After freshening her makeup, brushing her hair into a ponytail, throwing on a cotton skirt and a tank top, impossible text message still on her mind, Dixie strolled along the winding path of arborvitaes and rosebushes to the guesthouse.
Which wasn’t really a guesthouse at all. It was a mini version of the big house with only five bedrooms instead of ten, a pool lined with white travertine along its sloping edges, and an island, complete with palm trees, chaise longues and a bartender in the middle of it all.
As she made her way past the pool area, she noted not a single string bikini or Insanity Workout body to be had. The pool didn’t have a ripple of activity swirling in the crystal-blue waters, dotted with solar lights beneath the surface where she’d expected to see a bevy of beauties playing volleyball on the shoulders of beefy men.
Her images of sex goddesses scantily draped in bikinis, dangling their feet in the pool while they whispered, “I love it when you touch me there” fled and were replaced by the sound of a voice that couldn’t belong to someone more than ten years old.
She followed it toward the wide glass doors leading inside, scooting through the doors, and making her way across the terra-cotta tiled floor to the rounded entryway where the voice grew stronger.
“Ohhhhhh, I’m so wet for you!” an enthusiastic voice cooed. “You’re so big and hard, I just don’t think I can stand it! Doooo me, Enzo,” the little-girl voice—far too youthful for phone sex—purred. “Do me like that, you Italian stallion!”
Dixie stopped all forward movement as if she was playing a game of life-or-death freeze tag, gripping the overstuffed chair in the twilight-filled foyer to keep her legs from collapsing.
She couldn’t do this. The woman’s voice, coming from Landon’s old office, belonged to, at best, a teenager. How could she possibly support anyone who wanted to talk to a child—even if she was a grown woman merely pretending to be a child? How could Landon have supported it? Disgust bloomed in the pit of her stomach, mushrooming until she couldn’t breathe.
This had gone much further than she’d gone in her head. It was one thing for two adults to consensually have make-believe sex with a phone as their barrier. That she could almost handle. But when a man wanted a child he could pretend to have sex with—that was well off her morality chart.
Not to mention—Italians and stallions?
That was her cue. Exit stage left.
Five
A hand clamped on her shoulder, a cool hand with a gentle yet firm grip. “I know what you’re thinking, Dixie. You are the Dixie, right?” a soft voice asked.
She stiffened, caught in the act of running away. “If I said no, would that mean I could escape from this madhouse, and you’d never be the wiser?”
“Well, no. I’d be the wiser. I’d know you just as easily as if I’d run into you buying milk at the Piggly Wiggly. Landon talked about you all the time, and he must have showed us a hundred pictures of you.” She paused for a moment, putting both hands on Dixie’s shaking shoulders, forcing her to turn around.
What met Dixie’s eyes was a creamy-skinned, fresh-faced young woman of no more than maybe thirty, with long chestnut hair spilling over her shoulders and down her spine, and a pair of the widest, deepest green-blue eyes Dixie had ever encountered.
Her coloring was naturally peach-inspired, and the clothes she wore, a T-shirt that read Georgia Tech and black capris, were as simple as Dixie’s. “I’m Catherine, Cat for short, Butler. I’m general manager of Call Girls.”
“Gage’s new fiancée, right?”
Cat flushed a pretty pink—the kind of pink you flushed when you were wildly in love. “That’s me. Em asked me to tell you she’d see you tomorrow. Something about the hot tub at the big house and cold king crab.”
Dixie suppressed a smile. As a single parent with a husband who’d just up and decided he deserved a midlife crisis a little early, Em deserved a good pampering. “She deserves it after today.”
“And you are definitely Dixie Davis. Landon always said you were even prettier in person than you are in your pictures. He was right. And that voice!” Cat said with obvious delight. “It’s fantastic—so raspy and smoky. You’re gonna give the girls a real run for their money.”
Dixie grimaced. “I think today I don’t want to be Dixie Davis, and I don’t want to give anyone a run for anything with my raspy or my smoky.”
