Plum Orchard, Georgia, is about to get even juicier…

Notorious mean girl Dixie Davis is back in town and it’s payback time. Literally. Dixie is flat broke and her best—make that only—friend, Landon, is throwing her a lifeline from the Great Beyond. Dixie stands to inherit his business…if she meets a few conditions:

She’s got to live in Landon’s mansion.

With her gorgeous ex-fiancé, Caine Donovan.

Who could also inherit the business.

Which is a phone sex empire.

Wait, what?

Landon’s will lays it out: whoever gets the most new clients becomes the owner of Call Girls. Dixie has always been in it to win it, especially when it comes to Caine, who’s made it clear he’s not going down easy. (Oh, mercy.) Can Dixie really talk dirty and prove that she’s cleaned up her act? Game on!

Talk Dirty to Me

Dakota Cassidy

www.mirabooks.co.uk

For my agent, whom I lovingly call Agent Fab, Elaine Spencer. You’re a gladiator, my friend. There are no words in the English language to adequately describe how dear I hold the notion that you have always believed.

Also, to the many folks who’ve been involved in making this project a reality:

My editor, Leonore Waldrip—for seeing this one little crazy idea/book in its earliest stages and passing it on. Add to the mix your amazing sense of humor and genius brainstorming, makes you a keeper.

Emily Ohanjanians, your insight, attention to detail, and overall brilliance will forever influence the future words that flow from my fingertips.

An enormous nod to the show Hart Of Dixie, my inspiration for writing Southern fiction. I love every “bless your heart, Lemon Breeland, Lavon Hayes, Annabeth Nass, Zade” moment spent with you each week. If you’re a fan of the show, you’ll know what I mean when I cry, ZADE forever!

To all of my amazing readers—really who else can I count on to talk about anti-inflammatory cream and one’s (ahem) nether regions (all in one whacky conversation that I swear didn’t begin related at all) with me at three in the morning on Facebook but all of you? I treasure our conversations. I hold your thoughts and continued support in the highest regard. Thank you for always being so willing to laugh (and sometimes cry) with me!

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

One

“He looks really good, considering.” Emmaline Amos sniffed, pushing her way past an enormous bouquet of white lilies standing by Landon Wells’s casket at Tate and Son’s Home Of Eternal Rest.

She pulled Dixie Davis with her, away from Landon’s casket and into the privacy of a connecting mourning room where she set Dixie on a couch surrounded by pictures of Landon.

The scent of dark wood paneling, vanilla candles, and Old Spice invaded Dixie’s nose, making her “ugly cry” hangover pulse in her temples with the force of a sledgehammer.

Dixie lifted her sunglasses, thwarting another ambush of tears, so grateful for the opportunity to have had a few moments alone with Landon without the intrusion of the long line of people who’d shown up to pay their last respects.

She muttered up at Em, “Why does everyone always say that, Em? Landon’s dead. There’s nothing good-looking about it. I always thought that was a crude thing to say.”

Em huffed, brushing the brim of her black sun hat, and sat down beside her. She gave her a nudge to make some room. “It’s not crude. I was complimentin’ him. New adjective, please,” she drawled, her Southern lilt like macaroni and cheese to Dixie’s homesick ears. Comfort food for the soul.

“Crass?”

“Crass is harsh, Dixie.”

Landon Wells, her best friend ever, was dead. That was harsh.

Harsher still, Landon’s other best friend, Caine Donovan, was just outside that door.

Don’t forget he’s your ex-fiancé, too.

Right. Dixie started to regret her terse words with Emmaline. She couldn’t afford to alienate the one and only, albeit totally reluctant, ally she had left in her small hometown of Plum Orchard, Georgia.

Maybe what was making her so snappish was exhaustion after the long drive from Chicago. Or the anxiety of returning to said small hometown where everyone knew her name and mostly wanted to throw darts at her picture.

Maybe it was the precariousness of her life in financial semiruin that made her voice what she’d been thinking for almost two hours as mourner after mourner repeated Em’s words while she’d waited for her private viewing of Landon’s body.

Or maybe it was the likelihood that a good portion of the female population of Plum Orchard High, class of 1996, were just outside this very funeral home with metaphoric stakes soaked in the town’s specialty, homemade plum wine, just waiting for Reverend Watson to perform her public exorcism. Then they could seal the deal by driving their angry pieces of wood right through her despicable heart.

It would be nothing less than she deserved.

She’d been a horrible person in high school and beyond, and here in Plum Orchard where time seemed to stand still, no one forgot.

You were horrible long after high school, too, Dixie. To Caine...

Point. Most of her anxiety had to do with the fact that she had no choice but to see Caine Donovan again.

Bingo, Dixie. The thought of seeing him left her feeling fragile and raw.

To this damn day his memory still leaves you breathless.

Acknowledged. Dark, star-filled nights under a scratchy army blanket in the bed of Caine’s pickup truck, the scent of magnolias clinging to their sticky skin. It was just one of many of the images—both good and bad—she’d warred with since her return to Plum Orchard became a reality.

She scrunched her eyes shut before reopening them.

“Sorry,” Em said, dragging her from her internal war. Her blue eyes held sympathy beneath her wide-brimmed hat. “I’m glad they gave you some time alone with Landon before the latecomers swarm in to pay their last respects. I can’t even imagine how much this hurts.” Em squeezed her shoulder with reassuring fingers.

Dixie let out a shaky sigh, hooking her arm through Em’s. “No, I’m the one who’s sorry. I’m tired and on edge, and you’ve been so kind to me through this whole process when I totally don’t deserve—”

“No, you surely do not, Dixie Davis!” Em’s voice rose, then just as quickly reduced to just above a whisper. She peered over her shoulder as though unseen eyes might bear witness to her bad manners. God forbid. “You were a mean girl back in the day. My high school years were torture because of you. And might I remind you, people don’t forget, especially here in little ol’ Plum Orchard. Why, you’re lucky I even picked up the phone during Landon’s last days, knowing it was you I had to talk to on the other end of the line,” she finished on an offended harrumph.

But Dixie knew better than to take Em’s outburst personally. Em was as kind as she was generous, and nothing, not even a faded-around-the-edges grudge, would keep her good heart from beating selflessly.

For all her leftover high school anger with Dixie, Em had called her religiously with updates on Landon’s last days, because he’d asked her to. Em always did what was right. That was just who she was.

Still, Dixie gave her a sheepish glance, and bumped her shoulder playfully to ease the lines of Em’s frown. “This is about the cheerleading squad, isn’t it?”

Em’s arm stiffened. She lifted her chin. “You told me my legs looked like sausages in that stupid cheerleading skirt, so I couldn’t be on the squad. But my split jumps were better ’n Annabelle Pruitt’s, and you knew it.”

True. Every last word of it. She’d been cruel, twenty or so years ago. Yet, comments like that, among the many she’d hurled at Em, obviously crept into a person’s soul and hung around. From the moment she’d seen Em after being gone so long, Dixie had known she’d be met with extreme caution. Maybe some angry outbursts and plenty of tests to see if she really had changed.

So Dixie’s next admission was without hesitation. “I did.”

Dixie let her hand slide down along Emmaline’s arm to thread her fingers through hers, giving them a light squeeze. “I’m not that person anymore, Emmaline. I’m really not. You were right then and now. Your split jumps were at least a hundred feet higher than Annabelle’s. I lied back then out of jealousy. Your legs are long and gorgeous.” They were. Em was undeniably beautiful.

Em ran a self-conscious hand over her bare leg and said, “Don’t you try and flatter me after all this time. Not after I spent four months’ worth of babysitting money on the ThighMaster because of you.”

Dixie winced. “Then, if nothing else, you know, for every mean thing I did to you back then, I hope you’ll remember, the Lord says to forgive is divine.”

“The Lord didn’t go to high school with you.”

“Fair.” Dixie let her chin drop to her chest, noting under the lights of the funeral home, the long curls of her red dye job were fading dismally.

Em’s nostrils flared at the pin Dixie’d effectively poked in her bubble of anger before her rigid posture deflated, and she let out a half chuckle. “Don’t you be nice to me, Dixie Davis. I’m not one hundred percent buyin’ this ‘I’ve changed’ act. You’ve done that bit once before, and we all fell for it ten years ago, remember? Not so fast this time. So just keep your compliments to yourself.” It was obvious Em was trying to keep her resentments in check out of respect for Landon, for which today, Dixie was grateful.

If not for Em, she wouldn’t have been able to speak to Landon the one last time he was still coherent—nor would she have known about a single funeral arrangement. So Dixie nodded in understanding. “No rights allowed.”

The tension around Em’s crimson-colored lips eased some, her expression growing playful. She fingered one of the lilies in a fluted vase on the table near the couch. “And as a by the by, Lesta-Sue and the Mags said they’ll never allow you access to the Plum Orchard Founders Day parade committee, if you were hopin’ to worm back into everyone’s good graces, that is.”

It was a “take that” comment meant to hurt her—to remind Dixie, when she’d been head Magnolia, the town’s decades-old society of women, and a rite of rich Southern girl passage, she’d once used her popularity and status to shun others via the town’s elitist club. Especially Em.

If Lesta-Sue was here already, that meant the rest of the Mags would be here, too. Terrific. Surely, Louella Palmer, Dixie’s head Magnolia predecessor, wasn’t far behind.

Louella hated her, too. In fact, there was a special kind of hate reserved by Louella just for Dixie. Because she’d broken the girlfriend code ten years ago.

Really broken it.

But Dixie nodded again, and this time, if there was such an act, she did it with even less hesitation than the time before. “Lesta-Sue shouldn’t allow me access to a public gas station bathroom after what I did to her. Stealing her high school beau of three long years by offering to let him get to second base with me was a horrible thing to do. So it’s a good thing I’ll be long gone by the time they break out the hot glue gun and crepe paper. I’m not here to stay, Em. I’m just here to say goodbye to Landon.”

The statement tugged at Dixie’s heart. She’d missed home—even if it hadn’t missed her.

Em’s dark brows knitted together while her gloved fingertips fluttered to the pointed collar of her black-belted dress with the flared skirt. “You’re upsetting me, Dixie.”

“How so, Emmaline?”

“You’re still bein’ sweet.”

Dixie flashed her a warm smile. “Aw, thank you.”

“Stop that this instant!” Em insisted. “It’s unsettling. I should hate you just like every woman still left in this town who attended Plum Orchard High does.” She stiffened again, as if her years of piled-up high school hurts caused by Dixie were warring with her naturally forgiving nature.

