Caroselli's Baby Chase by Michelle Celmer Read Free Book Online Page B

glanced over at the businessman three barstools away, who she suspected had been working up the nerve to talk to her.
    “Buy you a drink?” he said the instant they made eye contact.
    Not only was he twice her age with thinning hair and a belly that sagged over his belt, but he also wore a chunky gold wedding band on his left hand.
    Seriously? Did she really look that desperate?
    She shook her head and gave him her not-in-this-lifetime look.
    Her phone rang and, happy for the interruption, she dug around in her briefcase to find it, smiling when she saw her best friend Alice’s number on the screen.
    “So how did the meeting go?” Alice asked, and Carrie could picture her stretched out on the sofa in the trendy SoHo loft she shared with her sister, her glossy black hair smooth and sleek and tucked behind her ears. She never sat on a piece of furniture so much as draped herself across it.
    At five feet eleven inches, and no more than one hundred and twenty pounds soaking wet, to say that Alice was wispy was an understatement. Hence her very lucrative career as a runway model. In college, where they’d been thrown together by chance as roommates, they had been like Mutt and Jeff. Two women could not have been more different in looks or personality, but with their similar backgrounds involving alcoholic parents, they had instantly bonded and despite living on completely opposite ends of the country, had remained the best of friends. Alice was her only real friend.
    Normally Alice would be calling her from Milan or Paris or some other fashionably hip location, but a healing broken foot would be keeping her off the runway until the fall.
    “They signed the contracts,” Carrie told her. “So I’m in Chicago for the next three months.”
    “That’s fabulous!”
    “They didn’t haggle over money either, which you know I hate. As far as business goes, the meeting itself couldn’t have gone more smoothly.”
    “But?”
    “What makes you think there’s a but?”
    “Gut feeling. I’m right, aren’t I?”
    She sighed. “I broke my cardinal rule. But it was an accident.”
    “I must be thinking of a different cardinal rule, because I fail to see how it’s possible to accidentally sleep with someone.”
    “Nope, that’s the rule. And I’m living proof that it is possible.”
    “Oh, I can’t wait to hear this,” Alice said, and Carrie could just picture her catlike grin, the spark of amusement in her violet eyes—colored contacts of course, although she would deny it if asked.
    “It’s a little hard to believe,” Carrie told her.
    “Honey,” she said with a laugh, “coming from you, I’d believe just about anything.”
    “That guy I told you about—Ron.”
    “Mr. Steamy Sex from the bar?”
    “Yeah, well, apparently I heard him wrong. His name was actually Rob .”
    “Oh. And that’s a problem because?”
    “His name is Rob Caroselli . And he’s the director of marketing at Caroselli Chocolate.”
    Alice was a tough person to shock, so her gasp was almost worth the mess Carrie was in.
    Okay, maybe not, but it was at least a slight consolation.
    Carrie told her the whole story, from the minute Rob walked into the conference room until lunch when she had her foot in his lap.
    “Well, you were right about one thing,” Alice said. “If anyone but you had told me that story, I doubt I would have believed them. But as impulsive as you are—”
    “I’m not that impulsive,” she argued, signaling the bartender for another drink.
    “Your first night in a new city you picked up a total stranger in a bar and invited him back to your room.”
    Carrie cringed. “Yeah, there was that.”
    “Not that I’m saying you could have or should have anticipated this happening. That part was just dumb luck. Really, really bad dumb luck.”
    “But on the bright side, I think that now I’ve got him right where I want him.”
    “Until you wind up in bed with him again,” Alice said.
    “I can’t sleep with