OPERATION: DATE ESCAPE (5 page)

She laughed softly.  “Sorry, not a big enough flaw to qualify for my ‘safe to date’ list.”

“Damn.”

He had no idea how tempted she was to bend
her dating rules.  Kelsie bit at her bottom lip to keep from saying something she would undoubtedly regret.  Like YES!  Turning, she fixed her gaze on the town passing by outside the passenger window and sat in silence the remainder of the way home.

“I’ll see you to your door
,” her rescuer said when they pulled up in front of her apartment building.

“No,” she blurted out
, knowing she would be too tempted to drag him inside with her.  And that would be a bad thing.  “There’s no need.  Thanks for everything.”  She threw open the door, needing to get away from the temptation.

“Kelsie...” 

Run!
her panicked mind cried out.
 
But she didn’t heed the warning.  Instead, she turned in her seat to face the owner of that sexy voice.  Mr. Perfect.

Cole
reached out to cup her chin and lifted her face to his, saying nothing.  He didn’t have to.  The heat in his eyes said it all as he lowered his mouth to hers.  The kiss was slow.  Passionate.  Dangerously seductive. 

Firemen were supposed to put fires out, not start them.
  Yet there she was on the verge of going up in lust-induced flames. 

Thankfully, he pulled away, ending the kiss before she gave in to the overwhelming
urge to play ‘Pin The Fireman To The Truck Bench’.

Her mind still dazed from their passionate kiss, she
slid bonelessly from the truck.  To her chagrin, she dropped her keys twice as she made her way to her front door.  Nothing like letting the sexy hunk behind the wheel of the big black truck know just how much his kiss had affected her.

She glanced back over her shoulder just as th
e tinted driver’s side window slid down to reveal Cole’s grinning face.

“See you around, Cupcake
!”  With that, he drove away, leaving her standing there, her entire body still short-circuiting from his kiss.  Irritatingly perfect man!  

CHAPTER FOUR

Cole was the last of his crew to give up the comfort of his
overstuffed recliner and head for the dining area.  The station had gotten more than the usual amount of calls that day and all he wanted to do was kick back and relax.  But it was Joe Mitchell’s night to cook and the smell of his friend’s famed ‘Smokehouse Chili’ had him picking up his step in anticipation.  Joe was unarguably the best cook at the firehouse.

He paused to shut off the large screen TV, one they used for both recreation and to watch department training videos on, then crossed the open room to the dining area where the rest of his unit had already gathered for their evening meal.

Hopefully they could get this one in without another call coming in.  Just as washing your car had a tendency to bring about rain, mealtime at the firehouse pretty much guaranteed some kind of emergency would arise.  

Conversation around the table quieted
the moment he arrived, turning instead into deliberate murmurs and muffled snickers.

His
gaze slid around the table, taking in the toothy grins of his fellow firefighters.  What were they up to now?  These guys loved a good joke and it was pretty apparent that he was about to be at the receiving end of one of them.

“Well, well, if it isn’t Hot Lips Maxwell,” the Lieutenant said with a
chuckle as he reached across the table for the coffee pot. 

Hot Lips?

“Excuse me,” he replied, certain he had misunderstood what the Lieutenant had just said.

“Keeping secrets from us, eh, Maxwell?” another of his crew, one they fondly referred to as Stubby, baited.

“Not that I’m aware of.”  Cole pulled his chair out from under the table and settled into it.  These men were his closest friends, more like family.  There really were no secrets between them.

“That’s not how we hear it,
Stud Muffin
,” Joe stated with a lopsided grin.  His reply was followed by the smacking of lips all around the oversized dinner table as the other men blew exaggerated air kisses his way.

Okay, so maybe he didn’t tell them everything.  But
somehow they had found out about his brief lapse in common sense.  But how?  Then it dawned on him.  “Kelsie called?”

“So that’s her name,” the Captain noted with a nod. 

“Sorry to disappoint you, pal,” Joe muttered between chews.  “But your lady friend hasn’t called.”

He
tried to ignore the quickening of his pulse, set about by the memory of the kiss he’d shared with the feisty little redhead.  If Kelsie hadn’t called, there was only one other way the men would know about her.  He glanced toward the door.  “You mean she’s here?”

“Boy,
do you have it bad,” Joe said with a hearty laugh.

