Page 11 of Her Prince in Disguise
Two exhausting weeks later, Andi watched as the printer ejected the latest report and paused to reflect on how much had changed in such a short time. The intense workload, the long hours, and the enigmatic presence of Laith Al-Sintra were all so far removed from her previous work life. She worked eighteen or more hours a day, but was thriving! Every morning, she would wake up with a new idea on how to investigate financial issues. She felt more alive than ever. Yes, the exhaustion was real, but so was the intense feeling of triumph when she solved a puzzle.
Lawrence, Jenny, and Tom were great to work with. They laughed and joked, and worked hard together.
Laith...remained a mystery. A compelling, fascinating mystery that Andi was finding harder to ignore.
He was the man who, lately, was never far from her thoughts—an ever-present hum at the back of her mind. And when he suddenly burst through the office doors, as he did now, Andi’s heart gave a little jolt of anticipation she tried hard to suppress.
She glanced at him, the end of her pen tapping lightly against her lip, pretending to be more absorbed in her notes than she actually was. Laith brought an energy into any room he entered, a restless vitality that made the air feel sharper, brighter, charged. Whenever he was around, Andi felt it—like her very skin was lighting up under the intensity of his focus.
And when he was gone, sometimes for days at a time, Andi felt...deflated. Like the air had gone out of her own personal balloon. But even then, she remained determined—scrambling to solve problems, connect dots, and untangle riddles—so that when Laith returned and inevitably asked for a report, she would have answers.Goodanswers. She lived for those brief flashes of surprise and gratified approval in his dark eyes.
Every so often, Laith would stay longer. He would sit with the team for lunch or linger after dinner, laughing at some stupid story from Jenny or arguing legal strategy with Lawrence. Andi would ride the high of those moments for hours afterward, clutching onto the warmth of his rare, real smiles like precious souvenirs.
She paid attention—more than she probably should. Laith asked questions that cut straight through the noise, nodding when someone impressed him, frowning when a new discovery hinted at fresh problems.
But there were other days, harder ones, when she fell short of the standard he never verbally set but somehow demanded all the same. Like the afternoon she missed a key data pattern in a financial report. She’d realized the error late at night, her heart pounding with sick dread, and spent hours digging through endless spreadsheets, rechecking every figure twice—sometimes three times—desperately trying to fix it before Laith noticed.
She hadn't dared breathe a word of it to him. Instead, she'd hidden the panic behind a tight smile and extra coffee runs, pretending everything was fine while fear gnawed at her stomach. When Laith stopped by her desk later, tapping his knuckles once on her folder in silent approval, she smiled back, holding onto the table for support, feeling like she was barely keeping her world from spinning off its axis.
Those days were the lows—the ones that hollowed her out with self-doubt and made the highs feel almost too precious to trust.
And yet, even through the chaos, Andi kept chasing those highs, kept working harder, reaching farther...hoping that one day, she wouldn't just be chasing the sunshine—she’d be standing right in the middle of it with him.
When someone handed Laith a report, he never sat down to review it. Instead, he remained standing—pacing slowly or shifting his weight from foot to foot, full of barely containedenergy. Somehow, impossibly, he would skim through pages of dense information faster than seemed humanly possible, his eyes flicking over each detail with razor-sharp focus. Andi could never understand how he absorbed so much, so quickly, when she would need hours to untangle half of it. Watching him sometimes made her feel like she was witnessing a force of nature—relentless, brilliant, and utterly out of reach.
Andi would watch him from the corner of her eye, wondering wildly what he looked like without the shield of the expensive button-down shirt and those tailored slacks.
Because underneath all the polish and control, Andi knew there was somethingmoreto Laith. Something raw and reckless and real. She just didn’t know how to reach it yet.
But she was starting to piece him together. Slowly. Carefully. Like a beautiful, dangerous puzzle she was almost afraid to solve.
Towards the end of their time in Singapore, Andi watched as Laith stuck his head into the conference room, where the team was working. “Jenny, the factory in Umsaba is slowing down. Any ideas?”
Immediately, Jenny nodded, offering him a piece of paper. “The generator isn’t working at capacity due to…” and they discussed parts, tensile strength, and gears.
Turning away, Andi forced herself to concentrate on the numbers in front of her. Something wasn’t adding up between the weights of the products being loaded at the docks compared to the output of the final product from the factory. She just…had to figure out what was missing.
Andi tapped her pen against her notebook thoughtfully, rolling the discrepancies around in her head. The issue was right in front of her. She just needed to look harder!
Andi heard Laith’s deep, sexy voice talking to Lawrence about a problem with a contract. Instead of reviewing the numbers, she found herself staring at Laith over her computer screen again. Laith would probably find the discrepancy with the weight issue more quickly. How often over the past two weeks had she been going through the numbers, only for him to walk over, put a hand on the back of her chair and say, “You look stumped. Tell me what you’re looking for.”
Almost immediately, he’d point to a column and suggest that she examine those numbers more closely. Sure enough, the problem would be there!
But this time, Andi wanted to figure the problem out on her own! She had to! Andi couldn’t admit that she just wanted,needed, to see that look of admiration in his dark eyes. There was just something so…amazing…about his eyes.
So, Andi kept digging. It took her another hour, sifting through the numbers until she found the problem. But the feeling of victory was…intense. And it was even better when she could report the problem, as well as the answer, to Laith.
Three hours later, dinner was delivered to the conference room. Andi groaned silently at the thought of yet another take-out meal. Her blood pressure was going to skyrocket with all of this sodium, she thought but she smiled her appreciation for the meal.
“Everyone take a break,” Laith called out, looking around at the team. “You’ve been at it since seven o’clock this morning. Just…relax,” he said. Had he looked directly at her?
The team sighed and leaned back in their chairs, chatting among themselves. Laith grabbed a paper plate and helped himself to some food, while Andi leaned back and watched him out of the corner of her eye.
He was funnier than she’d initially thought too. The man told stories of his childhood, about a cousin that used to paint her nose green and the silent hand signals they developed to sneak out of the house. Lawrence laughed and told them about the time he’d trapped his brother under the dining room table, tying him to the table legs. Jennifer had snorted, muttering, “I’msoglad I was an only child.” And Tom had joked about how he’d shot water guns at his big sister’s boyfriends from the bushes whenever they’d come to pick her up for a date.
Andi cherished those long evenings in the conference room with her teammates. If her eyes strayed too often towards Laith…well, he was a handsome man. She just…needed to remember that he was her boss. And off limits!
Chapter 7
