Get ready for a storm of emotions and unexpected connections in Feyi Aina's contemporary romance novel, Like Whirlwind, out now. Read the full first chapter here.
Chapter One
As Tomiwa Oyinlolu strode through the gold-platted doors of Lion Towers’ ten-floor building, his mind was not at ease.
Based on what little information Babs had been able to glean for him, the company eyeing the Kehinde Jules account was not to be underestimated. They had handled a few small to medium-sized projects, and the reviews on their work were good. Astonishingly good.
He was headed for serious competition with them as rivals in the coming weeks.
Feyintola will explode, he thought as he strolled through the wide lobby towards the corridor leading to the elevators. Meeting her this morning was the last thing he wanted to do.
He couldn’t fault her, though. She had moved heaven and earth to get them into the bid meetings in Abuja and rung up all her pending favours to ensure they were front and centre. Now they’d passed the first three stages of the bid presentations, the idea of pitching against One Tech, a relatively unknown company, was guaranteed to infuriate her.
Who the heck is One Tech?
How had they passed all the presentation stages with no sponsor? Who did they know on the inside? What was so great about their app?
The elevator dinged as it came to a stop and the doors opened. He pushed away his melancholic thoughts and stepped in, reaching for the control panel when a shriek stopped him.
“Hey, hold the doors!”
Startled, he kept a finger on the open-door button and waited to see who needed to get on.
It didn’t take long. She flew into the elevator like a tumultuous whirlwind, scattering and splattering his emotions around as she entered arms first, fruity fragrance next, into the rectangular space that had been his alone just moments prior.
Pretty, aquiline-shaped eyes above a small nose and dainty rose-bud lips arrested his attention at once, along with milk-white teeth as she slowed to a stop, placed a hand over her heart, and burst into boisterous laughter. Light and exuberant, it echoed around the spacious passage and had him mesmerized.
“Yeah, they have an elevator! I don’t have to rattle up those stairs with all my baggage.”
A one-second sweep of her from head to toe revealed a handbag, a laptop bag, a black manila folder, and a lunch bag. Quite a lot of things to be carrying but not so much they qualified as baggage.
‘Thank you,’ she mouthed as she turned around and smiled at him. “The building is huge and modern. I am impressed.”
He released his hold on the button.
“And I’m never late o! The car just developed a fault right in front of the school compound. Today, of all the days I needed to be on time.”
He raised his eyes to her face. Was she talking to him?
“I had to take a bike,” she chuckled. “Yes o! I would have been late.”
She wasn’t. She had on EarPods and seemed to be on a call with someone.
“I’m just praying that Niyi got the mechanic to get it to work.”
While she grappled with her phone call, he let his eyes take their time travelling down her svelte frame in the yellow dress and a white, short-sleeved knitted jacket.
She had braids on, whipped up into an elegant bun on top of her head. Hoop earrings dangled past her cheeks, and the top button on the jacket was undone, exposing a neckline hinting at two soft swellings that teased his imagination. It was just enough, better than most of it out in the open, in his opinion. Not that he’d even wanted to look.
“Okay, I’ll let you know how it goes,” she continued. “Thank you, bye.”
The folder was crammed below her chest over her abdomen where the dress followed the shape of her curvy hips to her knees, legs long beneath the hem. A yellow pair of two-strapped, transparent-heeled sandals completed the look.
He loved strappy sandals on beautiful women. They were his weakness. Strapped heels with well-manicured toes on slender legs and a lithe frame to go with.
“Sir.” Her voice put an end to his ogling. His eyes veered up and encountered her confused look as her eyes moved from his to the control panel. “I’m going to the fourth floor.”
He wasn’t the type to stare at girls.
Cars, yes. Buildings, maybe. Women…he drew a line at women. Especially if they were this young, this pretty, or somewhere within the sphere of his work-space environment.
But he was enchanted—it took him a second to realize the lift wasn’t moving. “Oh.”
She whipped out the electronic visitor’s tag she’d been handed at the lobby, but he came alive at once, like a quasi-knight aiming to score some cheap, unusable points with her.
He leaned forward, swiped his key card across the scanner, and pressed the number four button without a word. Then, he stepped back to extend a hand across the steel rail running the length of the wall and observe her.