Em had just wanted to fit in back then, and Dixie’d used it to her advantage at every outlet. She wouldn’t forgive someone for treating her the way she’d treated Em, but if regret counted, she had plenty of that to give.

Dixie shot her another smile full of more gratitude. “Yes, you should hate me. You still can, if you’d like. But I appreciate you, and everythin’ you’ve done. So see? We balance each other out.”

“The only thing that keeps me from shunning you just like the others is I can’t help but feel badly for you, Dixie. I, unlike you, have a conscience. You’ve had a horrible patch. I mean, first we all hear you lost your fancy restaurant—”

“That was almost two years ago, Em.” Two long years, scraping together a pathetic living with the degree she never quite got, and working odd jobs with her limited—really limited work skills.

Em clucked her tongue. “Two years, two days. Does the amount of time since the descent into financial devastation truly matter?”

Dixie had to nod her agreement. It only mattered to her. Her and the investors she’d let down.

“Okay, but then, your best friend, Landon, asks me to keep you—of all people—up to date on his journey to the end, knowing darn well I’d never say no because one, I grew to love him, too, and two, for gracious sake, he was dying. Then that best friend in the whole world of yours, I’m guessin’ your only friend left, dies.”

“You’re a fine human being, Em. I mean that.” Dixie refused to take the bait and let Em get a rise out of her.

Em pushed some more. “Adding to all that misery, there’s Caine Donovan. Your heart must be in an emotional tizzy about seeing him after, what is it now? Ten years...”

Dixie remained stoically silent. About all things failed restaurant and especially all things Caine Donovan.

“You remember him, right? One-time Plum Orchard High heartthrob and all-county track star, now one of Miami’s biggest real-estate moguls... Oh, and the man you claimed to love but bet on like a Derby horse?” Em was dropping a line into Dixie’s ocean with a juicy worm on the end of it to see if she’d rear up and bite.

The bet. God, that damn bet.

But the truth was the truth. Her restaurant had failed because she’d been too busy partying and running up her credit cards to bother with silly things like managing the restaurant she’d convinced herself, with absolutely no experience at all, was as good a place as any to escape her hometown and run away from the horrible thing she’d done to Caine.

Her engagement had failed because at the time, Dixie Davis didn’t know how not to turn everything into a three-ring circus.

And yes, Caine was successful, and she wasn’t.

All ugly truths.

Topping everything off, there’d been Mason—the beginning of her end.

Dixie lifted her sunglasses once more and forced a smile, letting her eyes purposely meet Em’s. “Sorry to disappoint, but there’s no emotional tizzy here. Seeing Caine is part of the process of saying goodbye to our mutual best friend. That’s all. He has as much right as I do. He was Landon’s best friend, too.”

Liar.

She’d practiced those words in her bathroom mirror hundreds of times before she’d left Chicago so they’d come off cordial and, above all, gracious. She’d almost convinced herself this imposed meeting was just that—two people who hadn’t worked out, simply running into each other again and chatting niceties until it was time to go back to their lives.

But seeing Caine meant remembering how madly in love they’d been for a time. It meant hearing his voice, a voice so warm it could probably still make her thighs clench.

If they ended up in a close setting, it meant possibly brushing against his granite wall of a chest or watching him confidently smile while he arrogantly tilted an eyebrow at her. It meant that swell of clawing longing for him rising upward and settling in her chest.

It meant reliving emotions that still ached almost as fresh as the day they’d happened.

No one since Caine had ever touched her quite the same way. Caine Donovan was like a drug, and she was his junkie in need of a Caine Anonymous meeting.

Dixie chose to avoid Em dangling the Caine carrot under her nose. Talking about Caine meant stirring up all the emotions that went with everything that had happened. Today all her turmoil was reserved for Landon and her gratitude toward Em.

That Em had walked this far out on the ledge, offering to come with Dixie to Landon’s funeral in front of all of Plum Orchard’s very prying, judgmental eyes, was more than was her due.

The ache of more tears tickled the back of Dixie’s eyelids. “You know, even though I knew Landon’s death was inevitable, it really is just like everyone says—you can never prepare for it.”

Em waved a hand around the room, chockfull of life-size pictures of Landon doing everything from zip-lining in Alaska over an icy glacier to cooking in Bobby Flay’s kitchen. “Well, if no one else was prepared, this sendoff is a sign Landon was prepared. He knew how he wanted to go out, and he left strict instructions about it. You don’t think his mother arranged those drag queens on stilts outside, do you? The Plum Orchard Bible study ladies nearly fell faint to the ground when they arrived.”

A glimmer of a smile outlined Dixie’s lips, lips still chapped and peeling from her nervous habit of tugging them. “He wasn’t shy, was he?”

“Landon was whatever the antithesis of shy is.”

That Landon had been. Loud and proud. Just thinking about him always made Dixie smile.

Yet, each time she thought she might smile, a new wave of loss washed over her, and it reminded her she’d never smile with Landon again. “I hate that he’s gone.” God, she really hated it. She hated even more the fact that she hadn’t made it back in time to be with him when he’d passed.

Everything had happened so fast, in a blur of urgent phone calls from Landon’s hospice care nurse, Vella, and Em’s updates, to the humiliating decline from American Airlines of her very last credit card.

Em pointed to one of the pictures of Dixie and Landon on a nearby table, her eyes fondly roving it. “He hates it, too. Who wouldn’t hate being dead?” She chuckled, eliciting a laugh from Dixie, too.

Dixie’s shoulders relaxed a little in her ill-fitting jacket. She leaned into Em and said, “Landon’s probably pretty upset he’s missing this.”

Em’s hand strayed to her hair with a bob of her head. “Oh, you know better ’n all of us what Landon Wells was like. He had to have his nose in everything, or it drove him positively crazy. I’m sure wherever he is, he hates missing out on the circus outside these doors. Did you see the gentleman who looks like he just left the set of that movie Coming to America? And bless his heart, all those grief-stricken comments from parts near and far on his Facebook page made me tear up.”

Dixie let slip a fond grin of recollection. “The turnout would have tickled Landon’s ‘come one, come all’ bone,” she agreed, referring to the mass of mourners she’d witnessed on their way inside.

Eclectic defined her best friend, or maybe, he’d defined it? Either way, it was what made Landon Landon. His joy in everything great and small—his wonder at the differences in people, cultures—his determination to experience anything he could get his hands on and celebrate it with gusto. His ability to collect people from all walks of life and turn them into lifelong friends.

Shortly after college, he’d invested his trust fund wisely in several startup internet companies and was a self-made multimillionaire by the time he was twenty-five. Those companies continued to provide steady incomes to this day. And along the way, he’d added new ones—via winning bets on everything from a game of pool with a castoff royal to a polo match with some foreign politician.

Because of his savvy business acumen, Landon was able to retire at twenty-six. Since that time, he’d been to exotic, sometimes isolated locales Dixie’d never heard of, had experienced the gamut of a world traveler, from a pilgrimage in an ashram in India to bobsledding with the Swiss Olympic team.

Landon had lived and loved openly and freely, sharing his wealth wherever he went.

Dixie gripped the edge of the couch, her heart overloaded with the empty beat of grief. She’d miss everything about him: his pushy late-night phone calls about her nonexistent love life, his questions about her financial security, his inquiries into her cholesterol levels, and anything and everything else Landon had pestered/mothered/nurtured her about in their lifelong friendship.

The small room had grown oppressive with her sorrow in the last vestiges of the late August day. She reached into her bag and used one of her many overdue credit card bills to fan herself. “Mercy, it’s hot in here.”

“Are your ears hot, too? Because I hear through the iPhone grapevine Louella Palmer’s in the back row of this very establishment, sittin’ next to Caine, and chewin’ his ear off as we speak. You know, the man you’re not in an emotional tailspin over?” Em showed her the text in yet another obvious bid to take her licks. It only made sense she’d think the subject of Louella Palmer would be the straw to break Dixie’s back.

Everyone in town probably thought the subject of Louella was a sore spot for Dixie. The real sore spot belonged to Louella, though, and she had every right to it.

Louella had once been her right-hand, helping her lead the Mags as if they were the mob—Southern contingency. They’d been frenemies of sorts then, and in the end just before Dixie left town, bitter rivals. Not only was Louella currently the head of the Magnolias, she was almost as good at mob relations as Dixie had been.

On the outside the Mags were refined and decorous, and they considered themselves the epitome of Southern grace and charm, but upon Dixie’s harsh inner reflections these past few years, they were all nothing more than elitist snobs with Southern accents—and she’d been the biggest one of all.

Of course Louella was sitting with Caine. It gave her plenty of time to remind him anew how Dixie was spawned from the loins of the devil.

Caine was already here, too. Dixie’s heart sped up as though someone had revved its engine, but her next words belied the storm brewing in her stomach. “You know what, Em? I hope Louella reminds him just how silly he was to ever get mixed up with the likes of Dixie Davis.”

Take that. She would not bite on the matter of Caine Donovan or Louella Palmer. The whole town had witnessed their messy breakup with Louella smack dab in the middle, and in a town as small as Plum Orchard, people were sure to speculate about their eventual meeting after all these years.

It was only natural—expected even. So why was she so jittery about it?

Because what you did was unforgiveable, Dixie. Then you ran away without so much as an apology.

Em’s expression was astonished, her eyes full of some good ol’ Southern shock. “I can’t believe you’re not biting, Dixie. How can you even be in the same room with him after everythin’ that happened between you?”

“Technically, we’re not in the same room. I’m in here, and he’s out there in the foyer.” Right out there. “And I no longer bite,” she teased, snapping her teeth in jest.

“For two people who were gonna get married and had the biggest breakup Plum Orchard’s ever seen, in the middle of the town’s square to boot, you sure are calm and collected.”

Her spine stiffened. Em just couldn’t seem to choose to love or hate her, and while Dixie recognized it as her due, the reminder of her and Caine’s breakup was still like a knife in the gut almost ten years later.

There’d been rain, and thunder, and shouting, and accusations, and even a small fire and finally, the death of their preordained relationship, left splattered all over the whitewashed wood-stained floor of the gazebo in the town square.

Dixie shivered. She would not revisit that horrific night today.

“I bet your mother’s still crying over all that money wasted on your fancy engagement party. Caine’s mama, too.”

Poke, poke, poke. Dixie knew for a fact her mother, Pearl, was still crying. She’d told her so from her sickbed in Palm Springs when she’d made Dixie promise to pass on her condolences to Landon’s mother. Though, her tears always had crocodile properties to them.

