Attitude

by EC Sheedy

  Attitude

  by

  EC Sheedy

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  Please Note

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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  Copyright © 2013 by Edna Sheedy. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

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  Chapter 1

  Precariously high heels, hip-rider miniskirt, white satin tube top—more Band-Aid than cover-up—and humongous gold hoops in one set of her three pierces per ear.

  Hmm...

  Lipstick, red enough, bold enough, slick enough, to make the cover of Hustler magazine.

  Ginger twisted, assessed, then smacked her backside. The skirt fit like sausage casing.

  Perfect.

  She tossed her long honey-red hair in the manner of a high-blooded mare and roughly pinned up one side, left the other to fall on her bare shoulder. Straightening enough for her top to lift and display the diamond glittering in her navel, she was battle ready.

  Almost.

  She scanned the mishmash of jars, bottles, and brushes littering her bathroom counter and chose a scent that smelled suspiciously like sex in a bottle. She drenched herself in it.

  Done.

  She grabbed a sweater, her outsized black tote, and headed for the door full stride.

  She knew exactly where to find him.

  Hand on the knob, she paused, closed her mocha-shadowed eyelids. Too hot, too hyped, she took a calming breath. If she didn't get control, and keep it, tonight would be no fun at all. She'd ruin everything. Foreplay—lingering, edgy anticipation—that's what this was about.

  He'd taught her all about that. Oh, yes...

  One private and wicked grin, and she flounced out the door.

  Tonight it was her turn to play teacher, and she intended to enjoy the class.

  She couldn't wait.

  * * *

  Ginger knew he—along with every other man in the room—had spotted her the second she stepped into the exclusive restaurant. An audience. Just what she wanted. To hold it, she placed a hand on her hip, swept the room with a bold smile. Finally, she settled her gaze on the darkly handsome man seated at the best table in the room.

  And his date.

  Perfect.

  He looked up and their gazes locked. She was too far away to see if he so much as blanched—the bastard!—but she was pretty sure his hand shook the tiniest bit when he lifted his wineglass to his mouth.

  Red wine. Excellent!

  Resisting the urge to paw the ground a la a charging bull, she handed her sweater to the maitre d' as if it were ermine, and sashayed across the room.

  She heard a whistle from a nearby table, ignored it. Ginger had learned to tune out whistles at the age of thirteen, if she hadn't she'd be deaf as stone.

  She stopped at his table.

  "Hey, Tony," she said, trying her best to purr like a month-old tiger. "Fancy meeting you here."

  "Hey, baby." He tossed his napkin on the table, leaned back in his chair, and gave her a smoldering once over. The guy was cool as winter glass—and handsome as midnight sin. Damn! Her stomach lurched. Lust or rage, she wasn't sure, but she'd bet on rage.

  "Going to introduce us?" She slanted a look toward his blond, beautiful, and obviously bewildered dinner companion.

  He gave her the white-hot smile that had attracted her to him in the first place. The man might be a bastard, but he had great teeth. "Ginger, honey, do you really think that would be smart?"

  "Probably not." She picked up his wineglass, took a sip. "But then smart isn't exactly what I've been these last few months. I was too preoccupied with this—" She lifted the wineglass, smiled, and poured it on his crotch.

  "Jes—Ginger!"

  Before he could get to his feet, she dumped his girlfriend's fettuccini Alfredo over his head.

  "But I got smart real fast when I found out about the wife and two kids you've got tucked away across the Canadian border."

  He jumped to his feet, sputtered, and wiped impotently at the creamy mess on his face with his napkin. The blonde marbelized where she sat. "You dumb—" he started.

  "—bitch?" Ginger finished sweetly. She picked a strand of fettuccini off his chin, while making sure her voice carried throughout the posh restaurant. "Better a bitch, lover boy, than a scum-encrusted bottom-feeding cheat like you."

  She strode off, turned back once to give him and the rest of the room a saccharine smile. "Oh, and did I tell you we're through?"