“Or was it five?” she muttered as the elevator lifted with a slight bump.
Flipping open the cover of the black folder, she studied the A4 sheet on the topmost page for a second, raised her eyes to his, and gave an apologetic little laugh. Her pearly whites flashed at him again. Perfect in their row, no spaces or gaps or discoloration. The gesture had been so dainty and sophisticated, he’d held his breath while watching it.
Sweet lollipop, I’m hooked!
Her beauty wasn’t the type to make one wild. Like with the girls his brother’s friend, Ade, jokingly termed a HOT Run—‘Hit Once Then Run.’ Girls that weren’t the main dish or the side; not even the dessert. More like the accompanying sweet with the bill at a restaurant, according to them.
She was a lollipop. The kind one took time to unwrap and savor and keep.
He had enough on his plate without adding the drama of a lollipop. Plus, he didn’t know how to bait a girl and run. It was callous. Offering a job, demanding other things, and bolting out of the door without looking back.
“Fifth floor, I’m so sorry, it's number five. Gosh, I am not myself today! Jelly brain, that’s what I am.”
Jelly brain? More like jelly-baby, you soft, luscious thing. Ade would have to expand his nomenclature. Desserts and sweets would not just do.
She pointed at the control panel. “Number five, please.”
He recalled himself and leaned sideways to press the fifth and eighth buttons on the panel. He’d almost forgotten which floor he was headed to.
Girls like her were a dime a dozen in the job-hunting space. Many of his friends had taken their pick, had their fill, and paid the price. Not him. Casual hook-ups were not his thing. He had more riding on his name and brand than to let one night of careless craziness ruin things.
Yeah, she’s beautiful, but hold your horses.
“I’m going for an interview,” she said to him.
He froze.
There was only one company in the building interviewing today.
His.
“Purple Chip Professional Services,” she added. “It’s the IT firm to be in. They’re indigenous, pushing frontiers, proudly Nigerian, and breaking boundaries. That’s why I like them.”
Interesting!
He understood now why she was worried about being late.
“I have always wanted to work with them.
You have?
“Ever since they won that grant from the US and secured the multi-country deal, they’ve been churning out amazing products. Now here I am, invited for their interview, and I’m late. Can you imagine?”
Unfortunately for her, the test had started.
But the interview, and in that dress, though, yellow? Who wore yellow to an interview?
“Well, test. Says so on their invite here.” She tapped the folder.
His eyes lowered to the folder and rose to hers.
“My sister-in-law says that problems are a sign of great things being in store for you.”
She was talking. Again!
“So, when your car refuses to start in the morning or you miss a ride on your way to an important interview—” she grinned at him, “—then know that all things are working together for your good!”
She was right. His need to travel down to the ground floor to sign off on a delivery was turning out to be a good start to his day.
“But I’m freaking out! I need to make the shortlist so I can get a chance to talk to the faces behind the greatest software company in the whole of Lagos. I’m a huge, huge fan of their financial management app, Compound. Don’t get me started on Compound. I could think of a few ways to jazz it up, but then, one step at a time, right? I have to get my foot in through their doors first before I think about changing their codes.”
His brow furrowed. Jazz up an award-winning software, was she serious? How old was she exactly? What did she know about coding?
The elevator's sudden stop jarred him out of his thoughts, and the doors slid open on the fourth floor. She took a peek out, and he mirrored the gesture.
“Not my floor!” She released a quiet sigh.
Since there was no one waiting to get on, the doors slid back closed again, and he was glad. It gave him more time to stare at her.
His eyes settled on her even-toned, animated face and went exploring again. Symmetry is beauty, he’d read somewhere. The braid bun drew attention to her pretty, expressive eyes and the lips that had been moving a mile a minute, not giving him time enough to admire them.
She seemed to notice him staring and suddenly turned shy, averting her eyes and folding her lips together.
He’d been told often enough that his quiet and stern outer appearance was vastly different from his soft and mushy inner personality. It took a while before people found out the outside didn’t quite match the inside. He didn’t know what she was reading from his facial expression, but inside, he was umpiring a battle between his yo-yo-ing heartbeat and his logic.
