Laney stood in front of the small mirror in her bathroom and painstakingly applied mascara. She hoped the stuff was still good; she hadn't used it in months. Hadn't she read somewhere that makeup had an expiration date? Well, it still seemed okay. She finished up, then licked a cotton swab and cleaned up the few smudges beneath her eyes. Lord, she was awful at this sort of thing. Her older sister had been so obsessed with boys and her looks that Laney had rebelled by being as mousey and bookish as possible. The behavior had stuck into her adulthood, which had been dominated by caring for her nephew. Heck, it had been almost a year since she'd had a date at all. And poor Pete Fielding from the feed store had been more nervous than she was. Needless to say, that experiment had not been repea