  * * *

  "At Darios! You didn't!" Tracy stared at Ginger, wide-eyed.

  "I did. And it felt good, woman—real good." Ginger leaned her head back on the sofa, closed her eyes, and hit the replay button. Warm all over, that's how she felt.

  She'd wasted six months of her life on Tony Flora—until his wife called and filled her in on his amorous adventures, Ginger being but one in a string. She felt like dirt about the unhappiness she'd caused the soon-to-be ex Mrs. Flora and her kids. Ginger had made her share of dating mistakes—but until now, being suckered by a married man hadn't been among them.

  "Man, would I have loved to have been there." Tracy took a sip of her coffee. "Pure Ginger, live and uncensored."

  Ginger's smug smile slipped a bit. "Yeah, pure Ginger," she echoed and tried to quell the uneasy feeling the description was apt, but not complimentary.

  Tracy tilted her head. "You're not having second thoughts are you? The guy was a worm."

  "That's the problem, Trace. He was a worm, and I fell for him. Doesn't say much for my judgment."

  "We all make mistakes."

  "True. I just happen to make a few million more than the rest of my sex." She got up from the sofa, tugged down her miniskirt, glumly confused. "What am I, anyway? Some shallow, incomplete woman, doomed to fall for losers and brainless hunks? Some kind of idiot girl?"

  Tracy tugged at a strand of hair, ominously silent.

  Ginger shot her a look. "You're not disagreeing with me."

  "You're no idiot, and you know it, but..."

  Ginger frowned at her friend and housemate. "But?"

  "You are a bit impulsive now and again. You know. A fool rushing in where angels fear to tread and all that."

  "You think I'm a fool."

  "No, that's not what I'm trying to say." She set her mug on the coffee table. "You're just... rash sometimes, or maybe too fearless. I don't know. It's like your heart's the hare and your head's the tortoise." She wrinkled her nose as if her bad analogy had caused a blockage. "Oh, you know what I mean."

  "Yes, I do, and I hate it, hate it." Bad analogy or not, Trace was dead on. Ginger paced. Paced some more. "And I'm getting sick and tired of being a cart-before-the-horse type of person. I'm twenty-four. I s
hould know better."

  "A 'cart-before-the-horse type of person'?" Tracy asked, clearly not getting it.

  "Falling in love before falling in like."

  "Lust is more like it. You see a good-looking guy, a good-looking guy sees you—TNT in spandex—and you're off to the races."

  "We use one more cliché in this conversation, and I'll have to turn in my advertising badge." She frowned.

  Tracy giggled.

  "But you're right. And it's got to stop. No more races. No more guys. What I need to do is... virginalize."

  "Excuse me?"

  "Clean up my act. Change my look. Grow a whole new attitude—and give up sex." She didn't like the idea of the last bit, but she was desperate.

  "Give me a break." Tracy actually snorted.

  "You don't think I can do it." Ginger stuck out her jaw.

  "I think you'll dry up trying." Tracy's grin was wicked. "You like sex. A lot. And you're telling me you can say 'no thanks' to some blazing hot guy with the appropriate gear, dutifully erect behind tight denim." Tracy wiggled her brows. "I don't think so."

  "You make me sound like a sex addict." Now Ginger was seriously perturbed. Maybe she was. No. "I haven't yet worked my way through a baseball team."

  "Not even close, but you do fall off the chastity wagon from time to time. And you do date a lot. Hell, the phone never stops ringing around here."

  "Date a lot, think too little." Ginger shook her head, and the clip holding up her torrent of hair fell out. "Okay, maybe I purposely overdid the getup for tonight's occasion, but the truth is I've been trying too hard. Wearing stuff like this." She plucked at her form-fitting top. "And these." She kicked at one of her abandoned stilettos. It lodged under the sofa. "I look like one of those bimbos on a service station calendar."

