Talking After Midnight

by Dakota Cassidy

  Tag pulled some matches from his pocket and scraped one to ignite it. He held up a small candle and struck a match, illuminating his angular face and making his dark eyes look even darker. “This is dinner. Remember our date?”

  For a couple of seconds, Marybell was speechless. No one had ever done something like this for her. Not in all her thirty years. The gesture stole her breath. It was sweet and thoughtful and utterly unexpected.

  And under the window of her office. “I don’t remember confirmin’ our date.”

  He popped open a bag of chips and dumped them on her plate with another grin. “Ah, but you didn’t deny it, either.”

  “So if I don’t say no, it’s automatically a date?”

  “That’s what the rule book says.”

  “Who wrote this rule book?”

  “Probably some desperate guy who couldn’t get a firm yes for a date.”

  She laughed, or maybe she giggled. The silly noise coming from her throat sounded suspiciously like a giggle. The kind of giggle a woman uses when she’s enamored with a man. When everything he says is charming and a total orgasm to her ears. Marybell clamped her lips shut. “I thought I told you I wasn’t dating.”

  Tag handed her a plate, complete with a sandwich cut neatly in a triangle, some fresh fruit and a pile of chips. “I don’t think you got that far.”

  She hesitated. No food. She couldn’t have a sandwich with this man. She’d been an unwitting party to ruining his life. You didn’t have a sandwich with a man whose life you’d annihilated. “I’m not dating.”

  He ignored her and thrust the plate at her again along with a bottle of ginger ale. “I know this is your favorite.”

  He’d gone out of his way to find out what she liked to drink? Bits of the icy formation around her heart broke off like chunks of an overheated glacier. Marybell took the plate and the ginger ale and set them beside her on the blanket. “Thank...you.”

  Tag leaned back against the guesthouse and grinned again, letting his long legs unwind in front of him. “That’s more like it. I like gratitude in the women I’m not dating.”

  She quashed the smile she was fighting with a vengeance. “As long as we’re clear this isn’t a date, I’ll eat your bologna sandwich, but it’s only because I’m starving and you’ve left me little choice now. Madge will be closin’ up shop soon, which means I can only get whatever she has left. Usually that’s eight-hour-old meat loaf.”

  Tag took an enormous bite of his sandwich and nodded, swallowing hard. “Bologna’s better for you than meat loaf. All these by-products put hair on your chest.”

  Her laughter tinkled from her lips before she could stop it. She nibbled at a chip to keep from making any more unfamiliar mating noises, but her mind was racing. “Why did you do this?”

  “Do what?”

  Make me feel something for you. Make me fight a dreamy sigh. Make me want to twirl my Mohawk in centuries-old, ritualistic gestures of flirtation. “Here—this—under my office window.”

  He shrugged his wide shoulders. “Because I had a funny feeling you’d try to skip out on our nondate. I figured this was the best way to catch you skipping.”

  “I’m not dating.”

  “Anyone, or just me?”

  “Anyone.”

  “Where do you come from, Marybell Lyman?”

  “Did you just hear me?”

  “Just because you’re not dating doesn’t mean you can’t have polite conversation.”

  Everywhere and nowhere. “Atlanta.” Atlanta was big. That seemed safe enough.

  “Me, too. The last name Lyman isn’t familiar, though.”

  That’s because it’s not really mine. “I get the feeling we didn’t travel in the same social circles.” No truer words.

  “Did you go to college?”

  She stiffened. He couldn’t possibly know—could he? Why was he asking so many questions? That’s what people do when they want to get to know you, Marybell. They make conversation. “Did you?”

  “Yep. Got a degree in architecture.”

  “Which led you here to Plum Orchard where big buildings are just linin’ the streets.” She was doing her best to be surly, but Tag wasn’t having it, and she was having trouble sustaining it because he was blatantly ignoring her efforts.

  “Nope. My sister’s death led me here.”

  Damn. Now she was just being a jerk. She knew from Em that his sister, Harper, had died, but she didn’t know that was why he was in Plum Orchard. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be so rude.”