Pearl Davis didn’t cry genuine tears over human beings. She cried over investments lost, bank accounts in the red, and the merging of two prominent Plum Orchard families lost to her all because of Dixie.

And Caine’s mother, Jo-Lynne? She still didn’t speak to Pearl. Regret, sharp and just as vivid as if their breakup had happened only yesterday, left Dixie fighting an outward cringe.

Dixie, Landon and Caine’s mothers were all best friends once—the belles of Plum Orchard’s hierarchy aka the Senior Mags. So it was only natural their three children were virtually weaned from the same bottle. Just over two years older than Dixie, Landon and Caine had been her protectors since birth.

While their mothers had played canasta every Thursday, planned church events at Plum Orchard Baptist, and been a part of every social organization a small town finds imperative to good breeding and proper social connectivity, they’d also planned Dixie would one day marry one of the two boys.

Either one would do as far as Pearl, Jo-Lynne, or Landon’s mother, Charlotte, were concerned. They were all as good as family, the women used to say. That hadn’t quite worked out as planned after Landon confessed to their families he’d only marry Dixie if she had male parts. And Caine’s male parts didn’t interest him in the least.

Caine and Dixie had always known their mothers’ plans were fruitless where Landon was concerned, but as it turned out, the plan wasn’t so far-fetched when Dixie and Caine’s relationship took a turn toward romantic upon their simultaneous returns to Plum Orchard.

“So has Miss Jo-Lynne spoken to Miss Pearl since the ‘incident’ or is there still bad blood after all this time?” Em prodded with a smile.

Dixie shot her eyes upward. “Look, Landon, who knew you weren’t the only busybody in Plum Orchard? Emmaline’s going to carry the torch in your stead,” she teased, warmth in her voice.

Em swatted her with her plastic fan. “Oh, hush, and don’t you worry. There’s still plenty of busy to be had from Landon, Dixie Davis. Plenty.” She shot Dixie a secretive look with her sparkling blue eyes.

The same look she’d given her when Dixie had mentioned the phone call she’d gotten from Landon’s lawyer, insisting she be at the reading of his will.

That phone call still made no sense, and it would definitely hold her up. Her plan all along was to get herself in and out of Landon’s funeral lickety-split because she desperately wanted to avoid running into Caine, and Louella and the Mags, junior or senior.

Avoid running into them like she’d avoid a venereal disease—or hitting a brick wall at full speed, driving a Maserati. A foolish hope, no doubt. She should’ve known Caine wouldn’t miss Landon’s funeral, even if he was living in Miami now. Of course, Caine deserved to pay his last respects to Landon as much as Dixie did. He’d remained one of the best friends Landon had long after she and Caine had fallen out of one another’s good graces.

I will not pretend like neither one of you exist, Dixie-Cup. You’re both my friends. Y’all will always be my friends, and that’s just how it’s gonna be, whether you like it or not. Landon had said those words with a sweet-and-sour delivery after dropping a fond kiss on her forehead.

She’d loosely maintained her friendship with Landon around Caine, as well. After Landon’s refusal to walk on eggshells, he relayed information on Caine’s life and exploits. While Dixie would never admit it, she ate the scraps Landon fed her like a hungry stray dog.

Dixie turned, folding her arms across her chest to find Em with expectant hope in her eyes. “Okay, this is me biting. Care to explain exactly what that ‘plenty of busy to be had’ means? You are Landon’s attorney’s secretary, so you must know something. You’ve been giving me the side eye since I got here yesterday.”

Em’s eyes snapped back toward the doors, connecting the mourning room to Landon’s viewing room. “I’m just a lowly secretary. I know nothing you don’t know.”

Suspicion pricked Dixie’s internal antennae, making her narrow her grainy eyes. “You do know something, Em. My spidey senses are dull from the long drive from Chicago and fraught with grief, so just spit out whatever it is that’s made you so full you’re gonna burst.”

“I assure you, there’s nothing.” Em crossed her heart with two properly gloved fingers, gazing stoically at Dixie. And she didn’t even blink. “Now, I think we should get a move on before we’re thrown outta here for loitering.”

Outside the door buzzed with activity from impatient mourners still waiting to say goodbye.

On a deep breath, Dixie took one last glance at one of her favorite pictures of Landon. One with his sandy brown hair, wide gray eyes and a smile he’d handed out as if he was handing out Halloween candy, Landon epitomized handsome.

Goodbye. How would she ever say goodbye to him?

“If you want to keep avoiding the man who shall remain nameless and absolutely doesn’t put you in an emotional tizzy, you know, Caine—you’d better step up your game. He’s four mourners, one a stripper from Glasgow, away from us in the line just outside that door,” Em whispered low in her ear, holding up her phone to show her the warning text message from Augusta White.

Dixie’s stomach dived toward the floor, twisting and swirling as it went. The temptation to take just one quick glance at Caine when they walked through those doors made her twitch.

Don’t you dare look, Dixie. Do not. Her curious eyes would not betray her by peeking to locate his face in the crowd. His delicious, handsome, chiseled face.

No. She wouldn’t allow it. She soothed herself with the idea that it had been close to ten years since she’d last seen him. He was almost thirty-eight now. Maybe he had a paunch and a bald spot.

It could happen. Early senior onset or something.

“Dixie, c’mon now. Let’s go,” Em urged with a squeeze of her hand.

With one last glance of Landon’s smiling face, she picked up the photo and whispered, “Please, please remember this—wherever you are.” Dixie closed her eyes and recited the words they’d used before they hung up after every single phone call, before every goodbye they’d ever shared. “I love you like I love my own spleen.”

That’s a whole lotta love, Dixie Davis, he’d say on a hearty chuckle. Landon’s all-too-familiar response to her decades-old declaration of love echoed in her head, leaving her fighting back another raw sob.

Landon Wells—protector of all things defenseless, smart, rich and the best friend any girl could ever have was dead after a short, but incredibly painful bout with pancreatic cancer.

Everything was bad right now. The world was dull and pointless. The future was cloudy with a chance of lonely. Tears fell from her eyes, making her shoulders shudder uncontrollably.

“Oh, Dixie,” Em whispered into her hair, wrapping an arm around her waist in a show of undeserved sympathy. “He’d hate you crying like this almost as much as he hates bein’ dead, and you know it.”

Dixie’s throat closed and her shoulders shuddered, making Em grip her waist harder. “Stop this right now, Dixie Davis. We have an afterlife party to attend. Landon planned it all out. Rumor has it, Bobby Flay’s gonna be there. You don’t want to miss bacon-wrapped sliders made personally by Bobby Flay, do you?”

Em’s words made Dixie set the photo down and take a deep breath, preparing herself to face the crowd outside. She was right. Landon would hate her grief as much as he’d hated the pity showered upon him when he’d first been diagnosed. He’d told her to live, and while she did all that living, he wanted her to love again.

Someone, he’d said into the phone during their last phone call, his husky voice deep and demanding in her ear even in the last throes of his illness. Love someone until it hurts, Dixie-Cup. And for everyone’s sake, don’t cry over my lifeless body. You’re an ugly crier, girlie.

A deep, shuddering breath later and she turned her swollen eyes to Em’s compassionate gaze. “You’re right. He’d hate to see me cry.”

When Em propped open the door to the viewing room, Dixie stumbled, forcing Em to tighten her grip around her shoulders. “You and your love of astronomically high heels. You’ll break an ankle someday, Dixie.”

But it wasn’t her heels that made Dixie stumble. It wasn’t the endless rows of heads that shot up as they stepped into the chapel to join the mourners, skeptically eyeing their first glimpse of the Horrible Dixie Davis after so many years gone by.

It was Caine Donovan and the momentary eye contact they made as Em pulled her away and down the seemingly endless candlelit aisle of the funeral home. The electric connection his deep blue eyes made with hers snapped and sizzled, sending blistering rushes of heat through her veins.

It was everything and nothing in one short glance, hot and sweet, dismissive and breathtaking. Her heartfelt prayer he’d developed a paunch and had lost all that luscious chocolate-brown hair had gone unnoticed by whoever was in charge of aging.

He stood beside a smug yet pretty, Louella Palmer, wearing a conservative black sundress and matching sun hat, her blond hair sweeping from beneath it. As Dixie and Em moved toward them, Louella’s fingers slipped possessively into the crook of Caine’s arm just as she turned her pert little nose up at them.

A reminder to Dixie she’d once broken the mean girl’s girlfriend code.

Job well done.

“Ladies,” Caine said with an arrogant nod and an impeccably unmistakable impression of Sean Connery. Em whisked Dixie past him so fast she had to run to keep up.

But she hadn’t missed the subtext of his Sean Connery impersonation. Caine had once used that accent, and his uncanny ability to mimic almost anyone’s voice, on more than one intimate occasion. His knowledge of just what a Scottish accent did to her naked flesh was extensive—and he was lobbing it in her face.

Perfect.

Em twittered in girlish delight, bright stains of red slashing her cheeks. “Oh, that man,” she gushed, holding firm to Dixie so she wouldn’t divert off their course to bacon-wrapped sliders. “He’s so delicious. I can’t believe he didn’t take that gift and use it to make big money in Hollywood or somethin’.”

Dixie flapped a hand at her to interrupt. “I know. He’s so dreamy when he does his Sean Connery impression.” And Frank Sinatra, and Jack Nicholson, and Brando, and even Mae West. Caine’s ability to impersonate not only movie stars but almost any stranger’s voice was something they’d once laughed over.

Dizziness swept over Dixie like a soggy blanket, clinging to her skin. But Em kept her moving to the end of the aisle and out the door. “Yes. That. All that dreamy handsome, well, it’s dang hard to hate.” Em’s face was sheepish when they finally stepped outside into the hot August day.

The darkening sky hung as heavy as her heart. Spanish moss dripped from the oak tree above them, drifting to the ground.

Em crumpled some with her conservative black pumps. “Sorry. He’s just such an honorable man. He makes despisin’ him akin to killing cute puppies. Forgive me?”

Dixie gave her a small smile of encouragement, moving toward the parking lot on still-shaky knees. “I’ll forgive you, but only if you call him a mean name in feminine-solidarity. It’s the only way to atone.”

Em pressed her key fob, popping open the locks on her Jeep. She looked over the top of the shiny red car at Dixie who stood on the passenger side and put her hands on either side of her mouth to whisper, “He’s the shittiest-shit that ever lived. Shittier than Attila the Hun and Charlie Manson on a team cannibalistic virgin-killin’ spree.” She curtsied, spreading her black dress out behind her. “Forgiven?”

