Scarlet Vows

7.

The name stayed on my mind for the entire night, even after Aren left to his guest room. I did not say it out loud though. I trusted Aren completely. There was no reason for him to lie to me and his emotions were evidence enough for me to understand that the King's issue was serious business.

I woke up early that day because we were having the last leg of our advertisement shoot. One day of posing in front of the cameras and Aren would be done with his contribution to my brand. After that, I'd be able to focus on maximising the sales, increasing my outreach and emptying the extra inventory that I had ordered for. Also, I could parallelly help Aren find the missing sheets. I had a solid plan in mind.

I dressed up in my sky blue blazar, pants and black shirt. Unlike the skirts that Charlotte adores, I've always liked the blazers and the pants. I hopped down the stairs in excitement and found that Aren was already at the breakfast table with my father and Bianca. The twins were fighting over a jar of jam and my father was scrutinising Aren. As soon as I came, he averted his gaze and cleared his throat.

Bianca was giving disapproving looks to her husband, clearly not happy about my father's assumptions about Aren.

"Good morning everyone" I greeted them.

"Good morning, Sissy Sera!" The twins sang.

We had our breakfast in silence. The kids kissed us all goodbye, including Aren, and stepped out of the house to go to school. I asked Aren to wait in the car. My father left. Bianca and I were the only people still lingering near the dining table.

"Bianca?" I said hesitantly, "Can you do me a favour?"

-x-x-x-x-

Aren's shoot was a success.

The director loved the result and Charlotte was finally happy that we were able to get things done in time. I couldn't take my eyes off Aren. The happiness on his face, the satisfaction of being appreciated and most importantly, doing something other than running behind a book that can destroy the whole world, brought out a side of him that I would have otherwise not witnessed. I sat on my chair behind the screen, next to the director. Aren posed with my products. He smiled, laughed, winked...it was surreal to see him. He was absolutely perfect.

When we were finally done, it was decided that we'd have a party the next day to celebrate the launch. And two days after that, I had a media gathering to launch the product. This was not an official launch seeing how my products were already in the market. I wanted to increase my visibility and spread the business to other states and beyond the USA.

"Great! We are done!" The director announced and I clapped with the rest of the crew.

Everyone huddled together to congratulate each other. There were a lot of people near Aren. I tip-toed to see him, making sure that he was comfortable with human proximity. I did not want him biting into necks.

"You seem to like him"

I was startled but noticed that Charlotte was leisurely sitting on the chair next to mine, her legs crossed and a book in hand.

"No..." I tried to explain, "It is not what you think."

"Okay, if you say so" She beamed and continued to write something in her book.

"Really!" I insisted, "I am just worried that he'd panic. He is claustrophobic." Big fat lie.

"Sure" she said much more seriously.

I opened my mouth to explain further but decided otherwise. I was only proving her point. I returned to gazing at Aren. A wide grin plastered on his face, his hands hugging everyone who was approaching him, his hair still flying because of the fans set up for the commercial shoot...he indeed looked ravishingly good. But, did I want to engage with him romantically?