Cat grinned, revealing adorable dimples. “If only trading lives with someone else was as easy as the words simply spoken, hmm? Now, before you set off to givin’ someone hell—and yes, I can see that look on your face, Landon described your ire well—hear me out. The voice you hear in there on that phone is Marybell Lyman’s, and she’s not role-playing. It’s just the voice our creator gave her. And it works for her, but we have strict rules about that sort of thing at Call Girls. I promise.”
Still shaken, though to a lesser degree, Dixie’s tongue got the better of her. “Clearly, the rules for Italians and stallions escaped Landon.”
Cat chuckled. “What’s the harm in making a small mob fish feel like a big ol’ shark? That’s why men call us, Dixie. To interact with women they’ve fooled themselves into believing are incapable of living without their magically lust-inducing words.”
Dixie exhaled a breath of regret, ashamed she’d jumped to the same conclusions people still jumped to about her. “I’m sorry. I heard...and I just assumed—”
“Never you fear, Dixie. Landon wouldn’t allow calls generated from men who wanted to talk to underage girls. He was a kind soul. In fact, it remains a strict rule. We entertain lots of fantasies here at Call Girls, but there are absolute no-no’s, and if anyone’s caught indulging a client in something that’s off the table, it’s cause for permanent termination.”
Another sigh of relief shuddered through her, leaving Dixie unsure how to respond to this woman who looked as if she’d just fallen off the pages of Seventeen magazine.
She’d expected women who popped their gum, half-dressed in spandex catsuits, wearing six-inch stilettos and more eyeliner than Brugsby’s Drugstore cosmetics counter could supply. Instead, a pretty, fresh-faced, articulate woman greeted her with a lovely smile and a lilting Southern accent.
One of these things was not like the other, and two of these things weren’t even kinda the same.
Dixie squared her shoulders and pushed her hand toward Cat. “My apologies for my inexcusable manners. Yes. I’m Dixie Davis. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
Cat gripped Dixie’s hand, curling her fingers around it to give it a firm shake before letting it go. “No, it’s not. Not yet anyway. You look like you’re ready to find the nearest pitcher of sweet tea laced with bourbon to drown yourself in.”
“Booze wouldn’t go denied,” Dixie confessed, dropping the tips of her fingers to the pockets in her skirt.
Cat tilted her head, her eyes glittering and playful. “So you made it this far, right? That’s a sure sign you’re at least a little curious. Do you want to soldier on? Or do we end this conversation with a pleasant but cordial ‘it was lovely to meet you?’”
Dixie swallowed hard, her throat full of sandpaper, but she squared her shoulders. She was in. “We soldier. We definitely soldier. Battlefields and hand grenades ahoy.”
Cat’s grin was infectious. “I confess, we all wondered what you’d do. I laid the biggest bet in the ‘Dixie pool’ by the way.”
“Bet?” Why, yes, Dixie. You’re familiar with bets. Those crazy situations where you challenge some poor soul, not nearly as skilled as you, to race you for the win? Sometimes they involve money—other times? Hands in marriage.
She shook off the voice of her past and repeated, “Bet?”
“Well, yes. The bet that said you’d at least come see what you could see. You know, investigate what this was all about? Everyone else thought someone w
ith the kinda means you come from would run away to your palace in wherever it is rich folk build their palaces. Not me, though. I just knew, from all the talkin’ Landon did about you, you wouldn’t turn tail. Knew it. So thank you kindly for the two hundred dollars I just won. Pizza night’s on me.” She let loose a breathy whisper of a giggle.
Dixie managed to ignore the fact that this as yet unnamed group of women had bet against her and her palace and blurted something random. “You have a pizza night at Call Girls?” Phone-sex operators ate pizza? Next someone would tell her hookers had expense accounts.
Cat grinned that contagious grin again. “Well, of course we do. We’re not heathens, Dixie. Just because we call all parts southern on your anatomy words your mama would’ve washed your mouth out with soap for sayin’, doesn’t mean we blow up edible condoms and decorate them with whipped cream all the time. We’re just like most everyone else. We have all sorts of things here at the office. Christmas parties—baby showers, ‘Wear Your Pajamas to Work Wednesday.’ You name it, and Landon insisted upon it. You know how much he loved parties, and impromptu parties were his specialty. It boosts morale if you can have a little party on the boss’s dime, don’t you agree?” she said with a conspiratorial wink.
