by Alina Jacobs
In Her Candy Jar
A Romantic Comedy
Alina Jacobs
Contents
Other books by Alina Jacobs
Synopsis
Acknowledgments
Mailing List
1. Josie
2. Mace
3. Josie
4. Mace
5. Josie
6. Mace
7. Josie
8. Mace
9. Josie
10. Mace
11. Josie
12. Mace
13. Josie
14. Mace
15. Josie
16. Mace
17. Josie
18. Mace
19. Josie
20. Mace
21. Josie
22. Mace
23. Josie
24. Mace
25. Josie
26. Mace
27. Josie
28. Mace
29. Josie
30. Mace
31. Josie
32. Mace
33. Josie
34. Mace
35. Josie
36. Mace
37. Josie
38. Mace
39. Josie
40. Mace
41. Josie
42. Mace
43. Josie
44. Mace
45. Josie
46. Mace
47. Josie
48. Mace
49. Josie
50. Mace
51. Josie
52. Mace
53. Josie
54. Mace
55. Josie
56. Mace
57. Josie
58. Mace
59. Josie
60. Mace
61. Josie
62. Mace
63. Josie
64. Mace
65. Josie
66. Mace
67. Josie
68. Mace
69. Josie
Sneak peek
His Candy Crush
1. Josie
2. Mace
Read His Candy Crush
About the Author
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright ©2019 by Alina Jacobs
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.
Created with Vellum
Other books by Alina Jacobs
Check out other books about characters mentioned in this one on my website:
http://alinajacobs.com/books.html
Synopsis
Mace
Discipline is what separates the successful from the fakers.
I am always fully in control of my company, my family, and my life. Even my diet is perfectly regulated—that includes no candy.
Except when my new assistant sprays chocolate sauce all over me and passes out drunk in my car, it marks the point where my control over everything starts to unravel.
Josie is a walking disaster and some sort of sugar addict.
And she's determined to turn me into a fiend for her candy.
Josie
Routines are the enemy of life. I live to be spontaneous.
My new billionaire boss looks like he needs something sweet in his life. I graciously offered to let him stick his hand in my candy jar.
It has salt water taffy and gummy worms! I can't believe he thought it was inappropriate!
I feel sorry for the guy. His little brothers are miserable, his PowerPoints are uninspired, and his life is seriously lacking in joy. And candy.
Thought if I'm being honest, I could use a little more discipline. My YOLO, fly-by-the-seat-of-my pants philosophy already sent my life into a tailspin.
It cost me the entirety of my life savings.
I'm living in a dilapidated tiny house that’s trying to kill me.
I regularly eat chocolate chips and boxed wine for dinner.
In an effort to redeem myself, I set out to show Mace that I wasn't a clumsy, car destroying, electronics-killing, accident-prone, walking disaster. That lasted all of five minute before I set his seaweed and quinoa lunch on fire. Yeah, I didn't know that was a thing either.
I can tell I'm a bad influence. I see him lick his lips when we're alone. I just have to convince him to take one little bite…
Because once he has a taste, he's going to want to stick his whole face in my candy jar!
This standalone, full length romantic comedy has no cliffhangers! It features a boiling hot romance, the largest selection of hot brothers to ever grace your e-reader, and a heroine prone to making suggestive comments!
To the guy at the pizza place who gives me free garlic butter even though you're supposed to pay for it. Bless you.
Acknowledgments
A big thank you to Red Adept Editing for editing and proofreading.
And finally a big thank you to all the readers! I had a great time writing this hilarious book! Please try not to choke on your wine while reading!!!
Mailing List
Read the short romantic comedy, HIS CANDY CRUSH, along with other novellas and short stories for free when you join my mailing list!
alinajacobs.com/mailinglist.html
1
Josie
"Follow your passion, and you will find your true self." That was what my mom told me right before she ran off with her new boyfriend. His name was Dave, and he liked to dress up as a clown and sit on the sofa, nursing an old hang-gliding injury.
That was the last time I saw her. Not that I was upset about it. My mother was a bastion of terrible advice. "Follow your passion" seemed pretty innocuous though compared to Mom's other advice, which ran the gamut from how to make a papier-mâché wasp nest to keep the power company from switching off the meter to where to buy used pregnancy tests to trick a man into staying with you.
Like I said, it was best that she left me with her aunt Myrtle. And once Aunt Myrtle went to the great canning club in the sky, I realized life was short and maybe Mom had been right about one thing after all. I decided to follow my passion and earned a marketing and graphic design degree. Everyone I worked with raved about my talent, and right out of school, I was offered a high-paying job doing creative, fulfilling work with wonderful people…
LOL! Nope!