  “Sure you did. You want our nondate to be over. But you know what, Marybell Lyman, that’s all right. To be rude, I mean—because we’re on a nondate. If this were a real date, I’d make you pay the tab for being so rude.”

  “I think I can rustle up some spare change for the bologna sandwich.” She stopped then. He wasn’t attacking her safe place knowingly. He wasn’t threatening everything she loved and held dear to be a malicious jackass.

  Lighten up. At least enough to appear civil.

  Marybell reached out and put her hand on his arm, softening her words. “And I really didn’t mean to be rude about your sister. I just didn’t know your reasons for comin’ to the PO. I’m sorry for your loss.” No one understood loss better than she did.

  Tag grabbed her hand and used it to slide her closer. “I’m sorry, too. She was a great sister.”

  The brief flicker of pain in his eyes made her wonder what had happened beyond what Em had told them. It was deep and it was personal, if Tag’s face lined with some raw emotion she couldn’t pinpoint was any indication. But then he smiled without letting go of her hand. “Why phone sex?”

  Her hand in his felt so good, so warm against her icy fingers, Marybell forgot to pull away. “Why not?” she said on a smile.

  “Hey, no judgment here. Just curious. I mean, if we’re honest, not many little girls dream they’ll grow up and be phone sex operators.”

  Not this one, either. This one had wanted to grow up and be a ballerina and wear a pink tutu. “The economy stinks.”

  “And that’s what led you to phone sex? Even in a bad economy, most people don’t consider phone sex. McDonald’s? Sure.”

  “Most people aren’t me.”

  “Fair enough. How’d you know you’d be good at it?”

  Desperation made me good at it. Desperation and the kindest man in the world who’d offered her an opportunity to live in a warm house free of vermin and filth. “I don’t know. I just made it work because financially, I needed to.”

  “Desperate times, huh?”

  And so many desperate measures. “That about sizes it up.”

  “Landon Wells, right? He’s the man who owned Call Girls before Dixie and Caine?”

  Her heart twisted in her chest at the mention of Landon’s name. She’d loved him so much. He was the only person on earth who knew who she really was. The only person on earth who’d cared little about her past—who’d been willing to help her when the entire world wanted to spit in her face—and some had—literally.

  “Yes.” She damned her throat for closing up. Clearing it, she sat up straighter, acutely aware of Tag’s thumb caressing her finger. “He was an amazing human being, and if not for him, I’d be livin’ on the streets.” She didn’t care that she was revealing something so personal, so painful. Landon would always have her undying gratitude, and she’d never hesitate to say it out loud.

  “No family to turn to?”

  “Nope.” Not a single soul.

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “Don’t feel sorry for me.” Please. “There are plenty of others who have it so much worse. For instance, just today I read one of the Kardashians broke a nail and Taylor Swift is never, ever getting back together with her boyfriend.”

  Tag chuckled. “I didn’t mean it in a pity kind of way. I meant it in the ‘Wow, it sucks that you don’t have people nosing into your business twenty-four-seven’ kind of way. So, where’s your fami
ly?”

  Marybell stared at him. This was getting too close for comfort. Yet she found herself repeating the words she repeated to everyone when they asked. “I was in the foster care system all my life. No family.”

  His grip on her hand tightened, and she knew she should yank hers back to safety, but it was so warm and...safe. Something about the calloused surface was safe. “Damn. This time I am sorry.”

  “Damn. I’d hoped you’d be more original.”

  “Original?”

  “Everyone says they’re sorry. I guess you’re not the exception I’d hoped for,” she teased, and smiled. She was used to the eyes full of sympathy, sad smiles, but it was all she’d ever known. She’d never truly realized what she’d missed until Landon came along.

  Tag’s eyes searched hers. “Not laughing. My family drives me crazy, but I couldn’t live without them.”

  Marybell shrugged to hide all her childhood hopes dashed—all her Christmas wishes ignored. “You could if you didn’t know what it was like to have one.”

