She pushed her way through the crowd, cheeks heating with embarrassment as Marigold and Winifred followed in her wake. Her original plan before she’d come to the bar was to drink enough beer that maybe, just maybe, she’d loosen up and flirt with a few guys, but that was going to be hard to do now that everybody in the bar was staring at her like she’d just grown a third boob.
Walking to the little table in the back of the bar had taken about a minute when they’d arrived earlier. Walking back out, now…that was an entirely different story. Decades passed and new presidents were elected as Ginger made her way through the crowd, who were mostly frozen in poses of complete astonishment.
Outside, bathed in the blinking neon red light of the Hoot Owl Hoedown sign, Winifred glanced at the bar behind them with interest. “That was fascinating. I feel that you may have unintentionally violated some type of implicit and yet unstated cultural mores in your rejection of the Alpha male’s advances.”
“You know, you keep talking like that, you’re never going to get laid,” Marigold said from behind them.
“I fail to see the connection between my speech patterns and the future possibility of my indulging in coitus,” Winifred said. “Then again, I frequently have a difficult time comprehending and correctly processing the thought processes of the non-academic crowd.”
“I think she just called you stupid, but I’m not actually smart enough to be sure,” Ginger said. “Did I ruin things for you and the bartender?”
“I don’t think it was meant to be,” Marigold shrugged. “I looked into our future. It doesn’t end well.”
The night air was warm and humid, and a fat yellow moon hung overhead. Ginger could swear the man in the moon was glowering down at her with disapproval.
They walked across the parking lot towards the pickup truck which Marigold had borrowed from her great-aunt for their visit.
“You know, I think Winifred was right,” Marigold added as they climbed into the truck. Did you see how the crowd stared at you when you said no? I mean, I’m only human, but I’m just wondering…is it a good idea to publicly insult the Alpha like that?”
“Publicly insult…oh, please, he publicly insulted me! Did you hear how patronizing he was when he asked me to dance?”
“Still. He’s the Alpha, you’re not.”
“Hmmph. He needed to be taken down a peg or two,” Ginger grumbled. “Besides, I’m sure it will all have blown over by tomorrow morning.”
Chapter Two
“Why is everyone staring at me?” Ginger said self-consciously, running her hands through her rumpled hair. “Do I have major bedhead?” She hadn’t slept well at all; she’d tossed and turned all night, dreaming fitfully of the sheriff, imagining him running his hands over her body, his hot tongue tracing the curve of her neck...
Funny, in all the time she’d been with Ashmont, she’d never had a single sex dream about him.
Then she’d dragged herself out of bed at 6:00 a.m. because Marigold’s great-aunt Imogen needed someone to help her gather eggs from the henhouse for breakfast and her handyman had recently quit.
Then she’d gone back upstairs to catch a quick nap while Imogen and Marigold made breakfast. She was not, by nature, a morning person.
When she went downstairs to join everyone for breakfast in the dining room, they all turned to stare at her as if she’d accidentally turned and was walking in on all fours.
“Is it true that you actually shot the sheriff down when he asked you to dance?” Miss Lamont, one of a pair of elderly twin spinsters who’d lived at the boarding house for forty years, asked Ginger. “In public? In front of everybody?”
“Yeah, I can’t believe you did that,” added Brenda, one of the archeology students, who all sat together with the professor at the end of the long dining room table. There were half a dozen of them, all girls. “I’d totally have danced with him.”
“You’d dance with anybody,” Tallulah, one of the other archeology students said snidely, earning a dirty look from Brenda. There was some odd kind of rivalry between the two of them; Ginger suspected it had to do with the handsome archeology professor Emerson Reese, who was leading the dig. He had wavy brown hair and wore glasses, and had kind of an Indiana Jones vibe going for him. He sat reading the morning paper, apparently oblivious to all the commotion around him.
“Everyone knows about it?” Ginger asked, sitting down at the table next to Tallulah, who scooted her chair over to make room. Tallulah was pretty in a washed-out, nerdy way, her hair scraped back into a French braid that she wound around the top of her head, her eyes made owlish by huge glasses with thick lenses. Brenda was her complete opposite, with stylish streaks in her flat-ironed hair, clothing by Hollister and a full face of makeup even at the breakfast table.
“Of course they do. It’s the talk of the town,” Imogen said cheerfully, setting down a steaming stack of pancakes at the table. She wore a floral a-line dress and her hair was styled in a white bouffant, courtesy of twice-weekly visits to the Kurl Up And Dye beauty salon.