In Her Candy Jar: A Romantic Comedy

by Alina Jacobs

  I admired the elegant yet minimalist label of the Grey Dove Bistro as I opened the box. There were five exquisitely decorated cookies. They looked like little miniature versions of the Harrogate city hall building.

  I took a bite of one. The sugar cookie was soft but still had some bite. There was a hint of almond, and the royal icing added a sweet note to contrast with the almost savory sugar cookie.

  "This is the best cookie I've ever eaten," I said around the mouthful.

  "It's almost eight in the morning," Mace said. "You're eating a cookie?"

  "And water," I added, holding up my glass water bottle. "That basically cancels it out."

  I held out the cookie to him. "Take a bite. It's a happy little treat to start your morning."

  "You look like a treat in that blouse," he said to me.

  Yep, he was definitely flirting.

  "And you look like a snack in those pants," I told him, taking a seductive bite of the cookie, as much as one could.

  "I look like a snack in my pants?" He seemed amused but confused.

  "Are you kidding me? Expertly tailored dress pants do something else to a man's behind," I said. "I don't know what it is, but wow."

  Mace was grinning at me. His hair and his jaw were doing that thing that made me want to drag him off to my tiny house and have my way with him.

  "So you're saying you notice me," he said, rubbing his jaw.

  "Are you kidding me? I'm surprised Tara hasn't hauled me down to human resources for checking your butt out. I don't know how your tailor did it, but it's like you pants fold under. Like the pants should fall, but they go around it."

  "Huh. Almost like your tits in that shirt. Especially when you were wet. In the rain," he clarified.

  Right, because I'm not wet right now.

  His eyes narrowed slightly. "I didn't know that women checked men out like that."

  "Of course we do! It almost makes me wonder if I should start a company for butt bras for men. Like it would lift everything up and give you a little butt cleavage. I'd call it Victor's Secret."

  Mace cocked his head. "I think we need to focus-group that name. It's very unsettling."

  "Fine," I said. "Herbert's Sex Dungeon it is, then. Happy?"

  "Not yet," he said. He walked up to me, the intoxicating smell of him surrounding me. I took another bite of the cookie to calm my nerves.

  "Do you want a bite of something else?" he whispered.

  "I'm the one who offered a taste of my candy first," I told him around the cookie. I had taken too big of a bite. I picked up my water bottle to take a swig. Mace's hand crept up my side. Of course I couldn't have a sexy flirtatious moment with a gorgeous man who was a relatively normal person and not a homicidal maniac. Mace's hand hit the faulty safety pin, and it jabbed me in the side. I screamed, sloshing the water all over Mace's front.

  "I am—that is totally my bad," I said.

  What the hell, Josie? Get it together!

  "I sure know how to ruin a moment, huh?" I said as I dabbed at his shirt. "I think this probably needs a dry cleaner," I told him as I helped him remove his suit jacket.

  "You know," he said, "if you wanted me to take all my clothes off, you didn't have to ruin my suit to do it."

  "Ha ha," I told him as I carefully unbuttoned his shirt before the water soaked through any more. "I hope you have a change of clothes."

  "Of course. I plan for all sorts of situations."

  He bent down over me, touching our foreheads together. I was very close to him, my hands on the farthest button. The outline of his abs was visible through the soft undershirt. The warmth made me shiver.

  "You know," he breathed, "I may want a bite of candy after all."

  "Lord have mercy!" I heard Tara say.

  "It's not what it looks like!" I shouted, jumping back. "I sprayed him with water."

  It wasn't just Tara's nose doing that twitching thing. Her cheeks and forehead looked like they were twitching too.

  "I need you to look over this marketing direction, Mace," Tara said finally.

  I clapped Mace on the back. "I have him all warmed up for you!"

  28

  Mace

  My brother Parker was at the marketing meeting, and he was even less happy with the new direction.

  "This isn't even how any of this works!" he shouted at me.

