A Princess in Theory (Reluctant Royals #1)(2)

So fun, that Brian.

She turned to face him. His dark hair was sticking out every which way and his face was unshaven. He looked stressed-out, which wasn’t unusual but generally didn’t bode well for her.

“Hi Brian,” she said, trying to find the pleasant but deferential tone that seemed to edify him. She hated that she couldn’t just talk to him like a normal human, but apparently there was something about her that had led him to tell Dr. Taketami—the lab’s Primary Investigator, and thus Ledi’s boss—that she was “giving him attitude.”

Ledi couldn’t afford to be labeled as a problem.

She’d wanted to be a scientist since her fourth-grade teacher had handed her a battered copy of National Geographic. Ledi had been fascinated with the cover: a close-up shot of a woman with dark skin, just like hers, peering into a microscope. That scientist had been trying to cure a mysterious disease, and Ledi had gleaned from the image not only that she wanted to do the same thing but also that she could.

She hadn’t foreseen all the other variables that went into life as a woman in STEM: politicians who treated her profession with contempt and threatened her future—and the world’s. Fellow scientists like Brian, who thought that women in the lab were their personal assistants instead of their equals.

“How are you this morning?” she asked him in the tone she’d heard secretaries on old syndicated TV shows use to placate their sexist bosses. Brian smiled; he’d watched the same reruns it seemed.

“Actually, I’m a little behind in my work after getting back from the Keystone conference.” That was when Naledi noticed the sheaf of papers in his hands.

This motherfucker, she thought.

“Oh what a shame,” she said.

“There’s this grant application that has to go out and we’re kind of screwed if we lose this funding. Since you don’t have much to do . . .”

“How do you know I don’t have much to do?” she asked in the same polite tone, unable to repress the question.

Brian cleared his throat. “Well, you’re just sitting here.”

“Kevin is just sitting here, too. He’s clearly watching a movie on his phone,” she said, tilting her head toward her lab mate across the room, who was laughing at whatever he was streaming. Her voice was still calm and polite, but she saw Brian’s brows drawing together in annoyance.

“Look, we all have to do grunt work sometimes. It comes with the territory. Do you think you’re somehow exempt from putting in the work?”

Ledi sucked in a breath. She worked hard—so much harder than she should have had to, really. That was the problem. When you worked twice as hard all the time, working at the average rate was slacking off.

“No,” she said quietly. “I don’t think that.”

Why did I even say anything?

She’d learned early on that challenging the people who held power over you made you undesirable, and undesirability meant gathering all of your things into a black plastic trash bag and being sent back to the group home. She swallowed against the brief wave of nausea and remembered the workshop for women in STEM she’d taken. She had to lay down her boundaries or people would assume she had none.

“I have no problem paying my dues, but this is the fourth grant you’ve asked me to help with,” she said. “And let me guess, it’s due this week?”

Brian nodded stiffly.

“Kevin has never done one of these for you before,” she said gently, though she was tired of being gentle. She was just plain tired.

“All the more reason for you to do it,” Brian insisted. “You won’t make beginner’s mistakes.”

And there it was; if she continued any further she’d be pushing, and as much as she’d heard about leaning in, when Ledi pushed she was usually met with a brick wall exerting equal and opposite force. She should have just taken the forms with a smile and kept her mouth shut.

“Sure. I’ll get right on it. Sorry.”

She put her textbook away and took the papers, somehow managing not to crumple them into a ball, and Brian walked off without saying thanks.

Ledi took a deep, centering breath.

Asshole postdocs are temporary, but scientific discoveries are forever.

When she opened her eyes, Trishna, her lab mate and a fellow Public Health student, was watching her from across the work table. Her long, dark hair was pulled back and her safety goggles magnified the annoyance in her eyes.

“He’s such a jerk,” Trishna said, and Ledi allowed herself a brief moment of camaraderie before shrugging it off.

“It’s not a big deal,” she said brightly. She smiled at Trishna and hoped her expression wasn’t as murdery as she felt.

“It is a big deal. Fuck Brian,” Trishna said. Then her brows lifted behind her goggles. “He’s probably jealous of your practicum with Dr. Kreillig’s Disease Task Force this summer, you know. It sounds so badass. Task force! Like that meme with the dude with sunglasses. ‘I’m here to cure diseases and chew bubble gum, and I’m all out of bubble gum.’”

Trishna grabbed two test tubes and pointed them menacingly around the lab.

Ledi might have laughed if Trishna hadn’t brought up yet another one of her bumper crop of problems. She shuffled through the grant papers Brian had just left her without really looking at them. “Yeah. I’m looking forward to learning a lot this summer.”