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Chapter 17
Vahadr
“Vahadr?”
I crack my eyes open from my home office chair where I’ve been sitting for the last fifteen minutes, my mind firing endlessly through all the problems I’ve faced today, and all the ones I’m likely to come across tomorrow.
“Ana,” I say as I catch sight of her in my doorway, and I’m surprised by the slightly croaky quality of my voice. “Do come in.”
She enters the room without hesitation, and the door closing behind her with a quiet click. Her dark curls are pulled into a loose bun again this evening, and she’s in a rather soft-looking beige two-piece.
“I wasn’t sure if I should bother you,” she says quietly as she walks towards me. I like this color on her, it looks almost gold against the deep warmth of her skin tone.
“This room is never off limits to you,” I say, although I can’t quite bring myself to move my fingers from where they rest against my forehead. “You may enter whenever you wish.”
The way she holds both her hands behind her back draws rather a bit of attention to her breasts, and I try not to stare, but my efforts only amount to my gaze tracing the small flash of skin bared at her stomach over the waistband of her pants, instead. I sigh and close my eyes. “I was doing nothing productive, anyway.”
“Um, sir, there’s something I needed to talk to you about.”
I don’t open my eyes. “Who’s sir?”
She hesitates. “Vahadr.”
“Yes?”
“I…are you okay?”
I take a deep breath. “I am either perfectly alright,” I say, “or I am entirely dead and useless. I’m unsure which one.”
“You’re allowed to be somewhere in the middle, you know…”
I slide my eyes open and look at her through my fingers. “Am I?”
She smiles. She’s pretty when she smiles. “Yes, I give you permission,” she teases.
She’s always pretty.
“Well, thank you, I suppose.” I drop my arm and continue to stare up at her. “What is it you needed to say?”
“D’you know what? I, um… I think you’re a little closer to ‘dead’ than usual, so maybe we can talk about it tomorrow.”
I hum, and my gaze drops to her waist again, which is sitting perfectly tapered and lovely right at my eyeline. “What are you holding behind your back?”
“Oh, right.” She brings forward a sleek black gift bag. “The present you asked me to get for you.”
“Perfect.”
As I take the bag and pull out a sizable leather box, she leans back to sit against my table. I try not to let it show on my face that I’m imagining her sitting elsewhere, as I watch her rounded cheeks spread a little across the wood from the corner of my eye.
“I’d initially picked something else,” she continues casually, and I flip open the lid. “But when they realized it was for you, they took me into another room and insisted on this one. They said it was the best piece they had on hand.”
And it is quite lovely. Sitting on black velvet is a rather ornate necklace with three rows of evenly spaced large diamonds, held together on an intricate design of platinum swirls that look rather like lace, and studded with many more smaller diamonds.
“Quite the piece,” I say, lifting it out of the box. Weighty.
“Apparently, they’re Kervashi diamonds,” she says, as if this means nothing to her. “Oh! And they gave you free matching earrings. Why do rich people always get free things when they’re the ones that can actually afford to pay, anyway?”
I glance up at her, unable to keep the quirk from my lips. “I am sorry to have offended you with my credits.”
