Operation Date Escape

her drink. “If Cole’s kiss got you as hot as you say it did, imagine what the guy’s going to be like in bed.”
    Her mother perked up like a cat d id when a can opener started to run. “Kiss? No one mentioned anything to me about any kiss.”
    “It was nothing,” Kelsie lied, but the memory of it alone had warmth oozing through her. “And you two can stop looking at me that way. I’m not going to bed with Cole.” Her gaze dropped down to the sliver of paper in her hand.
    Or was she?
    * * *
    Kelsie groaned as she eyed the mountain of empty pink hangars and discarded clothes that were strewn across the top of her bed. Her mother, a certified neat freak when it came to clothes, would have had a nervous breakdown if she saw the mess her daughter had made. On second thought, she would probably be thrilled by the fact Kelsie had cared enough to worry about wearing just the right thing on her date with Cole.
    She glanced around with a groan . Every inch of her usually tidy bedroom had suffered the effects of her pre-date dressing frenzy. Purses, from clutches to shoulder bags, were scattered across her dresser and heels of every height and color littered the floor around the bed like the end of a really big shoe sale at a department store. The only thing missing were the boxes and tissue paper.
    N othing she had tried on seemed quite right for her date with Cole. It was either too businesslike, and she wasn’t about to close any deals with Cole that night, too laid-back, and she wasn’t about to lay anywhere on this date, or too sexy, and sexy was definitely out of the question. That is, with the exception of the lingerie she was wearing, something she had no intention of letting her hunky date see her in.
    Maybe if she had the body to show them off...
    She quickly shoved that thought aside. Cole Maxwell was too perfect. She couldn’t allow herself to lose sight of that. No matter how tempting it was to give in to her attraction to him.
    She glanced at her reflection in the dresser mirror with a frown. Maybe she ought to have taken her mother’s advice and gotten a boob job. At least then she wouldn’t have to worry about what she chose to wear on her date. Cole would be too busy staring at her medically enhanced D cups to really care.
    But D cups were way out of her league. She was too petite to carry anything around that size. Not without becoming a walking circus attraction.
    “ Good things come in small packages,” she said, mimicking her mother. It was a phrase Melinda Collins had used often during Kelsie’s teen years. When all of her friends’ breasts were straining at the buttons of their too small, midriff baring tops and she was scarcely out of her training bra. Thank God she’d made it to a small ‘B’.
    It was only after her divorce that her mother started rethinking the ‘small package’ theory. No doubt, her mother’s change in how she looked at her daughter’s lesser endowments was brought about by Kelsie’s own whining. The woman Kyle had been screwing around with behind her back had centerfold-sized boobs and left Kelsie feeling like her failed marriage was her fault. That her less than womanly attributes had Kyle looking elsewhere.
    The phone rang, drawing her from her thoughts.
    “Not again,” she muttered with an eye roll. Her mother had already called three times that day to make sure she wasn’t thinking about backing out of her date.
    Sighing, she crossed the room to answer it, stepping over scattered heels as she went. A sudden thought gave her pause. What if it wasn’t her mother at all, but Cole calling to say something had come up and he needed to cancel their date? Or, even worse, what if he was calling to tell her that he was coming early?
    Oh, that would be great. She was nowhere near ready to go out. And she certainly couldn’t greet him dressed as she was. Not in only her newly purchased Victoria’s Secret bra and panty set.
    Stepping up to the nightstand, she glanced down at the caller ID . Nanci’s cell phone flashed across the screen. She grabbed for the cordless, bringing it up to her ear. “Hey.”
    “Hey back at you. I was just calling to see how things are going.”
    She knew better. She could read her friend like a book. Like her mother, Nanci was calling to make sure she hadn’t gotten cold feet and backed out of her date with Cole. As if anything about her could be cold when Cole Maxwell was involved.
    “Admit it, Nanc i. My mother asked you