Page 4 of Her Forbidden Prince
And Rafi—who wasn’t normally one for foolishness—actually considered it.What if I just let him go?What if Aida caught up to her?Just a few more minutes.One more conversation.Her name.Her number.Something.
But Aida wasn’t trained for that.Not yet.Too risky.
“No,” Rafi murmured with regret.“Not today.”
He clipped the leash, securing it with a tug.“We’re getting a harness.He’s going to pull this trick again.”
“Yes, Your Highness,” the guard said, but Rafi was barely listening.
His eyes caught a flicker of movement near the bench where the woman had been sitting.A piece of paper lifted slightly in the breeze, curling like a beckoning finger.
He stepped forward, picking it up—a letter.Folded, slightly smudged.His eyes skimmed the first line before he forced himself to stop.
“…hurting your father’s feelings…”
Curious, he flipped it over—and there it was.Scrawled in the top corner in neat, slanted handwriting:Carys.
His pulse kicked.Finally, a name.
He tucked the letter gently into his jacket pocket and turned to the sketchpad lying beside it.The pages fluttered slightly in the breeze.He opened it and smiled.
She was an artist.
More than that—she was abrilliantone.Page after page filled with marketing concepts.Clean lines.Sharp humor.Relatable characters.And all of it centered around a single product: a running shoe his company had been trying to sell without success.
Until now.
He flipped another page.Another campaign idea.Then another.His grin widened with each sketch.
She didn’t justworkfor him.She was about tosavethe product line.
He checked his watch.Less than an hour until he saw her again—Carys.
“Aida, my boy,” he said, resting a hand on the dog’s head, “you’re my hero.”
Aida’s tail thumped the ground, and he barked softly before looking down the path again, as if still hoping she’d return.
“I know,” Rafi murmured, scratching behind his ears.“I’m hoping too.”
He tugged gently on the leash.“Come on, partner.Let’s go find her.”
Chapter 3
Out of the corner of her eye, Carys noticed several of her co-workers hurrying down the hallway.“What’s going on?”Carys asked, looking up from her new sketchbook.She was trying to recreate the ideas she’d worked on over the past few weeks since she’d stupidly lost her sketchbook earlier today.
“Mandatory meeting in the conference room,” Marsha called out, passing by Carys’s cubicle.Marsha paused, her glasses dangling from a beaded string around her neck as she leaned over the edge of Carys’s three-quarter height wall.“Rumors are that layoffs are coming!”she explained in a mock-whisper.
Carys gasped, her stomach tightening.Layoffs meant that the company was trying to downsize.Was she on the list?Was she going to be cut?
She couldn’t lose her job!She finally earned enough to cover her rent each month, buy food, put a little money away for emergencies, and have a small budget for fun stuff.For a moment, Carys considered calling Andi, her best friend, who worked in the finance department.Andi worked for the finance director, but her friend was relatively new in her position as well.If layoffs were coming, would Andi also be on the list?Most likely not.Andi was a financial guru, so she was probably safe.But the people currently on the marketing staff weren’t pulling their weight.The last several marketing campaigns had been extremely expensive, but absolute duds.
Personally, Carys hadn’t liked the concepts.They’d relied on the old-school methods that had worked ten, twenty, or even thirty years ago.But with social media and the changed attention span due to the shorter video apps, the old marketing concepts didn’t work anymore.
She’d offered her ideas to Dave, her boss.But he didn’t like them.Carys had suggested a more subconscious marketing concept, something that wasn’t an in-your-face idea.Pushing a commercial regaling shoppers with the product had worked in the past, but consumers were more sophisticated now and they were too busy for the old-style commercials.Buyers wanted products that solved a problem.
Looking up, she noticed that everyone in the department was moving toward this mysterious meeting.She looked at her calendar, but she didn’t have any meeting on her schedule.Was she supposed to be in that meeting?Marsha had mentioned that it was mandatory.
“Carys!Aren’t you coming?”another colleague called out.
