Chapter 3
Raghav ended the call with more force than necessary.
New York was pushing back on terms they’d already agreed to. He rubbed a thumb briefly at his temple, then glanced through the glass.
Ishani sat at her desk, posture straight, fingers moving across the keyboard fluently. Two weeks in, and she still hadn’t made a single visible mistake. Not even unnecessary questions.
He didn’t like how often his attention drifted there.
“Ishani.” His voice carried through the intercom.
“Yes, Boss?”
“The McKinley Group is calling in ten minutes. Take it. They’re upset about the revised timeline.”
Most assistants would have hesitated. Asked for guidance. Requested talking points. Ishani simply nodded once. “I’ll handle it.”
Raghav should have left it there.
He didn’t.
He pressed the button and the door to his office opened, this time a little wider than before. Just enough for sound to carry. He told himself it was practical. He needed to know how it was being handled.
Eight minutes later, Ishani’s desk phone rang.
Raghav watched her posture shift. Shoulders back. Chin lifted. Her voice, when she answered, was calm and steady.
The client’s irritation bled through, loud enough to carry.
“I understand your concerns, Mr. McKinley,” Ishani said, lowering her voice instead of raising it. “The revised timeline includes safeguards that protect both sides. Removing them would introduce unnecessary risk.”
She didn’t rush. Didn’t placate. Didn’t defend. She controlled the call.
When she ended it, she made a brief note, then looked back through the glass. Met his gaze. Waited. As if she knew it was a test.
Raghav pressed the intercom. “Outcome?”
“They’ve agreed to the original timeline,” she said. “I’ve scheduled a follow-up with you next Tuesday to review the first milestone.”
Raghav nodded once and turned back to his screen.
Three days later, Raghav tested her again. A board presentation due the following morning with data that wouldn’t be available until after six.
“It needs to be sharp,” he said. “Twenty slides. I’ll review it tomorrow morning.”
Most people would have asked for samples. Formats. Preferences.
Ishani simply asked, “Printed copies for the board, or digital only?”
He blinked. It was the right question—the only relevant question. “Both. Twelve printed copies, full color.”
That evening, Ishani worked past nine.
Through the glass, Raghav watched her. The floor had emptied, the lights dimmed into their night setting. She stayed focused, moving between screens, pausing now and then to note something in the small notebook beside her keyboard.
The next morning, the presentation was waiting on his desk when he arrived.
Twenty slides. Cleanly arranged. The charts and graphs made complicated financial details easy to understand. The narrative was clear—problems, solutions, and outlining what to do next.
During the board meeting, no one needed to ask any questions. Raghav kept looking at Ishani, who was sitting next to him, focused on her notes. The data was clear and easy to follow. Halfway through, an impulse rose—sharp and unexpected—to acknowledge her work aloud.
The thought unsettled him.
He let it pass.
By the end of the third week, Raghav had run through most of the tests he typically used to evaluate new assistants. Ishani had passed each one without apparent effort. So he created new ones.
Ansh, catching on to this pattern, joined in.
“Ishani,” Ansh said one afternoon, stopping at her desk with a thick stack of folders. “These need to be checked against last quarter. Flag discrepancies. Add explanations. Boss needs it by three.”
It was nearly noon. The kind of task that usually came with a request for more time. Ishani glanced at the files, then at the calendar on her screen.
“Three o’clock,” she repeated, taking the stack.
At two fifty-eight, she knocked on Raghav’s door.
The analysis was thorough. She’d not only identified the discrepancies but had looked for the causes and prepared bullet-point explanations for each—saving him hours of questions with the department heads.
“Is there anything else you need, Boss?” she asked, her expression calm. No hint of the rush she must have experienced to complete the task.
Raghav’s gaze lingered.
It should have stayed on the work—the clarity of her analysis, the way she delivered results without explanation or expectation. That alone should have been enough.
It wasn’t.
He became aware of her in smaller, unwelcome details. The clean line where her hair was pulled back from her face. The brief glint of gold at her ears when she shifted. How composed she looked standing there, as if pressure never touched her unless she allowed it to.
What unsettled him wasn’t noticing.
It was how naturally his focus kept returning—from the work, to her, and back again—until the distinction blurred.