“
I don’t have anything bad,” he argued, his gaze shifting toward the stairs.  “So is she down there or not?”

His best friend
shook his head.  “Sorry to disappoint you, pal, but your
little Cupcake’s
not here.”

He turned his attention back to the men seated around the table. 
“Then how did you find out about what happened at the hospital?”

Stubby laughed.  “How else?  We heard about
it through the ‘grapevine’.”

The ‘grapevine’ being one of the other fire departments.  Cole frowned, his excitement waning.  He should have known Kelsie wouldn’t have changed her mind about going out with a guy like him.  Good old
Mr. Perfect
. 

If she only knew how wrong her assumption about him was.  He had just as many flaws as the next guy. 
Maybe more.

He
reached for the ladle and scooped a heaping spoonful of chili into his bowl.  “I don’t know what you guys heard, but it’s not what you think.”

Joe
pulled a handful of saltine crackers from one of the open packages scattered about the table.  “Then what is it?  One of the guys from Station 24 saw you in Riverside’s emergency room a few days ago.  And the way he tells it there was some sexy little redhead clinging to you and cooing sweet nothings into your ear.”

His
first thought was to deny it, but how could he?  Kelsie had been muttering sweet nothings.  Not that she’d meant any of them, but she’d said them all the same. 

“I’m not going to discuss it.”  There, that was simple enough.

Only Joe wasn’t ready to let it go.  “Thought you were going to steer clear of relationships after your breakup with what’s-her-face.”

“Melanie,” Cole
managed, despite being distracted by thoughts of another female, a certain spunky one with a sense of logic that made absolutely no sense to him whatsoever.  The little China doll that had nearly knocked his socks off when she returned his kiss in the front seat of his Ford F250.

“Don’t you mean Melissa?” Stubby
promptly corrected with a chuckle.

Cole frowned. 
He was usually pretty good with names, but all the other women from his past seemed to have faded from his mind.

“So give, Maxwell,” the Lieutenant
demanded.  “Who’s this mystery woman?  Uh, Cupcake, isn’t it?”

He
felt the heat creep up beneath the open collar of his uniform shirt.  How had he managed to end up in this situation?  Wrong place – wrong time.  Then he thought about the kiss he and Kelsie had shared and decided there was nothing ‘wrong’ about it.  In fact, it had felt pretty damn right.

“She’s no one,” he told the men watching him from around the table.  “Just someone I helped out when she needed it.”

Joe laughed.  “Helped her how?  By giving her mouth to mouth?”

“Hey, she kissed me,”
he clarified.

The crew’s
boisterous laughter followed.

He
released a long sigh as he glanced around at the smirking faces of his friends.  “All right, here’s what happened.  I met Kelsie the night I picked up our dinner order from Casey’s.  It was just a hello, nothing more.  Then I ran into her again at Riverside.  She was trying to get out of a bad date situation and I agreed to help her out.”

“Makes sense to me,” the Captain said as he
slathered butter across a thick slice of French bread.  “I always take my dates to the emergency room.”

The laughter that followed had Cole clenching his teeth.  He couldn’t blame them for not believing him.  But they didn’t know Kelsie.  If they did, it would
all make perfect sense to them.  Not that he knew her very well, either.  Except that she was stubborn and sexy and full of surprises... 

“So are you going to see her again?” Nate, one of the Medic crew asked with a wide grin.

He shook his head, unable to keep the frown from his face.  “No.”

“Why not?” several of the men asked in unison.

He considered refusing to answer, but knew they wouldn’t give up until he did.  “Because she won’t go out with me,” he said with a deepening frown.

His admission
successfully brought an immediate end to the laughter.  His friends sat there staring at him with stunned expressions all because some woman had turned him down.

Okay, so it was a first.  Not that he considered himse
lf a super stud or anything, but he’d certainly never found himself in this situation before.

“
Apparently I’m too ‘perfect’,” he muttered, figuring he might as well put it all out there. 

Joe choked on the spoonful of chili he’d just shoved into his mouth.  “Come again,” he
rasped, eyes watering.

“Perfect?” Stubby repeated.

He shrugged his broad shoulders.  “Her words, not mine.  Kelsie said she can’t go out with me because there’s nothing wrong with me.”

“That what she thinks,” Joe muttered beside him.

