“Hello?” she said anxiously, as she opened the dining-room’s side door and stepped outside into the yard. Marigold followed her out the door.
“What the hell do you think you’re up to?” the furious voice of the Alpha of her pack crackled over the phone.
“Uhhh…good morning, Mr. Cruz,” she said nervously. “Whatever are you talking about?”
But she had a sinking feeling she knew.
“Publicly insulting the Alpha of the pack? Is that what you think is a good representation of the Red Wolves of the Upper East Side?” he snarled.
“You mean when I turned him down to dance? Seriously?”
“Yes, seriously. The news travelled down here immediately and everyone is up in arms about it! You practically neutered their Alpha! This is not a small matter, Ginger.”
Ginger’s heart sank to the bottom of her stomach. Her father worked as an accountant for Mr. Cruz’s public relations firm. Anything that she did had implications for her family, as well as for her entire pack. She just couldn’t believe that saying “No” to some stuck up, admittedly sexy as hell jerk, would have affected her pack up North. If she’d known, she’d have danced with the jerk and then hightailed it on home.
“I’m sorry,” she said, appalled. “Is it really that bad?”
“Is it really that bad?” Reynaldo Cruz echoed in horror. “Let me put it to you this way. Do you want to see me, as Alpha, challenged by the Alpha of Blue Moon Junction because one of my pack insulted him?”
“What?” Ginger gasped, stunned. That would be a disaster. No, actually it would be a bloody massacre. The red wolves were the smallest of the wolf species. Sheriff Armstrong was twice Reynaldo Cruz’s size, and Cruz was a fuss-budgety, designer-suit wearing little city wolf. A Chihuahua shifter could probably kick his ass without much difficulty. In New York, the prestigious Alpha position tended to be held by those who excelled in business and social climbing. That clearly wasn’t the case here in the more rural areas of the country.
“I’ll apologize to him, for God’s sake!” she spluttered. “This is being blown way out of proportion!”
Marigold was eavesdropping avidly, arms folded, with an “I told you so” look on her face.
Ginger glanced at the boarding house. The dining room windows were open and everyone was leaning out, craning to hear.
“You’ll do more than that,” Mr. Cruz said icily. “When I asked him what we could possibly do to make up for your terribly inappropriate behavior, he said that he needs a new assistant because his assistant is out on maternity leave. I mentioned your particular talents to him, as well. You will be working for him for the next two weeks, and you will be VERY deferential. Do you understand? I do not want to hear any more complaints about you, or the implications for you and your family will be…unfortunate.”
“What?” Ginger protested. “But I’m supposed to go back to the city next week! I can’t stay here – they don’t even have dryers! We have to hang our clothes out back on a clothes line! I ruined my best shoes stepping in a cow patty!”
“Consider yourself lucky there was such an easy solution,” Mr. Cruz said, ignoring her protests.
“I’m supposed to be teaching summer school in two weeks!”
“That’s been cancelled. And the renewal of your teaching contract will depend on your ability to repair relations between our two packs.”
“Cancelled?” Ginger wailed. This couldn’t be happening to her. She’d been counting on that money from the summer school job to pay off her credit card debt.
“The sheriff will come by shortly to pick you up at the boarding house, so I suggest you get ready and make yourself presentable. Good day.”
Ginger stared in horror at the phone, listening to the dial tone.
“Wow. I will have to admit, I did not see that coming,” Marigold’s eyes were wide. “I thought we’d be ridden out of town on a rail, or tarred and feathered. But not that.”
“How do you ride someone out of town on a rail, anyway? It might be a better alternative. I mean, if I got to choose,” Ginger said, mind reeling.
“I always assumed that it’s like taking Amtrak. Probably a one way ticket.”
Then, simultaneously, the wedding march ring tone sounded and the sheriff’s patrol car appeared, steering round the bend, heading right towards the boarding house.
Sheriff Sexy-butt sure hadn’t wasted any time in coming to rub her nose in it.