  “So I gather the Call Girls are your family now? You all seem pretty tight.”

  There were times when she was almost afraid to acknowledge how she felt about them out loud. To say it was to throw it out into the universe and take the chance the universe would strike back.

  If you didn’t tell anyone you cared about something almost more than you cared about breathing, it wouldn’t tempt the Fates to snatch it away. She kept her feelings about Em and the girls on the inside. “They’re the closest thing to family I’ve ever had.”

  For all the years spent wondering what it was like to belong—really belong somewhere—she’d found that in the least likely place of all, and whether they knew it or not, she clung to their friendships. In silence, while she treasured them in ways she hoped they felt rather than heard.

  She didn’t want these friendships taken away when it had taken thirty years to find them. Tag had the ability to obliterate the only real thing she had, and he didn’t even know it.

  She faked looking at a watch that didn’t exist on her wrist, pulling her other hand from his. Without looking at him, she rose to her feet, brushing the dead leaves from her torn jeans. “My break’s almost over. I have to go.”

  Tag was up and on his feet, his large frame looming above her. “So I bet you don’t want to do this again, huh?”

  Yes, she did. No. She wouldn’t. “I’m not dating.”

  Tag tipped her chin up and smiled, his white teeth gleaming against his sun-weathered skin. “But you are eating. You need your energy for all that oohing and aahing.”

  Walk away now, Marybell. “Does what I do for a living bother you?”

  “Nope. I won’t tell you it’s not a little weird to know you—”

  “Get guys off over the phone?” Maybe if she was crude, he’d go away. He had to go away.

  Tag didn’t miss a beat. “Okay, if you want to put it that way. Then, yeah. But that’s not something that’d scare me off.”

  What would scare him off? If her outlandish makeup and hair didn’t do it, surely her job was cause to rethink pursuing her.

  Tag gripped her shoulders. “Is that what you want? To scare me off?”

  That’s what she should want, but she wanted that far less than she wanted to throw her arms around his neck and kiss him again the way he’d kissed her last night. Taking a step back and out of his reach, she kept her tone indifferent. “I want to go back to work.”

  Tag latched his fingers together and held them out, hitching his sharp jaw at her office window. “You want a lift?”

  She laughed, even though she knew she shouldn’t. Marybell pointed to the path that led back around to the front of the guesthouse. “I’ll take the long way. Thanks for dinner. G’night, Tag.” She made her way along the cobbled path, passing the neatly manicured topiaries with twinkling lights on them, her chest heavy and tight.

  It was time to find a new escape route to avoid Tag.

  “G’night, Marybell,” he called after her, his deep voice swirling in her ears.

  Goodbye, Tag.

  Five

  Em clinked her wineglass as they sat around the break room at Call Girls on Even Phone Sex Operators Have Pizza Night. “Attention, Marybell Lyman!”

  Marybell froze, midslice of gooey pepperoni. She lifted her eyes to meet Em’s devilish ones.

  “I hear someone’s been kissin’ a Hawthorne? Dish, MB!”

  It really was true all the bad press small towns got for gossip. Nothing was sacred.

  Dixie’s head popped up from her Brides magazine, her eyes zeroing in on Marybell. “Ohhh, juicy—share!”

  LaDawn sputtered, setting down the wine bottle she chugged from because she always said using a glass was a waste of dish washing liquid. “You been kissin’ a Hawthorne? Dang. Which one?”

  “Tag!” Em said on a laugh, swirling the red liquid in her tumbler. “She kissed Taggart.”

  “And you know this how, Emmaline Amos?” Dixie asked, closing her magazine.

  Em winked at Marybell. “Because he said as much. And he was smilin’ when he did.”

  Marybell had to fight the urge to run and hide. This was what girlfriends did, Landon had once told her. They shared secrets. They braided each other’s hair, had sleepovers, shopped and stuck their noses in your beeswax.

  Always done with love, but still done. You could say anything to your girlfriend, even if it was something unflattering, but God save the fool outsider if she took it upon herself to insult your BFF.

