Better Than Chocolate

“I want to save my company!” she yelled over her shoulder. “Sign something that guarantees you’ll save my company.”

“First let’s seal the deal,” he called as he chased her around a bed. “Come on, Samantha, you know you want to.”

“I shouldn’t do this,” she said, and hesitated, which gave him time to get around the bed and catch her. “It’s all right,” he murmured as he kissed her neck. “Trust me.”

Next thing she knew he was helping her strip off her little black dress. And lo and behold, she was wearing leopard-print panties and a matching bra.

“Now, sign this,” he said, and produced some sort of contract and a pen shaped like a licorice stick. Samantha took it and scrawled her name across the bottom of the document. “What did I just sign?”

Blake scooped her up in his arms and smiled at her. “You signed your life away, baby. You sold your company to Madame C.”

The cheap chocolate company in Seattle? “No!” she protested, and struggled to get free.

“And now nobody needs you anymore.” With her still squirming in his arms, he flew over to the hot tub and dropped her in. “Sayonara, sweet cheeks,” he said, and began pushing her head down.

She wakened just before she drowned, sitting up with a jerk and panting, covered in sweat. What kind of sick subconscious did she have, anyway? She pushed her hair out of her eyes and lay back down with a whimper. Nibs slowly made his way across the bed to investigate and she drew him close.

“Okay, it was only a dream,” she told herself. And one that had convinced her that no matter how bad things got, she didn’t want to end it all by drowning herself in chocolate.

* * *

Blake was picking up his midmorning Americano at Bavarian Brews when he spotted Samantha Sterling coming through the door. She wore a short, faux-fur-trimmed jacket over jeans that hugged her thighs and tall black boots—typical Icicle Falls business casual. Except this woman made business casual look erotic and he had to beat down a surge of red-hot lust. The memory of her losing her temper at him doused any remaining embers—until an unbidden thought fueled a fresh fire, suggesting that with so much passion she’d be a real firecracker in bed.

She saw him and her cheeks, already rosy from the cold, deepened to red. She shot a sidelong glance at the door but then seemed to think the better of turning tail and running, instead donned a polite mask and moved toward the order counter. He smiled at her, determined to meet her halfway. They lived in the same town. Might as well manage a difficult situation civilly.

“Good morning,” she said, her voice as stiff as her smile.

He held up his cup. “It is—now that I’ve got my coffee.”

She nodded. “I’m running on empty myself.”

“Can I buy you something?”

She blushed again and dropped her gaze to his chest. “No, thanks. That is—” she cleared her throat “—about the other day.”

This was awkward. He held up a hand. “Consider it forgotten.”

Now she did look at him. She had great eyes. And then there was her mouth. And other parts of her.

“It was very unprofessional of me,” she said, “and I’m not normally like that.”

“I’m sure you’re not,” he agreed. “And believe me, this isn’t any more fun for the bank than it is for you.”

A delicate eyebrow cocked, turning her earnest expression into something a little more cynical. “It hurts you more than it does me?”

“Well, sort of.” That had sounded stupid and made him look like a real jerk. This wasn’t going well. “I don’t like having to be the bad guy,” he said. Boy, there was an understatement. Why, of all the business choices in the world, had he chosen banking?

Oh, yeah, he’d wanted to help people fix their money problems, make their dreams come true, blah, blah. Talk about naive. Banks didn’t cure financial stupidity. They profited from it. He was no hero. He was a profiteer.

“Then don’t be a bad guy,” she urged. “Work with us.”

She looked so helpless, so desperate. He wanted to wrap his arms around her and tell her he’d come up with some way to save her.

Wait a minute. What was he thinking? He wasn’t, of course. Women like this one, they made a man’s brain melt. He gave himself a stern reminder that Samantha Sterling wasn’t the only person in town with financial needs. He had employees and other bank customers depending on him.

None of his other customers looked like this one.

Oh, no. He wasn’t about to follow old Arnie right over the cliff and take the bank with him. Yes, legions of men did dumb things for women. They spent money they didn’t have on women, stole for them, even committed murder for them. He didn’t have to join the legions.

“We’re making plans for something that could benefit not only Sweet Dreams but the whole town,” Samantha said earnestly.

There. She’d be fine. He’d known it all along.

This was a town full of fighters. It had been ever since the shutdown of the lumber mill and the relocation of the railroad left Icicle Falls in bad straits during the Depression. It’d been almost a ghost town by the fifties, but the people of Icicle Falls had self-administered CPR and spent the early sixties transforming their town into an Alpine village and haven for skiers. Sweet Dreams Chocolate Company was one of their success stories, weathering the hard times and giving the town a source of pride, and how it was founded had become a local legend. Like the other residents of Icicle Falls, Samantha Sterling was a fighter. She’d pull out of this.

“If we could have a little more time,” she added.

That again. So much for the false rosy picture he’d been painting. His morning coffee began churning up acid in his gut. “I wish I could,” he said. And he did. No lie.

There went the eyebrow once more. “Do you?”

Yes, damn it. But what was he supposed to do, rob the bank for her? Did he look like a money tree with hundred-dollar bills sprouting out of his ears? “Like I said before—”

“I don’t think I want to hear what you said before,” she snapped. “It was depressing the first time around.”

In under a minute she’d reduced him from six feet two to twelve inches, the world’s smallest man with the world’s smallest heart. “If there’s any other way I can help,” he began.

“You’re helping enough,” she said coldly, and marched off to the order counter, her back stiff.

But not her tush. How did women manage to walk like that? Honky-tonk badonkadonk, mmm-mmm.

Nice, Preston, he scolded himself. You’re about to take her business and you’re thinking about her butt. What kind of bastard did that make him? He supposed his ex-girlfriend would be glad to tell him.

There had been a superficial relationship that was doomed from the start. After they broke up he’d vowed to be more cautious and not let his common sense get anesthetized by a pretty face. Or a nice tush.

Talk about doomed relationships… Samantha Sterling is not for you. Still…that didn’t mean he couldn’t step back and analyze her situation once again and maybe come to a new conclusion. Really, was the bank wise to be so hard-nosed to a business that played a vital part in the local economy?

He tossed his coffee and stepped out into the cold. Instead of returning to the bank he went down to Riverfront Park. With the exception of a couple of brave walkers the footpath was deserted. He took out his cell and dialed Darren Short, his district manager, all the while telling himself that he was not following Arnie over the cliff.

“Blake, how’s it going?” Darren greeted him. “Are you settling in?”

“Well enough,” Blake said. “But now that I’m here I’m getting a bigger picture than we had on paper.”

“Oh?” Now Darren sounded cautious.

“Look, I think we need to reevaluate a few of these loans, especially the one to Sweet Dreams Chocolates.”

“Don’t go soft on me now,” Darren said. “You’re up there to stop the hemorrhaging.”