Chapter 2
DANIKA
Caffeine. Immediate. Non-negotiable.
I stumbled off the elevator like a zombie in business casual, laser-focused on the one thing that could save me. Reboot Coffee Bar. It was barely bigger than my condo, but it had espresso, and that was enough.
A snickerdoodle latte sounded amazing—but after last night’s cookie swap, I was still about eighty-percent sugar, and I kind of regretted it. Better stick to my usual oat milk vanilla latte, sugar-free syrup, and a sprinkle of delusion that I’d “cut back.”
Yawning hard enough to dislocate something, I shuffled through the lobby, past the dark glass-walled offices that made the place feel like a post-apocalyptic co-working space.
Maybe I’d come back later with my laptop to get some work done.
Gabriella’s endless videoconferences were slowly melting my brain, and I had data to clean.
More accurately, his data.
Nicholas. The hot dork from the cookie swap last night.
A smile tugged at my lips before I could stop it. He was one of those penthouse-floor types. Translation—rich, techy, and probably had a fridge that sent him push notifications. That was normally not my type. Those guys tended to be kind of…algorithmically optimized jerks.
But Nicholas? He was different. For one, he was into numbers like me. He was confident but not arrogant. Okay, maybe a little arrogant—but in the way that made you want to argue with him just to see him smirk.
The barista behind the counter was scrolling on her phone—understandable, considering the place was dead. The only other person around was sitting off to the left, hunched over a laptop. My caffeine-deprived brain took a second to process it, but…yeah. That was him.
Nicholas. The hot dork himself. Looking unfairly good for someone who’d been knee-deep in data chaos twelve hours ago.
He hadn’t noticed me yet. Too busy scowling at his screen like it had personally insulted his mother.
I should have kept walking. Ordered my latte, gone back upstairs, maybe sent him a polite text later with some thoughts. Professional. Distant. Safe. Instead, I found myself drifting toward his table like a moth to a very attractive, spreadsheet-wielding flame.
Three empty coffee cups formed a semicircle around his laptop. A fourth coffee sat at his elbow, still steaming. He looked like he’d been here a while.
He looked like he was losing his mind, actually.
“You know,” I said, stopping at the edge of his paper explosion, “caffeine overdose won’t fix bad methodology.”
His head snapped up, eyes wide. For a second, he just stared at me like I’d materialized out of thin air. Then recognition hit, followed by something that looked suspiciously like relief.
“Danika.” He said my name like it was an answer to a prayer. “You’re here.”
“I’m grabbing a much-needed dose of caffeine. You’re the one lurking in the lobby at—” I checked my phone. “Seven forty-three in the morning.”
“I’m not lurking. I’m working.” He gestured at the chaos. “I’ve been here since six.”
“That’s definitely lurking.”
A smile tugged at his mouth. “Okay, maybe partial lurking. I was hoping you might come through. Kyle mentioned you work from home most days, so I assumed you’d need to grab coffee at some point.”
“You asked Kyle about my schedule?” I crossed my arms, trying to look annoyed instead of flattered. “That’s creepy.”
“No, what’s creepy is that Kyle knows your schedule. I just strategically inquired about building patterns.” He ran a hand through his hair, making it stick up in a way that should not have been adorable. “That sounded worse, didn’t it?”
“So much worse.”
“In my defense, I’m running on approximately four hours of sleep and enough espresso to fuel a small aircraft.” He pushed one of the empty cups aside, making room. “Sit. Please. Unless you’re just here to judge my life choices, in which case, could you at least wait until I’ve had more coffee?”
I should have said no. Should have gotten my latte and left. Instead, I sat.
“Four hours of sleep?” I turned his laptop around so I could see his screen. “Let me guess—you’ve been obsessing over your failed predictions all night.”
“I prefer the term ‘intensive analysis.’”
“I prefer the term ‘spiral.’” I pointed at the chart on his screen. “And this is why. You’re looking at the same data the same way, expecting different insights. That’s not analysis, that’s insanity.”
He leaned forward, suddenly intense. “Then tell me what I’m missing.”
The barista cleared her throat loudly. “Did you want to order something?”
“Oat milk vanilla latte with sugar-free syrup,” I called back, not taking my eyes off Nicholas’s data. “And he needs water. Lots of water.”
