Chapter 3 - The Prince's Pawn

Trying not to blush at work

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Aria

Given the parade of good-looking men I’d had to walk past to get to the conference room, I was fully prepared for the clients to be equally attractive and had already steeled myself against any temptation to stare.

I was an adult after all. A professional. And I was here to work. But what came through that door overcame every defense I had in place and, for the first time since high school, I found myself blushing.

At the sound of the doorknob rattling, Dave, Arjun, and I had all put our phones away and popped to our feet. In walked two men, the first wearing a navy suit and tie, followed closely by the second, wearing the shirt-dress, head-scarf combo. Broad shouldered and confident, they both strutted into the room looking like they’d just finished kicking someone’s ass.

Immediately, both of them looked at me.

Face burning, I dropped my eyes, actually relieved I wasn’t expected to talk.

“You must be Khalid,” Dave said, stepping forward with his hand extended to the one in the shirt-dress.

“Guilty as charged,” the man said, flashing a bright smile and shaking Dave’s hand firmly enough that I swear I saw him flinch.

I guessed Khalid was the CEO, the one Dave had been directly corresponding with. I made a note to find out his last name so I could google him, because I definitely wanted to learn more about this guy.

Bearded with caramel-colored skin, Khalid was absolutely gorgeous. Dark brown eyes were framed by thick, perfectly sculpted eyebrows and his smile lit up his whole face. The lines of his beard were sharp, a seamless coating of black clipped close to his jaw. He couldn’t be further from the stereotype of the stern, humorless Arab. I found myself letting my eyes drift over to the other man just for a break from the perfection.

Of course, he was fabulous-looking too, but with the borderline scowl on his face, he was less intoxicating. His skin was slightly lighter and he wore a sharply trimmed goatee instead of a full beard. His eyes were hazel, as well, shining out from across the room.  

Mixed maybe? I wondered.

Both of them would have been right at home in any GQ photoshoot, and they smelled like testosterone and Gucci.

Definitely not like the dude-bros I worked with, who smelled like corn chips and Red Bull on a permanent basis.

“And is this your CTO?” Dave asked, nodding toward the man in the suit.

“No, this is Callum Abassi. He’ll just be observing today,” said Khalid, evading the question.

Callum nodded a greeting, folding his hands in front of him.

Dave didn’t seem to notice that Khalid didn’t say what Callum’s role here was. Nor did he notice how his suit jacket was a little on the baggy side, far from the slim cut that was most popular these days. But I did.

Packing heat, Callum?

“Allow me to introduce my team.” Dave cheerfully gestured toward me and Arjun. “This is Arjun Kumar, our sales engineer.”

Arjun nodded and stepped forward, holding his hand out. “Nice to meet you, Mr….?” he trailed off expectantly.

“Oh, just Khalid,” he said, shaking his hand with a smile.

I felt my lips purse and had to stop myself from audibly inhaling. Just Khalid? Arabs generally didn’t go by first names, and here he was actively declining to give his family name. That, in combination with Callum obviously being a bodyguard, left me with one inescapable conclusion.

Holy shit, this guy is a prince.

“And this is Aria Summers, who is also just here to observe.”

Hearing my name, I snapped back to reality and plastered a smile on my face, giving a polite nod with the full expectation of being ignored.

But then he stepped toward me, just like he had with Arjun… and held his hand out for me to shake.

“Nice to meet you,” he said, his eyes finding mine.

 My stomach dropped and I fought my face to keep from looking horrified. Muslims weren’t supposed to touch unrelated women. That was the whole thing with the abayas, right?

A look flickered on his face as he noticed my hesitation, and I shot my hand out to shake before it got too weird. I clasped his hand as lightly as I could, bracing myself as my skin touched his.

The warmth of his hand brought with it a mild wave of knowledge, a flash of his mood, and a confirmation that I’d been right.

Yes, he most certainly was a prince. Khalid bin Abdulaziz, the youngest son of the last king and nephew to the current one.

He was also the owner of this company, not just the CEO. And he was worried about something. I could feel it pulsing through him, even as he smiled at me.

“Nice to meet you too… Just Khalid,” I raised an eyebrow, giving him my most knowing smile.

“It’s casual Friday,” he whispered back, his eyes taking on a congratulatory expression. As if to say, very good, you figured it out.

My face lit up with heat before I could stop it and I looked down, battling for my dignity.

The change in my complexion didn’t go unnoticed and Khalid’s smile took on a mischievous note—almost as if he were winking at me.

“I hope your flight over here was comfortable,” he said, turning back to Dave and gesturing for us all to sit at the conference table.

I was sweating, despite the air conditioner being on full blast, and I sat down a few seats away from everyone else, glad I wouldn’t need to talk anymore. Since apparently I had regressed into a flustered middle schooler.