  "I understand—"

  "Do you want to get sued? Because promising all these things and confusing potential customers is how the federal government rains hellfire down upon you."

  I was becoming seriously worried. "The conference is in less than a month," I told the team. "You have four days to come up with something good."

  "Tara, do you have this under control?" I asked her as Parker stormed out. "I can bring in outside help."

  "No," she insisted. "We will have something by next week."

  "Everything okay?" Josie asked me when I walked back into the office.

  "Just this marketing thing. Don't worry about it. Tara is going to fix it."

  "Uh-huh." She didn't sound all that convinced. I had to admit I wasn't feeling all that confident myself.

  "I'm taking Henry out," Josie said. "He's antsy. I made a little scavenger hunt for him. You should come! Fresh air and exercise are good for you."

  "Says the person who eats fistfuls of candy," I retorted.

  "Especially for the person who eats fistfuls of candy. It's all part of a balanced life," she said, tossing me my jacket.

  Over the next few days, Josie and I took Henry to run outside a couple times a day. I had to admit taking a break did help me feel more relaxed.

  "Maybe you shouldn't be so much of a workaholic," Josie said, peering at me over her sunglasses.

  "You're being a workaholic though," I told her. Ever since the blatant flirting on the day she'd dumped water on me, Josie hadn't been acting like she would be receptive to any more flirtatious behavior. She was busy working on something. She locked herself in the tiny house all weekend.

  "The kids want you to come play," I told her through the little round window that evening.

  "I have to finish this sustainability brochure," she told me.

  "No, you don't. It's not important."

  "Just—" She sounded a little frustrated. "You go play with them. I'll make lasagna for dinner."

  I played several rounds of hunt the ogre witch troll, which apparently was a game.

  "Josie invented it," Henry explained.

  "What are the rules?"

  "You run around like this." He mimed making Hulk motions and pretending to smash things. "And these are your evil hench-dragons." He pointed to Garrett and Remy.

  "You're playing?" I asked Garrett.

  "I know how to play," Garrett scoffed. "It's a useful skill. Wolves play with the pups so that when they actually go hunt, they know what to do."

  It felt good, like we were a real family. Were we still a little dysfunctional? Yes, but having several of my little brothers hanging off of me as I spun around felt nice. I never really got to be an older brother, because I was too busy being their parent.

  "You guys want dinner?" Josie called out from the terrace.

  Huge trays of lasagna steamed on the long buffet in the grand dining room.

  "I like cooking for a crowd," Josie said as we all sat down at the table.

  "You should move in," Remy told her, lasagna staining his beard. I handed my brother a napkin.

  "I'm sure you all can cook," Josie said.

  "Remy makes a mean breakfast burrito," I said. "Other than that, I think we're a bit lackluster."

  I didn't make the kids help clean up after dinner.

  "They should shower," I told Garrett when he looked perturbed.

  "Uh-huh," he said and ushered the kids away.

  "You know," Josie said as she grabbed plates, "if I didn't know any better, I'd say you were trying to get me all alone."

  "That would be devious and underhanded and highly accurate," I told
her, trying to keep my tone light. I wasn't exactly sure what her feelings were. I didn't want to put her in a bad spot since she lived here. "I can clean up everything if you have other stuff to do," I offered.

  "I do have other stuff to do," she said, "but there's nothing sexier than a man doing housework, and I don't want to miss the display."

  "So it's like that," I said, grinning at her.

  "Yep. I just need you in an apron."

  "Not in a frilly one, I hope."

  "No, a nice thick leather one. And nothing else."

  "I can't tell if you thought about this before or if this is just something random that popped into your head like the butt bra," I said.

  "That was a well-thought-out plan!" she protested as she loaded the dishwasher.

  "I'm not even sure how that would work," I said.

  "I feel like it would look like a jock strap."

  "Those don't lift anything."

  "But they look damn fine," she said. "It's like a little bondage strap or something. No, I'm picturing something more like a shelf bra."