She heard the door to the dining room open, and the boarders trooped out onto the lawn, some of them still holding their coffee cups. This had to be the best entertainment in town, next to the drive in movie theater.
She quickly put her cell phone on silent. Her mother would, of course, have heard about Ginger’s bad behavior and was now calling her up to have a long-distance conniption fit. Ginger didn’t have time for a conversation with her no-doubt-hysterical mother at the moment; she was too busy panicking.
It suddenly occurred to her that she was still wearing her pajamas and slippers. Should she run inside and change?
Too late. He was already out of the car.
Mortified, she watched as the sheriff walked up the driveway and came around to the side of the house where she stood, cell phone in hand, future in doubt.
He looked her up and down with that perpetual quirk of amusement to his lips.
“Morning, Miss Colby,” he said. “I understand you’ve volunteered to be my assistant for the next couple of weeks.”
Chapter Three
He smelled masculine and earthy, with a hint of some woodsy-scented cologne. His uniform was pressed crisp and clean, the tan polyester molding perfectly to the curves of his biceps. It was obscene how good he looked this early in the morning.
Her pink button-front pajamas were rumpled, and she hadn’t combed out her big mop of red curls after she’d climbed out of the shower that morning. She was wearing bunny slippers. With button eyes and little ears. A gift from Marigold.
I am going to kill Marigold later, she thought irrationally. This is somehow all her fault.
“Absolutely,” she said, pasting a big smile on her face. “The Red Wolf pack of the Upper East Side is happy to assist you in any way we can.”
“You sure you know how to take orders?” He quirked an eyebrow at her skeptically. “Because I need someone who knows how to defer to authority.”
Ouch. He wasn’t going to make this easy on her.
“Your wish is my command,” she said with forced cheer, her smile still pasted on.
“Is that so?” A slow, lazy grin quirked his lips, and she found herself blushing. There was something about the way that he said it, the way he rolled the words around on his tongue, that made it sound like she’d just offered up some kind of sexual invitation and he was delighted to accept.
And she’d be darned if that pulsing hadn’t started up again, directly between her legs. Throb, throb, throb.
Down, girl! She mentally scolded her private parts.
As his gaze roved over her rumpled visage, she added quickly “I’m sorry, I wasn’t expecting you. I’ll go change. Would you like me to come meet you at the sheriff’s office?”
“No, that’ll be fine. I’ll wait right here and enjoy some of Miss Imogen’s fine coffee,” he said, nodding at Imogen, who tittered and scampered off to fetch him some coffee. Damn the man, he could even set the hearts of elderly widows to thumping. He was ridiculous.
She ran upstairs, with Marigold following her, and quickly threw on a red dirndl skirt and white peasant shirt with red tulips embroidered on it. Then she stuck her feet into a pair of red espadrilles.
“What should a sheriff’s assistant wear? Does this work?” she asked Marigold desperately.
“I gaze into a crystal ball for a living. Don’t ask me.”
Ginger quickly ran a brush through her hair, grabbed her purse, and rushed from her room.
“I’ve got extra condoms if you need them,” Marigold added, following her do
wn the hallway. “Do you want to tuck a few in your purse? How about a six pack? He looks like he’s good for at least a few rounds.”
“Shhhh! If he hears you, I will kill you! And are you crazy? I am being punished, not seduced!”
“Sometimes there’s a very fine line between the two. If you’re lucky,” Marigold said with wink.
“She is lucky,” Brenda said as she passed her and Tallulah on the stairway. “I’d assist him any day!”
“You’d assist anyone,” Tallulah sneered. Brenda stuck her nose in the air, sniffed “You’re just jealous!” and stalked off.
“Jealous? He respects me too much to take advantage of me!” Tallulah hollered after her, fingering her gold purity ring.
She turned to Ginger. “He’s just using Brenda for sex,” she confided. “He doesn’t respect her for her mind. Men prefer virgins, don’t you think?”
“Errr…enjoy your dig today,” Ginger said to her. “Hope you find lots of old bones.”
