Chapter 1 #3
“The investors’ lunch is still on for tomorrow afternoon.”
“Cancel it.”
Her fingers paused, then continued. “Would you like me to reschedule?”
“No.”
She entered the update without comment. Years together had taught her not to ask unnecessary questions. Viktor changed plans when something required his attention; explanations rarely came with them.
“You also have dinner with the development group tonight.”
“Remove it.”
She looked up. “The entire dinner?”
“Yes.”
Lydia nodded and went back to the tablet. Viktor leaned back and watched the changes ripple across the calendar — meetings shifting, calls moving, blocks of time disappearing one after another. Commitments that had seemed important an hour ago suddenly weren’t.
Josephine was home.
For the last year, nearly every schedule adjustment had revolved around her, whether anyone else realized it or not.
Business trips had become convenient opportunities.
Conferences had been arranged around performance dates.
Meetings had appeared in cities he had no other reason to visit.
No one questioned any of it, because the business kept benefiting — new partnerships, new contracts, results that justified every trip.
Only Viktor knew how many of those decisions had started with a dancer’s schedule instead of a market one.
Lydia finished the calendar. “Anything else?”
“Did the flowers arrive?”
“Yes. The delivery was confirmed forty minutes ago.”
He nodded once. Nothing else needed saying. He’d selected the flowers himself three days earlier, approved the arrangement, the card, the delivery window. Details mattered. Especially where Josephine was concerned.
“If that’s all, I’ll finalize the changes.”
“Do it.”
She left, closing the door quietly. Viktor stayed where he was, gaze drifting to the floor-to-ceiling windows. Traffic moved below. People hurried along sidewalks. Construction cranes stood over the next block.
Normally he’d already be moving toward the next meeting.
Today felt different — not because Josephine had returned; she’d already returned.
Not because she’d bought a house; that happened weeks ago.
It mattered because there were no longer airports standing between them.
No tour schedules. No departures. No easy escapes.
He stood and walked back toward his office, nodding to the few people who greeted him along the way. Inside, he loosened his tie and crossed to his desk, where a framed photograph sat in the top drawer. He opened it.
The image was from a charity event almost a year earlier — a crowd gathered around a stage, most of them focused on whoever stood at the podium.
Viktor’s attention had been elsewhere. Josephine stood near the edge of the frame, laughing at something someone said.
He remembered the moment. The dress she wore.
Leaving the event forty minutes later because she had.
The photograph stayed in the drawer because displaying it would invite questions, and questions led to conversations, and conversations wasted time. He closed the drawer.
A knock at the door. “Come in.”
One of his senior executives stepped in with a contract folder. “We need a signature before legal sends this out.”
Viktor reviewed the final page, signed it, handed it back. “Anything else?”
“No.”
“Then we’re done.”
The man left. Viktor checked the time — still early.
His evening now held several open hours, and that hadn’t happened by accident.
He went through what remained on the calendar: two calls that could wait, one that someone else could handle.
Within minutes he’d cleared those too, leaving an evening unusually, deliberately empty.
Most people would assume priorities had simply shifted, that some business reason explained it.
Viktor preferred it that way. He didn’t discuss Josephine.
He didn’t explain Josephine. He certainly didn’t announce that he’d spent the better part of a year quietly rearranging his life around a woman who, for most of that year, had rarely stayed in one place long enough to notice.
His phone buzzed. All changes completed — Lydia.
Good, he typed back, then set the phone down and looked out at the city again.
Josephine was home.
For a year he’d worked around departures, performance schedules, distance — accepted the waiting because there’d been no real alternative.
She’d always been moving toward another city, another performance, another commitment.
That reality was gone now. The house was bought.
The move was finished. The boxes had arrived.
The flowers had been delivered. Everything he needed to know fit inside those four facts.
Viktor picked his jacket off the back of his chair and put it on. The office stayed busy around him, but his attention had already left the building.
He’d spent the last year making room for Josephine Collins in places she’d never noticed. He had no intention of spending another year doing the same thing