ArHi Drabble Dabbles- Part 17 |Lesson Learnt| p74, 6/1/15 - Page 45

Hey hey! A belated Happy New Year to all :) Here's a teeny weeny something that I wrote last year, but somehow got lost in the slew of assignments. Not much, but better than nothing!

ArHi Drabble |Lesson Learnt|

"Hold this," he commanded, not waiting for her compliance before thrusting a largish sized box topped with a frilly purple bow into her arms.

It was heavier than she had expected, and Khushi instinctively clamped her arms around it, glaring at the Laad Governor as the man calmly surveyed the rest of the room. Before she could spout any of her ire though, he had scooped up two more boxes and added them to the load in her hands.

"H-hey!" was Khushi's only retort as she adjusted her feet to maintain her balance, juggling with the boxes at the same time, "What do you think you're doing?!"

The Laad Governor's only response was to quirk an eyebrow at her.

"I thought you volunteered to help."

"I volunteered to help," she snapped back at him, chagrined to find that strands of her hair had escaped her loose, sideways ponytail and were now drifting down to settle across the bridge of her nose and against her eyes. Huffing out an irate puff of air, she glowered at the deadpan expression of the man in front of her, "But you're just dumping everything on me!"

The Laad Governor fixed her with an almost bored stare before shrugging casually.

"I'd have thought you were used to menial labour like that," came his smooth repartee.

Khushi's patience, already on a short fuse, burned out completely.

"Why you-" she started heatedly, charging forward with every intention of ramming the boxes into his arms- although the alternative of dropping them on his toes was also very appealing- when his smug smirk arrested her movements.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," he told her, the arrogance in his tone and his bearing inflaming Khushi's violent streak until the smallish store-room, currently the abode where the wedding presents Jiji and Jeeju had received had been stocked until they returned from their honeymoon, was all but crackling with the heat of her rage, "The things in those boxes might be breakable."

The urge to knock his teeth out did not abate in the slightest- but Khushi had to grudgingly admit that the insufferable dolt she had had the misfortune of offering her assistance to was right. The largest of the boxes she carried was a good size to contain the traditional type of wedding gifts- sets of china, crystal ornaments, vases. As tempted as she was to cause bodily harm to the Laad Governor, her anger had to take the backseat for the sake of all the presents Jiji and Jeeju had left unopened when they'd been rushed off for their trip the day after the wedding.

Evidently, the Laad Governor had picked up on her line of thinking, because the smirk with which he was regarding her was positively infuriating.

Fixing him with her deadliest glare, Khushi carefully secured the boxes in her hold, the locks of hair in her eyes and the dupatta that had at some point slipped off her shoulder to tangle about her ankles making movement highly precarious.

"You're lucky my hands aren't free," she snarled in his direction, already planning a dozen different forms of retribution that involved expensive leather shoes and a goat.

There was a pause for a while, as she helplessly glanced about for an empty surface that was close enough at hand for her to put the boxes down and fix herself up before she ended up breaking a few bones.

And then she froze up, because he had pushed his face into hers until his eyes were mere inches away.

Before she could even absorb the sudden switch in the air, in their dynamics, in him and herself, her eyes grew so wide they almost bulged out of her sockets and she nearly had a seizure, because for the most fleeting of moments, his mouth had bumped into hers.

"Yes," he murmured to her, and Khushi instantly forgot how to breathe as warm air stirred the loose wisps of her hair falling against her face, "I'd say I am."

Without giving her a chance to even blink in the aftermath, her straining arms had suddenly been relieved of their burden, and somewhere in another world outside of a haze of heat and the thundering of her pulse, she could make out footsteps moving away from her, distinguish the muffled but recognisable noise of a door opening and closing distantly.

Khushi did not re-emerge from the store-room for another ten minutes.

By the time a concerned Anjaliji and a harried-looking-Hari Prakash found her, she was still furiously red in the face, and busily muttering things like "The nerve of-" and "Stupid, shameless Laad Governor."

And though she refused to explain just what had happened to work her up so to anyone else, glaring mutinously at the knowing glances targeting her from the source of all her woe, Khushi had learnt her lesson- following a Laad Governor into enclosed spaces was a recipe for disaster.

Whether or not she was supposed to be marrying him.