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  Candy plugged the computer back in and rebooted it. Jared was distracted by her hot little ass bending over and wiggling in the air as she stuck the plug in the socket.

  He said, "Maybe this is better. We can get out of the rest of those dumb-ass questions. We'll tell Harold it crashed."

  She looked doubtful, but he pulled her into his arms and kissed her with plenty of tongue until she relaxed.

  "Mmm," she said.

  "You took the words right out of my mouth." He stopped heras she tried to tug loose and head for the door.

  "Seven tonight? I'll pick you up." He wasn't letting her out of this office without a commitment to see him again.

  "Okay."

  "You go out first. I'll run Harold to ground and tell him we've solved our problems and his karma is at peak levels."

  She grinned as they paused in front of the door. "I like your karma."

  "There's plenty more where that came from." And because he couldn't resist, he squeezed her ass and molded her skirt to her, one finger sliding down between her legs.

  Her eyes fluttered shut. "Oh, stop it, Jared."

  "Sorry." Not.

  Jared opened the door, and when she stepped out, Candy found herself face to face with Harold. "Oh! Harold."

  Oh, Lord, she must look guilty as sin.

  And Harold was studying them way too closely.

  "Everything okay?"

  "Wonderful. Great." She cleared her throat and ran her fingers through her hair, guessing it looked like a blond feather duster. "Wow, what a great idea, Harold. That counseling just broke through all kinds of barriers and really brought Jared and me to a… new level of understanding."

  She broke off her babbling when she heard Jared cough over a laugh.

  Harold still looked puzzled, but he smiled. "So you finished the session?"

  Jared spoke. "Actually, we were two questions from finishing when your laptop crashed, Harold." He shrugged. "Just one of those things, so we didn't get our certificate of completion."

  Candy tried to maneuver around Harold, being careful not to touch his leather pants.

  "What? No certificate?" Harold pouted, which was so not attractive on a fifty-year-old bald man. "Then how do I know you actually did the counseling? For all I know, you've spent the last two hours playing checkers online."

  More like naked Twister. Candy couldn't think of a single doggone thing to say and starting inching down the hall, noticing there were quite a few curious heads poking out of offices.

  "I can guarantee you that we were not playing checkers," Jared said in a serious voice. "And you'll see the results of your counseling when we hand you Chunk o' Chocolate completed next week. We're going to work on it tonight."

  "Tonight? You're working late?" Harold's ears perked up, presumably at the idea of employees working overtime without compensation.

  "Yes. We'll work on it all night if we have to."

  A gurgling sound left Candy's mouth before she could stop it.

  "Are you okay, Candy?" Harold's eyes swung toward her.

  She didn't dare look at Jared. She blinked at Harold and grabbed her neck. "No, actually, I have something stuck in my throat. Excuse me, I'm going to go get a drink."

  Without waiting for an answer, she got the heck out of there, rushing down the hall on wobbly ankles. First stop was the ladies' room.

  Jan from payroll was walking down the hall with a stack of mail in her hand. She fell into step beside Candy.

  "How was Harold's kooky Internet counseling?" Jan asked in a whisper.

  Since Jan had been one of the few Stratford Marketing women who had been nice to her, Candy couldn't blow her off the way she really wanted to.

  She gave Jan a weak smile. "It wasn't as kooky as I thought it would be."

  Jan flipped her dark hair over her shoulder and grinned. "But at least you got to do it with a hottie like Jared Kincaid. With my luck, Harold would stick me in counseling with the office geek."

  Oh, Lord, Candy was blushing. She could feel the heat stain spreading across her cheeks. "You just treat it like any other work assignment."

  Yeah, right. If you were a hooker, maybe.

  "What's Jared like? Is he really the cool customer he looks to be?"

  Cool wasn't the word she would use.

  "He was very… accommodating." Candy choked on the word as she came to a halt outside the ladies' room. "Excuse me, Jan. I have to use the rest room."

  Jan stopped next to her. "Well, while you're in there, you might want to fix your blouse. It seems to have gotten crooked during your counseling session."