Dixie smiled and let loose a snort, adjusting the belt of her jacket to let it fall open in order to cool off, if that was possible in the last days of a Georgia August. “Done deal.”

Em winked at her. “Good, right?”

With a deep breath, Dixie let go of the restrictive tension in her chest. “You’re a good human being, Em. Right down to the cannibals and virgins.” Dixie paused, letting their light banter feed her soul.

It was okay to laugh. Landon would have wanted her to laugh. She tapped the roof of the car with a determined flat palm. “All right, c’mon. Let’s get to this shindig before I have to go to the reading of Landon’s will. I really hope you weren’t kidding earlier about the bacon.”

Dixie slipped into the car, taking one last glance of the funeral home in the side-view mirror where her last true friend in the world was housed. Her mentor, her shoulder to cry on, her life raft when everything had gone so sideways.

And then Caine stepped off the curb and into view—his tall, hard frame in the forefront of gloomy clouds pushing their way across the blazing hot sun.

Whether she’d admit it or not, Dixie watched Caine get smaller and smaller in the distance against the purple-blue sky until he was gone completely from her grainy-eyed vision.

Déjà vu.

Two

“Phone sex. You mean like—” Dixie dropped her voice an octave “—‘Hello, this is Mistress Leather’ phone-sex?”

“Correct, Ms. Davis. Phone sex. The act of engaging in verbal fornication.”

Dixie took a moment to process the entirety of the phrases “phone sex” and “verbal fornication” and what that entailed, but it was proving difficult. After so many sliders, she thought maybe not just her arteries were clogged, but her brain cells, too.

Yet, she tried to let the words of Landon’s attorney sink in as casually as if he’d told her she was now the proud owner of one of Landon’s classic cars.

So Landon Wells, the man Dixie was sure she knew everything about, right down to his preferred brand of underwear, owned, among various other assorted businesses, a phone-sex company he’d won on a bet in a high-stakes poker game in Uzbekistan back in 2002.

Dixie tore her eyes from Landon’s lawyer, Hank Cotton, Sr., and cocked her head in Em’s direction, her eyes full of accusation while purposely avoiding the invasive gaze of Caine Donovan.

He’d remained brooding and silent while Hank read the will, but Dixie knew Caine like she knew herself. He was just waiting for the right moment to pounce on her with his cutting words.

Dixie chose to ignore Caine, turning to Em who’d known the whole time what Landon was up to. This was what her code-speak had been about back at the funeral home, and she’d held her tongue.

Em, from her seat beside Landon’s lawyer where she flipped papers for him to read, folded her hands primly in her lap and made a face at Dixie. “Oh, stop lookin’ at me like I’m Freddy Krueger. Might I mention, I am a legal secretary for heaven’s sake, Dixie. I couldn’t tell you. So I’m callin’ the cloak of—”

“Client confidentiality,” Dixie finished for her, lacing her words with bold strokes of sarcasm. “I know you’re the last person I deserve common decency from, but at the very least, I expected more originality, Emmaline Amos. Something like, all memory of Landon’s recently revised will was snatched from you by aliens, and no way in the world would you have kept this kind of shocking news from me as yet another form of payback had those despicable aliens not sucked your brains out through your nose with a pixie stick.”

Em shook her head, her silky dark hair semiflattened by the sun hat she’d discarded. Her ruby-red lips curved into a wince of an apologetic smile. “Mmm-hmm. You know, I almost went with that story, but then there were all the complications that come with the pixie sticks, and I just couldn’t get it to...gel.” She threaded her slim fingers together to articulate her effort to gel, then let them fall back to her lap.

Caine sat in the corner, still silently sexy, his gaze burning a hole in the side of Dixie’s head. As if this was all her fault. If the world came to a screeching halt, just before it did, the last words she’d hear before it all ended would be Caine declaring it was all Dixie Davis’s fault.

Gritting her teeth, Dixie clenched her hands together in her lap to cover the bloat from the Alaskan king crab and sliders they’d consumed and lifted her chin. “I call traitor. You were traitorous in your intent. It isn’t like I don’t deserve as much, but this?” Phone sex wasn’t something you kept from someone—not even Satan.

Em pouted, her heart-shaped face scrunching comically. “That’s mean, Dixie, especially coming from you. And just when I thought you’d taken a turn, too. See why I was so hesitant to believe? I was just doin’ my job. I do have children to feed. And a very large dog.”

“Did you just say Dixie’s taken a turn, Em? A turn for what?” Caine finally inquired with that delicious drawl, his growly voice warranting an unbidden stab of heat in places along her body Dixie had to mentally beg to pipe down. His square jaw shifted, going hard as his lips turned upward into a smug smile. “Satanic worship?”

If there was one person who could make her reconsider sidekicking it with Satan, it was Caine Donovan, making her heart race like a Kentucky Derby horse all while she hated him for still being capable of wreaking havoc on her emotions after ten years apart.

Instead of reacting to him, Dixie turned the other cheek, narrowing her eyes at Em. While it was true Em should have no loyalty to her, she couldn’t help being upset. “Is it your job to taunt me, too? Because that’s exactly what you did back there at the funeral home. You hinted. You bandied, and you took pleasure in it to boot.”

Em slapped her hands on her lap, sending up a cloud of black material from her dress. “Bandied? That’s a fancy Chicago word there, Miss Dixie, and I did not taunt. I was just tryin’ to prepare you in a very roundabout, non-confidentiality-breaking way for—for this...And of course I was dying to tell not just you, but everyone in Plum Orchard. It’s the most scandalous news ever. I can’t wait to see what the senior Mags have to say about this. But in the end, I couldn’t betray our client.”

Hank’s nod from behind his glossy desk was of staunch approval. “That’s true, Ms. Davis. We take our clients’ confidentiality very seriously.”

Em’s head bounced again. “We definitely do. That also means I couldn’t tell you lots of things until the reading of the will. As a for-instance, a small village in some east African town I can’t pronounce will now reap the benefits of books, teachers, and medical care because of Landon.”

“Africa isn’t phone sex, Em,” Dixie reminded.

“Then guess what? Landon owned one of the most successful phone-sex companies in the world, and he left it all to you and Mr. Smexy. You know, with conditions. Surprise!” She smiled and winked at Caine aka Mr. Smexy, who was back to sitting stoically in his corner chair.

He’d surprised Dixie when he’d shown up—surprised her and made her blood pressure pulse in her ears. Em had explained Landon’s request Caine be present for the reading of the will, too. Something she’d also failed to mention while she was bandying and taunting.

Dixie shifted in her chair, still absorbing what she’d just heard. Forcing her lips to form a question, her eyes sought Hank Cotton’s again. “So just to be clear, when you say Landon had a phone-sex company, you don’t really mean, ‘Oh, Daddy, do it to me one more time’ kind of phone sex, do you, Mr. Cotton?” Did he?

No. That couldn’t be what he meant. Yet what other kind of phone sex was there but the kind with ball-gags and chains and furry costumes? The palms of her hands grew clammy.

“Say that again, Dixie—just like that.” Caine antagonized, drawing out his words. “All that honey pouring from your throat, husky and full of rasp is hot. It’s a voice made for sinning. The only thing missing is your accent. Where did that go, Miss Chicago?”

The words he spoke were designed to hurt. Dixie knew he was taking pleasure in seeing the red stain of embarrassment flush her cheeks.

Deeper and deeper Caine shoved the knife of their memories into her chest.

Landon’s lawyer, someone who hadn’t been a resident in Plum Orchard when she’d left, sharply dressed in a dark suit and red tie, winced then straightened in his chair as though he realized control was needed.

He cleared his throat, breaking the awkward silence in his overly warm office. “I’d like to get back to the business at hand. So yes, in fact, I do mean that, Miss Davis. And it’s very successful, lucrative phone sex, I might add. After Landon won the company, he turned a sagging Call Girls into a multimillion-dollar corporation.”

A thought dawned on her just then, making Dixie relax into her hard seat. She nodded her head in sudden understanding. A nervous snort slipped from her throat. “This was Landon’s idea of a joke, right? He told me before he died—” she puffed out her chest in Landon fashion “‘—Dixie-Cup, don’t you weep and wail long now, ya hear?’ If you knew Landon, you’d know he’d go to any extreme to cheer me up.”

Even from the afterlife. Where she totally planned to, when time and hiring a psychic to locate him allowed, hunt him down and kill him all over again for mocking her this way.

Hank shook his head with a firm sideways motion, his perfectly groomed, salt-and-pepper hair never moving.

His vehement nod meant a resounding no. Not a joke.

Hank leaned back in his plush leather chair and folded his slender fingers. “This is no joke, Ms. Davis. Landon Wells was very specific and quite detailed in his last wishes. He was the sole owner of Call Girls, and he hoped to pass that on to either you or Mr. Donovan in order to keep it in the family, so to speak. Clearly, his mother, Charlotte, wasn’t an option. That left the two of you, his closest friends. And I warn you there’s more to this. The will states that if you and Mr. Donovan wish to benefit from the entirety of the proceeds of his very unusual venture, both of you will have to earn it.”

Dixie looked away from Hank for a moment, focusing on an abstract painting on the far wall, full of slashes of color and streaked with gold edges. The tumble of emotions displayed in oil reflected her muddled thoughts. “Earn it? We have to earn a phone-sex company? Meaning?”

“Meaning you’ll both have to work the phones at Call Girls as operators. In essence, you’ll be Call Girls employees for a two-month period with a general manager to train you, and watch your progress. As another stipulation, if you should decide to take on this challenge, you must both reside in Landon’s house while you do—together or the offer becomes null. Landon had phone lines set up for you both at the guesthouse next to the other women he’s employed. They’re to help both you and Mr. Donovan learn the ropes of the industry, so to speak.”

Em’s finger shot upward. Clearly, there was something in this madness Em hadn’t been privy to. “Do you mean to tell me Landon’s plan is to keep the business and those women in his guesthouse here in Plum Orchard for good?” She grabbed a stray file folder and began to furiously fan herself with it. “What will Reverend Watson say? Oh, the ladies of the Magnolias of the Orchard Society will not like this. Not one bit.”

Dixie actually had to fight a giggle at the thought of the Mags, especially Nanette Pruitt’s face, the busiest busybody of them all, when she heard the news that Landon Wells planned to harbor harlots in what everyone in town, as far back as she could remember, lovingly called the “Big House.”

