Attitude

by EC Sheedy

  Great skin. Clear. Smooth as cream. Which made her—what? He tilted his head, looked harder. Very early twenty-something. He cursed inwardly, first at Ellie, then himself for going along with her suggestion and agreeing to this meeting. No way could this prissy thing have the experience he needed. He was opening a theater, for God's sake, not a damn convent. And what in hell was that scent she was wearing. It reminded him of those lavender sachet things his grandmother put in her linen closet.

  "Mr. Beaumann?" She was frowning at him.

  "In here," he muttered and pointed to his office. Once behind his desk he planned to get rid of her—as quickly as possible.

  "Have a seat," he said.

  She sat, the yards of cloth in her skirt draping the chair to the floor. She didn't cross her legs, just slanted them and tucked her feet under the chair as if she were the wallflower at a school dance.

  Surprisingly trim ankles...

  She propped a large portfolio against her chair and smiled again, a bright, earnest smile, the kind that came with dreams and high hopes.

  Cal sat down, steepled his fingers and tapped his chin. If he was going to dash those high hopes, he'd best get it over with. "Exactly what kind of work have you done, Miss Cameron?"

  "A bit of everything," she said, moving forward in her chair. The action giving a brief hint of actual breasts under her starched shirt. Interesting. Probably damn lush.

  "Like?" he prodded, surprised he was so intent on surveying her camouflaged territory.

  "I have samples in my portfolio. But what matters is what you want and if Ginger Ink can help you. Can you tell me a bit about Cinema Neo? Your plans for Waveside Bay? Is this your first theater?"

  "No, this is my sixth. The other five are all located in small to midsize towns in Washington and Oregon. But—"

  "That's really impressive!" Her blue eyes widened, and those red-gold eyebrows of hers shot up. "And have you used a local ad and PR firm for all those openings?"

  "It generally works out that way." He was getting off track.

  "That in itself is good PR. Small communities tend to support their own."

  "Uh-huh. I tend to think so, but look, Miss Cameron—"

  "Ginger, please."

  "Sure." Cal scratched his neck, took a deep breath. He wished she'd stop looking at him like a hungry expectant bird. And more than that he wished he wasn't suddenly intrigued by what kind of body might be under that pup tent she was wearing. Too much work. Not enough sex, he decided, had to be if he was thinking of the Miss Prim sitting in front of him as bedroom material. Hell, she was the least fuckable woman he'd ever seen. And considering that, he'd best get this over with. "Look, Ginger, this opening is critical. I've got a lot hanging on it." Including a brother with a financial noose around my neck. "I need someone with a lot of experience. I need great stuff, stuff to let people know Cinema Neo is not some second-rate independent movie house showing artsy crap that won't fly on the major screens." He stared her down. "To be honest, you don't look like someone who can do that."

  She narrowed her eyes. Her pale face suddenly not so pale, she said, "What do I look like?"

  "Like someone who probably does a hell of a job on ad campaigns for doughnut shops and local home service companies."

  She looked a little stunned, turned a dark shade of pink.

  Fabulous skin...

  God, she'd better not cry. He was lousy with crying women. So best he hustle her out of here pronto. He stood. "But thanks for coming to see me. Sorry things didn't work out." When she didn't say anything, he added, "You okay?"

  "I think so." She stood, looked him in the eye. "I'm just trying to figure out whether I've been insulted."

  "No insult intended. But the independent theater scene draws on a particular, and very fickle, demographic: people who are intelligent, young—hip, I guess you'd say. People into cutting-edge film. They want something new, something they haven't seen before." He paused. "Both on the screen and in promotion." He smiled, hopefully the smile of a kind uncle. "Somehow I don't think that's your scene."

  "And you've decided that by just... looking at me." She stared at him, disbelief and astonishment warring in bright blue eyes. "I've definitely been insulted." She picked up her portfolio and clutched it to her chest, eyed him as if he were a cockroach and she a boot-clad army vet.

  "But thanks for—" he started, intending to see her out.

  "—nothing," she finished. "At least not yet. But don't think you can get rid of me quite so easily."