  She winked and started off down the hall.

  Candy glanced down in horror. A good deal of her stomach was flashing through the Titanic-sized hole in the middle of her blouse.

  And Harold hadn't even seemed to notice.

  Maybe his eyes were going the same way as his hair.

  Yanking her blouse halves together, she pushed open the door and wondered how long until the last employee would leave the building for the day.

  She just might want to hide in the rest room until then.

  @ Jared didn't know what the hell he was doing.

  Everything had seemed a lot easier when he and Candy had been seminaked and moaning in Harold's office earlier.

  Now things were complicated.

  Candy had avoided him the rest of the day, and he had been unable to work because of all the confusing feelings tumbling around inside him. Feelings that were about as welcome as the stomach flu.

  Feelings that had him standing outside her door sweating in his wool coat like it was July.

  As he rang the doorbell to her apartment, he wondered exactly why Candy had agreed to meet him tonight. He also wondered exactly why he had agreed to meet Candy tonight. He didn't know what he wanted any more than he knew what she wanted.

  Aside from sex, that is. If she even wanted any more of that. And just why in the hell did he care so much?

  Candy opened the door and smiled shyly at him. "Hi."

  Oh, damn, she was wearing jeans that hugged every inch of her hips and rounded ass. A red turtleneck sweater stretched optimistically across her breasts and pulled northward toward her belly button when she reached up to run a hand through her hair.

  The flash of skin left him dazed and hard. And possessive. He didn't want anyone else to see Candy's skin but him.

  That sweater was the same one she'd been wearing the day they met, and it made her face glow golden. She'd put some kind of shiny wet-looking stuff on her lips and he wanted to eat it off, one little nibble at a time.

  After an embarrassing pause, he managed to say, "Hi. You look great."

  Oh, now there was an original compliment.

  "Thanks. Do you want to come in or did you have plans to go somewhere?" Candy tucked her hands behind her back and rocked on the balls of her feet in sexy little black boots.

  "Actually, we should get going. I made dinner plans."

  Alarm crossed her face. "I'm not dressed for dinner."

  "Don't worry, this place is casual." And blissfully close. His place was only twenty minutes from Candy's.

  "Oh, okay. Let me get my coat. Come on in." She turned and disappeared into her apartment. "Do I need the Chunk o' Chocolate file? Or do you have copies?"

  Naive girl. She actually thought they were going to do work? He'd been called a lot of things over the years, but never stupid. Any man asinine enough to discuss how to market chocolate when he had Candy Appleton alone in his condo was… not Jared.

  "I have copies." In his desk back at the office.

  Jared stepped into her living room and was immediately assaulted by an excess of floral patterns. Jesus, Candy had a whole meadow growing in there, various rioting prints covering a sofa, a loveseat, and an overstuffed chair.

  Violent red poppies danced across her curtains, and every table was littered with little things that he wouldn't even claim to know the name of. Things like little tiny wicker chair
s with plants growing out of their seats, and wooden cats. The coffee table held a bowl full of lemons on it, and a round ball of orange fur that was probably a live cat was sleeping next to it.

  He pictured those poppy curtains hanging in his apartment and shuddered. Not that he wanted Candy to live with him or anything. But love did not extend to ugly drapes.

  The L word brought him up short. What the hell was he thinking? He did not love her. He was interested in her. He wanted to get to know her. He had great admiration for her brain and her breasts, but that had nothing whatsoever to do with love.

  Did it?

  Candy stuffed her arms into a very fluffy camel-colored coat, with huge quantities of white fur pluming around her face.

  He didn't even know her.

  She smiled. "I'm ready," she said in a breathless siren voice.

  He did know she was trouble. But sometimes getting into trouble was so much fun.

  "Is something wrong, Jared?"

  "No, not at all. Why do you ask?"

  She shrugged and the fur nearly swallowed her face. "You just look a little serious. I was worried that maybe you're embarrassed because we diddled around in Harold's office."

