SOMETHING UNEXPECTED
Sunday evening came and went, but Damian couldn’t purge Chisimdi from his thoughts.
He had tried.
The family dinner at his parents’ estate should have been the perfect anchor.
His father’s study had been thick with the suffocatingly familiar weight of old lineage, polished mahogany furniture, and hereditary expectations that had tracked him since childhood.
Instead, Damian had spent the entire evening utterly detached.
Not because of the heavy corporate strategy discussed over dinner, but because of a woman who wasn’t even in the room.
He had caught himself mid-conversation wondering if Chisimdi had actually accepted that strategist’s invitation to lunch.
The sudden spike of irritation had been enough to make him excuse himself from the table much earlier than usual.
By Monday morning, he decided he was done letting her occupy his mind.
He arrived at the office before eight, threw his briefcase onto his desk, and buried himself in paperwork.
For the first hour, his discipline held.
Then, the heavy timber door to his office swung open.
Chisimdi stepped inside, balancing a manila folder and a steaming ceramic mug.
She glided across the carpet and set the folder down before him.
“Your nine o’clock meeting has been pushed to nine-thirty.
The client’s flight was delayed this morning.”
Damian’s eyes traveled from the documents up to the dark liquid in her hand.
“What’s that?”
She looked down at the mug, blinking.
“Coffee.”
“I can see that.”
A faint line appeared at the corner of her mouth as she fought a smile.
“I thought you meant what kind.”
He leaned back, his chair shifting beneath him.
“What kind?”
“Black.
No sugar.”
His eyebrows lifted slightly.
“You remembered?”
She shrugged, a subtle shift of her shoulders as she placed the cup right beside his folder.
“You drink it every morning.”
A sudden, unexpected warmth bloomed behind his ribs.
“You’ve been keeping track.”
“It’s difficult not to notice when someone follows the exact same routine every single day.”
He studied her face.
There was no teasing edge to her voice—just a calm, matter-of-fact statement.
Yet it forced him to realize how closely she must have been observing him while he thought himself entirely unreadable.
He reached out, his fingers brushing the warm ceramic.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
She pivoted toward the door.
Damian looked down at the dark swirl of the coffee.
“Chisimdi.”
She paused, turning back with her hand hovering near the frame.
“You didn’t have to bring this.”
“I know.”
The quiet confidence of her answer caught his breath.
She offered a small, easy smile, lifting a matching mug she had kept half-hidden against her side.
“I was already at the machine getting one for myself.
I figured you might want yours too.”
The casual explanation stripped the gesture of any heavy formality, making it feel entirely ordinary.
And somehow, that normalcy made it feel infinitely more intimate.
She stepped out, the door clicking shut behind her.
Damian stared at the rising steam for a moment before taking a sip.
It was brewed exactly to his preference.
He shook his head, a silent laugh escaping him.
This was becoming dangerous in ways he couldn’t even articulate.
The morning dissolved into a blur of corporate motion.
Chisimdi had barely settled back into her chair after delivering a quarterly review when a shadow fell across her desk.
She looked up from her keyboard to find Damian standing over her.
“Do you have five minutes?”
She tilted her head, looking past him to ensure no other executives were watching.
“For work?”
His mouth twitched into a phantom smile.
“Usually.”
“Then yes.”
He slid a slim folder onto her desk.
“I need another set of eyes on this.”
She pulled it closer, flipping open the cover page.
“The expansion proposal?”
“Yes.”
Her eyes scanned the dense columns of data.
“You don’t agree with their growth matrix.”
“I don’t.”
She looked up, meeting his sharp gaze directly.
“And you want to see if I’m going to rubber-stamp your opinion.”
“I want to know if I’m missing a blind spot.”
The raw honesty in his tone caught her completely off guard.
The commanding executive was asking for her perspective, not her compliance.
She turned her attention back to the paperwork.
For several minutes, the office fell silent except for the soft rustle of pages and the scratch of her pen making neat notes in the margin.
Damian didn’t move.
He stood right there, waiting.
He could have summoned a senior consultant.
He could have cross-referenced the market data himself.
Instead, he had walked down the hall to her desk.
He didn’t want to examine the reason why.
Finally, she closed the folder with a firm slap.
