Burning Desire

Chapter 1

The keys ticked beneath my fingertips as I concluded the article I'd spent the past hour and a half writing. Quickly glancing back over what I'd written, I was proud of myself. Mandy, my boss, would love this! She had been telling me to step up my game lately, due to a new girl she'd hired who seemed to want to compete with me. I didn't mind a little friendly competition with Nicole, but I didn't see the need to really change up my writing style – that is, until her most recent article had been the most talked about in our entire magazine!

Mandy favored me. I knew that because she'd told me a million times. But she loved to see her employees try extra hard, and I knew this was just another one of her tests to see if I was still as good as the day she'd hired me, if not better. Mandy wanted to see how good Nicole and I could outdo each other. I didn't have much choice in the matter since it was my boss's orders, but I'd mostly only agreed to the challenge to try to keep my status of having the most discussed articles and being the most talked about writer. I'd gotten so used to being successful at Satisfaction Magazine that I didn't want to let anyone outdo me. I felt like I'd worked hard enough to earn my position at Satisfaction, and I would feel like I wasn't doing a good enough job if anyone else took the top spot.

Fresh out of Princeton with degrees in journalism, English literature, and foreign affairs, Mandy Cartwright had hired me to write relationship advice and various types of "romance articles" for Satisfaction, one of the most popular magazines in the gossip community. Initially, my plan had been to write about important newsworthy topics that included politics and current events, but there wasn't a spot open for that type of writer at Satisfaction, and fearing that I wouldn't find a better offer for a while, I accepted Mandy's. I'd assumed I'd write about gossip and sex for a little while, just until Mandy realized what an asset I could be in the Current Affairs department, but so far, I'd worked at Satisfaction for nearly two years and nothing had changed in my job description.

I immediately became best friends with Selena, the writer who had a cubical beside mine when I'd first started. Since then, we'd both become so successful in our positions that Mandy had given us our own offices. We didn't get the luxury of having secretaries, but I didn't mind that. Selena wrote about women's sports, health and wellness, and yoga, usually. I'd learned several helpful tips from proofreading her articles before she submitted them for print. She was a very talented writer, even if her writing was eighty percent about yoga pants!

I attached my article to an email to Mandy and Selena, and hesitated a few seconds before sending it. Lately, I'd been a little unsure about my work until I got one or both of their opinions, but I was pretty proud of this one. It was the first piece I'd been really excited about in a few months, and I was anxious to hear what Mandy had to say about it. Very, very slowly, I was attempting to incorporate non-sex subjects into my romance-centered articles, hoping to sway Mandy's opinion on my ability to write about other topics.

I clicked send and closed my laptop, glad that my workday was over. I planned to go home and relax by the fireplace. It was a cold December day in New Jersey, and though I loved seeing the snow and getting to wear cute furry boots and knit scarves, I was more than ready to get out of my work clothes and warm up.

It was a long drive back to my house. Our offices were right on the New Jersey side of the Hudson River and I lived two miles from the Pennsylvania border. To get home, I had to drive the width of northern Jersey in rush hour traffic, which was no one's cup of tea. Nearly three and a half hours of my workday was commuting.

Having stared at my computer screen for so long, I was exhausted and decided I needed coffee if I was going to make it home without dozing off at the wheel. Three miles from the office, I stopped at the coffee shop and ordered my usual, a cinnamon vanilla mocha, but with two extra shots of espresso.