His best friend knew him better than anyone.  If it were possible, Cole would have had Joe vouch for his imperfections, but it was obvious Kelsie had already made up her mind where their ever going out was concerned.

The Lieutenant leaned forward to rest his folded arms on the edge of the table.  “I know I’ve been married for a long time, but I had no idea that dating has changed so much.  Are you telling me that women actually want men
with
flaws nowadays?”

“Only this one,” Cole muttered.  Then he went on to explain
her reasoning behind her dud-dating policy.  “So it looks like I’m out of the running.”

“Says who?” Joe countered.

“The woman herself,” Cole was quick to remind him.

“Look, if you’re as interested in
her as I think you are, you’ll just have to find some way to prove to her you’re not as perfect as she thinks you are.”

Before he had a chance to contemplate his friend’s suggestion,
the alarm sounded, calling out Ladder, Rescue and Medic.

*
              *              *

Hot.  The man was hot.  Nanci’s gaze moved down the back of his polo shirt to take in the faded jeans.  Nice ass.  He turned his cart into the next aisle. 
She followed.  Mr. Hot stopped in the produce aisle and began picking through the Roma tomatoes. 

Time to make her move.

She started toward him, intent on making intros and getting a date with Mr. Hot.  But some other woman beat her there.  A very pregnant woman.  She took notice of the matching rings on their left hands. 

“Damn.”  Mr. Hot had a wife.  That made him off limits in her book.  She pushed her cart a little faster, moving past the temptation. 

She had just passed the vegetable section when
Big Girls Don’t Cry
by Fergie rang out on her cell phone.  Pulling over next to the nectarine display stand, she grabbed her phone from her purse.

“Hello?”

“Hey,” Kelsie replied on the other end.

“Hey, yourself.”  She shifted the phone to her other ear.  “You all set for your date?”

“As ready as I’ll ever be, I guess.”

Her friend didn’t sound too excited and for good reason.  The Cornelius fiasco would
have made any woman gun-shy when it came to blind dates.  At least it had all worked out for Kelsie in the end.  She’d been rescued by a hunk.  Better yet, she’d been kissed senseless by him, too.

“
Well, good luck.  Call me if you need rescuing,” Nanci teased.

“You can bet I will.  So wh
ere are you?”

“Grocery store.”

“Shopping for men?”

She
laughed.  “Some of us choose to be proactive when it comes to our love lives.”

“Who are you trying to kid?  You aren’t looking for love – just sex.”

“Your point is?”

“Never mind. 
Finding any prospects?”

“
I thought I found one,” she said as Mr. Hot and his wife made their way past her.  “But he’s already on a leash.”

“Bummer.  So what
are you up to tonight?”

Not what she’d like to be doing.  “
I rented a couple of chick flicks and plan to kick back with a bottle of cheap wine and fantasize about some movie star hunk licking whipped cream off my naked body.”

“Want to trade pla
ns for the night?”

“No way.  No how
,” she said, shaking her head.  “I prefer to choose my own men, thank you very much.”

“I recall saying th
e very same thing to you and my mother, yet the two of you keep trying to find men for me.”

“
We’d do anything to see you truly happy again.”

“Anything?”

Nanci paused to think about that one.  Kelsie was up to something.  She just knew it.  She sighed, sensing she was going to regret this.  “Anything.”

“Then l
et me hang with you tonight?”

“
But your date...”

“
Won’t be a problem,” her friend said without hesitation.  “I’ll just tell him my best friend is having a personal crisis and needs me.”

Grinning,
Nanci yanked a plastic produce bag from the roller above her and placed a couple of nectarines inside.  “Another excuse for your book?” 

“Anything that
’ll get me out of this date.”

She wanted to give in and get her friend off the hook for that night’s date, but knew that doing so wouldn’t help Kelsie out in the long run.  It was time to practice some more tough love. 
“Sorry, chickadee,” she told her.  “I’m going to have to change my ‘anything’ to ‘almost anything’.  There’s no way I’m going to risk your mother getting mad at me for ruining the date she set up for you.”

And that was the truth. 
Having been raised in foster home after foster home, her best friend’s mom was the closest thing to a mother she had ever known.  And, while she had to agree Melinda Collins didn’t always choose the right men for her daughter, at least she cared enough to want to see her daughter happy.  More than Nanci could say about her own parents who she hadn’t seen since she was twelve.