She was pretty. Breathtaking, but he had his rules. He tried hard to follow his rules.
The side-effects of being a rich, powerful guy at the top of his game meant those rules wavered, wanting to be bent often enough, but he had a firm resolve and the discipline to carry it through.
Brand before babes! Brand first, babes later.
Babes— probably never.
She bounced on one spot, eyes on the elevator doors as if willing the carriage to go faster. This was the moment if ever he was going to get a word in.
“You should calm down.”
She turned to look at him, halting her fidgeting.
“I’m sure you will do just fine.”
His voice had come out rich and sonorous in the quiet elevator, and he’d been surprised at how calm and strong it was, considering the anxious pounding of his heart.
“I’m nervous. I talk a lot when I’m nervous.”
“I noticed.”
He was convinced she did cartwheels, as well, whenever she was nervous.
“I will. Do fine, that is. I have to. I prepared for this all through my university final year, so...” She chuckled. “But thank you for the vote of confidence, sir.”
Sir? The elevator bumped to a stop, and the doors slid open. Do I look that old?
“Okay, wish me luck!” She turned to offer him another smile.
She looked genuinely excited, so he tipped his head at her. “All the best.”
“Thank you! Enjoy your day,” she threw at him as she hurried down the lush red carpeting lining the hallway down to the offices of Purple Chip Professional Services.
He stood in the empty elevator for a moment staring at the spot she’d just exited from.
As he rode the rest of the way to the eighth floor, he wasn’t doing much worrying again about Kehinde Jules and the contract, or Feyintola’s impending blow-up. He wasn’t even wondering what kind of dirt Babs would have been able to dig up about One Tech or if it would even be useful.
He was thinking about the woman who had just waltzed into and out of his life, and how he was going to figure out who she was amidst the throng of candidates milling about on the fifth floor.
He had his rules, but she had bent them.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Tomiwa Oyinlolu is the successful CEO of Purple Chip Professional Services, the IT firm that everyone wants to work for. One day he meets an exuberant woman in the elevator of his office building and she completely mesmerises him. The thing, she shows up at their oral interview panel as one of the ten short-listed candidates from a pool of over a hundred. It is unfortunate she has a connection to the owner of their competitor, One Tech. Worse, his sister has a spy in the rival company and she won’t let him hire the young lady.
The problem is, she is a brilliant programmer, and it seems he has fallen for her.
Cheerful, high-spirited Ademide Akinseye’s dream has always been to start her career in Purple Chip Professional Services. On the side, she ushers at parties to make ends meet. The man she encounters on her way to interview attentively listens to her light-hearted chatter about her day, philosophies, and plans to join Purple Chip as a programmer. Then she arrives at the job assessment and realises she’s been blabbing to the founder and owner of Purple Chip.
Although the cards are stacked against her, she isn’t about to give up on her dreams.
Download your copy now:
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ABOUT FEYI AINA
Olufunmilola Adeniran writes as Feyi Aina, a Christian author and poet, crafting contemporary inspirational women’s fiction as well as historical stories infused with an African fantasy flavour.
She is a Physiotherapist by day, a writer by night and the author of several short stories, and novels including Love’s Indenture, Home Cooked Love, Love Happens Eventually, and most recently, AYANFE.
Her short stories have appeared in Brittle Paper, and in several anthologies, most notably Hell Hath No Fury, Healing Hearts and Hurts as well as Roses Aren’t Red. Her stories feature strong male and female lead characters in ‘what if’ scenarios created to epitomize good moral conduct while showing off the beautiful process of falling in love.
Olufunmilola lives in Lagos with her husband and children. She is the RWOWA 2019 Author of the Year winner for her novel Love’s Indenture. Her short story, THE RIVER GOD, was sampled in the textbook Nature, Environment and Activism in Nigerian Literature, by Prof. Sule. E. Egya.
When she’s not reading or writing, she loves cooking, traveling, and scouring the net for information about art, history, and ancient civilization.
Her e-books can be found on the following platforms: Amazon, Bambooks, Kobo, Scribd, Smashwords, Selar, and Waterstone. Physical copies exist in popular bookshops across the country.
Social media handles:
Instagram – feyi_aina
Twitter – @feyi_aina
Website – www.feyiaina.com
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