Only the middle-aged man half-raised his hand, giving Candace a sheepish grin, and she had the awful feeling that he was only voting for her because he thought she was easy.

Looking smug, the ringleader asked, “And who wants her to leave immediately?”

Everyone else raised their hands while their eyes shot daggers at her.

“Fine,” Candace said, calmly slipping her papers back into her leather satchel. Swinging it up onto her shoulder she stood and left the room without a backwards glance.

She was none too surprised when she heard footsteps behind her in the hallway and turned to see her one supporter hurrying to catch up with her.

“Candace,” he said, slightly out of breath. “I feel terrible about this.”

“I’m sure you do,” she said, a slight twinge of bitterness lacing her words.

“Even though this didn’t work out, I was hoping that, ah, maybe I could take you out for dinner next Saturday.”

Candace acted like she was considering his words carefully. Forcing a coy look onto her face she asked, “Is that all you want from me?”

Giving her a sleazy smile, he leaned in until she could smell his bad breath, and said, “I’m game for helping you try out some of your new scenes, any time you want.”

Candace worked hard to keep her hands firmly at her sides. He wasn’t the first guy she’d wanted to slap, and he wouldn’t be the last. From between gritted teeth she said, “I don’t know why every guy who meets me thinks all I want to do is f**k his brains out simply because I write erotica. Because I wouldn’t have sex with you if you were the last man on earth.”

Clearly upset by her slam, he looked her up and down and disdainfully said, “Then maybe you should stop begging for it, you slut,” then ran back down the hall to the meeting room, slamming the door behind him.

Standing in the hallway, stunned by her latest bad experience, Candace heard the distinct sounds of lovemaking coming from the women’s bathroom. A minute later, the two people who had left the room right after she read her chapter emerged, clothes in slight disarray, and sneaked back off towards the meeting room, thinking no one was the wiser.

Candace smiled momentarily. “I guess that means it was a good chapter,” she said. But then, falling despondent again over the difficulties of her new writing direction, she added, “At least some people are having a good night.”

Trying not to be too down about the events of the evening, she headed out for her car and another lonely night curled up on her couch with a paperback, where she could dream about having a perfect life, like the characters in her favorite books.

Chapter Three

Candace stood underneath the huge “Sensual Writer’s Conference” banner and took a deep breath. As soon as she walked through the double glass doors she would officially be entering into her new life. Instead of continuing to write young adult stories, where sex was never allowed to enter into the storyline, today she was officially going to make the jump into the world of erotica, where the only limit was how far a writer wanted to go. Practically nothing was forbidden.

Now, if she could just muster up the nerve to walk through those damn double doors.

She tried not to be too hard on herself. After all, anytime anyone made a career change they were bound to have some butterflies in their stomach. Unfortunately, what Candace was feeling went far beyond butterflies. More like huge ravens flying around inside of her, picking at her innards.

A middle-aged woman brushed past her and hurried inside the conference hall. Candace knew it was now or never—time to either bite the bullet and commit to doing the work she loved, or to wimp out by continuing to write the same old stories she’d been pumping out since college.

“If she can do it, I can do it,” Candace told herself firmly. She squared her shoulders, fluffed up her orange curls with one hand and set off for the door.

Candace was so focused on her goal, on making it past the threshold of her current comfort level, she didn’t see the attractive, muscular man who was just about to step through the doorway. They collided as Candace bumped into him in a particularly graceless way, the full-body impact knocking them both to the floor. Candace tried to catch her breath as she lay in a heap atop the stranger.

Absolutely mortified by her clumsiness, Candace scrambled to get up off the man, but not before she became aware of the firm muscles of his butt, back and shoulders rippling beneath her.

Overcome by both embarrassment and a rare jolt of lust, she blathered on and on without being able to stop herself. “Oh! I’m so sorry! I can’t believe I didn’t see you and then I walked right into you and then I fell onto you and now we’re on the ground and are you okay?”

Pushing himself up on his palms and then spinning around so that he was sitting on the cement floor, the stranger gave her a devastating smile. Brushing the dust off of his slacks, he stood up and said, “I’m just fine, thanks.”

Candace was bowled over by the dimple in his left cheek and could do little else but gape.

“Besides,” he added with a mischievous glint in his eyes, “who wouldn’t want to have a gorgeous woman lying on top of him first thing in the morning?”

Candace felt her cheeks turn pink, and she covered them with her hands, hoping to cool them down.

Looking slightly repentant, he said, “I hope I haven’t made you uncomfortable. I’m just joking around. You looked like you were heading into the Coliseum to face the lions.”

Candace dropped her hands from her face and gave him a small smile. “I feel like such an idiot for knocking you over.”

The blond hunk held up his hand to stop her from lambasting herself any further. “I can’t stand to hear you insult yourself. Especially since I don’t even know your name yet.” Holding out his hand he said, “I’m Charlie.”

As the warmth of his skin covered her cold hand, she relaxed for the first time since she’d parked her car that morning. “Candace. It’s nice to meet you.”

She could tell he was trying to put her at ease as he picked up her leather bag and handed it to her. “Is this your first conference? I’ve never seen you here before.”

Candace nodded. “Is it that obvious that I’m a newbie?”

“Nope, that’s not it. I’m just pretty sure if I’d ever met you before, I’d have remembered.”

Candace blushed again and silently admonished herself to cut it out. “I’m sort of new to this genre.”