned by my family, like I’m some pitiful old man? What does he know about family?”

Nandini silently tore a piece of paratha, her thoughts drifting elsewhere—somewhere they had no business going. Like Shaurya’s living room. To that moment when his hand cupped her jaw and his lips found hers, fierce and overwhelming. Her chest tightened. Damn it, why couldn’t she forget?

Her grandfather continued, completely unaware of the internal war waging inside her.

“And then he had the nerve to question my parenting!” he growled, buttering his toast so vigorously it looked like the poor slice had personally offended him. “As if he has any right to speak about fatherhood. A man who couldn’t even hold on to his wife!”

Nandini nearly choked on her tea. She forced out a cough, her eyes wide as she tried to recover without visibly combusting.

“I tell you, Nandini, that man is evil. Pure evil. If he weren’t my neighbour, I’d have dragged him to court for defamation by now! Are you even listening to me?”

She blinked. “Huh? Yeah. Shaurya. Evil. Got it.”

He narrowed his eyes at her, suspicious. “You look… off. You sure you are okay?”

She nodded a little too quickly. “Yup. Just... didn’t sleep well.”

Which was the truth. Sleep had been impossible. All night, she’d tossed and turned, her body burning with flashes of his hands on her waist, the press of his body between her thighs, and the wild, breathless sound that had left him in the heat of that kiss. Her brain kept looping the scene over and over like a never-ending reel. And the worst part was the sting of his words afterwards.

She stabbed her fork into her paratha like it was Shaurya Ahuja’s face.

No. She wasn’t going to let this slide. Her grandfather could keep ranting all he liked about how much he hated that man, but what really haunted her wasn’t the fight from last night. It was the kiss. And the fact that it had turned her into a puddle of emotions she couldn’t explain.

God forbid but what would happen if her grandfather ever found out about that kiss?

Just the thought of it made her stomach twist into a dozen knots. The same man who waged verbal wars over falling mango leaves would probably declare a state of emergency if he knew his precious granddaughter had lip-locked with the enemy, right under his very nose. He’d most likely storm over to Shaurya’s villa, his shotgun raised, and demand a full-blown explanation, or worse, a marriage proposal.

Nandini nearly dropped her spoon into her tea at the thought. Nope. That couldn’t happen. That kiss had to remain locked away in the vault of things that never happened. Even if her treacherous brain refused to stop replaying it.

Nandini’s phone buzzed on the breakfast table just as she was about to dip the last morsel of her paratha into the curd. She wiped her fingers quickly, checking the screen. Her brows lifted in surprise.

The call was from her parents in London.

She glanced at the time. That was odd. They usually didn’t call at this hour. It wasn’t even morning yet back there.

“Hello?” she answered.

“Happy New Year, sweetheart!” her mother, Nivedita Raichand’s warm voice filled her ears, followed by her father, Ritesh Raichand’s slightly more distracted tone, as if he were still half-dressed in his business suit. “Happy New Year, Nandu.”

“Happy New Year to you too,” Nandini replied, her eyes flicking toward her grandpa, who was mid-rant about something Shaurya-related. “You’re up early?”

She switched the call to speaker so Grandpa could listen in.

“We just returned from a client’s New Year party,” her mother explained. “We’ll be heading to bed soon. But we wanted to wish our only daughter first.”

A slow smile curved Nandini’s lips, despite the heaviness in her chest. “That’s sweet.”

And then came the inevitable.

“So,” her father continued, slipping into that businessman mode she’d known since childhood, “any thoughts on restarting your skincare business? I’ve been asking, Nandu. How long are you going to hole up in that house with Papa?”

Her smile faded.