Aarti Raman - Kingdom Come

“Put it down here, I’ll get to it in a minute.” She indicated the edge of her cluttered desk and Viven whistled as he placed the tray, after clearing a pile of papers.

“I have told you I could clear all this stuff up for you, Ziya.” He smiled goofily, a kid who was doing his MBA long-distance and had dreams of opening his own restaurant in the hills for adventure enthusiasts. “It’s my job as your assistant to help you out any way I can.”

“And it’s my job as your boss to kick your butt if you touch my stuff, sweetie.” Ziya smiled, a sharp grin and Viven shook his head and ducked out.

Krivi came in without knocking just as Ziya had opened the file. She looked up a split second before he entered, her inner radar alerting her to his silent, morose presence. He was dressed much like her. Jeans, a pullover in dark brown and work boots. He didn’t even wear a watch but she knew he was always on time. Every-fricking-where. It was uncanny and a little frightening.

“You read it?”

He didn’t sit down, didn’t hover at the edge of her desk. He just stood, casually, but on full alert like some soldier on duty, taking up all the space in her cozy, little office. Ziya resisted the urge to lean her chair back and regard him better. Since, with his six-two height and her current position he pretty much loomed over her across the room.

“No. I just got in.”

“OK. I will come back when you have.”

“That’s all right,” she said, tapping the file. “I think I sent you most of the stuff that you used to collate the report. What’s your gut tell you?”

He blinked, as if he was unsure of what he’d just heard.

“I beg your pardon?”

Ziya smiled and tapped the folder again. “The saffron field. Yield-to-seed ratio, output and expenses. Is it sound to go into it, right now? With the shaky situation of the market?”

“Isn’t that your job to figure out all the angles?”

She nodded and pushed her hair back behind her ear. His eyes twitched to her small ears for a microsecond and she dropped her hand back.

“Yes, it is.” Ziya leaned back in her chair to regard him better. “I just wanted your opinion. I assume you do have one.”

Krivi nodded. “Yes, I do.”

She waited a beat and then drummed her fingers over the folder again. “And this opinion would be …”

“We have a meeting day after tomorrow in Pehelgam. I think you should take it. The man seems sound, and his finances are in order. It’s a risk you can afford to take.”

She smiled again, but this time there was a bit of warmth in it. “Thank you. That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

Again, his hard eyes twitched, as if she’d said something that could set him off.

“What was?”

“Talking. Communicating. It’s what all the cool people are doing.” She kept the smile on even while she felt the temperature drop in the room by a good ten degrees.

“I wouldn’t know,” he replied, honestly. “I have never been cool.”

“Of course, you haven’t.” She shrugged. “I’ll look through the report again. See if I can spot a gremlin. But I think we should go see a man about a field too.” She waited a beat more to see if that would crack the impenetrable ice surrounding him.

It didn’t.

Ziya nodded, her eyes cool again. “I’ll see you day after tomorrow then. You can drive us down in the four-wheel. It’s not a problem, is it?”

He didn’t say whether it was a problem or not. All he said was, “Day after tomorrow. Nine a.m.”

And then he was gone, closing the door behind him in a soundless movement.

Ziya huffed out a breath and twisted the bottle of water in her hand. Men, she mused, were the strangest species on earth. And Krivi Iyer was the king of this species. Too bad he looked exactly like how she’d expect an ex-war vet to look. All surly and brooding, frighteningly efficient. And good enough in jeans as he must have in uniform. Then, because it was unprofessional to daydream about hot ex-war vets during business hours, Ziya turned back to the folder and started reading up on the pros and cons of buying a readymade saffron field.

The next day, Noor made a slight but significant change to their plans. First, she insisted on coming because she was so damn bored working on her ‘Commitment in literature was a hoax’ thesis. And secondly, she was missing Sam and she didn’t want to, so she was going down to Gulmarg and indulging in a day of sightseeing and souvenir shopping. And pigging out on junk food.

Noor was what you’d call an emotional eater. Ziya knew her best friend’s moods as well as she knew her own, so she knew the deep hurt Noor was hiding under her flippant arguments. So, she simply texted Krivi to tell him that they could take two cars down, since Noor and Ziya would probably end up spending the night in Pehelgam.

He sent a word back in reply.

No .

No explanations, no excuses and definitely no deference to the boss’s wishes. Just a no.

She was half-tempted to go down to his cottage and give him a good tongue-lashing for such insubordination, but then her Inner Bitch reared her head and argued that the best revenge in this scenario would be compliance. She’d seen the acute distaste in his eyes when he’d touched her yesterday, which meant that he wasn’t a big fan of her company. For whatever godforsaken reason. So, what better way to avenge her piqued ego than by making him suffer her presence for as long as she could? And that made her mind up and she only sent a single Cool back.

And her last thought, before she slid into deep dreamless sleep was the way his eyes had gone absolutely still when he’d been looking at her. And the way that stillness had touched off something inside of her. A tiny explosion of … something. An explosion for a man who couldn’t even look her in the eye.

So, she consigned him to the deepest bowels of Hades and slept dreamlessly.

The next day, more of the amazing spring weather continued, as Ziya woke up at six a.m.

The sky was so blue it was unreal, and the world looked so fresh and silent, Dada Akhtar’s roses were in vivid Technicolor against the green of the garden. There was a river of fog winding down the ground, and she leaned out of her window and breathed deep. Closing her eyes, just … glad to be alive. Glad to be here and living this moment in Goonj.

Echo.

She opened her eyes and looked straight at the gamekeeper’s cottage. By some twisted uncanny coincidence, the cottage’s owner stepped out of the entrance at the same time and into his Jeep. Ziya shut the window closed with an audible snap. He was not the first thing she wanted to see any morning.

But, two hours later when she was packing for her overnight trip, he was what she thought of and she couldn’t understand her hopeless attraction at all. Especially, because asking Noor about it would be an exercise in futility and awkwardness since she already suspected some deep love-story schtick between Ziya and her taciturn assistant, incurable romantic that she was. And Noor would never keep her trap shut if she caught even a whiff of the tumult and confusion and plain anger running through Ziya’s mind.

“Hey, babe,” Noor said as she came in, without bothering with the knocking. “I have to borrow your earmuffs since …” She stopped dead as she saw the mass of jumbled clothes on her best friend’s bed.

“Did a tornado just pass through here?”

Ziya raked a hand through her short hair and kicked at a stray white tee that had fallen off the pile on her bed.

“It’s a business meeting. But we are going sightseeing later on and I have no fricking clue how to dress up and down at the same time.”