Ready or Not

By Carol Schede

Sam and Ginger knew each other all their lives. They grew up together. They still lived next door to each other. So why after thirty-some year were they suddenly sneaking around, trying to have an affair? Both were unattached and the timing seemed perfect, at least in Sam's mind. But Ginger was wary, afraid that when the passion had faded—as she was confident it would--Sam would no longer be her friend. Their friendship was more important to her than a quick fling, which seemed to be all Sam was looking for. Fate chose to side with Ginger, preventing Sam from achieving his goal. Ultimately, no match for Sam's perseverance, Fate finally gave up, stepped aside and declared "have at it" but not without throwing some obstacles in their way. Just when it all seemed to be working so well—that deafening thud they heard was the sound of everything falling apart.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Carol Schede
• Release date: Apr 2, 2011
• ISBN: 9781458133670

Carol Schede

I have been writing contemporary romance for fifteen years. Trends come and go, but I have stayed true to the genre I most enjoy reading – southern romance. I have lived my entire life in East Tennessee and I write about that place because it is the place I know best. A place where we were taught to say "ma'am" and "sir" from the moment we could talk. A place where no one considers it to be a proper Sunday without fried chicken being consumed at some point. A place passionate about football. A place where few of us can make it through an entire day without quoting some wise adage of our grandmother. Of course, people everywhere, including the place where you live, have these same values, but I don't know those other places. I do know East Tennessee and the people who live here, and these are the people I write about.

Book preview

Ready or Not

by

Carol Schede

Smashwords Edition 

Copyright 2011

Copyright 2013 Carol Schede

Original work of Carol Schede

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All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author. This book contains content that may not be suitable for young readers (under 18).

License Notes

Chapter One

It might have been a gunshot!

To his lawman-trained mind, the sound whipping through the darkness could have been a gunshot.  Shockwaves echoed through Sheriff Sam Pepper’s head, breaking the midnight silence. His instincts screamed to dive for cover and return fire.  But current circumstances refused Sam the luxury of doing either of those things.  All he could do was flinch and brace for another onslaught. 

Nothing.

Except for the ringing in his ears, silence again reigned. Too much silence.  A silence at least as uncomfortable as the part of Sheriff Pepper that now hurt.

If you’ve got any sense left at all, just turn your stupid-ass self around and get the hell out of here.

Taking his own advice, he turned his vulnerable backside toward his attacker and walked away, his jaw clenched shut.

He hurt.  He stung like he’d tangled with a hornet's nest.  He couldn’t remember ever feeling so beat-up and miserable. 

No, Sheriff Pepper hadn't been shot but he wished to God he had been.  The truth of what had just happened hurt at least as much as a gunshot.  For sure, he would have recovered from a gunshot a lot sooner than he would recover from this sorry setback.

The whole episode was ridiculous.  He’d made one little slip, got caught up in one tiny, from-the-heart, let-it-all-hang-out gut reaction, and Sam knew his life would never again be the same. 

Because, to his everlasting mortification, right there on Ginger Lee Cooley’s front porch, with all the grace and skill of a sixteen-year-old in a fit of hormonal meltdown, Sheriff Sam Pepper had just gotten get his sorry face slapped all the way to hell and back.

* * *

Wine was the culprit. 

Sam couldn't drink wine worth a damn.  Never could.  He could nurse a six-pack of beer all evening and end up with little more than a warm buzz.  Hard liquor took more planning and restraint but Sam knew his limits and when to quit.  After all, any high sheriff worth his salt knew better than to drink himself falling-down drunk then drive home. 

But wine was something else entirely. 

Tonight Sheriff Pepper had consumed more than his self-proscribed sparse limit of the stuff. 

Maybe he was caught up in the mood of the wedding.  Maybe he was dead tired and his tolerance low from no time off in the last two weeks straight. 

Probably the real problem was Ginger's dress. 

Ginger Lee Cooley was sliding down the backside of thirty but she still looked pretty damn spectacular.  The dress she wore to Max and Chloe’s wedding had the look and silky feel of hot cocoa.  As Sam watched it slither over her trim hips and swish around her amazing legs, he’d been driven to cool himself off with wine, the only thing available with any kick to it that Max and Chloe had thought to provide at their wedding reception.

Looking good tonight, Sam remembered mumbling to Ginger sometime earlier.

Ginger had shot back one of those looks that suggested she thought he was full of it and switched her fine little tail off in the opposite direction for a time. 

Ginger Cooley had been Sam's best friend for all thirty-two years of his life.  She was also his next-door neighbor, his sometimes companion on an outing such as this wedding, his confidant, his maid when she got an itch to houseclean, and his cook when she got an itch to cook.  But Ginger Cooley was not his date.  No question of them doing something as stupid as trying to date each other.

In fact, Ginger Cooley didn’t date anybody much.  She flounced around town from time to time with that screwball male French teacher at the high school where she taught, but Sam had never thought much about it. Not until tonight. 

Sam did date--or tried to--but being the sheriff could turn a guy into a mighty stuffy date, what with being so recognizable and having his car parked at odd hours in places it probably shouldn't be parked and whatnot.

