She wasn’t looking at him there!
She grabbed her phone and toggled through her recorded messages until she found the one she needed. “Hi, Jia,” came her own cheerful voice. “I guess you had a good night and you’re battling some physical attraction to this man. So I’m going to say this as nicely as I can: make like a fourteen-year-old, and get home and get in a cold shower.”
Jia took a deep breath. Yes. Very good advice from her to her.
“What are you waiting for? Girl, go. Go!”
She threw her car into drive and went.
Chapter Eleven
“KAKA,I’Mfine.”
Dev removed his hand from his niece’s forehead and tried not to give in to the urge to roll her in bubble wrap and place her in her bed.
When he’d come home on Friday, she’d been bundled under her covers, moaning from a stomach ache and burning up. Dev didn’t have much experience with illness. He’d shoved his panic down and helped her sit up and drink liquids. After she’d fallen asleep, he’d sat outside her door and dozed.
She’d seemed better the next morning, her usual quiet self, but he’d taken her to a doctor anyway over her protests, and the woman had assured him Luna was fine. Though his niece had made it through the weekend pink cheeked and healthy, he didn’t love the thought of her going to school today.
“Let me check your temperature one more time.” He opened the kitchen drawer next to the fridge and pulled out their first-aid kit.
Luna rolled her eyes. “Do you keep one of those in every room?”
Since she’d come to live with him, yes. Never had Dev felt the sting of mortality so keenly as he did now that he had to care for a young child. “Come here.”
Dutifully, she lifted her face. He scanned her forehead and nodded at the temperature readout. “Very well. You don’t feel any symptoms of a cold or flu?”
“Nope.”
“You could stay home for one day—”
“Please, no. I’ll be that weird girl who started school and then left right away.”
She was responding to his English in Hindi, which eased his concern a little. If she was well enough to mentally translate languages, hopefully her illness truly had been a quick bug. “Are you hungry?”
“Where’s Adil Uncle?”
“I heard him late last night, binging a new season of some makeover show. I imagine he’s sleeping in today.”
Her smile was faint. “I’m not hungry.”
“How about a smoothie?” Starve a fever, feed a cold, right? Or was it the other way around? His mother used to stuff them with food no matter what they felt like. Food and turmeric milk.
“A smoothie would be nice. What are you eating?”
“I already ate.” His trainer had recommended disgusting protein shakes for breakfast, but Dev didn’t want to tell Luna that or drink them in front of her. He might be beholden to the industry, but the last thing he wanted to do was impose the world’s body image conventions on her.
He quickly pulled out the frozen fruit before she changed her mind. The chair squeaked on the tile as she settled at the counter.
“Don’t you have to film today?” she asked.
“No, I’m not needed on set. I’ll drop you off at school and then get some work done.” His agent had sent over a few more scripts. He was tied to this production for a season, but if it or he didn’t get renewed, he needed a plan B.
“Do you like it?”
“Like what?” He added a little water to the blender and set it in place.
She waited until the blending had stopped to continue. “The role?”