She’d like to have a little something on the boss, all right. She’d like to have a chokehold on him. “I...” Dixie held up a finger, putting it to her lips for a moment and shook her head. “I’m going to stop now so I don’t come off sounding like an uneducated, high-handed ass. Something I’m sure happens to you a lot. With first impressions being everything, I’ll just say this is unexpected.” Her head swam from so much unexpected.
“Your surprise is understandable, but I promise you, we’re mostly all just average women who needed to find a way to make ends meet. Well, with the exclusion of LaDawn. She really was a—” Cat leaned in, leaving the lingering scent of jasmine and roses in Dixie’s nose, and whispered, “a lady of the evening in Atlanta. Landon talked her out of the life and gave her a job here at Call Girls where she’s been ever since.”
Everyone’s knight in shining armor, weren’t you, old buddy?
“Some of us even have children, and Sheree has a husband who’s out of work.”
Once again, judge not lest ye be judged, Dixie Davis. “I—I’m sorry... I just thought...”
Cat crossed her arms over her chest as if she’d heard it all before. Yet, it didn’t come across as a defensive gesture at all. “We know what you thought—or think. It’s what everyone in this narrow-minded dink of a town still stuck in the 1950s thinks, and we’ve only been here just a few days. Some who call themselves open-minded think that. But I promise you we’re not so different than the rest of the workforce. We’re just more...er, colorful.”
“Ladies, I bid you good evening,” a cheerful voice with a British accent called from the sliding glass doors.
Dixie’s limbs instantly froze even as her stomach heated. Oh, good. Candy Caine was on the loose.
“Michael Caine, right?” Cat said on a tinkling laugh, her cheeks staining the color all women’s cheeks stained when Caine did an impression.
No one was left untouched by Candy Caine’s charm. Dixie had to fight not to roll her eyes and whisper a warning to Cat to beware the Donovan spell. Instead, she stiffened her spine, lifted her chin, and activated her Caine-Away force field.
He made his way across the tile with his pantherlike prowl, full of grace and a sensual glide of his cowboy boots. His legs, thick and muscular, worked under his tight-fitting jeans, flexing in time with his rhythmic walk.
A familiar and unwanted clench, deep within Dixie’s core, tightened as he drew closer.
He stopped a couple of feet from the women and grinned, holding out his hand to Cat, showcasing his enticingly visible pecs beneath his fitted navy blue shirt. “I’m—”
“Caine,” Cat twittered, her free hand making a nervous pass over a long strand of her hair to smooth it. “Caine Donovan. I’d know you anywhere, too. We’ve heard a lot about you from Landon.”
“Sorry I’m a little late.”
Cat smiled at Caine. “I figured you might be. LaDawn said she heard at the diner you were over doin’ Ezrah Jones’s laundry for him. Is that true?”
Caine shrugged his shoulders. “He’s had a rough go of it since Louise died, hasn’t been showing up for poker in the park with his buddies from the VA. Just thought I’d check on him, maybe offer some support. Louise used to make cookies for me whenever I won a meet. She was a great lady.”
Cat sighed a dreamy sigh. “You’re as nice as Landon said you were. He told us all about your high school exploits, and how you three were thicker ’n thieves back in the day.”
“And now it looks like we’ll be thicker than phone sex,” Caine joked, eyeing Dixie with that penetrating gaze that asked as many questions as it had ever answered.
“Damn. Guess I lost this bet, which might make pizza night a totally different ball game,” Cat said to Dixie with a snicker.
“Pizza night?” Caine queried, raising one eyebrow and wiggling it.
Dixie’s chin lifted defiantly, her eyes pinning Caine’s. “Yeah, funny thing about pizza night... The women all bet I wouldn’t show up today, but Cat. Cat had my back.”
Cat dipped her head. “But we definitely didn’t think you’d show up, Caine. You know, as rich and successful as your real-estate business is back in Miami.”