“They’re assuming the market will copy last year’s consumer behavior exactly.”
“That was my primary concern.”
“But there’s a bigger flaw.” She spun the folder toward him, her finger tapping a specific column of projected revenue.
“They’re treating the Lagos demographic and the Abuja demographic as if they share the exact same spending habits.
The cultural purchasing drivers are completely different.”
Damian’s posture straightened, his gaze sharpening instantly.
“Explain.”
He leaned over her shoulder to look where she was pointing.
He inhaled the faint, clean scent of her perfume as she broke down the regional metrics.
By the time she finished speaking, his eyes were no longer on the text.
He was staring at her profile.
“You’re entirely right.”
She blinked, surprised by the immediacy of his praise.
“Really?”
“Yes.”
A bright, triumphant smile broke across her face.
“That’s twice today I’ve been right.”
“Don’t let it go to your head.”
She laughed—a genuine, unforced sound that lingered in the small space between them.
Damian picked up the folder, his fingers tightening around the cardboard.
“I’ll make the strategy team rewrite the whole thing.”
She nodded, her smile softening.
He took a step back, preparing to head to the executive lounge.
“Mr.
Adetola?”
He stopped, glancing back over his shoulder.
“Thank you for asking what I thought.”
The tension in his jaw relaxed completely, his expression turning uncharacteristically gentle. Follow the newest chapters on g.com.
“You gave me a very good reason to.”
She held his gaze for one long, breathless heartbeat before turning back to her monitor.
As he walked away, neither of them acknowledged how far they had drifted from their standard corporate roles.
There was no rigid hierarchy here, no cold dictation from a boss to an assistant.
For a brief window of time, they had simply been two people locked in the same frequency, and neither had wanted the connection to break
Later that afternoon, Chisimdi was sorting through an influx of corporate emails when a knuckles-on-wood rap sounded against the partition of her cubicle.
She looked up to find Damian holding an empty coffee mug.
She glanced at the porcelain, an amused glint in her eyes.
“Another one?”
“I finished the first pass of edits.”
“So the caffeine kept you alive.”
“Barely.”
She smiled, leaning her chin on her hand.
“Good.”
Damian paused, his eyes narrowing slightly as he caught her choice of words.
A soft, self-conscious laugh escaped her lips, a faint flush creeping up her neck.
“You’re rubbing off on me,” she murmured.
“That sounds like a dangerous precedent.”
“Extremely.”
He rested one hand flat against the edge of her desk, leaning in slightly.
For a moment, the dialogue ceased.
The silence that followed wasn’t the agonizing, stiff awkwardness of a few weeks ago; it was comfortable.
Natural.
That was what terrified her.
A month ago, his sudden physical proximity would have made her hyper-aware of her own breathing.
Now, she could just sit within his space and trade banter.
Something fundamental had shifted in the air between them—unnamed, but undeniable.
Damian’s eyes flicked down to her monitor.
“Still writing reports?”
“Yes.”
“You’ve been buried in that screen all afternoon.”
“And you’ve been keeping count.”
His gaze moved back to her face, heavy and steady.
“Maybe I have.”
Her smile faltered, her breath hitching slightly.
It wasn’t discomfort—it was the sudden, dizzying weight of his admission.
He wasn’t hiding it anymore.
Before the silence could stretch into something dangerous, the phone in his pocket vibrated aggressively.
The spell shattered instantly.
Damian checked the screen, his expression immediately locking back into his professional mask as he straightened up.
“The board meeting is starting.”
“Of course.”
He turned to leave, but stopped after two paces.
“Chisimdi.”
She looked up from her desk.
“Thank you.”
“For the data review?”
He hesitated, his features softening for a fleeting second.
“For the coffee.”
Her lips curved into a soft, private smile.
“You’re very welcome.”
He turned and walked briskly down the corridor.
This time, Chisimdi didn’t immediately look back at her keyboard.
She watched his tall frame disappear around the corner of the executive wing.
For the very first time, she had to admit a frightening truth to herself: she was starting to look forward to his interruptions.
The thought brought a nervous smile to her face, and she quickly forced her eyes down to her work, trying to drown out the sudden flutter in her chest.
There was no point in analyzing it.
Not yet.