The Attraction
631 Words
Lucien noticed it three minutes into the meeting.
Not the numbers—that was muscle memory. Not the investors—he’d read them before they spoke. It was Nyla.
She sat to his left, posture perfect, pen moving at first with clean efficiency. Competent. Quiet. Exactly what he’d expected from someone like her. Then, almost imperceptibly, the rhythm broke.
Her pen paused.
Once.
Twice.
She frowned at the page, flipped it back, eyes narrowing as if the information had betrayed her. Lucien kept his gaze forward, but his attention had shifted completely. He watched her from the edge of his vision, the way one watches a fault line after the first tremor.
She missed a figure. He was sure of it.
That alone was unusual. Nyla didn’t seem like the kind of woman who missed things. Everything about her suggested control—measured movements, neutral expressions, the kind of stillness that came from discipline, not shyness.
And yet here she was, struggling.
Lucien felt something unexpected tighten in his chest.
It wasn’t irritation. It wasn’t concern.It was interest.
There was something arresting about watching her lose focus—not dramatically, not enough for anyone else to notice. Just enough to reveal that she was human. That whatever precision she carried had limits. The contrast made her sharper, not weaker.
He glanced down at his own notes, then back at hers. Fragmented. Incomplete. Her jaw tightened slightly as she tried to recover ground already lost.
Without making a show of it, he tore a page free and slid it toward her.
Their fingers didn’t touch, but he felt the moment anyway.
She froze for half a second before whispering her thanks. He didn’t look at her then—if he had, he suspected she would’ve seen something she wasn’t meant to.
The meeting continued, but Lucien barely registered it.
He kept thinking about the way her confidence hadn’t shattered—it had bent. How she hadn’t panicked, hadn’t asked for help, hadn’t made excuses. She’d simply endured the lapse, quietly, stubbornly.
That kind of restraint was dangerous.
Afterward, when the investors left and the room emptied, Lucien watched her linger, shoulders slightly tense, as if bracing for something. That’s when he knew it wasn’t just curiosity anymore.Walking beside her down the corridor, he chose his words carefully.
“You were distracted.”
She responded instantly. Too fast. A shield snapping into place.
“I won’t let it happen again.”
That confirmed it.
He stopped walking—not to corner her, but to slow her down. To make her look at him. When she did, her eyes were steady, but there was fatigue beneath them she hadn’t hidden well enough.
“You don’t strike me as careless,” he said.
He saw it then—the flicker. The smallest fracture in her composure.
Her apology caught him off guard.
Lucien wasn’t used to apologies that weren’t strategic. Hers felt… real. And that unsettled him more than it should have.
“You’re capable,” he told her, and meant it more than he let on.
The rest of the day passed, but Nyla stayed with him in ways that made no sense. Not her smile—she rarely smiled. Not her ambition—he’d met plenty of ambitious people.
It was the image of her pen hovering uselessly over the page.
Of control slipping.Of a woman who clearly operated at a level most people never reached—and who, for reasons he couldn’t yet name, had faltered beside him.
That night, long after he should have stopped thinking about work, Lucien realized something with quiet unease:
He wasn’t drawn to Nyla Voss despite the moment she lost focus.
He was drawn to her because of it.
And whatever that meant, it wasn’t harmless.
- Writer