“I’m the only person who knew the complexities of Landon’s will, and the people asked to help him execute it. No one in Plum Orchard knows the extent of it yet. Leastways, I haven’t heard anything through the grapevine,” Hank soothed. “But yes, that was his intent. After finding out he was terminally ill, Landon had his general manager, Catherine Butler, begin the move—they only left their old offices a couple of days ago. Landon wanted the ladies of Call Girls moved from a lush apartment in Atlanta into his guesthouse, where he had Catherine set up operations in order to keep what he called ‘his girls’ closer to home. As Emmaline may have told you, Catherine’s now happily engaged to Emmaline’s cousin, Flynn McGrady.”

Em’s eyes widened, her hand immediately drifting to her cheek. “Cat knew Landon planned to keep Call Girls here?” She turned her gaze to Dixie. “Why, the two of them were just over for Sunday dinner at Mama’s and not a peep about it!”

“Catherine was bound by legalities to remain silent until the will was read,” Hank reminded Em. “I hope you won’t hold it against her.”

Dixie nodded her understanding and gave a tired sigh. “I don’t know about Em, but I don’t blame her. How do you say, ‘I manage a phone-sex company, pass the fried chicken, please?’ Especially with your mama in the mix, Em.”

Em’s mother, Clora Mitchell, was a lot like her own mother. Controlling, and angry about something that had no label. Dixie handled her situation by running away from it, and Em handled it by taking exhaustive good-girl measures. In her later years, Clora had loosened her stranglehold on Em a bit, but she was still as proper as they came. Clora’d faint dead with the knowledge she was related, even loosely, to someone working for a phone-sex company.

Hank cleared his throat. “We were talking about the guesthouse. That’s where Dixie and Caine, if they choose to accept this challenge, will work during the course of their training. All of the appropriate permits are in place, and there’s a formal letter to Reverend Watson and Mayor Hale available should there be any doubt this is all done within the confines of not just county regulations but state, too.”

Caine, who’d gone back to quietly brooding, cleared his throat and steepled his tanned hands under his chin. Dixie knew that look. It was the one where all the processing of pertinent information was done, and he was ready to play.

In three, two, one...

* * *

Caine fought to keep his voice even while trying to ignore Dixie and her gravitational pull. He was still damn angry with her. As angry as he had been the day they’d broken up, and that made him angrier. After all this time, Dixie still had the power to make him feel something he didn’t want to feel.

“So let me get this straight. Landon left everything to Ms. Davis and I, but only if we actually work at Call Girls and live in his mansion together?”

Em coughed to disguise her laugh before pressing her fist to her lips to suppress another outburst.

Hank locked eyes with Caine, steady and sharp. “Yes. That’s correct, Mr. Donovan. You each have two months to create your personas as phone-sex operators, and your, um...specialty, so to speak. Whoever garners the most calls at the end of the two-month time period wins the company. Full ownership. I have a list of what exactly specialty means in the phone-sex industry, and some other details to be hashed out, but that’s the laymen’s gist of it. You’ll have full access to the house and staff, but I warn you, Landon left strict instructions that a court-appointed mediator will monitor your actions, so in his words, there’ll be no funny business. Your reputations for one-upmanship precede you both.”

Son of a bitch. Landon had covered every base, hadn’t he? Especially the base that kept him and Dixie from finding a way that led to the other’s demise.

If there was a way to manipulate herself as the frontrunner in anything, from a sack race to a hot-dog-eating contest, Dixie would do it, and like the ass he was, he’d take the bait.

You knew us well, friend.

But why had he done this? In this particular way? Putting them together in the big house? The house where there were a million memories of them as a couple. Why had he put them together for an extended period of time anywhere? Landon had known how dark those days after he and Dixie broke up had been for him. This contest was like rubbing salt in a bloody gash. Putting the two of them together after their shitty history was diabolical and possibly even homicidal.

No way he’d survive being around Dixie for an extended period of time. He wasn’t proud of admitting that, but it was the damn truth.

But wait. Caine finally smiled. The bastard was messing with them even from the grave. Damn, he loved Landon and his balls-to-the-wall sense of humor—even in death, he was busting their chops.

Dixie might have fallen for this act Em and Hank were putting on, but he wasn’t. He barked an openmouthed laugh at the thought. “Hah! You son of a bitch, Landon,” he said into the room. “Best prank ever, pal. This one even gives Dixie a run for her money. And great job, Hank. Really. You should consider Hollywood. So let’s get to why we’re really here. Did he just want someone to witness his last prank? Wait, did he have you videotape this?” Caine craned his neck to scan the room for a camera. “This will end up on YouTube, won’t it?” He laughed again.

And then he pulled up short.

Hank gazed intently at Caine.

Shit. He wasn’t blinking. They were screwed.

“Mr. Wells said you might say something like this. I’m not sure you really understand me, Mr. Donovan. I repeat, this is no prank. If you wish to review Landon’s will with the attorney of your choosing, I’m happy to oblige.”

In his mind, he’d been busy sending Dixie back to Chicago where she belonged. Shipping Dixie and all the memories that came with her far away. Taking with her the dark circles under her eyes and the worry in her voice. Leaving. So he could do what he’d intended to do when he came back for the funeral. Stay a while. Catch his breath. Reevaluate where his life in Miami was going, or rather, wasn’t going.

There was something missing from it these days. Something big. Something important. He wanted to know what that something was.

But now, he was back in the room with them all, hearing words like Landon figured he’d think this was all some joke. Which meant it was no joke.

Damn, Landon.

Dixie leaned forward, her beautiful face masked in more apprehension, and it made his chest tight, despite his wish that he could ignore it. She was thinner, almost fragile, maybe. Something she’d never been, but it wasn’t just physically. It was in her posture, once straight and confidently arrogant, now a little slumped.

Shit.

Don’t get sucked in, buddy. Don’t you damn well do it. You know what it’s like when she wants something. She could out-act Meryl Streep on an Academy Award–winning day if it meant she’d get what she wanted. Or have you forgotten all those tears she cried when you broke off your engagement? They looked damn real, pal. She’s good. Too good.

Caine shifted in his chair and forced himself to ignore any and all signs Dixie was suffering any more than he was over Landon’s death—or suffering over anything at all.

But there it was again, her voice a little small, a little hoarse when she asked, “What if I don’t have an attorney because they cost money, ridiculous money, no disrespect to you—” She gave Hank an apologetic wave of her hand “—and there’s no possible way I can afford to have someone review this? What if, as utterly shocking as I’m sure this will be for some, I don’t want to work at Call Girls?”

Dixie didn’t have any money? Bullshit. He’d heard about her closing her restaurant, but she came from one of the richest families in the South. She’d just ask her mother for more. Wasn’t that what all women like Dixie did? There was a game here. Caine just didn’t know what it was.

Hank’s expression didn’t budge when he gazed at Dixie. “If you don’t want to participate, then you forfeit your ownership to Mr. Donovan, and he owns Call Girls and the profits from such in its entirety.”

Aha.

Those words, so calm, so beautifully articulated tripped all the triggers Caine suspected Landon had counted on. He and Dixie in a hand-to-hand combat situation where, if it killed one of them, they’d do almost anything to win.

As it once was, it always would be.

Now he got it.

Dixie slipped to the edge of her chair, drawing Caine’s eyes to her legs. He snapped them shut and instead listened to her ask, “So he gets everything if I decide to bail because I’m not game to pretend I’m Mistress Leather?”

“Mercy,” Em muttered, letting her head drop to her chest, kicking up the momentum of her makeshift fan a notch.

Hank rolled his tongue along the inside of his cheek. “That’s correct. And Landon suggested you use the title Lady. I believe—” he shuffled through more papers on his desk, tapping one before putting his glasses on “—yes. There it is in my notes. Landon thought Lady Lana would suit you, Ms. Davis. My notes here say he thought it was the perfect name for someone with ‘a voice meant for sinning’.” Hank slid his thin index finger into the collar of his Brooks Brothers shirt, loosening it to clear his throat.

Caine smirked, looking directly at Dixie. Lady Lana. Nice, Landon.

Yet, his victory was short-lived. First, when he remembered, even after their ugly breakup, Landon had kept their friendships on equal footing for the near decade they’d refused to speak to one another. Second, when he saw Dixie’s pretty eyes finally spark, he knew he was in for it, too.

In the name of fair, Landon wouldn’t play favorites.

“Really,” Dixie drawled, her Southern lilt reappearing. She leaned forward toward Hank, her gaze captivating his, her body language, a glowing halo of sexy. Just like the old Dixie.

Caine relaxed a little. Nothing had changed. It was just another ploy.

She let her eyelashes flutter to her cheeks in that coy way that made his pulse thrash. “And did Landon have a name all picked out for Mr. Donovan, too? It would only be fair.” She smiled at Hank—the smile that was both flirtatious and subtle, one she’d used often to get almost anything she wanted back in high school. One she’d used on him.

One you fell for, dummy.

Caine eyed Hank’s reaction, at first taken aback. Really, who wasn’t when Dixie poured on the charm? But it was only a momentary lapse before he read her playful tone. “How well you knew him. In fact, he did, Ms. Davis.”

Caine gritted his teeth, bracing himself. Damn you, Landon. I hope you’re getting your pound of flesh up there.

Dixie cocked her eyebrow upward in smug anticipation. “You have Mistress Leather’s full attention,” she cooed, using her husky-honey voice to encourage Hank to spill. She swung her crossed leg and waited, smoothing her hand down along her calf to her ankle before pointing her toes.

Jesus.

Hank looked to Caine. “Landon’s suggestion was Candy Cane, with a play on Caine, but he was also partial to Boom-Boom LaRue.”

How do ya like that for some boom, Boom-Boom?

Three

Caine gripped the arms of his uncomfortable chair. Damn her, after ten years, for not only still being so sexy it made his teeth grind together, but for possessing the ability to suck any man—even staid Hank Cotton, into her vortex of charm.

Boom-Boom. The hell, Landon?

Why wasn’t he getting the hell up, forfeiting everything to Dixie, and going back home to Miami? He could reevaluate his life anywhere in the world. It didn’t have to be here. He didn’t need the money. He didn’t want the money. He wanted Dixie to go home and Landon alive so he could take him back out.

Worse, why was she still stirring things up in him better left unstirred? Just the brief glimpse of her with Em today at the funeral home dragged him right back to their short but tumultuous engagement.

When they’d both come home ten years ago, and she no longer felt like his kid sister, their constant sibling antagonism turned to something much bigger than he’d ever thought possible. When he’d stupidly believed Dixie wasn’t the reckless, cruel, entitled kid he’d left behind.