  "You're a little, uh, flashy, but that's just you, Ginger. It's who you are."

  Flashy? "That's it!" Ginger stared at her friend, enlightenment filling what, until now, had been her dangerously empty skull. "False advertising, that's my problem. The package I've been presenting is designed for nabbing the bad boy—completely misleading."

  "Misleading?"

  "Add to that my knack for falling for handsome faces with Chiclet-perfect smiles, and I come up a loser every time."

  "So you like good-lookin' guys. That's a crime?"

  "If I ever hope to find a nice quiet accountant or plumber, it is."

  "So now you're after an ugly plumber?"

  "Absolutely. Safe, sane, and serious as a preacher." Ginger was fired up. She should have seen this before. She knew exactly what she had to do. "I've got to retool and repackage."

  Tracy gave her a pained look. "Don't start, Ginge..."

  Ginger ignored her, circled the sofa, and tapped on her chin. "First step. Avoid temptation. Second step. Re-virginalize."

  Tracy's gaze shot to hers, alarmed. "God, you're not talking surgery here, are you?"

  "Of course not." She blinked. "Can they do that?"

  "Ginger!"

  "Okay, okay. No, I'm not talking surgery, I'm talking attitude. I need a makeover. I need to look like the serious no-nonsense person I intend to be."

  "Not the clothes thing, please," Tracy beseeched. "You're the only woman I know who uses clothes as a weapon. I don't think I can take another of your closet crusades."

  "This is not 'another' anything. I'm serious. I need to change the way I look and how I think. Let the exterior reflect the interior. To do that, I'm going to dress down—way down—and get out of the date race." She took a deep, deep breath. "And I'm staying celibate until I smarten up and can see past the six-pack abs, pearly whites, and sleep-with-me smiles to the real thing."

  "Which is?"

  "A good guy, a true-blue guy—hardworking, honest, stable as a Plains' farmer. A guy with callused hands and a soft heart who wants to mate forever like... like a Canada goose."

  "A Canada goose?"

  "Exactly."

  Tracy sighed and rubbed at her temple. "Is there any wine left? I need a drink."

  "Help yourself." She stooped, picked up her high heels, dangled them from her fingers, and smiled. "Me? I never touch the stuff."

  * * *

  Cal Beaumann strode up the aisle of Cinema Neo, smacking the newspaper against his thigh. He ignored the workmen installing the seats in his soon-to-be-opened theater and headed for the office behind the ticket booth in the lobby.

  Something seriously akin to worry poked at his gut.

  He needed hot, no-fail promotion and he needed it ASAP. Locking up the screen rights for No Friend At All, the hottest and most talked about comedy to hit the independent film scene in years, wouldn't mean squat if he didn't get the word out. No Friend At All was a sure-fire seat filler, and Cinema Neo needed every buck it could drag in. Hell, his loan had more terms and conditions than a paranoid billionaire's prenup. He needed crowds, and he needed them from day one.

  He put the piece of paper holding Ginger Ink's number on his desk. Ellie, his assistant, had given him the number this morning. In Waveside Bay, apparently this Ginger person was it for advertising and PR. She better be.

  He stabbed at the keys and tilted back in his chair.

  "Ginger Ink. Tracy speaking. Can I help you?"

  "You can, if you put me through to Ginger Cameron. I'm the owner of Cinema Neo, the new movie theater in town. I'd like to talk to her about doing the promotion for our opening."

  "Ginger's out right now—something about a new bird—but I can make an appointment for her."

  "Bird?"

  The Tracy woman laughed. "Yeah, she's taken up bird watching, but don't worry, it won't last."

  He wasn't worried, he was just trying to picture a bird-watcher doing his PR.

  "Okay, how about three-thirty?" the woman went on. "There, I've marked you down." She sounded as though she just completed a hand-rendered copy of the Book of Kells. "Cinema Neo on Front Street, right?—Oops, the other line, gotta go."

  Click.

