Operation Date Escape

Okay, and maybe kissing her again, but her safety had been his first concern.
    “I don’t know what to think,” he said as they made their way down the stairs to the bay. “I don’t consider myself God’s gift to women or anything, but I’ve never had a problem getting them to go out with me.” His problem had always been in keeping the relationship going afterward because of his chosen profession.
    Joe chuckled. “Yeah, can’t say I ever remember you ever having to bribe a woman to go to bed with you.”
    “Kelsie and I are going to dinner, not to bed.”
    “Yet.”
    He rolled his eyes. He was by no means the stud his best friend tried to make him out to be. Sure he’d had his share of relationships in the past, but not all of them had ended up in bed.
    “With Kelsie, I’ll be lucky if I get her to the dinner table.”
    “The department ‘Stud Muffin’ afraid of a little challenge?” Joe asked as he ran his sleeve over the chrome backing on the Ladder truck’s side mirror.
    “Hell, no.” Cole yanked open the equipment doors at the side of the truck.
    “Then what’s the problem?”
    “The problem is this thing with Kelsie is driving me crazy.”
    “Thing?”
    “She’s not like any woman I’ve ever dated.”
    Joe shrugged. “Might be a plus.”
    He wasn’t so sure. “She’s trouble waiting to happen,” he said as he moved to check the hoses. “You’ve seen it firsthand.”
    “What I’ve seen is a woman that makes your face light up like the skies over Thomas Worthington High School stadium on the fourth of July.”
    She did?
    Joe continued with his assessment of the situation. “You’ve always played it safe, dating all those boring, cookie cutter kind of women. It’s no wonder things never worked out with any of them.”
    “Boring?”
    “Yeah, you know. The kind of women who spend hours deciding on what shade of nail polish they’re going to wear out. The kind of woman who wouldn’t be caught dead in a tree.”
    “I can assure you Kelsie wasn’t too thrilled to be caught up in that tree either.”
    “All I’m saying is that maybe it’s time you stop playing it safe and give ‘trouble’ a chance.”
    Joe was right. Kelsie wasn’t like any of the women he’d dated before. While he had a tendency to go for tall, mostly blonde and slightly more endowed women, he found himself surprisingly turned on by the petite little stick of dynamite with hair as fiery as her personality. One who wasn’t afraid to try things like rollerblading, or as in last night’s case, tree climbing.
    He chuckled inwardly at the memory of it. And it was good to know that slightly mussed hair wasn’t a major crisis for her, because that hair of hers beckoned a man’s hands to run through it. His hands.
    He closed the doors and leaned against the truck. “You know, Joe, I think you’re right. No more playing it safe in my personal life. We both know Kelsie is looking for the not-so-perfect man.”
    “And?”
    “I’m going to give her what she wants and have fun doing it.” All he had to do was keep her from pulling a date escape on him, too.
    * * *
    Kelsie stepped into the kitchen and groaned in protest of the sunlight penetrating the partially opened slats of the mini-blinds. She felt like hell. Not because she’d drank too much at Nanci’s the night before, though she had downed several glasses of cheap wine during their movie marathon. Her exhaustion was due more to the restless night she’d spent after she’d gotten home. One spent fantasizing about Cole Maxwell.
    She made her way over to the kitchen pantry and pulled out a loaf of twelve-grain bread and a near empty jar of Jif . Peanut butter was one of her three main vices – coffee, chocolate and peanut butter. Not always in that order. It depended on what time of month it was.
    After dropping two slices of bread into the toaster, she hurried to get the coffee maker started, desperate for a caffeine fix. There was no way she’d be able to spend the day shopping feeling the way she did. Like the human equivalent of a slug.
    Adding more urgency to her need to pull herself together was the fact that if she didn’t go it would mean her mother and Nanci would be spending the day alone together – probably scheming. A dangerous thing.
    She pulled her purse towards her across the counter and dug inside for her cell phone. Turning, she dialed Nanci on her way back to the toaster. The smell of freshly brewing coffee seeped into