He mentally dug in his heels while she sat in her chair, daring him with her flashing eyes to come play the game. Not a chance she was going to sucker him again. Which brought him back to the same thought as he watched Dixie watch him. Why wasn’t he hauling ass outta here?

“What’s the matter, Caine Donovan? Are you afraid I’ll beat you just like I did when you bet I couldn’t spit watermelon seeds farther than you?” Dixie pointed to her pink-lipsticked lips, full and pouty-smug. “That’s right—this mouth beat you by almost eight inches.”

Caine made a fist of his hand, flexing and unflexing the tense muscles to keep her from seeing she was getting under his skin. “Your mouth was as deceptive as the rest of you. And you stood on a chair, Dixie. Hardly fair.”

Dixie tilted her chin toward her shoulder, letting it nestle in her long red hair, gifting him that smoldering eye thing she used to do, knowing damn well it made him crazy. “Why, where in the rules for watermelon seed spittin’ did it say I couldn’t use a chair, Caine?”

Caine’s jaw tightened to a hard line, shifting and grinding. Resist. “I don’t need Landon’s phone-sex company, or the money it makes. No matter how much.”

No amount of money was worth being around Dixie again. No amount of money was worth the constant reminder that he was an asshole who couldn’t tell the difference between the real thing, and the fake Dixie thing.

Yet. Here you sit.

* * *

Dixie rose to her feet, hurling her large handbag over her shoulder. That settled that. “Good for you, Richie Rich. Unfortunately, I do.” Wow, did she. After her drive here to Plum Orchard, her checking account was nothing but the kind of change you find in the cushions of your couch.

She needed the money. But did she need it enough to become a phone-sex operator?

Weren’t you the one organizing an ad for your kidneys on Craigslist just three short hours ago?

But what if she didn’t want to play Mistress Leather to dirty old men and oversexed college boys as a way to get herself out of this mess?

What if? What if you want to live the rest of your life never making the things you’ve done wrong right? What if you just sweep it under the carpet like you’ve always done? What if you just skip this part, the hard part, and fix something else you’ve broken instead? Something smaller, less difficult, maybe?

No. She didn’t have to do this. She could skulk back off to Chicago and continue to lick her wounds in her studio apartment with the peeling pink paint, a stove that had only one working burner, a shower that dripped exactly two drops of water per minute, and a punk neighbor who sold pharmaceuticals for someone named Dime.

She absolutely could go right back to living just barely above the poverty level while she tried desperately to pay back money she’d charmed out of her mother’s connections. Money she’d promised to handle with care—promised in the way the old Dixie promised everything. Loosely—offhandedly—with little regard for anything but what she wanted.

No. This was a way to finally do something because it was right.

Still, the more she played with the idea in her mind, the easier it was becoming to convince herself she could do this.

If getting back on her feet meant spanking a chair with a fly swatter for effect while she whispered the words, “You must be punished for disobeying me,” into a phone, she’d do it. It was either that or starve at this point. Food won. Food and a warm place for Mona and Lisa, her twin bulldogs to sleep. “So, it’s settled? I win. You lose. Where do I sign, Hank?”

Hank gave Dixie another “Hank look” translating to “not so fast.” “Let’s not be hasty. You have twenty-four hours to think about it, Ms. Davis. Mr. Donovan, too. Landon insisted upon a waiting period of sorts. In the meantime, Landon has offered his house and staff at your full disposal—to the both of you—while you mull this opportunity over. He wanted you both to be comfortable while you considered his offer.”

She’d already had two years of broke since her restaurant had gone bust. Why waste time? Dixie shot her hand upward to avoid more naysaying. “I don’t even need twenty-four seconds. I’m in. Pass the pen.”

But Hank shook his head. “I’m sorry. Landon insisted that you both take the time to thoroughly think this through and get your affairs in order. He knew the two of you well, Miss Davis. His notes, and there were many, many notes—” Hank held up a stack of paper “—claim, on occasion, you’re quick to jump before you think. Especially if it comes to any sort of competition with—”

“With me,” Caine interjected with confidence, quite obviously pleased with himself.

Hank’s lips pursed at Caine’s interruption. He held up the ream of paper again and pointed to it with a short-clipped nail. “Yes. Landon did say that, but Ms. Davis wasn’t the only one he left remarks about. He also mentioned you’re quite easily baited by—” he looked down at the paper, shifting his glasses “—the lovely and irresistible Miss Davis. His words, right here.” He tapped the mountain of white again.

Dixie shot Caine a triumphant gaze. If there were notes to be had, she was grateful she wasn’t the only one worth noting.

Caine’s fingers flexed and cracked, signaling his legendary simmer.

“Thus,” Hank continued, “he asked that you both take a hard look at his proposition. Landon was quite aware you both have lives and jobs elsewhere.”

Well, one of them did.

“So please, each of you use the maximum time given, and we’ll meet back here tomorrow at six with your decisions. Now, Landon had all the locks changed on the big house just prior to his death. I’ll go get the set of keys he had made for each of you so you can settle in after such an emotionally trying day.” Hank rose, whisking out of the office on expensively clad feet, quite obviously relieved to get away from Landon’s tawdry business dealings.

Em rushed to stand next to Dixie, peering down at her with an expression of guilt. “Before you rush to callin’ me a traitor, yes, I was the one who had the keys made and called the locksmith to change the locks. But I maintain, I only knew Landon owned a phone-sex company and he was leaving it to you two to fight over. I thought Cat and the girls were going to show you the ropes temporarily. He left me a beautiful letter to thank me for facilitatin’ his...his passin’, but there was nothing about keeping Call Girls here permanently.”

Dixie’s smile was as ironic as her tired nod. She patted Em’s hand. “You don’t owe me an explanation, and either way, I’m not staying at the big house.” Not with Caine. Not knowing he’d sleep in one of the eight or so bedrooms—naked. He always slept naked.

A fleeting visual of his wide chest with a sprinkling of dark hair and thickly muscled thighs spread wide to reveal his most intimate body part shuttled through her mind’s eye unbidden. Dixie bit back an uncomfortable groan.

“But the big house is so nice with every luxury available. Butlers and maids and a full-time chef,” Em said, as though all those things in a gloriously opulent setting would make it easier to answer to the name Mistress Leather. “And bidets. He has bidets. Who can resist a bidet?”

Dixie pulled her purse closer to her side, running her fingers over the surface. She knew everything Landon had. Scratch that. Almost everything. “Yes, I know Landon has a bidet, and a slide in the pool, and a screening room, and a camel named Toe he couldn’t bear to part with when he left Turkey so he hired a zookeeper to care for him at the big house. He told everyone all the time what he had. I’m not interested in his possessions—just the predicament he’s left me in.”

Dixie breathed deeply, pushing air in and out of her lungs to assuage her anxiety. “I don’t want to stay at Landon’s, and I don’t care about the chef.”

“You just care about the money, right, Dixie?” Caine interrupted, rising from his chair to saunter with liquid grace toward them. As confident as ever, he’d added a dash more smug to his repertoire.

Nice. Veiled innuendo.

Fine. She deserved all of the mud he could sling.

As she turned to look him directly in the eye for the first time in almost a decade, Dixie mentally reminded herself to stand strong and fight the bone-deep lust that never failed to consume her whenever Caine was in close proximity.

The way he moved with the sensual grace of a panther, the light bronze of his skin beneath his white shirt and navy suit, the ripple of his thighs, pushing against his trousers, still affected her.

But resist she would. Not an easy hurdle to jump when he moved in even closer and gazed down at her, waiting.

No. He wasn’t waiting. He was laying down a dare in much the way she had earlier, but his wasn’t based on desperation. It was steeped in anger.

Automatically, Dixie’s chin lifted, her pride raising both metaphoric fists to the sky even as a wave of shivers covered her arms and the back of her neck. “Don’t be coy about it, Boom-Boom. If you want to insult me then do it, but do it well. I’m not ashamed to say I need a job. So what?”

“And you’re willing to call men you don’t know ‘Daddy’ for employment?”

Her cheeks went hot, but her mouth flew open. “You’re just shy of accusing me of hooking for cash, aren’t you?”

Caine’s dark eyebrow rose while he jingled coins in his pocket. “Oh, I’m not shy, sweetheart,” he reminded her.

She swallowed hard, the room growing oppressive. No. Neither of them had been shy. Their chemistry was what legends were made of. Hot, sticky, soul-baring legends. Her legs wound around him while he drove into her with forceful thrusts until she screamed, was the hottest, rawest sex she’d ever had. Everything—everyone since was just lukewarm.

She forced that to the back of her mind. “Well, I’m not shy either,” she gritted, “as you well know. So here’s the truth of the matter. The economy stinks. My restaurant went bust. I lost hundreds of thousands of some fine people’s investment dollars. My 401K has tumbleweeds cohabitating in it, and I haven’t been able to find a decent paying job in two years. So shoot me, Caine Donovan, for having the audacity to entertain the thought that this might answer a couple of long overdue prayers.”

There was nothing Caine would love more than to hear the opportunity she’d jumped on when she’d left Plum Orchard had failed. He deserved to roll around in her failure.

Em stepped between them, casting Caine a pleading eye before turning to Dixie. “Suggestion? It’s been a long, chaotic day. How about we go to Landon’s and relax before someone says somethin’ rash?”

Dixie straightened, preparing to leave before she took the bait Caine dangled in front of her and things escalated between them. They were older—wiser—and their behavior should reflect that.

She tugged her purse back over her shoulder with resolve. “I’m ready now. That Landon wants us to wait twenty-four hours is just enough time to grab a shower, eat some of Martha’s infamous peach pie and Sanjeev’s lamb curry, get a decent night’s rest, and skip back over here to sign those papers.” Her choice was made.

“You do realize this is ridiculous, don’t you, Dixie?” Caine’s voice grumbled, still so sexy-rough. “Landon’s really yanking our chains, pitting us against one another. You know, just like back in the old days when the two of us competed over everything, and Landon looked on fondly at his two foolish best friends making asses of themselves? He’s having a good laugh, wherever he is. What I don’t get is why he’d do something like this. It’s not like Landon, especially knowing the way we feel about one another. I don’t suppose he left the reasons he did this in all that paperwork, Em, did he?”

Em’s hands folded and dropped in front of her. “No. I don’t know any more than the two of you know.”

It was clear Caine’s anger with Dixie hadn’t dulled after almost a decade, and he wanted her to know. Fair enough. “Then don’t stick around for the five W’s. Go back to Miami and sell some more million-dollar, oceanfront houses to leathery-skinned women who have pocketbook-size dogs. You don’t need the money. I do. You probably couldn’t handle the challenge anyway.” Dixie was methodically inviting him to try and best her. It was silly and childish and unlike the person she strove so hard to be, but gravy. Ten years was a long time to still feel this much hate coming from Caine.

