And then her life would return to normal.

Unfortunately, Callie knew that wasn’t possible. Not only did she have potential customers to sell candy to—not many, of course, but the ones who came were loyal and she loved each and every one of them—but she had an important business meeting. Her accountant had set up an appointment for her with a renowned candy company consultant, Sweet something or other was the name of his company. He was going to be coming by her store at 10 a.m. this morning. No matter how bad she felt today—like a cheap, tawdry slut to tell the truth—she couldn’t miss this meeting, or she’d really be screwed. Literally and figuratively.

She dragged herself out of bed, almost stepping on one of Wolf’s big mutt paws.

She bent over to drop a kiss on his muzzle in apology and then stepped into the shower.

She turned it on full blast, praying that water could wash away some of her sins.

“I’m supposed to be the nice candy lady,” she muttered, roughly soaping up her skin. “Not the truffle slut who picks up the best man and fucks his brains out.” She lathered up her arms, her legs, her stomach, trying to avoid the inside of her thighs until the last minute. She didn’t want to touch herself, had held off from touching herself all night, even though her every waking moment had been filled with arousing images of her and Tobey at the bar and in the refrigerator. Her short dreams when she had fallen asleep had been even worse than that. After only a few minutes of sleep she woke up, drenched in sweat, the apex of her legs—she couldn’t believe she had actually said the word pussy yesterday—throbbing with need.

But no matter how she tried, she couldn’t control herself, the need Tobey unleashed in her was that great. Her hands had a mind of their own and before she knew it she was touching herself, rubbing herself, pretending that Tobey’s tongue was on her again.

Her clit grew huge and hard and her legs were trembling so badly that she had to lean back against the wall for support. She imagined him in the shower with her, her legs wrapped around his waist, his cock driving into her, his strong arms supporting her weight, his tongue in her mouth.

The orgasm hit her like a city bus and nearly knocked her down. She rubbed herself frantically, not wanting the tremors to end, not wanting the fantasy of Tobey being with her to be erased when she opened her eyes.

But when it was through, she shampooed her hair and dried off, utterly disgusted with herself. Forcing herself to push all erotic thoughts away, Callie dressed in her one suit, the most severe outfit she owned. The light pink suit accented her curves, the one button on the jacket showcasing her tiny waist and lush breasts and hips. Underneath the jacket, she wore a see-through silk camisole. She didn’t intend to take her jacket off for the meeting—the suit was more like armor than clothes in her mind—and the white silk looked the best of anything she owned peeking out from underneath her jacket.

Callie usually wore jeans and a t-shirt that said Callie’s Candies on it, so today she felt business-like and stern in her suit.

She brushed her hair violently, trying to tame her unruly curls, and finally gave up.

“Who am I kidding?” she said, taking one last look in the mirror. Wolf followed her out of the bedroom and she let him into the little fenced backyard to take care of his business.

“I’ll come back at lunch,” she called to him and he stopped sniffing the grass and turned his furry face to hers, wagging his tail as if he understood.

Sliding the screen door shut, Callie sighed. “At least somebody loves me,” she said, then went to the garage to get her car. Downtown Saratoga, home to the famous horse races, was only ten minutes from her cottage. It had snowed the night before, but by a.m. the streets were nicely plowed and the sidewalk slush had melted.

Callie had spent her whole life in Saratoga, but the Saratoga of today was very different from the town she knew so well as a child. Now that she might have to close her store in the near future, she took in the Main Street with renewed interest.

When Callie was a little girl, she used to ride her bike into town with her friends, fifty cents in her pocket, straight to the candy store. They’d fill up their bags with jujubes and Necco wafers and jawbreakers and then head to the park and stuff themselves full of sugar under an elm tree. As a teenager, when Callie realized she had been blessed with the gift of candy making, she knew that, as soon as she could, she would open up her own candy store on Main Street.

Her dream became a reality when she was twenty-five years old. She had saved every penny from her various cooking and catering jobs over the years, only spending the bare minimum on her cottage, and all of the sweat and grease was worth it when she signed the lease for her very own candy store.

The first time she walked by the vacant storefront that was now Callie’s Candies, the old rundown ice cream shop didn’t look like much good for anything other than for breeding spiders and mice. Narrow but deceptively long, with a large kitchen in back, it was covered in dust and neglect.

But for Callie it was her first brush with true love. She immediately envisioned the space a buttery yellow, glass display cases full of truffles and fudge, old wine barrels on the floor with fresh, homemade saltwater taffy.

The past five years had been the most rewarding time of her life. She made candy in the evening and sold it by day. She loved watching the glee on the children’s faces as they flew in off of their bikes, strewn haphazardly on the wide sidewalk, anticipation glowing in their eyes.

They knew that Miss Callie would always give them free samples of whatever she had just made that day, whether it was vanilla swirl fudge or chocolate turtle pie. And even when they pulled the dollar out of the dirty shorts and handed it to her for a bag of taffy, they couldn’t wait to get outside and see what little “extra” Callie had thrown in for them, maybe a lollipop or a wax-paper-covered slice of fudge.

Sometimes, if they were really lucky, and they had been given money from their mothers for a box of truffles to take home, Callie never let them get out of the store without a handful of lollipops and gummy worms.

But now that popular chain stores ruled the street along with swanky restaurants and wine bars that seemed to multiply by the week, Callie’s rent had doubled, then tripled in the past five years. With every year, she found it harder and harder to put something away in the bank after she had paid her bills. People were always telling her to put up a website and advertise, but she didn’t know the first thing about that kind of stuff.