  She didn’t always understand the mechanics of a close relationship, friendships or otherwise. She’d never had a relationship that lasted much longer than six months before she was moved to a new foster home. It was barely long enough for her to adjust to her new surroundings, let alone forge bonds.

  But Landon had taught her bonds could be forged virtually overnight. He’d taught her that not everyone had one foot holding the door open for her exit, and not everyone betrayed you.

  The girlfriend thing she was still feeling her way around in the dark about.

  If you let just one person in, Marybell, it eases the burden of your own troubles some because then y’all share them. I hope someday, when you decide we’re not all bottom-feeders, you’ll do just that.

  She’d held those words to her heart when she’d taken the leap and decided to move with LaDawn, Cat and the others to Landon’s small hometown instead of staying in Atlanta. He’d prepared them for the kind of snobbery they’d be up against, but he’d also promised them if they moved with the company, there’d always be more love than hate.

  And for the most part, he’d been right. Still, the security and friends he’d given her far outweighed the problems they’d faced in Plum Orchard.

  “Why so quiet, Miss MB?” Cat, so beautiful in her last month of pregnancy, asked. She rubbed her swollen belly and batted her eyelashes.

  So, what to say? It was amazing. I haven’t stopped thinking about it since it happened. It can’t ever happen again because I’m allegedly responsible for the downward spiral his life has taken.

  She wiped her mouth with a paper napkin. How could she keep this girlfriendish enough to keep them happy, but not lead them to believe that kiss had been with her every waking moment? “It was no big deal.”

  Em threw her paper plate away and crossed the room to wrap her arms around Marybell’s neck, giving it a squeeze. “No big deal? It most certainly is a big deal when the woman we know hardly ever even looks at a man. Now, out of the blue, she’s kissin’ one? That’s big where I come from.”

  Marybell patted Em on the arm and gave it a squeeze before untangling herself. “Men don’t really look at me, so why should I look at them?”

  Dixie grinned. “Well, you been doin’ just a little more than lookin’ at Tag, now, haven’t you? So, are you going to see him again?”

  “I’m not really dating.” Brief and to the point.

  “But you are kissin’?” LaDawn snick
ered.

  “It was just a kiss. No big deal.”

  “He made her bologna sandwiches,” Em offered. “In all the months I’ve known Tag, he hasn’t shown a lick of interest in a soul here in the PO, and now he’s makin’ bologna sandwiches for our Marybell like he’s creatin’ the Sistine Chapel with a knife and some mayonaise.”

  She warred with a secret smile of pleasure and her rising discomfort with their teasing. The half of her that had never had anyone give that much thought to making her anything wanted to preen. She wanted to tell them how amazing his kiss was. She wanted to gush and giggle the way they did. She wanted a happy ending just like Em’s and Dixie’s.

  But the other half of her, the half that had to keep this from spinning out of control, just wanted everyone to leave it alone and stop drawing attention to it. She was good at indifference. Really good at it.

  If you didn’t let anyone know how important something was, they couldn’t take it away from you. “I’m not interested. But the bologna sandwich was nice. Now, ladies, I have to get to work. Thanks for the pizza, Dixie. I’ll see you guys later.”

  She ignored the looks her friends passed to each other and wiggled her fingers at them before almost running out of the break room. She stopped at Nella’s desk and gave her the thumbs-up for calls and escaped to her office, shutting the door.

  Putting on her headset, she clicked the on button and waited only a few seconds before her phone began to ring. A glance at her computer screen said the caller was unknown. Since Jax had restructured their entire call system, there was no guessing when it came to who was calling.

  Each call was tagged with a label for recurring callers, regulars, newbs and the undecided. Meaning, either Nella didn’t know what to do with them or their needs were unidentifiable.

  Answering the phones was what had saved her four years ago—being someone else, pretending. She was good at it. She was good at compartmentalizing her feelings on the subject of the art of talking dirty. It was all just words—words she submersed herself in—worlds she created. They weren’t conventional worlds, or appropriate in most minds, but they were hers.