At least touching the real-life handsome prince hadn’t gone wrong. I tried to avoid handshakes. I could never be sure what I would absorb from people. Most of the time I felt their general emotional state, like I did with the prince. But sometimes it was so much worse.

Depending on the person, I might get a full-on play-by-play of whatever they were thinking about. Seeing someone else’s thoughts or memories wasn’t a positive sensation, even if they were thinking about something happy.

I was the one violating their privacy, yet it was me who felt like I was being forcibly penetrated by someone else’s mind. That was the worst part of it.

It was enough to keep me from wanting to touch anyone for longer than a few seconds and—no surprise—had killed off any prospect of a dating life.

The conference table was long enough to accommodate probably fifty people and Arjun stood at the head, firing up the screen while Dave and Khalid made small talk about soccer.

After a few minutes, my face went back to a normal color, thank God. But I was still uneasy with the Callum guy standing behind me. Obviously, the gun he carried was to protect his boss rather than to harm me, but I didn’t like knowing it was there.

“Aria?”

Arjun’s voice jolted me back.

“Sorry, what?” I asked, looking from Dave to Arjun, horrified that I’d drifted off.

They were all staring at me. Shit, how long had I been zoned out?

“Khalid wanted to know about our InfoSec classification. Do you have my notes on that?”

Arjun widened his eyes at me, obviously not sure how to answer whatever the prince had asked and was trying to cover it.

I looked up at the slides to see what they had been talking about. Arjun was only midway through the presentation. Why was he asking about security already?

“I believe the SOC 2 metrics are on slide twenty-five,” I said, smiling like the good little assistant I was pretending to be.

Dave gave me a reassuring smile and looked like he was actively resisting the urge to give me the thumbs up.

Arjun nodded and flicked forward to the slide in question, looking sweaty and rattled. I looked over at Khalid to see him utterly relaxed; why was Arjun so nervous?

I wanted more than anything to hop up and take over. Not because Arjun wasn’t up to it, but because he was so hard on himself. One little hiccup in a presentation and he felt like an abject failure. I had to feel bad for the guy. What must his parents be like to make him that way?

I knew saying something reassuring would only make his anxiety worse, so I just watched as he continued.

When he got to slide twenty-five, he read the stats directly off the screen, which is not what I had told him to do during our practice sessions.

Khalid interrupted almost immediately. “I understand the purpose of SOC2. I’m wondering how specifically you met those metrics.”

Again, Arjun’s face flashed with panic and he fully turned his body to look at me for help.

We would be managing personal information for his company, so it made sense for Khalid to press this issue. Unfortunately, Arjun hadn’t been a part of the information security compliance process, so even if he had been with the organization longer, he still wouldn’t be able to answer these questions.

Seeing the direction of Arjun’s panicked gaze, Khalid likewise turned to me and asked, “Maybe you should be the one giving this part of the presentation?”

Dave leaned forward, holding his hand out across the table, “We wouldn’t want to be disrespectful…”

“Hardly disrespectful to have the more senior engineer give the presentation she clearly prepared,” Khalid said, smiling in a gracious way, putting Dave at ease and drawing an audible sigh of relief from Arjun.

“Aria, would you mind?” Dave asked.

I shrugged. “Not at all.”

I stood up, grateful for the dark abaya I was wearing. No way anyone could see the sweat through that.

Guess I would have to actually earn this bonus.

My eyes flicked to the door, where Callum stood silently. Though I thought I detected a slight look of amusement through his scowl.

Glad you two are enjoying yourselves.

I stepped to the head of the table, giving Arjun a reassuring pat on the shoulder as he sat down.

“All right then,” I said, putting on my most professional salesman smile. I launched into my spiel about the process we took to bring our infrastructure up to SOC2 standards, and how that would protect the personal information of his employees, relieved when Khalid nodded several times while I talked.

He didn’t ask any follow-up questions and I was just about to go back to the slide where Arjun had stopped when the door to the conference room opened.

Normally, I wouldn’t have reacted to the men walking into the conference room. What did I care if I had a bigger audience?

But they each had a pistol in their hand.

As the first one walked through the door, Callum’s hand shot into his jacket, reaching for his weapon.

Too late, I screamed look out! or something useless like that, only for the first man to smash Callum’s nose with the butt of his pistol, screaming something in Arabic as he did so.

The bodyguard careened backward, slamming against the wall as the other man came fully into the room.

Dave and Arjun sat frozen in their seats, arms raised in surrender.

Khalid, on the other hand, was on his feet, staring at the men, his face a thundercloud of fury.

What was he going to do, fight them?

Frantically, I looked around for an exit—a window, a fire escape, anything.

But there was nothing. There was only one way out of the conference room—and I would have to get past two armed men to get there.