Operation Date Escape

you knew.”
    “Not about that,” her mother said, easing back again in the seat. “It appears you’ve been keeping a lot of things from me lately, young lady,” she added in that perfected guilt-inducing tone all mothers knew how to use.
    Then it dawned on her what her mother had actually said. She hadn’t known about her date with Cole, so what other secret was she supposed to be keeping from her mother. “What were you talking about?”
    Her mother reached into her purse and pulled out a folded newspaper page, shoving it through the opening between the two front seats. “I was referring to this.”
    Her gaze shifted from the road to the paper her mother was waving beside her. There on the front page of the local newspaper was the picture of her in Cole’s arms after he’d rescued her from the tree.
    “LOCAL FIREMAN RESCUES DAMSEL IN DISTRESS,” Nanci read with a giggle. “And it goes on to say the unidentified female victim had gotten herself stuck in a tree after climbing out of one of the second story windows at the Touch of Spice lounge.”
    “Aaaah!” Kelsie groaned, glancing down once more at the picture of her staring up all cow-eyed at Cole. “I can’t believe they actually put this in the paper.”
    “Red light!” her mother shrieked.
    Her gaze snapped up to see the rapidly approaching light. With a gasp, she stomped on the brake, leaving a set of tire marks behind them on the road. By some miracle, she managed to stop just behind the white line as a car passed by on the crossroad. “Shit.”
    “Shit is right,” Nanc i said. “I can’t be in an accident today. I wore my shopping undies instead of my thong.”
    Leave it to Nanci to worry more about what her ass would look like to rescuers instead of just how bad this could have turned out.
    “Maybe we should forget this whole shopping thing,” Kelsie suggested.
    “After I went and had my hair done this morning just for our little outing?” her mother muttered.
    “Fine, but it’s not going to be an all-day event,” Kelsie told them. “I feel like something the cat dragged in.”
    “At least you don’t look like you feel today in this picture with Cole,” Nanci remarked, studying the paper more closely. “You look great, all things considered.”
    Her mother gasped. “Cole? The same Cole you have a date with tomorrow?”
    “Every mouthwatering inch of him,” Nanci wasted no time confirming.
    Kelsie groaned. What were the odds that if she took a really sharp left turn her friend would fly out the open window and take her big mouth with her? She was seriously tempted to find out.
    “And to think I worry about you choosing men who are all wrong for you,” her mother said as she reached between the seats to snatch the paper back.
    Kelsie fought the urge to laugh. Most of the ‘wrong’ men in her life lately had been chosen by her mother.
    “Mmm...he’s a real looker,” her mother muttered appreciatively from the backseat. “Glad you finally took the bull by the horns and asked a man out.”
    “I didn’t ask him,” she told her mother, not wanting her to think she had any real interest in Cole. “He asked me out.”
    “Ooh, even better,” her mother squealed in delight. “He clearly likes what he’s seen.”
    “He should,” Nanci said with a smile. “The guy had a great view of her backside from that rescue box he went up after her in.”
    Kelsie shot her the ‘evil eye’, something she seemed to be doing a lot more of lately.
    “Honey, you really shouldn’t scrunch your eyebrows up that way,” her mother chided. “It’ll give you premature wrinkles.”
    “I wasn’t scrunching.” Scowling. Maybe. Throwing eye darts. Definitely. But she had a good reason to. Her best friend had a big fat mouth!
    “I don’t know what you’re so upset about,” she said, holding up the newspaper for Kelsie to see in the rearview mirror. “This is a really good picture of you.”
    “Too good,” Nanci agreed. “Guess it’s safe to say you won’t remain unidentified for very long.”
    “Just what I need,” Kelsie groaned. “People I know wondering what in the world I was doing in up a tree outside of a strip club.”
    “Strip club?” her mother blurted out.
    She nodded. “However, I didn’t know it until I was already inside.”
    “What on earth were you doing there in the first place?”
    “Meeting her date,” Nanci answered for her.
    “The one you set me up with,” she reminded her mother. “But