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Keep reading for a sample from Falling for Mr. Maybe, the next book in the Falling for Mr. Wrong series.
Falling For Mr. No Way in Hell
by Jenny Gardiner
Chapter One
Lacy Caldwell secured her long, tawny hair into a loose side braid, pulled her goggles over her bright green eyes, then tugged on the iridescent teal mermaid tail that had, like it or not, become an appendage she’d gotten oddly attached to over the past year. Since last January, Lacy had been supplementing her income to pay for grad school by working as a mermaid at a cheesy roadside tiki bar in the small town of Verity Beach in North Carolina’s Outer Banks.
At first she simply took the job because it was a job to be had. She’d never aspired to be a freak attraction to tourists looking for a good laugh while getting drunk over too many beers. But then she surprised herself by finding out she kinda loved both the job and the quirky group of people who she worked alongside at the Mermaid’s Purse, too.
This included 87-year old Edna Dingleheimer, who’d been pounding out customers’ favorite tunes on the electric keyboard four nights a week since the year John Kennedy was assassinated. Despite her one-of-a-kind appearance (bleached-blond beehive hairdo, Coke bottle-thick eyeglasses, knuckles knobbed with arthritis, dressed in a grass skirt over a pair of blue jeans), Edna’s presence always took second fiddle to the main attraction: two mermaids who each night dallied in a swimming pool on the other side of a large picture window that overlooked the dark, dank bar of the Mermaid’s Purse.
Sometimes Lacy could relate to how a stripper must feel, having leering eyes laser-focused on you for sometimes hours at a time. Even though she was, for all intents and purposes, far more dressed than a stripper. That said, the coconut shell bra wasn’t exactly a turtle neck, and she had large enough breasts that they couldn’t help but spill out a little bit from the tiny confines of those hard cups.
At first she’d felt self-conscious in her low-cut tail and coconut bikini top, but soon she realized it was sort of fun to get paid (and earn some pretty generous tips) to just flipper around a swimming pool for several hours a night. Since the pool was indoors, they weren’t exposed to the elements, which was a huge plus. The biggest downside was sheer boredom: you could only do so much in a mermaid tail—a few underwater flips here, a handful of turns there, a couple of tail slaps with whatever other mermaid was on duty that night, and maybe send some seductive bubble kisses to the people at the bar, and then you had to get creative. Thank goodness she had to surface for air every twenty seconds or so, just for the change of scenery.
Often Lacy stuck around after work to chat with her co-workers. She adored the owner, Vera Cosmopolous, a seventy-something Greek American woman who made it her life’s goal to fatten Lacy up, even though Lacy felt plenty fattened enough already, thanks.
“Here,” Vera said, sliding a plate with grilled pita and baba ganoush, an eggplant and tahini dip, toward Lacy, who had to admit she was starved after swimming around in the pool for four hours. “This will be good for you and will help you get over that stupid man.”
The stupid man she was referring to was her now ex-boyfriend, Billy Crapple. Yes, that was his name, deservedly so. Although Billy “What a Complete Pile of” Crapple was what she chose to call him nowadays. Lacy had devoted the past two years of her life to building a relationship with Billy, only to find out he’d been seeing not one, not two, but three different women at the same time. Three-timing Lacy. When she found that out—based on a phone call from one of the suspicious three-fers, accusing her of being the other woman, of all things—she kicked him to the curb, vowing to steer clear from men for the foreseeable future. From here on out, she was devoting herself to finishing up her degree and stockpiling money as a mermaid.
It was a good life. Or good enough, albeit a teensy bit lonely. Currently the biggest stressor in her world was that she had to attend the engagement party of her friend Carly, whose fiancé Jimmy was good friends with Billy. And the last thing Lacy wanted to do was show up dateless with him there.
“I tell you what you need, honey,” Vera said as she helped herself to the pita bread she’d proffered to Lacy. Her electric green nail polish practically glowed in the dim light of the bar as she pointed at her mermaid employee who’d become like a daughter to he. “You need to bring a man with you and show that crappy Billy Crapple you never looked back once he was in your rearview mirror.”
Lacy sighed. “Yeah sure. Great idea. But who might you suggest?” She looked around the empty bar. “I mean I could bring Stan with me—” she nodded toward a man twice her age with a bushy moustache and a wife at home, “but that wouldn’t work on many levels.”
They both laughed at the idea. Stan just scowled at them.
“Can’t you think of any man who might go, even as a pity date?”
Lacy rolled her eyes. Just what she wanted to be: a pity date. Even though that’s precisely what she needed to find.
“I dunno,” she said. “I mean there’s this nice guy I’ve chatted with at the gym. He was next to me in yoga last week, and I’ve seen him at the other end of the room in boxing class every now and then.”
Vera shook her head. “Just as long as you didn’t see him in ballet class, I say go for it.”
“Like go for it as in, approach the guy whose name I don’t even know, and say, ‘uh, hey. I’m sort of a loser and can’t find a date and I really need one badly to taunt my cheater ex-boyfriend and, well, we did do yoga together so it’s almost as if we knew one another’?”
Vera waved her hand, dismissing the cynical suggestion. “It’s as good an approach as any. Unless you want to put an ad in the paper.”
“No one puts ads in the paper anymore.”
Vera shrugged. “Oh excuse me. Then you can put a notice in Craigslist and I’ll hope and pray you aren’t murdered in your sleep.” She clasped the cross dangling from her neck.
“Fine, I get your drift. I should just lose the shame and ask this guy. Even though I’m likely to see him every damned day at the gym, which will be perpetually humiliating if and when he turns me down.”
Vera frowned. “Humiliating is when you’re left at the altar with a bouquet of tea roses and no fiancé. I speak from experience.”
It always saddened Lacy that Vera never did marry after that episode. Instead she made the bar her life and family, and now here she should be retired and enjoying life, but with no one to share it with, she just keeps on working.
“You do know that guilt trip isn’t going to work on me, lady?” Lacy kissed Vera on the cheek.
Only it actually did work, every damned time she used that ploy. Each time Lacy thought about being alone and in her seventies, it just about prompted her to start looking for someone before she became old and lonely. Couple that with the need to prove to Billy that she’d long since moved on meant that she was indeed going to muster up the courage to ask her yoga buddy to be her date. Even if it killed her.