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 down 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.