Into the Fire - Leslie Kelly [40]
Dammit, she wanted happily ever after. She wanted her soul mate, her Anam Cara, her split apart.
"And I want Nate Logan," she admitted aloud, leaning back in her desk chair and sighing in frustration. At this particular moment, she honestly wasn't able to say which she wanted more.
* * *
By Wednesday at four, Nate knew he'd had enough. Fun e-mails were one thing, but he really wanted to see Lacey again. Calling her at the office, he waited until she answered, then said, "My car needs washing."
"Nate?"
"Yep. Let's get to work, Lace. There's a self-serve car wash a few blocks from the office. Meet me there."
"Forget it. I'm wearing a silk blouse."
He paused for a quick mental image of her in a wet silk blouse. A white one. A very sheer white one. That might be even better than a T-shirt.
Lacey didn't notice his silence. "How about the library?"
Nate groaned. "It's a beautiful, sunny afternoon and you want to bury us in the city library?"
She paused. "Have any dirty clothes?"
"Of course, the Laundromat," he agreed.
They met an hour later at the agreed-upon location—a Laundromat in a strip mall in Towson . Lacey looked somewhat out of place dressed in an ivory-colored business suit, the silk blouse—green—and a string of pearls. Nate, with his faded, torn jeans and dingy Orioles shirt, fit right in. "Wanna help me sort my whites?"
She glanced at his laundry basket and raised a droll brow. "I'm sure sorting your whites would be the highlight of my week. But, no, I think we should separate if we really want to observe the swinging single scene at the Laundromat."
He knew she was right. But separate wasn't what he had in mind. Actually, now that he had Lacey in a hot, sweaty Laundromat filled with dozens of heavy-duty, industrial-strength, vibrating washing machines, being separate was the last thing on his mind! He couldn't think of a good enough reason to get her to sit on top of one of the things, however, and watched helplessly while she went clear across the room and sat in a corner near the front windows.
Lacey perched on the cracked edge of an ancient metal folding chair, whose seat had once been orange, and had once been cushioned. Within forty minutes three men hit on her. None of them looked like Prince Charming—more like the prince's ninety-year-old toothless stablehands, or the dirty storybook villains who locked the princess away in the tower.
Judging by the pinched frown on her face, Nate knew Lacey was not amused by their people-watching in the Laundromat. Nate didn't fare much better. Yes, he definitely got some attention from the females entering the place. Most, however, weren't young singles on the make. They were harried housewives with runny-nosed two-year-olds glued to their hips, or older women who looked like they needed to start measuring their bra size in length instead of circumference. After an hour, he was ready to call it quits. "This was a bad idea."
"I figured since we're near the university, we might hit some of the college crowd," Lacey admitted with a sigh.
"So maybe next time we try the college library instead?"
"You're on. Now, let's get out of here. I'm feeling the need to take a shower after being around all this dirty laundry."
Nate chalked up their Laundromat experience as a draw.
* * *
By the end of Thursday, Lacey had really begun to look forward to Nate's e-mails, especially since at the bottom he always included something irreverent or outrageous to amuse her. From lame dumb blonde jokes—What do you call a blonde skeleton in the closet? The