  Cal lifted the phone from his ear and stared at it. A birdwatcher and a birdbrain. Really gave a man confidence.

  * * *

  At three-twenty Ginger stood outside the theater looking at the almost finished marquee and the art deco touches on the wide front doors. Nice. Whoever this Cal guy was, he was doing a great job. Waveside Bay needed a movie house, and as a project, it would be fun to work on. More fun than her current stuff: a tire franchise and a discount carpet outlet.

  Not that she was into fun these days. She was a serious woman with a serious agenda, whipping her bruised psyche into shape and being a good girl. She'd been a retooled woman for three months, now—no dates, no temptation. Only twenty-one months, two days, and fifteen hours to go. But hey, who was counting? She got a grip on her current goal—get this account—and pushed open the door. She stepped inside the theater, firmly in character, a no-nonsense businesswoman who would have made Joan Crawford quiver in her platforms.

  And a woman determined to make a sale.

  * * *

  "Cal?" Ellie called through the gloom of the dimly lit theater. "You there?"

  "Yeah?" Cal wrestled the faulty chair seat out of position and set it in the aisle for the installer to replace, a whim of a job he hadn't intended on doing, especially without full overhead lights on.

  He was going to tell Ellie to bring the lights up when she added, "Ginger Cameron's here."

  "Be right there." He made a couple of mental to-do notes, turned, and headed up the aisle to his office.

  A woman strode down the aisle to meet him. She stuck out her hand with the force of a politician fresh from solitary. "Ginger Cameron, of Ginger Ink," she said. "A pleasure to meet you."

  He took the hand, but he couldn't make out the face, only a halo of hair glowing like hot coals against the light coming from the theater doors still open behind her. "Nice to meet you," he mumbled, still holding her hand. Or was she still holding his? Either way, they were locked together, her pumping his hand
with enough gusto to bring up oil and him squinting to get a better look at her face. "My office?" He gestured up the aisle. "At least we'll have light there."

  She released his hand. "Lead on."

  * * *

  In the brightly lit lobby, Ginger turned, worked up her corporate smile, and... gaped.

  Cal Beaumann was sin in the flesh. Tall, dark, and terrifyingly good-looking. Damn.

  Temptation. A woman magnet if ever she saw one.

  Oh, no...

  Her stomach tilted and her mind went snowy. Obviously the goddess of all things virginal was giving her a test. Why else would she present Ginger with six feet plus of male poster material who smelled like musk and spearmint?

  Oh, no...

  Her neck got warm, warmer. Boiling. If she had a fan she'd be working it hard enough to cool the next county. He had green eyes... She so loved green eyes!

  Her stomach sank under the weight of the butterflies. What now? She hadn't been within sniffing distance of him for more than thirty seconds and her knees were noodles—and that only meant trouble. Because, in her case, instant attraction was a really really bad thing, followed by a hormone hurricane that tossed her headfirst into deep water and turned what was left of her brain to rock salt. Her glance fell from green eyes to tight blue denim that fit nicely around all the right body parts. The fabric over his zipper was worn, softly whitened by washing—and other pressures? She wondered if he ever... Stop it.

  She lifted her gaze abruptly. It bumped into his.

  The man was looking at her as if she were the biggest disappointment in a life cluttered with them. Interest level?

  Point zero and falling.

  Perfect. She started to breathe again while saying a small prayer of gratitude to the ultimate power of fashion choices.

  * * *

  Cal tried to pull his gaze away. Failed. This had to be a joke. A bad one.

  Ginger Cameron was the palest woman he'd ever seen, and she was draped in enough beige cloth to decorate the windows of a new subdivision. He wasn't big on women wearing a ton of makeup, but this one could use a jar or two of something. Anything. And her hair! Except for frizzy bits that fought the leash and caught the light from the open door, it was coiled tight enough to cause brain damage. Interesting color, though, like her eyebrows, kind of a reddish gold, and...