Patra's newest assignment brings her back to a man she never expected to see twice — Ashish, the rough, uncomplicated one-off from Osaka, now running IT for the client account she's just been handed in Chandigarh. Professional distance lasts about a day. What follows is a locked office door, an akhara pit full of local wrestlers all volunteering to coach the visiting foreigner, and an evening at Sukhna Lake that turns into the one thing Ashish has apparently been carrying since the day they met.

Chandigarh is Le Corbusier's planned city — clean concrete grids, and the Open Hand Monument turning slowly in the wind, built to symbolize the hand that gives and the hand that takes. Patra came for a work trip. She leaves with a proposal she didn't see coming, an answer she's still not sure she means, and a man who tells her, at the gate, that he isn't going anywhere.

Sukhna Lake is real, the Capitol Complex is real, and every street market, hotel, and akhara in this book is one you could actually visit. Layover in Paradise is an explicit, standalone travel-romance series — read in any order, or from the beginning with Book One: Bangkok.