Candy Store

convulsively, but her mouth felt dry and her tongue refused to fit within the confines of her mouth. All she could do was nod.
    The silence between them in Callie’s Candies was almost a live being. She wished she knew what happened to her when Derek was near, that way she might have had a chance in hell at fighting it.
    But when he finally said, “I like that about you, Callie. I like that a lot. I like everything about you,” she knew she was irrevocably lost.
    “Lock the door,” she said, then turned and walked back into her storeroom.
    She heard the lock click shut and undid the button on her jacket. Shrugging out of the pink wool, she threw it onto her desk.
    She reached for the zipper on her skirt just as Derek walked through the door and let it drop to the floor.
    Standing before Derek in her camisole and silk thong panties, she said, “One more time. And then we’ll take care of business.”

Chapter Seven

    “Remind me again,” Callie said as she stamped her feet in the snow to stay warm. “Why are we doing this?”
    Derek put the huge cooler he had been carrying into the snow on the edge of the rink. “Ice skaters love two things,” he said, taking a moment to admire how cute Callie looked in her form fitted pink down jacket and tight black ski pants. “Perfect ice, obviously, and, even more importantly, chocolate.”
    Callie humphed and rubbed her mittened hands together. “If I weren’t so cold I might care.”
    Derek wanted to suck that pouty lower lip of Callie’s into his mouth.
    It really was too bad that after leaving Callie’s Candies on Monday, after their crazy, perfect sex on the steel kitchen island in the middle of her store’s back kitchen, Derek felt he had to make the only decision possible under the circumstances—to back off until Callie’s Candies was back in the black and running smoothly.
    It was perfectly all right to fuck Callie’s brains out before they discussed business, but once the first professional word had been spoken, Derek knew not touching Callie was the right thing to do.
    Not, of course, that he would hesitate to rip her clothes off and keep her naked in his bed for a week once their business transaction had ended.
    But for the time being, the last thing Derek wanted was for Callie to think that the success of her business was in any way linked to whether or not she put out. For the past fifteen years he had been the consummate professional with his clients. He didn’t mix business with pleasure, although, truth be told, he had never been tempted to lick cocoa powder off one of his clients before.
    In any case, given that this was his last job in the candy business before the world of accounting took him in, he felt an even greater motivation to do his very best.
    Not to mention the fact that he had a very strong personal interest in his gorgeous, talented client.
    He was going to stick to his decision. Even if it killed him.
    Looking at the way Callie’s ass rounded up at him as she bent over to unlatch the cooler, Derek was pretty damn sure that keeping his hands off the delectable little candy maker was, indeed, going to destroy him.
    After their meeting on Monday, Derek had spent the week holed up in his office, working up a plan of money-making action for her. After looking through her books, he saw that although she was doing fairly well in sales, she was in such a high-rent district that she’d have to either move to another town or double her daily sales.
    Their conversation on this matter had been short and sweet.
    Derek: “Have you thought about moving to another location?”
    Callie: “No.”
    Derek: “The rent is lower and you wouldn’t have to worry about losing your shop.”
    Callie: “I grew up here and I’m staying here. Isn’t it your job to figure out a way to make that work?”
    Derek grinned. Just looking at Callie, small and pretty and sweet, her fiery, sharp mind wasn’t inherently obvious. But it was there.
    Along with her ravenous sensuality.
    Plans for saving Callie’s Candies consumed him. He'd already had a web site built for her at a reduced rate by his sister-in-law, who was one of the best in the business, by promising her all the truffles she could eat for the next decade. He was doing the same trade with a hot public relations firm. Next week, he was going to look into national distribution through major gourmet food chain stores.
    In any normal consultation situation, Derek would have met with her again in