Her Boss's Surprise

Chapter One

In the prime of your life, Mom, how did you ever go without spousal companionship, or intimate love for more than twenty years?

Vanessa gnarled her face at her daughter.

Candice suppressed laughing, and eyed Derek. She'd been out of work for six months and needed to start selling herself, but continued to be slow on her delivery.

Vanessa sighed at her daughter's verbal hesitation. She was a fifty-three-year-old widow on a budgeted income. It was also her growing fear that she wouldn't be able to monetarily help her daughter forever. She knew, too, that if Candice remained "husbandless" that life could be more difficult for her daughter. Better yet, if Candice didn't marry, Vanessa worried that she'd never have a grandchild.

As Candice held silent, Vanessa's past words troubled her again: They called that show "Love in the City," not "Love in Suburbia," Candice, her mother had said during their eat-out dinner celebration for Candice's birthday last week.

It was called Sex "and" the City, Mom, Candice had sighed back.

Well, then, there ya go, Vanessa had countered, as she had taken another mouthful of her linguine with clam sauce. The city's where you'll find work and love. Suburbia has nothing for you, Candice.

It wasn't that Candice didn't like New York. She loved the city that never slept. But the reason why she'd avoided it lately, like the plague, was because she couldn't forget what had happened to her there six months ago.

Once bitten, twice shy, where "big-city" employment is concerned, Candice had thought during that mother-daughter birthday dinner.

That was because Candice's former "city" employer, Peggy Jones, had fired her--because Peggy had deemed her an interloper in her family designer shoe business.

Candice couldn't understand that stupidity. Prior to her termination, Candice had worked for Peggy for three years. Peggy had even told her that her ideas for the company's growth had been dynamite:

I never knew that a shoe Web site could be so appealing, Candice recalled Peggy telling her once. Your fold-down pump design that turns a spiked-heeled shoe into a flat-soled one is genius. Your sneaker design with letters on the soles, so that people can purchase footwear with their initials will be trendsetting. But your brilliant ideas are just too much for us now. My family employees are slacking off, because you outshine them, and they still get paid. Have to let you go, kid. Can't tolerate an interloper.

After her firing, for the next six months, Candice had searched for work. But only around her suburban neighborhood. When nothing had clicked, Vanessa had sent Candice her Jensen Enterprises' e-mail. And here she was now, sitting before an Adonis.

"So, tell me," Derek began with a contemplative face, eyeing Candice's résumé. "It says here that you did modeling."

"Some. Amateur--if you can call it that."

"Amateur?"

"Runway stuff in high school."

Hmm. Derek's face contorted in thought, his dreamy eyes bouncing between the résumé and Candice's face. Then he asked, "Why are you right for this position?"

With vigor, Candice replied, "I'm punctual, professional, and flexible."

Vanessa discreetly patted Candice's thigh. Slow down, "Sally," said her contact.

Hmm, Derek thought, ogling Candice. She had the face of an angel, and a body for which to die. He figured that a petite, fit, curvaceous vixen--like Candice--could bend in all sorts of positions.