The ripple of power Caine exuded reflected in his narrowed eyes. “Are you suggesting I let you have everything?”

“I’m suggesting you go home and admit defeat. Because, as you’ve mentioned, you don’t need the money.”

“And how is it that you’ve come to the conclusion I’ll end up the loser?”

“It’s simple logic. Me—woman—with a hot voice, if all the compliments I’ve been getting all these years are any indication. You—man, probably not a key component when attempting to arouse a male who wants to be called Daddy by his little girl.” Dixie had to fight the shudder those words evoked. That was most definitely not going to be her persona’s specialty.

“Ah, but you forget one little thing, Mistress Leather,” Caine baited, gracing her with a smile full of white teeth.

“What’s that, Candy Caine?” Her eyebrow rose with total confidence. She hadn’t forgotten anything. She had him by a landslide just by virtue of her gender.

Caine leaned into her, the slightest hint of his cologne dousing her nostrils before she took an unsteady step back. “You’re forgetting ‘Bond. James Bond.’”

The tip of Em’s index finger went directly into her mouth. She nibbled the chipped end of her nail, her brow furrowing, her eyes flashing danger zone signals at Dixie.

Oh, damn him and his Sean Connery bombs. Caine could create any persona he desired and melt the insides of millions of women into sticky goo. Dixie wanted to stamp her feet in frustration until she remembered one thing. Women didn’t call phone-sex lines, or if they did, they sure weren’t in the majority. Men were.

Hah!

Dixie was right back in high school when she said, “I think you’re forgetting one little thing, Boom-Boom, name one woman you know who calls a phone-sex operator. One.”

Caine’s lips flat-lined.

Uh-huh. “I bet you don’t have enough fingers and toes to count the men you know who’ve dialed a Mistress Leather, or variation thereof, do you, Caine Donovan?”

More flat-lining and nostril flaring.

She curtsied and winked. “Your serve.”

“Don’t be so quick to call me dead in the water. The women of today are empowered, unafraid of their sexuality, bolder about their needs and about expressing those needs. Add in Sean Connery, Johnny Depp, maybe a little Sam Elliott or for that matter, almost anyone they’d like to, uh...verbally play with, and I’m your man.” Then he grinned. Wide. Smug.

Her nostrils flared.

“So I’ll tell you what, Dixie Davis, you go right ahead and rev up your sexy, because I dare you to top that.”

He’d used the word dare. Such a bad, bad word. Resist, Dixie. Fight it. Fight hard.

Instead of reacting, Dixie gathered herself together, her body rigid enough to shoot an arrow and looked Caine Donovan square in the eye.

The second gauntlet of the day she threw down was again silent, metaphoric, but it was no less meaningful. “Then I guess this is Donovan versus Davis. See you here tomorrow at six. Don’t forget your thong and your flogging thingy.”

“Flogger,” Em corrected. “It’s just called a flogger.”

Dixie cocked her head at Em. “You know this how?”

Her face flushed red as she backed away from them. “I’m gonna go check on Hank and see if he’s found those keys,” she said over her shoulder, her embarrassment painfully obvious.

Caine rolled his tongue along the inside of his cheek, his expression once again arrogant. “You bet I’ll be here, Dixie, and I’ll see your flogger and raise you some latex and hot candle wax,” he retorted, still so smug.

Okay, conscience, fair is fair. I’m trying to be the best person I know how to be. I’m trying to leave my baggage at the airport carousel. But c’mon. He’s baiting me. It’s plain as the nose on my face. You can’t expect me to take it and just lie down and die.

Her blood pressure soared. “Funny you should mention the word see, Caine.” Dixie paused, putting the tip of her nail between her lips, widening her eyes with mock exaggeration. “You know, I wonder if Landon’s company provides live video chats? I bet he does in this age of technology. So, I’ll see your ridiculous latex and raise you one hot Southern belle in a leather corset, fishnet stockings and some ruby-red stiletto heels. A real live Southern belle, not someone just pretendin’ to be a celebrity,” she sniped with a smirk.

Caine leaned down, pinning her with his gaze, as though he were transmitting every last hot, lust-filled second they’d spent together to her mind’s eye.

He trailed a finger along her cheek, making Dixie fight a whimper for the weak-kneed hunger his touch left in its wake.

It was all she could do to remain defiant rather than curl her jaw into the digit and sigh with years of pent-up yearning. His hand snaked around her waist, hauling her to him so their bodies were flush, his taut, hers softer but no less aware of the fire brewing beneath all that sinew.

Her clit throbbed in reaction to the rigid line beneath his trousers, aching with familiar need. Her leg begged her to allow it to wrap around his trim waist.

His hard fingers dug into her flesh, but Dixie didn’t flinch. Instead, she issued what she was sure, if Caine actually decided to take Landon’s offer, would be just one more of her many challenges. “What do you have to say for yourself now, Caine?”

Leaning in farther still, his lips stopped a mere breath from hers, creating an all-over tremble of awareness. The scent of his cologne, sharp and musky, lingered in her nose. “I say you look hot in leather, Dixie. Your ass was the finest in all of Plum Orchard at one time. Maybe even in the entire state of Georgia.” Caine emphasized that point by reaching around her and grabbing a handful of it, kneading it until she thought her lungs had stopped working altogether.

Sliding his free hand along her bare leg, he traced his silken-padded fingers upward until they were under her skirt and had reached the edge of her panties, allowing his knuckles to skim the tender flesh where her leg met the apex of her thighs.

Caine pulled away then, almost garnering a gasp of disappointment from her, only to run his index finger along her cleft, pressing the silk of her underwear against the heat of her achy clit.

Shivers of need, desperate and wanton, made everything else fall away. Though her arms remained at her side, the all-consuming desire to twine them around Caine was a war she fought with steely resolve. He let his silken tongue dab at her lips, before he added, “Know what else I say?”

Her breathing was choppy, there was no hiding it, but she was delighted to find, Caine’s was, too. “What else do you say?”

The delicious movement between her legs stopped as suddenly as it had started. He smirked down at her. “I say you don’t have the guts. That’s what I say.”

Just as Dixie was considering wiping the smirk off Caine’s face with a good right hook, Hank and Em’s footsteps sounded. She pushed at Caine, taking two unsteady steps away from the astounding effect he had on her body, away from the memory.

Em held up the gleaming keys and shook them.

Dixie snatched her set from Em and dangled them in Caine’s direction with quivering fingers, and melting kneecaps. “I’ll see you here tomorrow, Caine Donovan, and we’ll see who has guts. Bring your impersonations. Bring whatever you think will help you win this. Just be sure to bring it, big boy.”

Dixie rounded on her heel with such fluid grace she owed herself a pat on the back for not collapsing. “Good night, Hank. I’ll see you tomorrow at six sharp.” She sashayed out of the office with the invisible words I dare you written all over the back of her suit jacket.

When she reached the top of the stairwell, she had to grasp the banister to keep from pitching forward. The throb in her temple returned, matching the unmerciful throb between her thighs, beat for agonizing beat.

She’d just consented to sell sex over the phone so she could win a new way to make a living, and in order to do it, she’d have to beat Caine Donovan, the one and only man who’d ever made her so insane with primal, wanton need, she would have done anything he asked.

Crazy must have taken a global vacation, but not before making one pit stop in her small town in Georgia.

Em skidded out into the hall, hot on her heels. As she reached the top of the steep steps she panted, “Don’t do it, Dixie! I can barely afford to feed our dog, Dora the Explorer. I don’t know if I can take Mona and Lisa in, too. And seeing as you have nothing left in your 401K, you won’t be leavin’ me anything to help.”

Dixie finally giggled, releasing her nervous tension. “I wasn’t thinking about ending it all. I was just thinking about getting out of that room.”

“Where all that hot man sucks up every last ounce of air? I know. I get it. He’s like a vacuum packer—or at least, when you’re in the room he is.”

“That’s not it either.” The lie fell from her tongue like honey dripping from a bottle. “I was leaving before we ended up thumb wrestling till someone cried ‘uncle.’ You know what we were like, Em—always trying to one-up each other—fight to the death. That was years ago. I’ve grown up. So the last thing I want to do is engage in a pointless ‘he said, she said’ argument. I want to go back to my hotel and mull—plan—plot how in the world I’m going to pull this off.”

Em clucked her tongue. “First, we’re going back to Landon’s so you don’t break the rules he’s set forth and forfeit everything because you can’t resist being difficult. My mama has the boys for the night, and I’m free. I can dine on cold, leftover crab and artichoke dip in Landon’s hot tub, which runs at a warm ninety-eight degrees. And second, remember this—your voice is pretty sexy, Dixie. All raspy and Kathleen Turner-ish. No doubt, you’ve made a million foolish men fall at your feet without ever having seen you. All they needed to do was listen. Bet you could beat the pants off Caine Donovan in a phone-sex-off with a voice like that if you set your mind to it.”

If only his pants were the issue. Anxiety churned in Dixie’s stomach. “But he can create thousands of different personas with his impressions, Em. He can be whoever a woman wants him to be. How can I ever top Sean Connery?”

“I can’t even believe I’m sayin’ this. What do you think the ratio of male/female callers really is? Ignore the story Caine was sellin’ you and focus. You could beat him with your mouth taped shut with those odds. Women might be empowered these days, but the truth is, they don’t have to work as hard as men out in the real world.”

Good point. But... There was still Sam. “Have you heard his Sam Elliott impression?”

Em waffled, probably because she had. And it was a thigh-clencher. Still, she shook a stern finger at her. “Then you’ll just have to work harder.” She paused then, her smile ironic. “Funny, isn’t it? You actually workin’ for what you want instead of everyone doing the work for you? And besides all of the obvious, we don’t even know if Caine’ll take Landon up on this crazy endeavor I’m hereby callin’ ‘Survivor, the Porn Edition.’ So before you even consider feelin’ sorry for yourself, just remember your new mantra—outwit, outlast, outplay.”

Em’s words of encouragement warmed her. True enough. You didn’t become a successful real-estate mogul by taking two months off. “You think?”

Em nodded with a vehement dip of her head. “He has a successful real-estate business back in Miami, Dixie, employees and everything. He can’t just up and leave for a long period of time. So I’d lay bets by tomorrow, he’ll be on a plane back to the Sunshine State. Today was just him blusterin’ like men do when a woman has the nerve to call them on their game.”