  "A what?"

  She wiped her hands then put a palm under each boob.

  "You know what a pushup bra is, right?" she asked, demonstrating.

  "I guess so?"

  "I was wearing one the first, well, I guess second time I met you. I was soaking wet, remember?"

  "I do seem to have that effect on women."

  "Don't get too cocky," she said, giving me a slight shove. I caught her forearms. I just wanted to push her back against the counter and fuck her brains out.

  "You know," she told me as I held her arms so our bodies barely skimmed each other, "considering that you hated me the moment I dumped chocolate sauce on you and now I've moved into your house, we might be moving a little fast."

  Her eyes were dilated, and her breathing was slightly erratic.

  "I'm not trying to back you into a corner," I said. "I just want to stick my hand in your candy jar."

  "Once you taste my candy, you're going to want to stick your whole face in my candy jar." Josie smirked and stepped back, releasing her arms.

  "Keep talking to me about this shelf bra," I said lightly. I was a little worried I had pushed too far.

  She smiled. "It is what it sounds like. It's just the shelf of a pushup bra." Her hands were back under her boobs, pushing them up to demonstrate.

  "Wait a minute," I interjected. "But then what's the point?"

  She shrugged. "Support? If you have boobs like mine, you can't go braless."

  I mean she could, but then I really wouldn't get any work done.

  "Like, if you were wearing a really low-cut dress. You would wear a shelf bra to keep everything up, but obviously you would wear a pasty to not show anything too risqué."

  "I think I'm going to need to see a demonstration," I said. "You know, to compare and contrast."

  "For science?" she asked, one eyebrow raised.

  "For science."

  29

  Josie

  The blatant and heavy flirting with Mace had left me feeling like a Twizzler left in the sun. My jellybean was jumping, and I wanted Mace to suck it and make it better. I wanted to march back up to the house and tell him to put his face in my candy jar. But I didn't have the best track record with making decisions based off of the YOLO philosophy. Maybe it was better to put the brakes on and really think about what I was doing.

  But thinking made me think about Mace doing naughty things to me. I squirmed. My candy jar was feeling very gooey and melty.

  Josie: I want Mace's face in my candy jar

  Willow: And I want Tara to take a long walk off of a pier made of my broken dreams and murdered ambitions

  Josie: Marketing not going well?

  Willow: No

  Josie: I'm working on something. I've been sketching out ideas all day. Going to hard line everything tonight and tomorrow

  Willow: I hope it's amazing, because this is like the blind leading the narcissistic bitch over here

  Josie: You guys still at the office?

  Willow: Yes. Not just the office but trapped in one horrible, smelly conference room. I'm going to have tinnitus after all this is over from Tara's screeching

  I ate the last of the candy from my stash to distract me from the fact that Mace clearly also wanted a taste of my candy. It didn't work, so I turned my attention to the marketing project.

  Between talking to Mace and the hundreds of documents in the folder Willow had sent me, I had a pretty good idea of the marketing direction for the gene therapy product. Actually it wasn't a product. I decided that was what Tara was missing. This was a procedure—an idea, a vision for the future of purely customized healthcare.

  I spent Monday polishing everything, only taking a break to take Henry out for his midday energy burn-off. I spent that night working, finalizing everything and tweaking the words and graphics. Willow was up all night too. I periodically got text updates from her about how Tara was making them change all the colors on the slides from, in her words, puke green to puke yellow.

  The next morning, we all met in a large conference room. I was there only to hand out coffee, but then I was supposed to leave. I had my presentation on a flash drive. I was planning on showing Mace privately after the meeting so as to give him something to compare and contrast.

  The room was packed with what looked like mainly Svensson brothers and one guy who looked a lot like Chloe's boyfriend, Jack Frost. I sighed, thinking about Chloe and her perfect life. I religiously followed her on Instagram and Pinterest. Everything she made was beautiful. Lately she'd been posting pictures of the renovation of her and Jack's penthouse. I had to wipe the drool off my face when I saw the plans for the craft room.

