Women's fashion entrepreneur, Keli Michaels's mundane life is about turn topsy turvy. It all starts when her business partner and best friend, Tya, arranges a blind date with her cousin, but fails to tell Keli about it until two hours before their dinner reservations. Despite Keli's well founded annoyance, Ty convinces her to at least go out with him.

But when he arrives, Keli discovers something else her duplicitous friend failed to tell her. She is shocked to find out Ty's favorite cousin, Phillip (Trevor) Gordon, has long blond hair, beautiful baby blues and is cuter than hell.

Having never considered interracial dating, Keli, reluctantly accompanies Ty's handsome cousin, out on the town in a limo, and enjoys the most wonderful date of her life.

With the stars aligned, inevitably drawing this unlikely pair together, passion ignites and burns hot. But will it evolve into true love or burn out and fade away?

EXCERPT

"Me? A date with me? You told him I'd go out with him?"

"I'm afraid so. Please don't hate me, but I told him it was all set."

Keli's jaw muscles tightened, but she put her best foot forward. "I could never hate you, Ty, but why me?"

"It's my fault. I kept bragging about you, how fabulous looking you are and what a darling shape you have and...two weeks ago he asked for a photo, so I emailed him some pictures."

This made no sense. "Why would he need pictures, he met me two years ago?"

"Oh, you're thinking of Cousin Antoine. This is another cousin, great looking and smart as a whip."

"And he wants to go out with me?"

"Yes, He kept pestering me to get a date with you and I kept putting it off. Four days ago, I told him you were looking forward to it."

Feeling faint, she pulled a chair out from the table, sat and paraphrased what Ty had said, very slowly, "Let me get this straight, you told him I...really...looked...forward...to...our date?"

"Afraid so, and he made reservations at a fancy restaurant and bought tickets for an expensive play. I wanted to call and tell you, but I knew what I did was wrong and by then I became scarred shitless to tell you. Until now...now I'm out of time."

Her heart jumped into her throat. At least it felt like it did. "Hold on! Wait a minute, what does 'out of time' mean-?"

"Your dinner reservation is for six-thirty."

Panic struck. "Six-thirty!" She glanced at her watch-a quarter to five. "Tonight!" she screamed, "Girl, how could you do this to me? Maybe I can hate you after all."

Ty began to blubber. "I'm sorry, sob, I know I shouldn't have done it, sob, but it was one of those things. I can't, sob, explain it."

"If dinner is at six thirty, what time will he be here?"

"I don't know, but it's downtown so I suppose forty-five minutes to an hour ahead of time."

Absolute terror replaced her panic. A strange man would be here in less than an hour to take her out. Calm down and think. "Ty, I don't hate you, but I am really, really pissed at you. I don't have much time, since I have to get ready, give me the condensed version. Tell me everything about your cousin you can think of in two minutes, starting with his name.

"His name is Phillip Gordon, but he goes by Gordy. He's two years older than us, stands a shade over six feet, and like you, he has a glorious bod and...let's just say you won't be disappointed. He attended UCLA on a football scholarship, received a BS degree, is supposed to be some kind of wizard and works his wizardry in the research and development department of some avant garde, hi techie company."

When Ty paused to catch her breath, Keli said, "Sounds impressive. I need to get ready now. Just tell me, is he nice?"

"Oh yes. Gordy is the warmest, sweetest person. I adore him."

"Okay, good. I gotta go."

"Keli?"

"What?"

"There's one more thing I should tell you."

"Yes."

"Gordy is light skinned."

"That's all right."