One Perfect Night by Rachael Johns is an office romance. In real life, fishing off the company pier is generally considered a bad idea. In this story, it not only turns out to be good advice for the participants, but it is great fun to read.

Peppa Grant usually works as voice talent at Lyrique Recordings. But for the company’s Christmas party, she had agreed to entertain the staff’s children, dressed in a fairy costume, after the regular entertainment called in sick.

This was not her lucky day. On her way into the party, she had side-swiped the Head Honcho’s vintage Lamborghini, and there was no way her insurance was going to cover the damage. And she was going to have to ‘fess up to her “crime” dressed up as an “elf” to a man the female employees nicknamed “McSexy”.  And Peppa was in no way immune to his charms.

Cameron McCormac didn’t need any financial assistance to help repair the damage to his Lamborghini. Money was not a problem. What he really needed was a date to his family’s Christmas party that evening to stave off his relatives well-meaning but futile attempts to fix him up with someone. He hadn’t been interested in anyone since his wife died three years ago, but he was definitely interested in the fairy girl in her too-short tutu and red fishnet stockings. Very, very interested.  Cameron offered Peppa a deal, accompany him to his family’s annual Christmas, and he’d forget about the car. Peppa couldn’t even afford to replace the hubcaps on a Lamborghini. She took the deal.

Nothing that evening was what either of them expected. Especially when the evening ended in Peppa’s bed. But after one perfect night together, what happens when both of them want more, even though neither of them expect that it can possibly work out?

Escape Rating B: This story turned out to have much more to it than I expected, especially for a 100 page story.  Peppa and Cameron are both characters who have been hurt badly, and both have come to expect absolutely nothing from relationships, even to expect not to have relationships. They know they should not get involved. And yet they do. Everything is tentative and scary for both of them, and the author does a very good job of portraying the “two steps forward, one step back” nature of this type of relationship. Well done.