EPISODE 4

If there was one thing Amara understood about desire, it was that it did not care about your five year plan. It arrived when it wanted to and it did not wipe its feet at the door.

Three weeks into the job and she had been quietly moved onto the main project team. No announcement. Just her name appearing on an email thread from Dami’s PA, copied to everyone, like it had always been there. Her supervisor’s expression had shifted into something unreadable. The senior brand manager had stopped making direct eye contact.

Amara worked harder and said nothing.

She was leaving late again on a Wednesday when the elevator opened at the ground floor and Dami stepped in from the parking level, phone to his ear. He nodded at her. She nodded back. She fixed her eyes on the floor numbers and counted.

He finished the call before the third floor.

Silence.

“You eat at your desk every day,” he said.

She looked at him. He was not looking at her phone. He was looking at her. His eyes were dark brown, steady, the kind of eyes that had made a lot of decisions and were comfortable with all of them. Fine lines at the corners. A face that had gotten better with the years rather than just older.

“I am focused,” she said.

“There is a client dinner next Thursday.” The elevator reached the ground floor. The doors opened. Neither of them moved. “I need someone from the creative side who can talk through the youth data without reading from a card.”

A pause.

“It would be you.”

Amara knew what this was professionally. She also knew that the way he was looking at her when he said it did not live entirely in the professional category and they both understood that.

“I will be there,” she said.

She walked out into the warm Lagos night and dialed Tola before she reached the street.

“He wants you,” Tola said, before Amara had finished the story.

“It is a client dinner.”

“Amara.”

“With other people present, Tola.”

“That man has not personally invited a junior staff member to anything in the two years I have worked here. I have access to records. I checked.”

Amara did not respond to that.

She did not sleep well that night. Not because Tola was wrong. Because she was now fairly certain Tola was right.

previous Episode 3:

THE CEO’S INTERNA. Lagos Adult Romance Series 3