  "Thank you for coming this morning," Tara said while I slowly handed out coffee and tea. "This is the marketing material thus far for the gene therapy product."

  "It's a procedure," I muttered under my breath.

  "What was that?" she asked sharply.

  "Just asking if he wants any water," I said with a fake smile.

  "So, everyone knows my background. I was originally at a marketing firm that specializes in pharmaceuticals." A basic big-pharma bitch. Figures. Pharmaceutical sales were known for their mediocre commercials and marketing. They were all geared to sell unnecessary medicines to the anxious elderly. I had worked on those types of campaigns; it always felt like a scam. If that was Tara's mentality toward the gene therapy procedure, then it was no wonder it fell flat.

  "Could you move this along?" one of the Svensson brothers asked. He was wearing a white lab coat and looked unhappy and annoyed to be there.

  "You don't have anywhere to be, Parker," Mace said to his brother.

  Tara launched into the presentation. It was worse than Willow had said. My friend was sitting in the room, staring unhappily into her water glass.

  Parker interrupted Tara as she was explaining the contents of a slide with a logo that looked like two beavers going at it like rabbits.

  "I don't know what you all were doing the past few days," Parker said. "Mace, this is unacceptable. You're paying people for this crap?"

  "You don't need to be rude, Parker," Mace said.

  "But he's right, isn't he?" Garrett asked. "I mean look at this. And we're only weeks out from the conference."

  "I agree," Greg said. "I hope you have all of this insured."

  "Doubtful," Hunter said.

  "If we could just finish the presentation and hold questions until the end," Tara pleaded. She sounded a little hysterical.

  "Or you could just kill it, bury it, and spare us all," I muttered. I was having real issues holding my tongue.

  Tara turned her sharp gaze toward me.

  "Like the eye of Sauron," Willow whispered.

  "Do you have something to add?" Tara asked nastily.

  All the heads in the room swiveled toward me.

  "If you have something to say," Mace said, "speak up. Maybe fresh eyes would be go
od." He looked a little desperate.

  I cleared my throat. "Actually, yes I do have something to say. You see," I said as I walked up to the lectern and plugged in my flash drive. "There is a fundamental flaw in the team's thinking. The gene therapy treatment isn't a product. It's a procedure. It's a method, an idea, and a vision for purely customized healthcare. It is fundamentally about the future."

  My slides flashed up. They were minimalist but still sexy—a splash of blue, a thin-line circle for the logo. I flipped through the deck.

  "This procedure is about hope. But it is also grounded in the realities of today."

  I flashed up a slide of a blue-eyed cat.

  "Computing power has never been cheaper. It's so inexpensive to do this kind of analysis. Right now all that data space is taken up with cat memes. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but maybe a little less memeing and a little more lifesaving." I saw Mace smile.

  I clicked through the graphics I had made that clearly explained how the gene therapy worked. I was particularly proud of the diagrams, a brilliant blue against a deep charcoal.

  Next was a picture of Henry looking up in wonder at the hydroelectric equipment.

  "This gene therapy procedure also ties into our sustainability mission. PharmaTech cares about people's health and a safe environment, and we're innovating in both. It's a future-looking ideal of purely customized healthcare. Except that the future is now."

  Willow flashed me a thumbs-up.

  Tara was incensed. "She's just an assistant! She gets coffee and answers the phone. You can't seriously be listening to her."

  "These are just a few things I've been working on," I told the room. "Take it and run with it, or keep beating your heads against the wall. I have done several campaigns for FinTech companies and medical device companies. I can do a lot in a short amount of time, especially with a good team, but we are fast approaching the point where nothing can be done well. You must have time to vet the language and the graphics."

  I hoped I sounded authoritative and not shrill. The Svensson brothers looked thoughtful. Owen stood up and walked to the front of the room. He seemed angry.