Hate To Love You

Rosie's new job as a secretary at a real estate firm puts her in the same office as Davis, the man who shared her bed for one passionate night at a club months earlier, but he greets her like a stranger. While she confides in her friend Ella about this impossible attraction, across town her teenage daughter Shally lives with Femi and his fiancée Jessica; Jessica keeps pressing Femi to reunite the girl with her biological mother, yet Femi refuses because Rosie's abandonment years ago burned him too deeply. The push and pull that gives this story its name, 'Hate To Love You', tightens when Shally collapses during Femi's marriage proposal to Jessica, sending them all to the hospital, and Femi, frightened by the thought of losing his daughter, decides Shally needs her mother; he leaves the girl at Rosie's gate with a suitcase and a note. Shally's sudden arrival forces Rosie to confront a past she has hidden from everyone: she was fifteen when she fell pregnant, her parents sent her away to deliver, the baby's father refused to stay, and she ran away because she was terrified of raising a child alone. This confession spills out only after Rosie follows Shally's advice and tells Davis she loves him at the office, where he rejects her coldly, suspends her for a week, and leaves her devastated. At home, Rosie's tears crack Shally's own loneliness, and the two begin to mother and daughter each other; Shally forgives her mother just as Davis calls back to explain that his fiancée died in a car accident two years ago, that he has been afraid to love again, and that he rejected Rosie because her confession would fuel his own desire—he has loved her since the night they spent together. Rosie hesitates to trust him, and her friend Bisi's dangerous affair with a married man called Chief offers a cautionary echo: love that hides in corners rarely ends well. Davis shows up at Rosie's home with a gift for Shally.