  "I don't think—"

  "Obviously not. If you did think, you'd be thinking about how ticking off one of the community's own"—she slapped a hand against the portfolio she held to her chest—"in this case moi, is not all that good a PR stroke on your part, especially if the person you ticked off is on a first name basis with all those 'doughnut shops and home service companies' you sneered at." She rammed the portfolio up and under her arm and hooked some kind of granny bag over her right wrist. Cal had the fleeting impression of the queen of England. "The people of Waveside Bay won't take kindly to that at all—should a certain someone decide to make it known."

  "Are you threat—"

  She raised a hand, went on, "To protect you from hometown backlash, I'll do you a favor. I'll be back in two days, presentation in hand. But for now... good-bye, Mr. Beaumann." She walked out and closed the door—none too quietly—behind her.

  Cal's jaw hung low enough to warm his chest bone. As sales calls went, this one definitely broke new ground. First she'd blackmailed him, then she'd bullied him. Amazing. He should be mad as hell, instead he felt himself smiling. Who'd have figured it? Under all that tight hair and yards of fabric lay the spirit of a street cop. And maybe a real woman's body.

  He shook his head. If he had time, he'd—

  But he didn't. He went back to his seat behind his desk. What time he did have, he wasn't going to waste on a PR type who looked as if she stepped off the pages of a 1950s edition of Ladies' Home Journal. He punched a series of numbers into the phone, massaged his forehead while he waited for the call to go through. Hudson Blaine would cost him big time, but one thing was certain, he'd give Cinema Neo the kind of promotion it needed.

  Ginger Cameron, she of the unfortunate suit and even more unfortunate personality, was history.

  Chapter 2

  "Tracy? You home?" Ginger shouted, slammed the door, and tossed her portfolio and bag on the nearest chair.

  Tracy wandered into the hall munching on a sandwich. "As they say in the movies—yo!"

  "Do not talk to me about movies." Ginger eyed her housemate's sandwich, decided she was hungry, and headed for the kitchen. She wanted to chew on something, and if it couldn't be that smart-mouthed, supercilious, arrogant, condescending brute of a Beaumann—who was the sexiest piece of manhood she'd seen in years—she'd settle for cold cuts. And goddess, she was hot. On her way to the kitchen she peeled off her suit jacket and shirt, and got down to her demi bra and silk-camisoled self. In the kitchen she started beating up on the sandwich fixings.

  "What gives?" Tracy popped the last of her sandwich in her mouth. "You look as if you've spent the afternoon on the wrong end of a tax audit."

  Ginger slathered mayo on her ham and tomato and clamped the two slices of bread together with enough force to bind them for life. "A tax audit would be a cakewalk compared to a meeting with Cal Beaumann."

  "Oh, right, the Cinema Neo thingy."

  Ginger rolled her eyes. "A sales call is not a 'thingy.' It's a, uh... sales call, for heaven's sake. You know, a front runner to paying the bills, car insurance, the mortgage—those kind of inconveniences." Firmly under the beady eye of her banker since she'd bought her house last year, Ginger had a deep respect for cash flow—and closing a sale. Her parents had helped her out, both in buying the house and getting Ginger Ink started, but it was up to her to meet her obligations. And until lately she hadn't exactly been doing a bang-up job on that front.

  Before she'd
slapped on the beige and cinched up her chastity belt, she'd wasted a lot of time chasing guys instead of customers. And that kind of monkey business had a way of showing up on the bottom line in bold, feverish red. Securing the Cinema Neo account would atone for a lot of past sins.

  "Sorry. You know I'm not into business stuff."

  Major understatement. Tracy was an artist. Although Ginger suspected she knew more about business than she let on, but ignored it because it bored her.

  Tracy walked to where Ginger was pummeling the sandwich. "Let me do that." In seconds she had a neat sandwich and two glasses of milk on the table. "Now, tell Mommy all about it."

  Ginger munched morosely on the sandwich. "I blew it."

  "Ah. And that would be?"

  "My meeting with Beaumann. He didn't even look at my work, just gave me the once-over and decided I couldn't do the job."

  "I can't imagine why he'd think that." Tracy said dryly. "You've done such a swell imitation of someone's indigent grandmother, and you're so marvelously... billowy." She looked at Ginger's pleated skirt, then lower. She sniffed. "And those shoes..."

  Ginger stuck her leg out, rolled an ankle anchored by a mottled beige pump. "What's wrong with my shoes?"

  "You look as if your toes have tumors." Tracy looked at her shoes as if whatever they had was contagious. "They're positively orthopedic."

