like and didn’t remember ordering. “By someone like you, I meant a nice, attractive woman with interests of her own and not a whole lot of dating experience.”
“How do you know I haven’t dated multitudes of men since you knew me in school?”
“I don’t know. Sorry.” A guy does know, he thought, trying not to let her see his smugness. “Why are you making this so complicated?”
“I have too many possibilities on my list—friends, sisters of friends, cousins of friends, friends of friends, customers, friends of customers, relatives of…”
He laughed defensively. “That narrows it down to all the eligible women in the greater Detroit area.”
“Not quite, but I have at least a dozen good prospects. I’ll mull it over, then negotiate.”
She stood and brushed crumbs from the lap of her short, swingy, flowered skirt, forcing him to notice those spectacular legs again.
“Negotiate, as in union contract?”
“You have to realize, some of my friends may not be interested in meeting you.”
He did the wrong thing—he laughed.
“I have to get back to work,” she said forcefully. “By the way, I do want to thank you again for letting me preview the new product line. It was quite an experience.”
“One I’m trying to forget,” Cole muttered.
TESS WENT BACK to work seriously considering signing up for a yoga class. Nothing she’d learned in the self-assertive discipline of kickboxing had helped when Cole showed up at the store without warning for the second time. She was embarrassed to remember her pounding heart and racing pulse.
He’d startled her. That could be the only possible explanation for her purely involuntary adrenaline rush.
Instead of working on the next week’s work schedule, she laid Cole’s list and hers side by side on her desk in the back room. The numbered lineup of unattached friends spilled over onto the back of her page, even though she’d printed their names in ant-size letters. She flipped the paper and put her own name at the bottom of the list in tiny, barely legible script. She belonged in this anthill, too.
Cole would get his fill of the eager and the eligible. Meeting Mr. Right was the Mount Olympus of dating, and the older a woman got, the harder it was to scale up to where the Greek gods were hiding.
She stabbed at the paper with the pen point, obliterating her name. What had she gotten herself into?
Anyway, she said she would set him up, and she would, and why had Cole wrapped his sausage and bun instead of eating it? Did being with her zap his appetite, or was it the prospect of an endless string of blind dates? More puzzling, why was he gung ho to have her help him meet women when he didn’t have the slightest bit of trouble getting acquainted with them wherever he went? She didn’t buy his excuse about not finding nice women on his own.
She could keep him supplied with a new date every night of the week and double book him for lunch and dinner on the weekend. She’d begin with friends from high school. They’d at least know him by reputation—the Bailey twins’ legacy had endured at least until Tess’s class graduated, if not longer.
Lucinda deserved to sit on a jellyfish on her tropical paradise honeymoon. If it weren’t for that ludicrous dress, Tess’s bow wouldn’t have been caught in the trunk and Cole wouldn’t have paid the least bit of attention to her. Now she was really stuck—matchmaker to a man of many conquests.
She flipped the sheet, wrote her name above contestant number one, then blacked it out letter by letter.
The phone interrupted her as she turned the n in Morgan into an inky square.
“Baby Mart, how may I help you?” she automatically answered.
“Ms. Tess Morgan?” The woman spoke with diligently cultivated culture.
“This is she.” She couldn’t say, “Yeah, it’s me,” to this voice.
“This is Dorothea Danzig, Mr. Marsh Bailey’s personal assistant. Mr. Bailey would be honored if you would attend a reception to launch the new catalog this Saturday evening.”
“Me?” So much for outclassing the classy voice on the other end of the line.
“You are the owner of Baby Mart?”
“Yes, I am.” She said that satisfactorily, hardly a gasp of astonishment in her businesslike response.
“Cocktails from seven to nine in the Windsor Room of the Sherman Arms Hotel, then dinner at nine. May I add your name to the guest list, Ms. Morgan? Mr. Bailey will provide transportation, of course.”
“I’d be very pleased to attend.” Did that sound all right, or was there a little wheeze in pleased?
“Splendid. Your limo will be there at 6:30 p.m., if you’ll be so kind as to give me your home address.”
Home address? Yes, she had one! She gave it triumphantly.
She was going to ride in a limo, a limo as in prom night, wedding…funeral procession!
“You may, of course, bring an escort if you like. I believe you’re a friend of Mr. Bailey’s grandson, but it’s completely optional whether you choose to invite someone. The event is black tie.”
Tess repeated the date and time, scribbling them on the margin of her list as the call ended.
Was it because she’d liked the portable potty? Or because lime green reminded her of lizards, pond scum and diet lime soda? More likely, Cole’s grandfather was trying to use her to entice his grandson into taking an interest in the business. The Bailey men were leading her on a flimsy rope bridge over very sticky quicksand. She could only hope her common sense was an adequate safety net.
GETTING DATES for Cole proved as easy as locating a free cat. Friday night was a snap. Tess had gotten reacquainted with a classmate, Jordan Collins, who’d recently moved back to the area. She was on the thin side, but Cole hadn’t made a point about size or shape.
“I had a huge crush on Cole in high school,” Jordan admitted when Tess called her that evening after work. “But didn’t everyone? He was so adorable in a naughty sort of way.”
“Certainly not me,” Tess lied.
Saturday was even easier to book. A real friend, Margo Hendricks, volunteered when Tess groused to her over lunch on Tuesday. She’d never met Cole, but a longtime relationship with a live-in boyfriend had fizzled a few weeks earlier.
“I hate all men, and I hate blind dates even more,” Margo said. “But if I do this for you, we’ll be even for all the time you spent listening to me sob about Rick.”
“You’ll be perfect,” Tess declared.
She didn’t have a free minute to tackle a really serious problem until Friday. What should she wear to a reception at the Sherman Arms? She took a long lunch break and covered the stores in the mall, deciding she really couldn’t afford five hundred dollars for a midnight-blue evening gown shimmering with a touch of deep violet even though it made her look thin and feel like glamour personified.
After work she resorted to desperate measures—she went to her sister. Karen agreed to loan anything she owned in exchange for Tess keeping Erika and Erin overnight sometime soon so she and Duke could relive their wedding night at Martino’s Resort and Spa.
“You don’t know what pleasure is until you bask in one of their heart-shaped hot tubs,” Karen enthused.
“I can’t decide which dress to wear,” Tess said, trying not to imagine Cole rising up in a cloud of mist and leading her to a bed covered in black satin sheets. “I’ll have to take some home.”
“Come back tomorrow. It isn’t as if Royal Oak is as far away as the moon.”
“Can’t.