A flicker of heat traced up his spine, unexpected and sharply out of place.
Raghav cleared his throat and looked down at the papers on his desk, forcing his attention back where it belonged.
The steadiness returned. Almost.
“No, Ishani. That will be all.”
She nodded and turned to leave.
Raghav’s gaze followed her the straightness of her posture, the unhurried way she crossed back to her desk. He didn’t realise he was still watching until a quiet sound broke the moment.
Ansh stood in the doorway.
“The Tokyo investors are on line two,” he said, a hint of amusement in his tone.
Raghav nodded, turning away quickly, annoyed at being caught staring.
By the end of the fourth week, the pattern was impossible to ignore.
He found reasons to walk past her desk more often than necessary.
His eyes drifted to her through the glass during calls.
He noticed details—how her desk was always aligned, how she prepared herself before entering his office, how she tucked the same strand of hair behind her ear when concentrating.
Others noticed too.
During a meeting, he caught the marketing director, Samrat, watching them both, an eyebrow lifting when Raghav asked for Ishani’s input on a client presentation. It was something he’d never done before.
Five weeks, and Ishani Rao had become more than a functional part of his office.
She’d become a distraction.
On Friday afternoon, as the floor emptied for the weekend, Raghav found himself standing near the glass, watching her shut down her system. She slipped her notebook into her bag, straightened her desk, and reached for her coat.
Just before leaving, she looked up.
Their eyes met through the glass.
Her expression remained unchanged—no smile, no question—only a brief pause before she nodded once, professionally, and turned away.
Raghav looked down, heat creeping up his neck.
This was absurd.
She was his assistant. An employee. Competent. Reliable. Nothing more.
And yet, as the elevator doors closed behind her, he was already thinking about Monday morning, about her returning to the desk outside his office, restoring order to his day with that same efficiency.
Professional appreciation, he told himself.
That was all this was.
◆◆◆
Monday evening, Raghav stepped out of the conference room, loosening his tie with a single tug.
The quarterly board meeting was scheduled for the morning, and eight straight hours of negotiations with the German investors had left a dull ache settled across his shoulders.
He rolled them once as he walked down the corridor.
Most of the floor was dark now, lights dimmed for the night. Except for one soft glow. It came from the direction of his office.
Raghav slowed, frowning slightly as he approached.
Ishani sat at the desk outside his office, eyes fixed on her screen. Her brows drawn together in concentration. Her posture, usually perfect, had softened just enough to betray longer working hours.
She hadn’t noticed him.
He paused without quite meaning to, watching her work with the same intensity she’d shown since her first day.
When she reached up to massage the back of her neck, the gesture seemed oddly intimate in the empty office. Private. Something he wasn’t meant to see.
He cleared his throat. “Ishani.”
She straightened instantly, hand dropping back to the keyboard. “Boss. I didn’t realise you were here.”
“What are you working on?” He stepped closer, eyes moving to her screen.
“The projections for tomorrow,” she said. “The Singapore numbers came in late, so I’m updating the forecasts.” She tucked a loose strand of hair back behind her ear. “I’ll finish within the hour.”
He glanced at his watch. Nearly ten. “You should have gone home.”
“The data needed to be right.” She said it plainly, as if staying this late wasn’t a sacrifice, just the logical thing to do.
Raghav studied her face. She was tired. Yet, calm, focused and familiar in a way that unsettled him. The recognition came uninvited. How many nights had he stayed just like this, alone in his office, choosing work over everything else?
“Have you eaten?” he asked abruptly.
The question caught her off guard. “I had something earlier.”
He was already reaching for his phone. “I’m ordering dinner. We’ll finish the projections together.”
“That’s not necessary…”
He didn’t wait for agreement. He placed the order with a restaurant that knew his preferences, asked for enough for two, then ended the call.
“Bring your laptop,” he said, nodding toward his office. “We’ll work inside.”
She gathered her things without comment and followed him in. The office lights were dimmed for the evening, leaving the space somehow… intimate.
Outside the windows, Mumbai spread out in quiet points of light against the dark. Raghav paused, captivated by her silhouette framed by the dazzling view. When she turned to look at him, the city lights cast a golden glow around her.
He cleared a space on the conference table in the corner of his office. “Set up here. We’ll spread out the reports.”