  Diddled? He was pretty sure he'd just been insulted.

  "Diddling is not what I would call it. And I'm not embarrassed. I don't get embarrassed. Especially not when I enjoyed being with you and would do it again in a heartbeat." He was conscious his voice was rising, but shit, he couldn't help it.

  Diddled, for God's sake.

  Candy reached out, put her warm little hand on his cheek, and stroked with her thumb. "I'd do it again too."

  His anger vanished along with the last of his futile resistance. "Good," he said gruffly.

  Candy was starting to figure out that Jared was a whole lot of masculine bluster. Beneath the cool stare and the cutting words he sometimes tossed off, he had feelings.

  Twenty minutes later when she walked into his condo, she realized those feelings included being really doggone romantic.

  He had recreated her idea of a perfect evening, right down to his own addition of a fire popping warmly in the fireplace.

  Oh, Lord. If she hadn't been on the edge before, taking in the table set for two, the chilling wine, and the scented candles burning did her in for sure. It felt almost like she was falling in love with Jared.

  Which was insane, since she was supposed to be using him just for the purpose of having some romping good sex. But the stupid man had gone and actually listened to what she had said when she'd been talking. She wasn't sure any man besides her stepfather had ever actually heard a single word she'd said outside of work-related topics.

  Dean, her ex-husband, sure in the heck never had.

  "Oh, Jared, you didn't have to go to so much trouble." But she was sure glad he had.

  "It wasn't any trouble."

  For a man who claimed not to get embarrassed, he was doing a pretty good imitation of just that.

  It just made him all the more gorgeous.

  Jared was wearing casual black pants and a sky blue shirt, which made his blue eyes even lighter against his dark hair. He had a smooth, understated style, always looking good but never veering into the female world of primping.

  He picked up a remote control and turned the stereo on. Jazz music started playing softly. Her legs threatened to give way. He'd even remembered the jazz.

  When he held her chair out for her, she looked at the pasta sitting in a covered bowl ready to be served. If he had cooked food that was edible, she might just never want to leave. "Did you cook this?"

  He snorted. "Hell, no. I don't cook. I ordered it from an Italian restaurant around the corner."

  Then he sat down across from her. He sounded oddly eager when he said, "Do you cook?"

  "Not unless you call PB and J sandwiches cooking."

  "I can make omelets," he said.

  She was impressed. Scrambled was the most she could manage. "I can boil hot dogs and heat up canned corn."

  They both laughed while he poured the wine and served them pasta and bread. She took a steaming bite and silently thanked the unknown chef. Having spent a good portion of her lunch hour holed up in the ladies' room, she was now starving.

  After a few bites, Candy said, "We're not going to get to any work on Chunk o' Chocolate, are we?"

  Jared looked up from his plate. "We'll get to it." He grinned. "Sometime before it's due on Harold's desk."

  She was afraid he would say that. Or really damn pleased was probably the more honest answer.

  "Jared, we should at least try and work on it." Candy tried to sound firm, but she knew she was failing miserably.

  He kept smiling. Geez, she loved his smile. He didn't ever look so relaxed at work, and she felt a giddy pleasure that she could bring that grin to his face.

  "Alright, let's think up some slogans while we eat." Jared took a sip of his wine. "What rhymes with chunk?"

  "Monk. Punk. Funk." She leaned back in her chair and nibbled on her bread. "So, how about a monk at a disco eating chocolate?"

  He shot her a withering look.

  She giggled. "Hunk rhymes too."

  "We're talking about the ad, Candy, not me."

  His deadpan expression made her laugh out loud. "Hunky and modest, huh?"

  "I'm a pretty good catch, aren't I?" His serious expression cracked a little, his lip twitching up in a smile.

  "I know you are. Didn't I ask why no one's caught you yet?"

  "Maybe I've been waiting for the right woman to figure out how to catch me."

  A fishing net? Handcuffs? With fantastic sex?

  Candy wished she knew, because she was starting to think she'd like to snag Jared for herself.