But all that aside, Ginger in her cocoa-colored dress, with her long, elegant legs and her tawny mane of hair that finally figured out how to behave itself sometime during the years she lived the high life out in California…all those things had banded together to stir poor old Sheriff Pepper up just a trifle more than he could handle. 

When Ginger swung her spectacular hair around as she made some kind of avid point, he got a snootful of lilacs.  When she moved her arms, her gold bracelets clinked like cymbals--exotic Turkish harem cymbals--which only served to fill Sam’s mind with visions of the delightful goings-on he imagined in exotic Turkish harems. 

Max and Chloe had sprung for a live band clear from someplace over the mountains in North Carolina and everybody gathered at the Laurel Ridge Community Center was dancing up a storm.  It would have been rude--ungracious was the actual word Ginger had used--not to dance, so he danced with Ginger. 

That was when he descended into madness. 

Holding Ginger Lee Cooley, a woman he’d known forever, skewed the axis of his world.  The band struck up Unforgettable, he put his arms around Ginger and--wham!--desire slammed into him like freight train. 

I guess that's enough of that, he muttered after that Godforsaken, endless dance was finally over.  He needed to distance himself from Ginger and her lilac scent, from the unexpected, fierce response that had detonated and was still roaring through his body.  Ginger smiled vaguely in his general direction then wandered off toward the punch bowl.  Later, after Sam had half-drowned himself in the nasty wine, he saw her waltz by with Jake Pennington.  Sam didn’t like anything about that scenario.

Back in high school, Ginger had done it with Jake Pennington. Sam knew because Jake had reported back on every single detail.  At the time, Sam had seriously considered beating the shit out of Jake Pennington.  Now he wished he had.    

He searched the crowd through the one eye that still could focus until he located Jake’s pregnant wife Amelia plopped in a chair, showing no visible concern that her husband was dancing with a lilac-scented, cocoa-clad sex siren, who was sure to give a major woody to any guy who dared to dance with her.

The rest of the evening was more of the same. 

Long before Chloe threw her bouquet (Sam noted Ginger made no effort to catch the thing) and drove off with Max, Sam wanted out of there.  He couldn't vouch for his sanity or his manners, and his most urgent goal was to find some dark, private place where he could be alone with Ginger Cooley for long enough to do something highly physical and possibly depraved with her.  In the end, all he did was deposit her in his car and work on formulating strategy while he tried to convince himself he wasn’t drunk, then ended up doing nothing more degenerate than driving them both home.

Nice night, Ginger commented, and then had the nerve to lay her head back against the headrest, close her eyes and allow the spring breeze blowing through the car from the open windows engulf Sam in yet another whirlwind of lilacs.

Yeah, Sam grunted.

God, to be that young and in love…, Ginger's voice trailed off.  Her shoes also took that cue to trail off her feet, and she tucked her elegant legs underneath her bottom.

Yeah.

You ever think about getting married?  She rolled her head around and looked over at him.

Nah, Sam managed to work a new word into his shrinking conversational repertoire.

I guess with your job and all...  Ginger's voice trailed off again and she turned away to gaze out the window. 

Sam sat up a little taller, a little straighter.  His job was important.  He wasn't exactly Marshall Dillon--but still, a sheriff, even the sheriff of Laurel County, Tennessee, had responsibilities, duties.  He was accountable to his constituency, responsible for their safety and peace of mind. 

You ever miss being married? he asked her, and right away regretted daring to ask such an intrusive question.  Once upon a time Ginger had married herself a professional baseball player and skipped off to live happily ever after in California.  Ten years and one nasty divorce later, she crept back home to Laurel Ridge a different lady than the one who had left.  Older certainly.  There was no getting around the facts of age.  But so much older on the inside than on the outside.   Brittle and cool, with a hard, sophisticated edge, but so vulnerable when she let down her guard that her forced bravado sometimes came close to breaking Sam Pepper’s remarkably break-resistant heart.

Maybe, she said.  I guess I miss what I wanted it to be, what it should have been. She finished up with a frosty, I sure don't miss what it really was.

Sorry ‘bout that, Sam muttered.

Forgiven, she glanced back over at him and smiled.

Sam forgot to breathe.

He decided he didn't much like being sexually attracted to Ginger.  

Sam prided himself on the comfortable simplicity of his relationships.  Women came and went with varying degrees of frequency and none of them had yet left a noticeable mark on his heart. 

But for the past couple of hours Ginger Cooley was creating an unholy mess in his orderly life.  He needed to get the hell over his confusing, inappropriate attraction to her and be quick about it.

He was mulling over exactly how he might go about doing such a thing as he pulled up into her driveway, dividing his front lawn from hers.  Mulling it over to such a degree that he paid little attention as his reflexes kicked in and he sprang from his car, opened the passenger door for Ginger and marched her right up the steps to her front door.  Just like a real date.

It was at that point Sam's sanity deserted him.  Only for a second or two, but it was during that oh-so-brief disconnection with reality that it happened. 

