Check out the first book in my Karma Cafe

Karma Café: Sugar and Spice

~Excerpt~

What was a smart, goal-oriented girl to do when she got all hot and bothered watching a strong, sexy man look like a lost little boy? In this particular case, Dedra Hanson figured the only option was to run like hell.

Because when the lost little boy was her boss, a strong, sexy man who had just gotten engaged to someone else, he landed firmly on her off-limits list. Throw in the fact that he saw her as an efficient, albeit sometimes humorous robot, and the whole situation just screamed heartache.

Standing by the front door with a stack of files clutched in her arms, Dedra watched Paul Chastain stare at the small, vividly furnished apartment like he’d never seen a couch before. Then again, it was highly likely he’d never seen one in neon paisley.

The morning sunlight filtered through the sparkling windows, a view of the Golden Gate Bridge beckoning as Paul shoved both hands through his hair.

“This is surreal,” he decided, his voice hoarse with exhaustion.

Maybe it was jetlag, having had to fly from Sydney to San Francisco on a moment’s notice. Or the frustration of having to cut his last single-man vacation short to clean up the mess Peter had created at Chastain International, the company the two brothers had inherited when they’d lost their parents five years back. Chastain International specialized in luxury footwear, while the Chastain brothers specialized in playboy adventures. Or maybe he was upset because he’d had to turn down some half-naked slut-bunny who’d promised him any number of sexual favors.

Which was yet another reason she had to quit this job. It had been hard enough watching Paul parade through the society pages with a different gorgeous, sexy woman each month. But once he was married, Sylvia would be in the office all the time. Oh, at first it’d be sweetness and light, the same as she’d been in the meetings with Paul. But the ice queen couldn’t hide her grabby intentions for long. Dedra would bet it’d be less than a month before Sylvia started interfering. Bossing her around. Edging her out. So, nope. No way. It was better to quit while she was ahead than deal with that.

“I don’t know how it happened,” Paul said, half to himself. “One minute I was buying a cruller and wondering where the hell I’m going to live for the next five days. The next thing I know, I’m hanging my suits in a tiny closet between a glittering ball dress and what looks like a molting wolf-fur, and trying to choose what kind of meat I wanted on my morning muffins.”

“It was sweet of Natalia Karmanski to offer you a place to stay,” Dedra said quietly, sorting through the already organized stack of papers she’d brought for him to read to keep herself from staring at him with puppy-dog eyes. “You don’t want the board to know you’re back until you finish negotiations with Ms. Bittle. With your house under a termite tent, your office off limits and the paparazzi always squirreling out your location whenever you stay in a hotel, this is a great option.”

Sort of.

Dedra looked around at the small, colorful apartment with a grimace. Decorated in late psychedelic, early gypsy, the bleeding pink, purple and turquoise walls were making her wish she’d worn sunglasses. But she’d give up a month’s pay to see her jet-setting, super elegant boss curl his long, lean body into that lime-green fur beanbag chair.

“Even if it isn’t quite your style,” she added dryly.

Paul rolled his eyes at her, then in a rare show of stress, rolled his neck from side to side as well.

“Did you tell Natalia I needed somewhere to hide out?” he asked, giving her a suspicious look.

“As fascinating as your life is to many, I actually don’t talk to people about it.” Dedra handed over three thick file folders filled with merger documents. Nope, talking about him inevitably led to deep sighs, lusty thoughts and hard nipples. Nothing she wanted to share with others. Sharing them with Paul? That scared her almost as much as people suspecting she was a sad cliché, the mousy secretary falling for her glamorous boss. A boss who had a strict policy against sleeping with people who worked for him. “I figure I have to answer enough questions about you during work hours, I try to avoid it on my time off.”

Instead, she used her time off to obsess over her miserably inappropriate and useless crush on an off-limits, soon-to-be-engaged, out-of-her-league man. Dedra gave a mental eye roll of her own, wondering when she’d changed from practical, sensible and smart into pathetic, desperate and demoralizing.

At least she hadn’t slipped over into delusional and started believing she had a chance with him.

“Peter claims they’re witches. I figured he was referring to how delicious their food is. But given that Natalia knew exactly what I needed and had it waiting, maybe he’s on to something.”

Dedra’s lips twitched. “Magical muffins and mind reading, all in one visit?”

His grin filled his face, wiping away the slight grayish cast of exhaustion and lighting his blue eyes, giving them that boyish sparkle she loved so much.

“Could be. That elderly one, what’s her name?”

“Odette.”