  Ginger tucked the offending footwear back under the chair. "I want to vent and all you can talk about is my fashion statement."

  "Vent away, but if that's a fashion statement, Ginge, I'm an investment banker."

  "A little conservative maybe—"

  "Humph."

  Ginger glowered at her friend. "The point is that whether I wear a toga or a tutu, I deserve a chance to show what I can do. Not to be treated as if I were—"

  "—someone's maiden aunt attempting to rejoin the workforce after the Second World War?" Tracy smiled, drank some milk.

  "Trace!"

  "Okay." Tracy waved a hand as if she were swatting an invisible fly. "I'll shut up, but you're the one always talking about dressing for the job."

  "And that's exactly what I'm doing." Ginger smoothed a pleat. "I look sensible, sane, and—"

  "Sanitized. The restored-virgin look, I know." Tracy snorted in derision. "It's overkill, plain and simple."

  "Overkill or not, it's the new me."

  Tracy rolled her eyes. "I give up. So, go on, tell me what happened."

  "Beaumann says he's looking for hip, cutting edge stuff, and he doesn't think that's my 'scene.' Can you believe that?" Ginger took a swallow of milk, licked away the frothy mustache.

  Tracy suddenly looked puzzled. "You know that name's really been bugging me. I know it from somewhere. I'm sure of it. Beaumann... Cal Beaumann..." Her eyes widened. "No. It can't be. Can't be that Cal Beaumann. Not here in Waveside."

  Ginger, who'd barely begun her rant, wasn't in the mood for one of Tracy's digressions. "What are you talking about?"

  "What does he look like?"

  "I didn't notice." Ginger lied.

  "Think. It's important."

  Ginger picked up the pickle Tracy had put with her sandwich, stared at the wall, and tried to look as if remembering what Cal looked like was a challenge. "Let me see..." A primitive female sigh escaped before she could stop it, and damned if she didn't get a bit breathless, and more than a little heated under the silk of her camisole. "Kind of a cross between Sam Worthington and Eric Dane. No. More like between Jason Momoa and Francis Cadieux—"

  "Who?"

  Ginger frowned. "You're kidding. Get thee to Google, woman."

  "Will do. Now back to Cal."

  Another sigh, longer this time. "Hot. Super hot. One of those chiseled chin types with a small dimple in his left cheek, makes a crevice when he smiles. Tall. Major shoulders."

  Ginger warmed to her topic. She might be beige but she wasn't blind. "And I'd say pec central under that green cashmere sweater he was wearing. Thick chestnut hair, straight with sunny streaks in it. Longish, but not girlish. Oh, and he's got a pale scar on his jawline. Right about here." She touched the spot on her own face, to the left, halfway between her chin and earlobe. She let her hand linger there.

  Tracy gave her a speculative look. "You sure you didn't get his shoe size?"

  Ginger pulled her hand back, took another bite of her pickle.

  She wasn't about to add that her stomach did major aerobics at first sight of the man or that he scared the virgin out of her. One look at him and she'd thought rumpled sheets and sex... and more sex. She'd keep that to herself. Sensible women didn't think that way. At least she didn't think so, never having passed Common Sense 101.

  "And his eyes, what about them?"

  Ginger lifted a shoulder, then her dill pickle, studied it. "Kind of like this."

  "He had eyes like pickles?" Tracy echoed, caught in a blond moment.

  Ginger had to laugh. "They were green, Trace. Or hazel. Something like that." Actually they were the color of cedar boughs with a touch of Christmas glitter. They were beautiful eyes, full of questions and promises. And humor, she guessed. Her chest kind of caved in. Was there anything better than hot sex and laughter? She didn't think so.

  "Then it's him. It's got to be him." Tracy's voice rose in excitement.

  "Who? What are you talking about? I'm into serious venting here and—"

  "Your venting can wait." Tracy jumped from her chair and ran out of the room. She was back in seconds. "Look at this. Is this who you met today?" She shoved a magazine into Ginger's hand, one of those weekly entertainment things. The top of the page was headlined, "COMEBACKS? WE HOPE SO." Under that was a picture of a man in a tuxedo at some red-carpet do in L.A., the requisite beauty hanging on his arm.

  Ginger peered harder. It was definitely him, but who was he? "Okay, I give up." She handed the magazine back to Tracy.