Sheriff Pepper opened up his big, stupid mouth and asked Ginger Lee Cooley to spend the night with him. 

And Ginger slapped the holy hell out of him

Chapter Two

Spend the night with me, Ginger Lee.

Ginger paced the length of her bedroom for the umpteenth time, still huffing in short, troubled spurts.  She was overreacting to Sam’s startling appeal, of course, but how could she not overreact?  Too much energy hummed through her body.  Too much anger at Sam for daring to take such a liberty.  Too much embarrassment at her heady reaction to his invitation.

Spend the night with me, Ginger Lee.

Of course she’d slapped him!  She wished she'd slapped him again. 

Of all the nerve!  Sam Pepper was supposed to be her friend. She’d known him as long as she had known anyone on this earth.  But now, it seemed, she didn’t know him at all.  She considered herself savvy and experienced in the ways of the world, yet his invitation had blindsided her.

He wanted to sleep with her!

Beyond the jolting physicality of his proposal, she had to wonder out of what dusty vault he’d dug the reference to Ginger Lee.  Nobody had called her Ginger Lee for years and years.  Long ago, Ginger Lee Cooley had been an entirely different person. Crazy and wild, no responsibility to speak of, too young to have any sense at all.  And look at what a mess she’d made of her life.

Thank God, Ginger Lee grew up finally, set her unfortunate marriage behind her and settled down to her safe, steady, boring life as simply Ginger.  Ginger was stable and calm. Ginger felt older than God most of the time.  Ginger taught high school English.  Hard to be more boring than an English teacher.

Sam must be drunk, Ginger decided.  She should have stayed beside him all evening and kept an eye on him as she used to do when they were kids.  But he was the sheriff, for heaven's sake.  Surely the sheriff had enough sense not to get drunk.  Maybe luck was on her side and tomorrow he wouldn't remember anything about his fall from grace.

Lordy, I hope you don't, Ginger muttered to herself, as she tugged the hairbrush through her hair.  Tomorrow I hope your stupid head feels like a busted watermelon and you're sick as a dog.

Thirty-one strokes, thirty-two, thirty-three...

No, of course, she didn't really hope Sam was hung over and sick tomorrow, but the whole episode was very, very weird.

Sam’s eyes... 

Sam was a quiet guy, but he was quick and clever and funny when you knew him as well as Ginger knew him.  On normal days, when he smiled his eyes crinkled up nicely at the corners--merry and a nice, an unremarkable blue.  But tonight, on her front porch, as he gazed down at her, Sam's eyes weren’t the least bit crinkly. In the moonlight, they glowed deep and dark--hot, wild Caribbean blue.  Piercing.  Bold.

That's how Sam looks when he makes love. 

Ginger shivered.  Who gives a flying flip how Sam looks when he makes love!

Forty-seven strokes, forty-eight, forty-nine...

You can take your hot eyes and your hot thoughts and your hot little invitation and shove 'em, Sam Pepper.  What kind of a sheriff goes around asking respectable women to spend the night with him, anyway? 

Fifty-nine strokes, sixty, sixty-one...

And just when the heck did you get so tall? 

Not so long ago--how long ago was it?--Ginger distinctly recalled looking at him straight on, eyes level.  But tonight she’d been forced to tip her head back and look up--pretty far up, actually--at him.  And she remembered reaching way up to slap his ornery face.  

Oh, dear heaven, when they danced...

What a major mistake, insisting that they dance!  All throughout Laurel County Sam Pepper was known as a fine dancer, but he hadn’t done much to impress her as they danced at the wedding.  In fact, he’d stumbled around, keeping her at arm’s length the entire time.  The one time he did bring her close, Ginger almost asked him why the heck he’d felt compelled to wear his gun to the wedding.  She’d been so horribly close to working in a brief but necessary lecture on wedding etiquette and guns.  What a godsend that she’d kept her mouth shut!  Because, with perfect twenty-twenty hindsight, Ginger now knew the stiff, rigid, unyielding, proddy thing that kept poking her when they bumped together as they danced wasn’t any gun.

Tall and sturdy, dark, rock-solid, hard...

For her own peace of mind, she vowed, from this day forward, whenever she thought of Sam she would do well to focus on some other aspect of the man besides hard. 

Sam with his dark, thick hair...his dark, deep, sinfully blue eyes...his five-o'clock shadow that refused to wait until five o'clock...

Spend the night with me, Ginger Lee.

Sam Pepper, I'll just to have to slap you around some more tomorrow.  That's all there is to it.  Ginger's scalp ached from all the intensity of her brushing.  You've got me thinking about your beard and your eyes and how you look when you make love and all manner of things I don't want to think about. 

Seventy strokes, seventy-one, seventy-two...

You can just take your beard and your hormones and anything else you might need and go find yourself some little sheriff-groupie who would be just so delighted to jump into bed with you. I wouldn't sleep with you if it was just you and me stranded on the moon, you oversexed jerk! 

The hairbrush flew across the room.

As the brush thudded against the far