Candy Store

straight to it, intent on ignoring the new sensual sensations her body was sending her.
    Picking up her clipboard and supply spreadsheet, she went to her dry storeroom first and noted what was low. Moving to her walk-in refrigerator, she checked materials off her list from the top shelf first. The bottom shelves were deep and she had to get on her knees to count cocoa bars. The position was awkward, with her rear end pointing straight up, her hands and knees sprawled unladylike on the floor.
    For the past five years, Callie had planned on putting in sliding shelves on the bottom of her refrigerator. Unfortunately, the project never made it to the top of her ever-growing to-do list so she hadn’t gotten to it quite yet.
    Squirming around, trying to get comfortable in her clumsy position, she said, “One, two, three, four,” aloud as she counted stacks of the finest imported cocoa bars.
    Immersed in her counting and in the painful crick that was building up in her neck, she was surprised by footsteps coming up the short hallway and then stopping at the doorway to her storeroom.
    “We’ve got to stop meeting in refrigerators like this.”

Chapter Six

    Callie’s heart almost stopped beating. She would have recognized that smooth, deep voice anywhere.
    She froze in place, unable to get her limbs to work. She couldn’t believe that Derek’s first image of her outside of the wedding refrigerator was like this—could she be any less sexy, she wondered dejectedly—in her own damn commercial refrigerator.
    Her face, she was sure, was going to be flushed a deep shade of red when she finally stood up, considering that the man she had been lusting after for the past twenty-four hours had walked into her store unannounced, just in time to witness her pawing through her shelves on her hands and knees with her butt sticking straight up in the air.
    “On second thought,” he said, his voice washing over her like hot caramel, “I think I like it.”
    For a millisecond, Callie considered trying to crawl onto the shelf, hoping that Derek would just go away. Then again, she thought, she hadn’t invited him to her store. In fact, she hadn’t even told him she had a store, so how could it possibly be her fault that he had found her looking less than ideal?
    Trying desperately to rouse up some anger—otherwise she was stuck with embarrassed and horny, and that was a terrible combination—Callie crawled backwards and stood up, brushing invisible specks of dust off her knees and skirt.
    Her arms folded across her chest, she said, “What are you doing here?”
    Derek was leaning against the door, looking more gorgeous than any man had a right to in his pin-striped shirt and well-tailored coat and slacks.
    He grinned and Callie wanted to smack the smile from his lips.
    She also wanted to kiss him senseless, of course, but she was going to have some control over herself if it killed her.
    Which it probably would.
    “This is Callie’s Candies isn’t it?”
    Callie nodded, keeping her lips firmly pressed together, forcing herself to back up into the refrigerator shelves, rather than jump Derek’s bones.
    “I’m here for our appointment.”
    “Our appointment?”
    She was utterly mortified, sure that her skin was turning pinker and pinker by the second. If things got any worse, she would fade away completely into the fabric of her pink suit.
    “10 a.m., Monday morning. My assistant set it up with your accountant.”
    “You can’t be the guy who-” She shook her head. “That's impossible, because-”
    She leaned her weight into the cool air of the refrigerator as the full ramifications of her actions came crashing down upon her.
    “Oh god.”
    Thoughts rushed around her brain, knocking into each other as the magnitude of her mistake sunk in.
    She'd slept with the Candy King.
    She'd had a one-night stand with the one person who could save her business.
    What if he thinks I knew who he was all along and did it on purpose?
    Struggling to sound like she had at least half a handle on her life, she said, “Please forgive me. You’re with Sweet…”
    Callie let her voice drop and looked up towards the ceiling as if she obviously knew the name of his company but had momentarily forgotten it. She hoped against hope that he would fall for her act.
    The truth was, she was such a bad business owner she didn’t even know the name of the company that had been sent in to save her from ruin.
    “Sweet Returns,” he said