The sheriff was drinking coffee in the parlor, looking out of place and yet perfectly at ease in a floral pattered wing back arm-chair. The house was decorated in early 20th century style, with faded rugs, china cabinets displaying old bric a brac, framed needle-point pictures, and lots of ceramic roosters. The girls from the archeology class were all hovering around the sheriff and giggling; they scattered when Ginger came into the room.
Ginger followed him silently out to his patrol car, where he held open the door for her and let her in, and they pulled away, heading towards town.
They drove in uncomfortable silence for several minutes until Ginger couldn’t stand it any longer. He un-nerved her like nobody else ever had.
“Realistically, I know that you don’t need me to be your assistant,” she blurted. “You just need to save face after I turned you down at the dance last night. So how exactly do you want to do that? You want me to follow you around and act deferential? Like walk 10 paces behind you, or hang my head and act submissive or something? I just don’t know how it’s done out here.”
“How it’s done out here?” he echoed, looking baffled.
“I guess I don’t know how anything’s done out here. In New York, if I turned a guy down for a dance it wouldn’t be a big deal. I had no idea that it would cause such a huge stir here.”
“How about polite and respectful? You think you could pull that off?” he sounded exasperated.
“Yes,” she bit out evenly. “I’m pretty sure I can manage it.”
He fell silent, and they kept driving. She wanted to ask him what her duties were, but she didn’t seem to be able to speak without unintentionally needling him, so she kept her mouth shut.
Sitting so close to him was terribly disconcerting. He oozed sexuality even when he was doing nothing more than driving and staring at the road ahead of him; it was like he’d been dipped in a vat of pheromones. She didn’t want to stare at him directly, so she pretended to look out the window while she watched him in the side mirror.
His upper lip was curved like a cupid’s bow. The rational part of her brain knew that pretty much every attractive woman in Blue Moon County had sampled the sheriff’s candy; the irrational part of her brain just wanted to trace that curve with her tongue.
The radio crackled to life. “Car 11, there’s a Code 33 taking place at the Wishing Well Motel, repeat, Code Five at the Wishing Well,” the dispatcher’s voice said.
“I’m right around the corner, I’ll take it. On my way, ETA one minute,” he said, and activated the car’s lights and siren.
“What’s a Code 33?” she asked, as they quickly turned down a narrow side road.
“Burglary.”
“Somebody’s burglarizing the wishing well?”
“Happens more often than you’d think,” he said. “And it pisses me off every time, because those coins go to the local food bank.”
They turned down Wishing Well Road and raced towards a small, picturesque motel. The sheriff drove past the motel and up a small hill, where the well sat.
“Let me handle this.”
As they pulled up in front of the wishing well, they saw a skinny young man run past them, all elbows and knees poking out of holes in his clothes.
The sheriff quickly parked, and the young man dropped to his hands and knees. His clothes fell off him as he shifted into the form of a scrawny coyote. The sheriff leaped out of the car and followed suit, shifting into an enormous gray wolf and racing right out of his clothes to chase after the coyote.
He easily overtook him and the coyote fell to the ground, rolling onto his back and waving his paws in surrender. Less than a minute later, both men had shifted back and trotted over to where Ginger stood, holding out the sheriff’s clothes which she’d scooped up off the ground.
She looked away, shielding her eyes. She’d gotten a brief glimpse of the sheriff’s naked body, the solid muscles outlined in sharp relief, the massive muscles of his thighs, and the thick phallus that dangled between his legs, and she was struggling not to hyperventilate. Could she suddenly have developed asthma, at age 26? Where did they keep all the damned air around here, anyway?
“Good lord, woman, why you looking away? Haven’t you ever seen anyone shift before?” the sheriff laughed, grabbing his uniform and quickly pulling his clothes back on.
“We don’t generally run around naked in the city,” Ginger said, looking away. “That’s kind of a weekend thing, done out in the suburbs, and only with friends.”
The young man shimmied into his dirty clothes. When Ginger looked at him, she saw he was just a teenager. He was wearing an old army jacket, despite the heat, and a grimy white tank top and jeans that were too big for him.