Caine made a comically sad face, and in Daryl from The Walking Dead’s voice, he said, “It cuts me deep you think I’d run away from the chance to talk dirty when I have the best Sean Connery impression ever. It speaks volumes about our future working relationship, ma’am. We’re lackin’ trust.”
Cat howled her pleasure, her slender shoulders shaking with laughter beneath her T-shirt. She pointed up at him. “Daryl—The Walking Dead, right? Lawd in all his mercy! Landon told us all about your celebrity impersonations. You really are as good as he said,” she gushed.
Hark! Who goes there? What was that she heard in the distance? Yet another woman fallen prey to Caine Donovan? Dixie fought another roll of her eyes.
Turning her back on Caine, Dixie forced a smile to her lips and put her hand on Cat’s arm to draw her away from the sexual napalm. “So maybe you could explain all of this? How Call Girls is run. What’s expected of us? The thing about our chosen personas?” That troubled her the most, choosing a persona.
“You mean our specialty kinks, right, Dixie?” Caine made a point of reminding her, stepping around both of the women so he could peer into the archway that led to the great room and the subsequent bedrooms.
Dixie fought a scowl at his deliciously fresh, clean scent, but couldn’t fight the pop of her lips. “Why yes, Candy Caine. That’s exactly what I mean. I’m all about finding out what my kink is.”
“Um, we, in the business, that is, actually call them fetishes. Just an FYI,” Cat interjected with another of her easy smiles.
“Fetish.” Dixie nodded, mentally making a note of it for future fetish exploration. “Got it.”
“Studious as ever,” Caine remarked dryly, clearing his throat.
The reference to her lack of interest in her studies back in her high school days didn’t go unnoticed. “That’s what got me that 4.3 GPA in college,” she reminded him with a flash of her eyes. “If memory serves, you had a 4.2.” So humph.
“Studying was what got you a 4.3, Dixie? And didn’t you leave college to cruise the seven seas on some rich guy’s yacht?”
It was only two seas, thank you. Her blood pressure soared.
Just as Dixie was about to sling an arrow dipped in contempt back, Cat threw a hand up between, staring them both down with a matronly glare. “Okay, to your corners.” She swished a warning finger at them, shooing them apart. “So let’s just get this all out in the open, because even thou
gh I’m office manager, Landon was kind enough to allow me to take college courses online while I oversee Call Girls. So quite often, in between calls, I’m studying. Which means not only do I have other employees to protect, but my future career, as well. I can’t do that if I’m breaking up petty disagreements between the two of you.”
Protect? As if they both had a penchant for serial killing?
“Now, Landon told us all about the two of you and your ongoing love affair with a good war of words. He told us everything about your childhoods, Dixie’s legendary mean-girl reputation here in Plum Orchard, your love of a good bet, your eventual engagement—the ugly ending to your engagement—the subsequent years you both spent hating each other over the ugly end to said engagement, all while he continued to remain friends with you both. Big yawn. Old news, right?”
Both Caine and Dixie remained stubbornly silent.
“Right?” Cat prompted, her expression stern and schoolmarmish.
Their grating sighs were simultaneous. “Right,” they responded in unison like two guilty children.
“Good. So here’s how this is gonna play out. I know there are hard feelin’s between the two of you, and that’s too bad, but they’re absolutely not for the workplace. I run Call Girls, and I run a tight ship. If you decide to join us, I won’t have the two of you taking potshots at each other, and making everyone around you uncomfortable while you do it. If you want to beat each other up over your history together, do it somewhere else. Do we understand each other?”
Like two chastised children, they both let their eyes fall to the tiled floor.
“And do not roll your eyes at me, Dixie Davis,” Cat warned, planting her hands on her hips.
Dixie stopped mid-eye roll and sighed, letting her shoulders sag and her chin hitch forward like the petulant child she turned into whenever Caine was around. Their bickering was bound to affect those around them, and that was unfair. “I’m sorry. We can really suck.”
Cat giggled. “Landon told us all about your brand of suck. We were locked and loaded.”
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