  "So say a woman wanted to catch you. What would be the best way to do that?" She tried to keep her voice light, but a quiver crept into it.

  Jared put his fork down and gave her a searching look that made her want to squirm. He said, "I think by just being herself, and letting me be myself."

  Then he shrugged. "It sounds like an after-school special, but it's true. I don't want games, I want a partner, a friend."

  He raised his wineglass in mock salute, and his voice lightened. "Sounds pretty stupid, doesn't it?"

  "No." Candy shook her head rapidly. "No, it doesn't. I… I was married once."

  Jared's eyes bulged. "You were?"

  "Yeah." She tried to smile, but couldn't quite force it. "Dean was my boyfriend in high school. It was never a good relationship, not even then. We broke up when I went to college, but when I came back home, he came on strong, said all the right things."

  Yet to this day she couldn't imagine what she had been thinking when she had married him. "As soon as we were married, I knew it was a mistake, but I didn't want to admit that."

  Jared was gripping his glass tightly. "What did he do to you?"

  Startled, she said, "Nothing. I mean, he didn't abuse me or anything horrible like that. We just had nothing in common; we didn't talk. He was violently jealous of guys looking at me, and it just got worse. He had to control everything with our money, where I was going, what I was doing. He didn't want me wearing makeup or nice clothes."

  No, Dean had never hit her, but he had made her life miserable, and had stripped her of her dignity. He had humiliated her in front of people she cared about. "He said it was my fault men looked at me, that I was a flirt, a tease."

  "Jesus, Candy. How long were you with him?"

  It wasn't pity in Jared's voice, just honest concern. It made her feel better about blurting out her past business to him.

  "Three years." Years that she had accepted were gone and she couldn't get back.

  "That's a long time to live like that."

  "It is. But I got away as soon as I was ready, and thank goodness we never had any children together."

  "Are you divorced then?"

  His hand had snaked across the table and was holding hers, stroking with a light touch.

&nb
sp; "Oh, heck yeah. He tried to fight it, but the judge was friends with my stepdad and he wasn't having any of Dean's crap. Judge Anderson pushed it through nice and fast, and I moved to Knoxville. But it still felt too close to Dean, so I picked up and came to Chicago. My roommate from college lives here."

  She waited for the apology that was sure to come. The pity or even the recrimination. If Jared thought there was an ounce of truth to Dean's accusations of her being a dick-tease, she would either die from mortification or impale him with a salad fork.

  He didn't do what she expected at all.

  Instead, he squeezed her hand hard and said matter-of-factly, "Your ex sounds like a big pussy."

  "Jared!" Good gravy, she couldn't believe he'd said that. She'd never heard him sound so brutal and angry before.

  But then Dean inspired those feelings in her too.

  "Well, he is." Jared was unrepentant. "Any real man would be proud to have you as his wife. He'd want you to dress up and look all sexy, so he could stroll into a room and let every guy there know that he had managed to marry a hot woman like you."

  Candy flushed with pleasure.

  "So I think your ex had issues about his manhood. That's the only explanation for treating you like that."

  Candy had issues with Dean's manhood now too, since Jared had managed to make her moan squished up against a mahogany office desk. Dean had never inspired anything more than a pleasant sigh from her, and that was on his best days.

  "He wanted to own you, didn't he?" Jared had pushed his chair back, but hadn't let go of her hand.

  Candy's arm was stretched clear across the table, but she never even noticed the awkward position. Jared's words sliced something deep inside, touching a raw spot she hadn't known even existed anymore.

  "What do you mean?" She thought she knew precisely what he meant.

  "That your ex wanted a pretty wife on his arm, like a cool car or a great stereo system. Then when he had you, he worried about losing you to someone else who might want you."

  Maybe she had suspected that all along, but she had never discussed it with anyone. To have Jared guess what might be the truth was a new humiliation. "Probably," she choked out.

  Then she spoke in a rush. "Listen, Jared, I don't… I'm not… my ex wasn't right about the tease thing. I…"