A Kiss to Remember

This bland romance, a first novel, tracks the relationship of Lucia and Mitch, who meet when her son and his daughter stay out late on a date. He comes pounding on her door and she lets him into the house and serves him coffee despite the fact that it is two a.m. and he is a stranger and by his own description ``a little oversize.'' Although they are attracted to each other, Mitch's overbearing way of seeing to the needs of his children and his ex-wife and Lucia's heavy work schedule (answering the phone at a freight company as well as a sideline sewing lingerie) keep them busy and separated. Mitch's daughter Debbie is a particularly unbelievable character--a ditzy college freshman who listens to everything her sorority sisters tell her, talks in outdated Valley Girl lingo and, after one stint in a lunchtime fashion show at a restaurant called The Scuttled Butt, decides to drop out of college to model. Equally illogical is the idea that while Mitch and Lucia are too straitlaced to go to a motel or sleep together in either of their homes (because of their children), they have no qualms about carpeting the back of Mitch's truck and making love parked on a dead-end road. (Apr.)