Attitude (2 page)

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 should 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...

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.