Follow your passion was probably the worst advice my mother ever gave me. I followed my passion off a pier into an ocean of soul-crushing student loan debt. I added an astronomical amount of credit card debt to the pile in order to work three unpaid marketing internships with some of the most narcissistic, self-absorbed people I would ever meet. Unable to afford anything better, I rented a cardboard refrigerator box in someone's living room in Manhattan. At night, I worked for a content farm, writing articles about vitamin supplements that totally didn't contain steroids or meth.
One evening while sitting in my box, I realized this was it. I had followed my passion and found my true self. The real Josie hadn't come very far in life, and the highlight of her week was eating a bowl of ice cream hidden under a pile of gummy bears. My true self was a real bum.
I needed to make a change. You only live once, and I was going to live life to the fullest. I gave up the box and found a new roommate. Anke was Russian and spent money like water. She always had the best clothes and stayed in the nicest hotels. She was #YOLO personified. We traveled together, partied together, and shopped together. My Instagram never looked so good. For about six months, I lived t
he glamourous life of a digital nomad. By day I worked from chic cafés in the cities Anke and I traveled to, and at night I hung out at the coolest parties. I was living the #YOLO life, until I YOLOed right off a cliff. Turned out Anke had been running a scam the entire time, and when the scam crashed and burned, my meager life savings were collateral damage, and my credit score was nuked from orbit.
Now I had nothing, not even my box.
"Have you heard from her at all?" my friend Willow asked. When I came back from that final trip to Morocco, tail dragging, credit card companies breathing down my neck to pay for all the stuff Anke had put on my cards, my friends took pity on me. Marnie finagled a crappy little assistant job for me at Svensson PharmaTech, and one of Willow's hipster friends was willing to gift me a tiny house.
"I haven't heard from her in months," I said. "I've sent her hundreds of emails asking, sometimes begging, for her to help me." In Morocco, Anke had promised to pay me back if I put the luxury hotel suite on my credit card. Except I had woken up one morning to see that she had disappeared in the night. The hotel wouldn't let me leave until I had paid off the balance. I split the remainder of the payment across my other cards and booked the cheapest plane ticket I could back home. Now I was left with the carnage. The vegan fried ice cream I was eating churned in my stomach.
"The credit card companies didn't let you contest the charges?" Willow asked, pouring me more wine.
"I showed them the police report, but the hotel showed them pictures of me staying there, so they won't eat the charge," I told her. "It's not like Anke stole my credit cards and used them." I sighed and dribbled some more chocolate sauce on the last ball of the crunchy, sweet treat.
"Are you going to ever be able to pay it back?" Willow asked. "Maybe you should file for bankruptcy."
I looked around the little vegan café in the quaint town of Harrogate. From our seats at the reclaimed-wood counter that wrapped around glass cases filled with desserts and baked goods, I had a good view of the room. It was filled with happy, thin, well-dressed people who didn't seem to have a care in the world.
"I don't know," I told her, watching as people trickled into the café, one of whom was a tall man in a well-tailored suit. His dirty-blond hair was in a 1940s-style undercut, making him look a little like Chad Michael Murray from that TV show Agent Carter. "Too bad I can't just find a rich man who would fall in love with me. Maybe I should have taken Mom's advice to heart a little more." I poured more wine; I needed to slow down. I started my new job in the morning.
"Isn't she living in a trailer park in Florida?" Willow asked, wrinkling her nose.
"Yes, but she doesn't have to pay for any of it," I countered. "Maybe I need to lower my standards."
"They're already pretty low," Willow said. "You're going to be some corporate douche's assistant."
"Don't remind me."
Out of the corner of my eye, I watched the Chad Michael Murray look-alike talk to the cashier. He had an annoyed look on his face as he walked a few paces away to wait for his food.
"He seems like he's in a bad mood," Willow remarked, following my gaze.
"I mean this place is vegan," I said.
"Vegan is good for the environment!" Willow protested.
"I mean, I guess. But maybe he wanted a steak, but instead he decided to buy his obnoxious girlfriend a vegan treat that she is going to take one bite of and complain about how fat it's going to make her and that she's such a pig," I said, stabbing at my fried ice cream ball in annoyance.
When I was stressed, I ate, and the Anke situation had me going through a bag of sour gummies a night. My waistline was paying the price. I started to get angry at the girl who was making the poor blond guy so stressed, but then I thought, What am I doing? I have too many real problems to start tackling imaginary ones too.
