Managing Manhattan

Always having had an eye for fashion and what looks good on people, Taylor Morgan has known that someday she would live in the fashion capital of the country, New York City, but only when the time was right. That time comes when Alyssa Stone, a customer who liked everything about her first experience in Taylor's women's wear boutique in small town Ashtabula County, Ohio, offers her the job managing A-Line, Alyssa's upscale boutique in Manhattan, the job which Taylor ultimately accepts. It isn't until she arrives in New York that Taylor learns the full extent of the job: that she is expected to increase the somewhat struggling store's profits by double digits by the end of the fiscal year in a couple of months so that Alyssa's investors will approve her expansion plan. Alyssa also didn't tell her that she didn't tell either of her two existing sales associates, Mindy and Courtney, that she was hiring a new manager, so they're resentful, thinking that one of them should have been promoted. And when Alyssa said she would arrange temporary accommodation until Taylor could find her own place, Taylor didn't expect to be Mindy's roommate in her cramped apartment, their relationship already strained because of the job. What worked in small-town Ashtabula County doesn't always work in Manhattan. And while Alyssa hired Taylor in large part because of the honest, caring way she deals with people, Taylor will find how far that honesty will go with Alyssa. Through it all, Taylor must adjust to life in the big city. She finds a friend in Philip Bartell, a native New Yorker and real-estate agent who does love his job in working for his parents' firm but has his own professional dream outside of real estate. While Philip would like their relationship to be more than just friends, Taylor will have to open herself up to the possibilities that all that New York City has to offer, which might not be easy with Philip not only because of that difficult adjustment, but because of having been burned in a recent relationship.