She turned towards Cletus, talking fast and praying that the sheriff didn’t blow up right there. “Yep, he said that you’ll have to hold down a full time job for the next…ah, two weeks, as punishment. 9 to five.”
“I ain’t afraid of work. Not like anybody would hire an Arbuckle in this town for any job, anyway.” Cletus glanced at the sheriff, half fearful, half hopeful.
“Is that really what you said?” he asked him.
“Uhhh…of course. You aren’t saying my lovely assistant’s a liar, are you?” The sheriff was struggling to wipe the look of surprise off his face.
“No, sir, I ain’t saying that. If that’s what my sentence is, I guess I’ll have to do it. When do I start?” he couldn’t hide the eagerness in his voice.
“Tomorrow morning, nine a.m. sharp.”
“Oh, and lunch is provided free,” Ginger said, glancing at Cletus’s bony frame.
He looked at her suspiciously. “You’re not trying to give me no charity, are you?”
“No sir. Not at all,” she said, noting his look of surprise when she called him “sir.” “Everybody who’s working on the community garden gets lunch free. It’s standard.”
“All right then.” He nodded, then turned and jogged off down the road. Ginger waited until he was out of earshot before she turned to the sheriff.
“Okay. Let me have it,” she winced. Please, don’t eviscerate my Alpha, she thought desperately. I’m pretty sure my pack would ban me from not just the city but the state of New York. Forever.
Chapter Four
“Let you have what?” That amused grin was back, and Ginger found that, despite herself, a little shiver ran through her body and her nipples swelled into tight nubs. He was so annoyingly sexy when he smiled. “You’re a puzzle, Miss Ginger. Maybe if I could figure out what you wanted, I could give it to you.” There was a teasing quality to his voice, and a twinkle in his golden-brown eyes as he said it. As if he were picturing what he’d love to give to her.
Or maybe that was just Ginger’s sex-starved imagination.
“Well….I thought you’d yell at me for what I did just now.”
“Naah. You were surprisingly diplomatic about it.”
Ginger winced at the “surprisingly” part, but she’d earned it.
“And that was actually pretty damn smart of you,” Sheriff Armstrong continued. “I should have thought of that myself years ago. Every time I tried to offer Cletus and his family money, they say they don’t take charity; I should have realized the solution was to find Cletus some kind of job. He’s right that it’s hard for him to find any work, the Arbuckle’s have a bad reputation in town. Especially Cletus, he did time in juvie for a vandalism spree after his father died, smashed the windows on a bunch of businesses on Main Street, and a lot of folks in town hold that against him.”
“I’ll pay for his salary,” Ginger said, relieved that this wasn’t going to get her in even more trouble with her pack. “And his lunch.” She could charge it to her credit card, skip lunch for the next few months when she was in New York…
“Don’t be ridiculous, woman. I’ll get the town to cover it out of petty cash. We do need that garden weeded and planted.”
They climbed back in the car and headed into town. “Next time, consult me first,” he added.
“Will do.” She nodded, relief rolling over her. Disaster averted. Her Alpha, and her standing with the pack, were safe. For now.
“I’m going to take you to my office now, introduce you to everybody. We expanded our building recently. I’ve got boxes and boxes of filing that needs to be done.”
“Great!” she forced a bright, cheery smile, but inwardly she quailed. How would everyone at the station react to the woman who’d publicly insulted their Alpha? And how had she managed to get herself into this mess?
Her phone vibrated in her purse, and she pulled it out and glanced at it.
“Boyfriend?” he said, glancing sideways at her.
Hmmm. Why was he asking?
“I don’t have one of those,” she said. “But I do have a mother who’s apparently called me 11 times this morning.”
“No boyfriend? Men in New York must not know a good thing when they see it.”
“You’re too kind. I had a boyfriend. We…wanted different things.” That wasn’t a lie. She wanted fidelity, more passion and a wedding ring, and he wanted to have sex with Bitsy Saperstein.
Her phone rang again.
“Why does your mother’s ring tone sound like the wedding march?”
She shot him a dirty look, flipped open the phone, and her mother’s shrill voice rang in her ear.
“What have you done? Did I raise you like this? How will we ever get you married now? Are our packs going to be at war?”
“Mother,” she said, gritting her teeth together. “I am in the car with the sheriff. Everything is fine. Everything is going very well.”
“Really?” her mother perked up. “Does he like you now? Is he single?”
“Mother.”