"I don't think I can be a good assistant," I admitted. "You know how disorganized I am. I wish Marnie had found me anything else. Maybe you can bring me in on that marketing project?" I pleaded.
"You don't want to be on that project," Willow replied. "It hasn't even started, and I can already tell it's going to be horrible. The marketing director sounds like a real piece of work."
"It can't be that bad," I said, trying to keep the jealously off my face. "They're putting you up in a hotel."
"That I have to share with two other people."
"Any they're paying for meals."
"Which you are already partaking in," Willow replied.
"I honestly can't believe you're doing marketing work for Svensson PharmaTech of all places," I told my friend as I poured more of the rich chocolate fudge sauce onto my ice cream. "You always wanted to work for a nonprofit."
"Funny thing about that. All those charities think you should be glad to work for free since you're doing something noble. Unfortunately you can't pay student loans with good intentions, heartwarming feelings, and exposure. And I didn't win that position at the Holbrook Foundation, which is one of the few well-paying nonprofits."
"It's going to be fine," I told her. "It's a fresh start for both of us."
"I just wish it wasn't pharmaceuticals," Willow complained. "They're the worst. The marketing material is so dry, and all the commercials are the same."
"Do you have feelings of dread, no money, and a general sense that your life is a waste?" I said in my best commercial-narrator voice. "Try biggus dickialus. Guaranteed to relax you. Side effects include a delicious soreness and a man in your bed."
We shrieked in laugher. The blond-haired guy turned around to glower at us.
"I wouldn't mind his biggus dickialus," I whispered. The words came out louder than I intended. The frown on the guy's face went deeper.
"Shhh!" Willow said, giggling. I poured more wine. Alcohol and sugar were pretty much my main food groups at this point.
Willow looked at him critically. "He's probably too tight-laced for you."
I thought about that for a moment as I studied the guy. The gray suit fit him well. It was perfectly tailored to accentuate all the nice bits.
"He does seem very uptight, and I don't have a lot of patience for the stick-in-the-mud types, but you know me—I'll try anything once. Why, look at this vegan ice cream. Most people think vegan food is gross. And I'll admit it is a little grainy, but I'll eat anything if it's fried and covered in chocolate!" I said as I reached for the spoon in the little pot of vegan fudge.
But instead of daintily picking up the spoon, clumsy, drunk me ended up slamming it. In a haze, I watched the spoon and the pot fly though the air… and cover the uptight corporate guy in chocolate. It streaked all down his face, dripping on his light-gray suit.
"Fudge," I said as he stood in front of me, his gray eyes wide in horror. "Though you do look amazing covered in chocolate. I bet you taste good too."
"What is wrong with you?" he shouted.
I pushed off the wooden stool, landing unsteadily on my feet. "Calm down. I didn't dump a vat of acid on you," I slurred as I dabbed at him with a napkin.
He batted my hand away. "Don't touch it! You're ruining my suit."
"Lighten up! Too much stress isn't good for you. Why don't you sit down, and we'll buy you some ice cream to go with that fudge on your suit?" I snickered to myself at the joke. Drunk me was very easily amused.
"Willow here has an expense account." My friend waved to him from the counter. "You can get sloshed, and maybe later I'll lick all the chocolate off you." I waggled my eyebrows suggestively to let him know I was kidding. Partially.
"I have responsibilities, and people relying on me. You already put me off my schedule," he said irritably. Then he grabbed the white box from the countertop, turned on his heel, and left.
"That went poorly," Willow snickered as she watched me drain my wine glass. The room looked wobbly; I definitely drank more than my fair share of the wine.
"The worst of it is," I said, "all the chocolate is gone."
2
Mace
Discipline s
eparates successful people from the ineffective people. I ran a multibillion-dollar pharmaceutical company. I was accountable for the financial and professional well-being of my employees. I was also responsible for my younger brothers—all two dozen of them.
Both my business and family lives were complicated entities, and I lived and died by my schedule. I had planned on picking up the vegan nut loaves at 8:30 p.m. I called ahead, but of course the bakery did not have them ready for me when I arrived. However, I had built a contingency into my schedule. I could wait up to five minutes for them to package the bread. The baker put the loaves on the counter at 8:34 p.m., leaving me plenty of time to arrive home at 8:55 p.m.
Except that girl had spilled chocolate sauce all over my suit, causing me to spend too long in the bathroom trying to clean out the worst of it even though I knew it was most likely ruined and I should cut my losses.