“Ginger, meet Cletus Arbuckle. Cletus, put back all the coins that you stole before I kick your ass.”
Glowering, Cletus trudged over to the wishing well, emptied out his pockets, and threw all the coins back in.
“Poor bastard,” Sheriff Armstrong said to her in a low voice. “His father died in a hunting accident, and his mama took it real hard. She used to work as a cleaning lady; now she’s just a certified drunk. Doesn’t do a lick of work. I may have to call in county services soon to take his younger brothers and sisters away.”
Ginger winced. “Ouch. I hope that doesn’t happen.”
“Me too, but I don’t have a lot of options. “
Cletus trudged over to Ginger and Loch, his head hanging down.
“God damn it, Cletus, you got to cut this shit out. Pardon my French,” the sheriff said apologetically to Ginger, and she couldn’t help but smile, there was something so country-chivalrous about the way he said it.
The sheriff turned back to Cletus. “You’re lucky you’re still a juvenile. When you turn 18, you’re looking at doing some real time. Then who’ll take care of your family?”
Cletus shrugged angrily.
“I told you before, if you need money, I can give you money.” Sheriff Armstrong’s voice softened.
“My daddy didn’t raise me to take no charity,” Cletus muttered, his eyes glittered with tears. Then he muttered something else in a barely audible voice, something that sounded suspiciously like “Fuck you.”
“What did you just say?” The sheriff’s shoulders rose up and his eyes blazed with anger.
Ginger cringed. He was about to cuff Cletus to the ground, and humiliate him further, or haul him in to jail, or…
“Hey!” she said brightly. “You didn’t tell Cletus about the plan you were telling me about just a minute ago. Sir,” she added hastily.
“Plan?” Sheriff Armstrong stared at her as if she’d lost her mind.
“You know! The plan you came up with! It was such a great plan! You said, if you caught Cletus stealing one more time, you were going to sentence him to work for the community center for six bucks an hour.”
She’d pulled that from her memory; Imogen had been filling Marigold in on the town’s latest news, and she’d told her that they were building a new commu
nity center. Her handy man had quit because they’d hired him to help put in a garden.
She turned towards Cletus, talking fast and praying that the sheriff didn’t blow up right there. “Yep, he said that you’ll have to hold down a full time job for the next…ah, two weeks, as punishment. 9 to five.”
“I ain’t afraid of work. Not like anybody would hire an Arbuckle in this town for any job, anyway.” Cletus glanced at the sheriff, half fearful, half hopeful.
“Is that really what you said?” he asked him.
“Uhhh…of course. You aren’t saying my lovely assistant’s a liar, are you?” The sheriff was struggling to wipe the look of surprise off his face.
“No, sir, I ain’t saying that. If that’s what my sentence is, I guess I’ll have to do it. When do I start?” he couldn’t hide the eagerness in his voice.
“Tomorrow morning, nine a.m. sharp.”
“Oh, and lunch is provided free,” Ginger said, glancing at Cletus’s bony frame.
He looked at her suspiciously. “You’re not trying to give me no charity, are you?”
“No sir. Not at all,” she said, noting his look of surprise when she called him “sir.” “Everybody who’s working on the community garden gets lunch free. It’s standard.”
“All right then.” He nodded, then turned and jogged off down the road. Ginger waited until he was out of earshot before she turned to the sheriff.
“Okay. Let me have it,” she winced. Please, don’t eviscerate my Alpha, she thought desperately. I’m pretty sure my pack would ban me from not just the city but the state of New York. Forever.
Chapter Four
“Let you have what?” That amused grin was back, and Ginger found that, despite herself, a little shiver ran through her body and her nipples swelled into tight nubs. He was so annoyingly sexy when he smiled. “You’re a puzzle, Miss Ginger. Maybe if I could figure out what you wanted, I could give it to you.” There was a teasing quality to his voice, and a twinkle in his golden-brown eyes as he said it. As if he were picturing what he’d love to give to her.
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