Blind Date Disasters & Eat Your Heart Out

dates.”

“Clear the set!”

The crew scrambled away. Everyone but Dimi’s persistent assistant.

“You can’t give up,” Suzie protested.

“Watch me.” Dimi straightened her chair. “I mean it, Suzie. No more men, not ever again,” she vowed for once and all, at the exact moment Suzie finally backed off the set.

And just as the director punched a finger into the air, signaling they were live. The red light was on the camera. The camera pointed right at her.

The camera to which she’d just announced, on live television, no less, that she’d permanently sworn off men.

From just off the set, Suzie was shaking with silent laughter. Oh, yeah. Funny. But Dimi Anderson, former high school beauty queen and homework aficionada for the football team, hadn’t gotten to where she was today by giving in to public humiliation.

Host of the live cable cooking show Food Time, for the serious chef, Dimi forced a smile into the camera and said, “Just seeing if you’re awake, folks.” She cleared her throat and went resolutely ahead. “Welcome to today’s show.”

Off camera, but still in Dimi’s line of vision, the determined Suzie held up her clipboard.

A woman needs regular orgasms! it said.

Dimi faltered but, always the ultimate professional, covered it up with an unfortunately stiff smile. “Today we’re making-”

Suzie was busy scribbling, and she held up the clipboard again.

And not from anything battery operated!

Dimi choked, covered it with another smile, but she still had to repeat herself to get back on track. “Today we’re making-”

We’re making sure you get some. In this millennium!

“Carbonada Flamande and a lemon tart to die for,” Dimi said firmly, refusing to look at Suzie again.

SOMEHOW Dimi managed to finish the show, in spite of Suzie’s occasional very obscene clipboard suggestions. She’d created a new twist on the Carbonada Flamande and had made the lemon tart look interesting and challenging-she hoped. It tasted fabulous to her, anyway.

She should know, she’d put away three pieces of it, not a good thing. Not that any man would ever notice an extra few pounds on her hips, because she’d given up on men.

Things were fine. Really. She had a nice place to live and a job that let her eat all day long. What more could she want?

Plenty, apparently, given the odd sense of loneliness coursing through her as she drove home through the small historical town of Truckee toward Donner Lake and her town house. She could, as she always had, go to her twin sister’s town house, just down the path. They could share an entire bag of barbecue potato chips, or maybe chocolate chip cookies. That is, if Cami had gone food shopping.

But even that wasn’t the same anymore. Cami had Tanner now. He kept her happily fed, and given the constant expression of bliss on her sister’s face, it wasn’t with just food. It was a miracle, really, as Cami hadn’t been any more lucky in love than Dimi had been until a series of blind dates from hell had changed the tide for her.

Dimi didn’t begrudge her sister’s newfound happiness. She didn’t. She just wanted some for herself. Not likely, not now.

Oh, well. She had Brownie, her hamster. She also had the leftover tart.

Because she hadn’t yet bought furniture after having moved out of Cami’s place several months before, Dimi sat on the floor in her bare kitchen, the tart tin in her lap. Ready for her very own invitation-only pity party, she grabbed a fork.

Stuffing her face, she turned her head and looked into Brownie’s cage, which sat on the floor next to her. “You should know, I gave up men today. No daddy for you.”

The white and brown hamster poked her nose out of her little wooden hut and stared curiously at Dimi.

“On live television, no less. Should have seen it. Emmy-winning performance, no doubt.”

Brownie’s nose wriggled, and her dark eyes darted to the pie tin in Dimi’s lap. “Ah, the important stuff. Smart girl.” Dimi took a tiny piece of crust and offered it.

Nabbing it, Brownie quickly vanished into her hut.

“Not even a hamster wants my company,” Dimi said to no one in particular, wondering in her sugar-induced stupor where on earth she’d gone so wrong. What exactly was missing from her life?

But she knew the answer to that.

Love. True, heart-stopping love. That’s what was missing.

She polished off every last crumb of the tart, all the while telling herself she couldn’t miss what she’d never had.

HAVING GIVEN UP her dream of wedded bliss in front of the entire world actually had a benefit, Dimi discovered. She couldn’t have been lonely that evening if she’d tried, since everyone she knew called her.

First her friends, one by one, all of whom thought her little proclamation was hysterical.

Oh, yeah, just hysterical.

Then her sister. “Way to go,” Cami said.

“Way to ruin any prospective relationship you might have had.”

“There was no prospective relationship,” Dimi reminded her. “Now go back to your fiance.” She took some joy in hanging up soundly.

No peace, though; the phone immediately rang again.

“Oh, my God, you’ve given up men,” her mother wailed. “How could you?”

“Mom…you watched.”

“Well, of course I watched. I always watch.”

That was so unexpectedly sweet, Dimi was speechless.

“I watch during Debbie Dee’s commercials.”

Dimi’s competition. The Debbie Dee Trash Talk Show. Dimi put her head to her knees. “Gee, thanks, Mom.”

“What’s this about no more men? I want grandchildren, Dimi!”

“Mom-”

“Your sister is such a good girl, falling in love. Why can’t you do that?”

Desperate times called for desperate measures. So she simulated static through her teeth. “Gosh, would you listen to that? Bad connection on the cell, Mom! Gotta go.”

“Dimi Anderson, you don’t have a cell phone in your town house!”

“Hey, did you hear that? It’s my doorbell.” But just as Dimi disconnected, her mother sighed.

“You can’t fool me,” she grumbled. “I know you don’t have a doorbell, either.”

WHEN DIMI ARRIVED at the studio the next morning, she found her staff huddled in the parking lot, unusually solemn.

“Hey, guys. Cheer up. Just because I gave up men-”

“For once, men are taking a back seat,” Suzie informed her.

“Wow, really?” She studied the quiet faces. “It must be bad then.”

“Ratings are down,” Ted the cameraman told her. “Down, down, down.”

“How can that be?” Dimi thought of all the calls she’d taken over yesterday’s show. “Everyone I know watched.”

“What?” Ted asked. “All of two people?”

“Hey, I know more than two people,” Dimi said, insulted.

Grace, their cooking consultant, was wringing her hands. “You giving up men is the least of our problems. It’s rumored heads are going to roll. Today.”

“It’s fact, Dimi,” Ted agreed. “We’re in bad shape.”