Blind Date Disasters & Eat Your Heart Out

“Mitch picked them out,” Leo said meaningfully.

“Oh.” Suzie fingered the material of the pants. “Which of course makes them cheap, ugly and unwearable, right?”

Dimi just glared at her, making Suzie sigh. “Hon, look. Hate the man if you must, but he’s got great taste. This is exactly what the young, gorgeous, amazingly talented chef and host of a cooking show should wear.”

“They won’t fit,” Dimi assured them both, but Suzie set Leo free and pressed Dimi into her dressing room.

“Show me.”

“Gladly.” Dimi stripped. Muttered about the temperature in the room. Swore at the new clothes. Beamed at Suzie when she could barely get the pants up.

Then stopped in defeat when she looked in the mirror.

Because it fit, all of it. Like a second skin, but it fit. The pants didn’t cover her belly button, but they did cover her hips, just barely. The bra fit, too, and gave her generous breasts more…generousness. “Holy smokes,” she muttered, staring at her reflection.

Suzie handed her the blouse, which covered exactly nothing and had only one button.

“One button!” Dimi wailed, closing it between her shoved-up-and-out breasts. “I need more buttons, Suzie.”

“It drapes closed perfectly.”

“Yeah, because what does it matter when you can see everything right through the shirt!”

“It’s not that see-through, Dimi. You’re perfectly covered.”

“I can’t show my belly button on the air.”

Suzie laughed good and long over that. “You do realize this is the twenty-first century, right?”

“Said by the woman who’s five foot two and one hundred pounds. You could get away with this, but not me.”

“Have you seen a Brittney Spears video lately?”

“A little sympathy would be nice.”

“Okay,” Suzie agreed. “I’m sorry you’re so tall and curvy and gorgeous. What a curse.”

Dimi rolled her eyes. But after she applied her makeup and took a brush to her already curled hair, she had to admit, she looked…well, pretty damn fine.

“Whoa, baby, who knew you were hiding such a great set of breasts,” Suzie marveled. “And that tush. Good Lord, girlfriend, you should have been wearing pants all along. Good thing no one can see that you prefer plain white cotton panties.”

“I like cotton.”

“You know they make it in colors now, right?”

“Everybody’s turned into a comic.” Dimi tried pulling the pants up a little more, to no avail. “This is crazy. If I so much as bend over, I’m going to expose my butt like a damn contractor.”

“So don’t bend over. Dimi, can’t you feel it?” Suzie’s eyes were lit with excitement. “The new direction of the show. We’re going to go big. We’re all going to make it.” She hopped off the chair she’d plopped into and twirled around. “No more unemployment threat looming, no more scanning the classified section in the newspaper.”

Her earnestness had Dimi biting back her disgruntled reply. She wasn’t that selfish as to take away Suzie’s hope and joy, and she knew it wasn’t just Suzie. In fact, she knew exactly how many people depended on the success of this show.

Dammit.

“Look, I almost forgot,” Suzie said. “I came to tell you, Mitch wants to see you before the show. He wants to go over today’s dialogue.”

“We’re going to plan our dialogue?”

“Apparently.” Suzie grinned. “Make it as hot as yesterday, and we’re all on easy street for the season.”

Dimi thought of yesterday, and how she’d nearly melted watching Mitch handle the food, the cooking, everything, with a masculine flair that had left her…hungry.

And not for food. “I can’t do this,” she muttered, but Suzie was already gone, so she took herself down the hall to tell Mitch that very thing herself. She wouldn’t follow his dictates. She would dress and walk and talk however she wanted.

Only as she went, no less than six male crew members dramatically fell to the floor when she passed.

“Very funny,” she told them, getting more and more righteous and worked up, until finally she stood right outside Mitch’s office door with damp palms and a racing heart.

What if he gave her that look again, the one that scrambled her brain and made her want things she couldn’t even think about without getting all hot and itchy from the inside out?

Just as she lifted her hand to knock, Mitch opened the door, startling her into a very unrighteous squeak. “Do you have radar or something?” she demanded.

His gaze traveled the length of her, heating up from a mere smoldering to full-blown sizzle by the time it met hers again. “The outfit is good.”

“Tell me again, exactly what does being a sex goddess have to do with cooking?”

He grimaced at her loud voice, took her arm and pulled her inside his office. She had to stalk the length of the room a few times because it was hard to gather her temper again after that brain-cell-crunching look he’d just given her, but not impossible.

“I didn’t say sex goddess,” he said.

“Leo said-”

“I said sex kitten.” He grinned when she whipped around, practically snarling.

At least he wasn’t wearing black leather or those dark, dark sunglasses today. At least they weren’t outside where his nearly black hair gleamed and so did his smile, not to mention the motorcycle that had given her quite the interesting fantasy the past few nights.

But the truth was, he didn’t need any of that to be dangerous, because it was all in his eyes, in his smile and most definitely in the way he looked at her.

“What I said was, you needed to be coached from serious queen to sex kitten.”

She crossed her arms. “And that you were going to be the coach.”

“Yes.”

Just the single word caused a ripple of awareness. She ruthlessly stomped on it. “What does that coaching entail?”

“We’ve already covered this. The walk, the clothes, the smile.”

“That’s it?”

“You’re not quite ready for the rest yet.”

Well, darn if that didn’t send another little thrill rippling through her body. But that couldn’t be right, she couldn’t be…excited about this, could she? “I think I’d at least like a hint,” she decided.

“No.”

There was something incredibly intoxicating about how close his mouth was, about being able to-if she so chose-slip her arms around his neck and lose herself in him.

If she so chose.

Which, of course, she wouldn’t.

His eyes were shining with approval and a good amount of heat. “You’re going to knock ’em dead today, Dimi. Do you have any idea how incredible you look?”

“For a sex kitten, you mean.”

Running a finger over the gauzy material covering her shoulder, he slowly shook his head. “You look like a woman full of life, confident and all too happy to show the world what she can do.” His gaze met hers. “So, what can you do, Dimi?”

Anything. That’s how she felt when he looked at her like that. She could do anything. “I want to pick the recipes we use,” she managed to say. “If I have to walk, talk and dress like this, you can give me that.”

“Okay, what direction do you see yourself and the show going in?”

She’d done this before, pitched her vision. No one had ever wanted to believe in her, and as a result, she’d been stuck with tried, true and boring recipes. “I want to try new things across the