“Yeah, she always seems to know what I’m craving. If it’s not on the menu or in their dessert display, within seconds of me walking through the door, she comes out and says she’s just made it and would I like a taste. Last month it was Hungarian Goulash. Before that apple pie. It’s scary.” His exaggerated shudder made it a joke, but Dedra saw the hint of speculation in his eyes.

“They’re just good at what they do,” she dismissed in her practical way.

She wished they were magic, though. Maybe if they whipped up a potion to help her get over her feelings, she wouldn’t have to quit her job.

Thanks to her father’s fling with his secretary, she’d learned how ugly the results could be. He’d ended up marrying the harridan, leaving the woman and her snotty daughters to run the chain of boutiques when he died. They’d wasted no time pushing Dedra out of the business, claiming her dowdy fashion sense and boring personality weren’t what Fairytale Fashions needed.

And now, four years later, they were begging her to come back. Apparently dowdy fashion sense was okay as long as it was combined with a degree in business and three years working as the personal assistant to one of the top footwear design companies in the country.

“Gotta say, the Karmanski women are better at cooking than they are decorating,” Paul muttered, bending over to read titles in the odd bookcase under the couch.

Her eyes trailed over his backside in a long, hungry slide. Long, because at six-four, he was one tall guy. Hungry because she wanted him, like no one and nothing else she’d ever encountered in her life, she wanted him.

She wanted to run her hands over that tight butt and assure herself that it was as firm as it looked. To press her petite body against his and find out where her breasts hit on his torso. To taste him, one tiny bite at a time, until her control snapped and she ate him up in big, gulping slurps.

She pressed two fingers against her temple, just barely resisting the urge to poke them in her eyes so she’d stop torturing herself with the view.

She’d tried listing all of Paul’s irritating traits, making charts of the many, many reasons they were unsuitable and why he was a horrible man to lust after.

But his rumored sexual prowess, combined with the way her skin seemed to heat and tingle whenever she was within three feet of him pretty much nullified those reasons.

She’d tried distractions. Hobbies. Diet and exercise. Dating. All that’d done was fill her apartment with craft projects, add another language to her skill set, and skim five pounds off her hips. The dating part of the experiment hadn’t produced anything worth remembering, either.

Finally, she’d given up. The sky was blue, water was wet and she had the hots for her boss. She couldn’t change any of it and she was too practical to keep wasting time wishing she could.

Accepting that she was stuck with the crush was one thing. But watching him marry another woman, especially one like Sylvia Bittle, was too much. The woman would be around all the time. Not just in Paul’s bed and on his arm at social events. But in the office.

In Dedra’s territory.

Ever practical in all things that didn’t relate to lusting after her boss, she’d decided the only solution was to remove herself from the situation.

Three days from now, at the stroke of midnight, her torment would end. It’d be her, a red-eye from San Francisco to Chicago and the end of this phase of her life.

Easy peasy.

If you didn’t count the heart-wrenching misery of leaving behind a man she’d secretly lusted after for the last eighteen months, the job she’d loved for the last three years and the fun of living in the gorgeous Bay Area.

And since she wasn’t counting any of that, the easy peasy label fit just fine.

Except she’d expected him to be out of town when she quit. It was so much easier to dump someone—even a job—if it wasn’t face to face.

“Have you checked in with Peter yet?” she asked, biting her lip. Paul’s younger brother was, technically, in charge of personnel. So it wasn’t, technically, chicken-shit to have tendered her two weeks’ notice to him instead of Paul.

Technically.

“Not yet. I’m going to do that now, though,” Paul said, straightening with a copy of Kama Sutra for the Adventurous in his hand.

Dedra gulped. Her entire body flashed hot, then cold, then hot again. Her eyes shifted from the book to the phone in his hand and then to his face.

What was worse? Being here while he called Peter and heard about her defection? Or watching him flip through a sex manual, wondering what positions he liked best.

“I’ve got to go,” she blurted out.

“What?” Frowning, Paul gestured to the tiny, scarf-covered table. “I thought you were going to stick around, go over the files with me.”

“Um, no.” Backing up, she reached behind her, feeling around for the doorknob. “It’s Saturday. I’ve got plans. Stuff to do. I’ll check in later, though.”

Maybe. If she could get ahold of Peter first to beg him to keep her resignation quiet until she was actually gone.

She gave Paul a quick wave and hurried out the door.

She had to move fast, before she grabbed the book, opened it to any random page and begged him to prove to her that reality really was better than fiction.

Of course, if she did that, she wouldn’t have to worry so much about his reaction to her resigning.

Because he’d fire her.

~*~*~*~*~*~

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