A Man Like That

The first thing Zara noticed about him was not his face.

It was the scent.

She was standing at the edge of the Governor's reception — one of those Abuja evenings where the air conditioning was aggressive and the small chops were excellent and everyone in the room was performing a version of themselves they had rehearsed carefully in the car on the way over. She had a glass of something sparkling that she was not drinking and a smile she was not feeling and a dress that had cost more than her first month's salary at the Ministry, which she now considered a reasonable investment.

She was not supposed to be thinking about perfume.

She was supposed to be thinking about the contract.

The ₦4.2 billion infrastructure contract that had somehow, in the three weeks since tender closed, migrated from the shortlist to a status that her director described only as under review — which in Abuja meant it had migrated into someone's pocket and the question was only whose.

She had come tonight to find out whose.

Then the scent reached her.

Bergamot and pepper — and underneath those top notes something warmer and more complicated. Ambroxan. The synthetic molecule that smelled like expensive skin, like proximity, like someone standing very close in a room where everyone else was standing very far away.

Something wild and clean and deeply, deliberately masculine. Bergamot and pepper — she knew enough about fragrance to know that much — and underneath those top notes something warmer and more complicated that she could not immediately name. Ambroxan, maybe. The synthetic molecule that smelled like expensive skin, like proximity, like someone standing very close in a room where everyone else was standing very far away.

She turned.

He was across the room, talking to the Commissioner for Works, but he was not looking at the Commissioner. He was looking at her. He was tall in the way that Abuja men who had not worked for anything were sometimes tall — easy in his body, comfortable in his suit, the kind of man who had been good-looking long enough that it had stopped being interesting to him. Dark. Composed. A glass of Scotch held loosely in one hand.

Dior Sauvage EDP. She placed it now. She had smelled it before — on a former colleague, on a stranger in a lift, once memorably on a man who turned out to be thoroughly unsuitable in every possible way except the olfactory. It was the most bought men's perfume in the world, which should have made it anonymous, and somehow never quite did.

He broke eye contact first. Returned his attention to the Commissioner.

She turned back to her sparkling wine and her thoughts and the contract. Three minutes later he was standing beside her.

“You were trying to place it,” he said. Not a question.

“Excuse me?”

“The perfume.” He glanced at her sideways. “You had the look of someone doing taxonomy. Most people just say it smells nice.”

“It does smell nice,” she said carefully. “Dior Sauvage. EDP not EDT — the vanilla in the base gives it away.”

A pause.

“Most people don't know the difference,” he said.

“Most people,” she said, “are not most people.”

His name was Emeka Nnadi. He was thirty-eight. He was the founder and CEO of Nnadi Infrastructure Solutions, which had been registered eighteen months ago and had somehow, in those eighteen months, won three federal contracts worth a combined ₦11 billion.

She knew all of this before he introduced himself because she had done her research and she was very good at her job.

What her research had not told her was that he would smell like that.

What her research had not prepared her for was that when he smiled — slow, contained, like a man who rationed his warmth — she would feel it in a way that was professionally inconvenient and personally very interesting.

“Zara Musa,” she said, and gave him her hand.

He held it a moment longer than was strictly necessary.

“I know who you are,” he said.

The evening continued. The small chops were replenished. The Commissioner gave a speech about development corridors that no one listened to. The air conditioning continued its assault.

She did not find out what she had come to find out about the contract.

She found out other things instead.