  "That—" Tracy stabbed the page with a blunt fingernail, "is Cal Beaumann, from Life and Love. They killed him off three, maybe four years ago. After that he disappeared."

  "You watch the soaps?" Ginger was fascinated with soap operas, but with her work schedule, she never had the luxury of connecting with the story line, so rather than frustrate herself, she left them alone.

  "Did, when I was in art school." She touched Cal's image. "I ate my lunch watching this guy make love to women for two years." She laughed. "And from what I read about him, he was as busy with the female sex off screen as he was on. The tabloids loved him. He actually won a contest they ran on which soap star had the best and biggest pe—"

  "Stop. I don't want to know," Ginger croaked. She would not go from talking business to penis size. She wouldn't. But his jeans definitely held promise.

  "Pectorals, Ginger. I was going to say pectorals.'"

  "I knew that." Ginger turned red enough that Trace shook her head.

  "Although there were rumors..."

  Ginger glared at her, but her stomach did a traitorous flip-flop. She'd pegged Beaumann as an A+ woman magnet, but she hadn't factored in playboy status. No wonder she'd drowned in her own hormones when she set eyes on him. She was programmed to fall for these kind of guys.

  Typical scenario? One look and her brain shorted out, leaving her dumb as an unmanned hammer.

  But not this time! Her loins—or whatever was causing the trouble down there—were seriously girded. No way would she traipse the yellow brick road with yet another guy whose only significant credentials had been earned in the bedroom.

  "I can't believe he's in Waveside." Tracy's brown eyes widened in delayed shock. "And I actually spoke to him when I set up the appointment." She looked as if she were going to faint, but rallied to shoot Ginger a steely look. "And you say you blew it?"

  "So the man says." She was mad all over again. "But I say, maybe not." She rose from the table, put her dishes in the sink, and leaned her backside against the counter. "I muscled myself into one more appointment." She set her mouth into a straight line. "I told him I'd
be back in two days. And when I walk into his office, I intend to blow him out of his Nikes."

  Tracy's expression turned hopeful. "You're going shopping?"

  "No." Ginger would get the account, but she'd get it her way. She pulled up her mental socks. An Amazon in beige. That's what she was. All business. All the time. Besides, she didn't want to go to bed with Cal Beaumann... her thoughts slid off the rails. There were those rumpled sheets again... She shook them flat. She wanted the Cinema Neo account—period. She didn't need flash and style for that; all she needed was her brains and her talent.

  And maybe one other thing...

  The hope in Tracy's eyes faded. "But you've got some terrific ideas, right?"

  Ginger's bravado withered to pickle size. "Not a one."

  * * *

  When Hudson Blaine walked into Cal's office, the two men did the male hug thing, quick embrace, manly slap on the back. "Good to see you, Hud," Cal said. "It's been too long."

  "Over a year." Hudson dropped his case and took the chair he was offered, stretched his legs in front of him.

  "I could have come to L.A."

  "I figured I should get a firsthand look at what you're trying to do up here. Makes the job easier."

  Cal settled into his chair. "So how's the PR business treating you these days?" He surveyed his friend, lifted a brow, and grinned. "Judging from the Armani on your back, I'm guessing pretty well."

  "You'd guess right."

  "Better than repping a reluctant soap actor, huh?"

  Hudson laughed. "Much. And I don't have to use a cattle prod and bullwhip to get the guy to sign a contract most actors would kill for."

  "It wasn't for me."

  "Yeah, I know. But we had some good times."

  "The best."

  "The best food, the best wine, the best women."

  "Amen." Cal lifted his coffee cup, didn't have the heart to tell his friend he didn't miss any of it. Okay, maybe he did miss the women, but there were plenty of those, and plenty of ready sex, if a man went looking. Which he hadn't. He'd been doing the monk thing too damn long. Obviously a big mistake, given he hadn't stopped thinking about sex since Ginger Cameron walked out of his office two days ago. Hell, the woman looked so damn tight-assed and proper, you'd think she was a virgin. Could she be? He couldn't buy it. Inexperienced? Maybe. His mind shot to a pristine bed, smooth white sheets, Ginger, knees glued together, arms covering her breasts, giving him a sultry I-dare-you smile. Hell, he was getting hard just thinking about spreading those knees, running a hand up to—