Operation Date Escape

points and hopefully find himself an ally, because he knew even before this date was finished that he wanted to see Kelsie again.
    “Do you have any brothers or sisters?” she asked.
    He shook his head. “Nope. I’m like you. The one and only.” He turned into the parking lot behind Kelsie’s office and cut the engine. “Here we are.”
    “Thanks.” Opening the door, she slid from the cab. “I’ll just be a second.”
    He watched her go, enjoying the view, and then stepped out of the truck to stretch. They couldn’t have asked for a nicer evening for their date. Though it was summer and the humidity had been close to unbearable the past few days, it wasn’t that night.
    He looked up as a light breeze stirred the leaves on the trees around him, cooling the air even more. No doubt a prelude to the rain that was predicted to move into the area the next morning.
    The back door to the Victorian-house-turned-office opened and Kelsie stepped back outside. Juggling a brown paper bag in one hand, she dug through her purse in search of something.
    “Everything okay?” he called out.
    “I can’t find the key,” she replied. “I stuck it in my purse when I went inside.”
    He walked up to her and reached for the bag so she’d be free to search for the key. “I’ll hold this.”
    “Thanks. This purse is a bottomless pit when it comes to finding things.” She dug deeper, finally locating her key ring. “Got it.”
    Shoving the key into the lock, she gave it a quick turn and then tested the door to make certain it had latched. Then she turned to him with a smile. “All set. I’ll take that now.” She reached for the bag.
    He let go as her hand curled over the rolled up top of the brown paper bag. Unfortunately, she didn’t have a good enough grip on it and it dropped to the ground with a loud thud. The thin paper sack split open, spilling its contents everywhere.
    “What the...” His eyes rounded and his jaw went slack as he stared down at the assortment of vibrators strewn out across the shadow-dappled walkway.
    Whoa!
    “Oh, shit,” Kelsie exclaimed, her cheeks instantly turning a vibrant shade of red. She fell to her knees and scrambled to gather up the assortment of sex toys scattered around her. “They’re not mine,” she insisted as she reached for a package that read THE GLOW WORM.
    He couldn’t help but grin. “Let me guess,” he said as he knelt to help her. “They belong to a friend?”
    “Exactly,” she blurted out, looking up at him. “They do.”
    He arched a brow.
    “It’s true. I swear. And I’m going to kill Nanci the second I see her again.”
    Nanci. Now that made more sense. She was more the ‘Glow Worm’ kind of girl. An odd sense of relief surged through him. Not that he was uptight when it came to people finding sexual pleasure. It was just hard to imagine Kelsie having that kind of sexual weapons arsenal.
    He continued picking up the boxes. “I had no idea there were so many kinds of these things.”
    She laughed. “This is nothing.”
    He returned the last of the battery-operated joy-toys to what was left of the bag and then stood, carefully handing it over to Kelsie. “Looks like Joe’s got himself a lot of competition.”
    She laughed. “Nanci doesn’t use them. Well, I suppose she might, but that’s really not any of my business. My guess is that these are for her collection.”
    “Collection?”
    She nodded. “Yes. You know how some men collect baseball cards?”
    He nodded.
    “Instead of cards, she collects vibrators.”
    Kelsie was the only person he knew that could make that kind of comparison and have it sound like her friend’s obsession with fake phalluses wasn’t somewhat out of the norm.
    “Tell me something,” he said with a grin.
    “ Yes?”
    “ You don’t happen to have any odd hobbies I should know about before we go out tonight, do you?”
    “Too late,” she said. “We’re already out. But you don’t have to worry. All I have is a really small leather whip collection. And I almost never bring them out until at least the second date.” That said, she flashed him a smile and stepped past him, making her way back to the truck.
    He watched her go, the alluring sway of her behind drawing his gaze like a magnet. He couldn’t help but chuckle. Whip collection. Now that was funny. Kelsie wasn’t the wild, leather whip toting kind of girl. Of course, she didn’t seem like the type to crawl out of a strip club window either.
    She