“I don’t need water—”
“You need water.” I clicked to another tab on his spreadsheet. “Trust me, dehydration makes you stupid, and you’re about to need all your brain cells.”
He blinked. “You’re going to help me.”
“I’m going to tell you what you’re doing wrong. Whether that’s helpful is up to you. But first, I need you to answer a question honestly.”
“Okay.”
“That spreadsheet. The dating one.” I met his eyes. “Do you actually think you can quantify compatibility?”
He hesitated, and I watched him war with himself. The urge to defend his system versus the desperate need for my help.
“I did,” he said finally. “I thought if I could just identify the right variables, optimize for the right qualities…” He trailed off, looking at his coffee.
“But it turns out my most successful relationship lasted three months, and according to my spreadsheet, she should have been perfect. And the person I couldn’t stop thinking about last night doesn’t check a single box. ”
My heart did a stupid flutter. “Nicholas—”
“I know it’s messed up.” He looked at me again, and there was something raw in his expression. “I know it reduces people to data points. But I’m good at data. I’m not good at…this.” He gestured vaguely between us. “People. Connection. The stuff you can’t measure.”
“So you tried to make it measurable.”
“Yeah.”
The barista brought my latte, and I wrapped my hands around it, thinking. He was watching me with this hopeful, anxious expression that made him look younger than he probably was.
“Here’s the thing,” I said. “Your instinct isn’t totally wrong. Data can reveal patterns. But you’re treating people like your retail clients—as if human behavior is just another algorithm to crack.”
“Isn’t it?”
“No.” I took a sip of my latte. “Because people aren’t trying to optimize. They’re trying to feel something. And feelings are messy and irrational, and they don’t fit in spreadsheets.”
He absorbed that, nodding slowly. “Is that what’s wrong with my holiday analytics? I’m optimizing for the wrong thing?”
“Probably.” I pointed to his laptop. “I pulled your company’s public data last night—”
“You did?”
“I couldn’t sleep.” I felt my cheeks warm.
“Anyway, I think I see your problem. You’re measuring what people buy, but you’re not accounting for why they buy it.
Holiday shopping isn’t rational. It’s emotional.
People aren’t optimizing for value or utility—they’re optimizing for feelings. Joy. Nostalgia. Connection.”
His eyes widened. “The things you can’t measure.”
“The things you haven’t been measuring,” I corrected. “But they leave traces. You just have to know where to look.”
He stared at me like I’d just solved world hunger. “Show me.”
“I need access to your actual data first. Not just the public stuff.”
“Done. Anything you need.” He was already pulling out his phone. “I’ll set up your credentials right now. Full access. Whatever you want.”
“Nicholas.” I stopped him with a hand on his wrist. His skin was warm, and I felt him go very still. “I need you to understand something. If I help you with this, I’m going to tell you things you don’t want to hear. About your data, about your methodology, about your entire approach.”
“I can handle it.”
“Can you? Because from where I’m sitting, you’re a control freak who’s built his entire life around quantifying the unquantifiable. And I’m about to tell you that most of what you think you know is wrong.”
A slow smile spread across his face. “You really don’t pull punches, do you?”
“Not my style.”
“Good.” He turned his hand under mine, linking our fingers for just a second before letting go. “I don’t want someone who’ll tell me what I want to hear. I want someone who’ll tell me the truth.”
“Even if the truth is that your whole system is fundamentally flawed?”
“Especially then.” He met my eyes. “Fix me, Danika.”
I should not have found that as hot as I did.
“I’m not fixing you,” I said, taking another sip of latte to buy myself time. “I’m fixing your analytics. You’re on your own for the rest.”
“We’ll see about that.”
And there it was—that smirk. The one that made me want to argue with him just to see it again.
I was in so much trouble.
“Okay,” I said, tugging his laptop toward me so I could reach the keyboard. “First lesson. Stop treating Christmas shoppers like rational actors. They’re not. They’re stressed, sentimental, and running on sugar cookies and false hope.”
“Like someone I know?”
I kicked him under the table. “Focus.”
He was grinning now, the stress from earlier melting away. “Yes, ma’am.”
And for the next two hours—surrounded by coffee cups in a lobby that smelled like espresso and poor life choices—I taught a billionaire that some things couldn’t be predicted.
Including, apparently, the way my heart rate spiked every time he looked at me like I was the answer to every question he’d ever asked.