Dixie stood rooted to the top of the stairs while the phrase, “What can Mistress Lana do for you tonight, unworthy one?” ran like a stampede of elephants in her brain.

Em roped an arm through Dixie’s. “You’re thinkin’ too much. I can see it. Let’s go to the big house and we’ll talk it over.” She stopped on the step for a moment, turning to Dixie, her eyes clouded with suspicion. “Wait a minute. Did Landon know what was going on with you financially? Did he know you were pushin’ your last dime just to get here to be with him?”

Tears began to flood her eyes again, but this time Dixie didn’t stop them, she let them drip down her face and hit the steel steps. “No,” she whispered. “I could never tell him....”

“Because the first thing he would have done was meddle, and the second would be to set about making the boo-boo all better, and naturally, you have your pride.”

“So you know what happened?” That last bit of her pride floated upward toward the ceiling.

“The grapevine is thicker than ever here, Dixie. Some took great pleasure in it when they read the papers and saw Dixie-Cup had gone belly up. Though I will tell you, I wasn’t one of them. Honest.” Facing Dixie, she held her right palm up.

“I didn’t want him to rescue me. I went in with my eyes wide open. I left Plum Orchard to open the restaurant with them wide open, too—definitely one of my more harebrained schemes. But I never told Landon a thing. I lied to him and told him everything was okay, because he was so sick and he had enough to worry about. I let him believe I walked away from all of my investors.”

“You’re doin’ this to pay back all those investors, aren’t you? Because most of those investors were Davis family connections.”

Shame and humiliation tinged Dixie’s gut, but she refused to let it dampen her determination. “If I have to sell an organ on Craigslist.”

Em let go of a heavy sigh. “That’s what I figured. But it isn’t like your mama’s friends couldn’t afford the investment, Dixie. They’ll just write it off as a loss. And isn’t that what bankruptcy is for anyway? So you don’t have to pay anyone back?”

Dixie shook her head sharply. No. That was the easy way out. No more easy. “It was the easiest way to keep the bank at bay, but I still owe a debt as far as I’m concerned. I’ll repay it.”

Em’s pretty blue eyes searched hers, a hint of admiration in them until they clouded back over with skepticism. “I just don’t know what to think of you anymore, Miss Dixie,” she said, her tone clear with conflict.

“Then think about other things. Like how uproariously, ironically funny it’ll be when everyone in town finds out Dixie Davis, reformed mean girl in deep financial debt, is selling sex.”

“You should’ve told Landon, Dixie. He’d have wanted to know. He loved you. He said that often to me durin’ his last month. He said if he’d been hitting for the other team, it would always be you.”

He had said that on a million occasions. He’d said it when he admired the color of her hair or what he called the sexy half curve of her lip when she was thinking. He’d said it when she was singing along with the radio, and her sultry voice made every song sound dirty.

Dixie smiled at the memory, and it grew wider. He’d said, The only person I’d change who I am for is you, Dixie Davis. You make this gay man pause from time to time. But then I remember I can’t change, and you love Caine Donovan. Nothing can change that, girlie.

Something had.

Dixie shuddered a breath from her lungs and began to descend the steps one at a time, taking Em with her.

Maybe it was Landon’s spirit. Maybe it was just desperation, but an ember of hope sparked, and if she fanned it just right... “But he didn’t know, and he didn’t hit for my team, and now here we are. So let’s go back to the big house and research phone sex, because I plan to be the best Lady Lana Call Girls has ever seen. Caine Donovan will rue the day he talks dirty to some lonely woman with Johnny Depp’s voice.”

The pound of footsteps from behind them startled the women. Caine flew down the stairs past them, ruffling Em’s hair on the way. “Race ya to the big house, ladies!” he yelled as none other than Christopher Walken, taking the steps two at a time as if he was twelve, and they were still walking the halls of Plum Orchard Middle School.

“So we have some work cut out for us,” Em squeaked.

Dixie’s eyebrow rose. “We? Won’t that cause trouble for you with Louella and the gang?” Louella was going to have a kitten if she found out Em was helping Dixie Davis—once girlfriend-code breaker extraordinaire, now sworn enemy.

Em flapped her hand, but her eyes wouldn’t meet Dixie’s. “Bah. They pay me little mind unless they need somethin’ legal, so I pay little mind back. It’s the same as it always was—just like high school. I wasn’t born a Mag, so I’ll never be a Mag. And since Clifton left me for that no-good woman in Atlanta, they only tolerate me because I can be of help from time to time in the legal area. I was always an outsider, Dixie. That’s still just as true as it ever was.”

Dixie grinned. Em was bucking the system even though Dixie knew the lack of acceptance from the reigning queens of popularity and prominence stung. “Then we can be outsiders together.” She tugged at her arm.

But Em hesitated. “Wait. Before we go any further, there’s one more thing.”

Dixie stiffened. “Now what? Oh, wait, I know. Landon owned a brothel, too, right? Is this the part where you tell me I have to get rid of my flannel pajamas for crotchless underwear, but you couldn’t tell me before because it was confidential?” She accented the word with a roll of her eyes.

Em’s hand fluttered to her neck. “Why, Dixie, I almost think that would be easier.”

Hackles rose on the back of Dixie’s neck. “Than?”

“Telling you about the court-slash-Landon-appointed mediator. Remember Hank mentioned that?” Em’s feet were suddenly moving down the steps at a rapid pace, the skirt of her dress flying behind her.

Dixie followed suit, pushing the exit door to hold it open. “Vaguely. I was a little caught up in the ‘oh, baby, I like it like that’ at that point.”

Em stepped around her and held her hand out with a grimace. “Meet your court-appointed mediator.”

Four

Dixie stood at the foot of the bed in her appointed room at Landon’s house. The house he’d bought, expanded and renovated from top to bottom. He had instructed she stay in the aptly dubbed Princess room, the room he’d always given her whenever she’d come back home during and after college to visit the big house.

Buttery lemon and pastel green leaves whispered across the wallpaper on the walls, surrounding the centerpiece of the room—a king-size canopy bed handcrafted in Italy of chestnut and ash and lacquered in a soft cream.

This was the bed where she and Caine had spent the nights just before their engagement party, wrapped in each other’s arms, contemplating their future.

Caine would spread her out on the cool sheets while the sky outside grew heavy with stars. He’d rise up above her, running his possessive hands along her skin, paying special detail to the dip where her waist met hip, leaning forward and nipping at it while his hair grazed her shivering, frantic flesh.

Her hands always rose to caress his thighs, loving the response he gave when he’d fall over her, taking her legs up around his neck and moaning the words with a rasp, You, Dixie. I need to lick you or I’ll damned well lose my mind.

Those decadent, raw sounds coming from his lips always made her press her hips upward, begging.

When his head finally dipped between her legs, it was almost a surprise how the wondrous lust filled her up.

Jesus, Dixie, you’re all I can think about day and night, were always the last words he spoke before he parted her cleft with his thumbs and slipped his tongue inside her, drawing long passes around her clit, making her beg him to capture the bud between his lips and suck the hard nub until she was thrashing her way toward insanity.

Rising up on his elbows, his glittering eyes held victory in them when they found hers. His raw power never failed to wrench the breath from her lungs when he demanded, Look at me, Dixie. Look at me when I—

“Dixie?”

The voice from over her shoulder jolted her with a yank from her memories and the indelible mark of Caine. Taking a shaky breath, she turned to find Sanjeev, Landon’s trusted assistant, at the door with Dixie’s lone suitcase.

She quickly took the opportunity to hide her embarrassment by gazing around the room she’d helped to decorate.

Her eyes scanned her surroundings and almost nothing had changed, from the thick carpet beneath her feet to the whimsical tea set on a corner table between the floor-to-ceiling windows, draped in shimmering silk, and overlooking the main house’s pool. Despite the big house’s lavish opulence, it was meant to enthrall those who stayed in it—not impress.

Landon had never cared what people thought about his outrageous spending. He’d only cared that, should they grace his doorstep, they grace it with the utmost comfort at their disposal.

Sanjeev, dressed in a traditional maroon kurta, put down her luggage then smiled at her. His olive-black eyes, set in flawless mahogany skin, gazed at her with warmth. “Landon said this should be your room for the remainder of your stay.” He held out his long, well-defined arms and embraced her. He tightened his grip, as if he knew a hug was in order.

She leaned back in his embrace so their eyes met, ruffling his thick thatch of midnight black hair with her fingers. “Yeah, about that, Sanjeev... Did Landon, that crazy prankster, say anything else about my stay?”

His smile beamed wide. “He said I was to cater to your every whim, keep you well-fed, well-rested, and make sure you didn’t spend wasted time mourning him.”

She gave him a look of admonishment, clucking her tongue. “Aw, come on, Sanjeev, you know what I mean, and it has nothing to do with your out-of-this-world lamb curry or your saffron rice or even your pillow fluffing skills. The phone-sex thing. You must’ve known.”

Sanjeev didn’t miss a beat, though an erratic pulse throbbed at the base of his neck. “Of course I knew. I was his assistant. I knew everything.”

Dixie tapped him on the shoulder with a chastising finger. “So you knew Caine would be here, too.” She didn’t ask.

His nod held no apology. “I did.”

“And a sneaky, late-night phone call, something along the lines of, ‘Hey, Dixie-Cup, that guy who stomped on your dreams of marital bliss like he was stomping out a campfire is going to stay in the big house with you while you call men naughty boys’ was totally out of the question?”

Sanjeev’s eyes twinkled. “First, I believe it was you who stomped first with that dreadful bet. And oh, no, it wasn’t out of the question.”

The bet. She never, ever wanted to talk about the bet. “But it was disloyal to Landon?” She sighed in understanding. “I can’t fault you for that, even if it wasn’t in my favor.”

His smile gleamed playfully. “As per Landon’s reminder, I was bound by the ‘I saved your life’ speech.”

Landon had found Sanjeev in the streets on one of his treks to India, dirty, infested with lice, homeless and alone at seventeen after he’d run away from an orphanage three years earlier. After living with Sanjeev for a year in India, Landon had acquired, via his multitude of connections, a visa for Sanjeev and brought him back to the States to live with him and manage the big house. That was eleven years ago, and never was there a better assistant to someone as whimsical and impulsive as Landon than Sanjeev.

Dixie rolled her eyes, knowing Landon would have cut off his right arm before he’d have sent Sanjeev back to India. “Well then, I hope you gave him the ‘If not for me, the big house would have collapsed by now, and Toe the Camel would have died of malnutrition’ speech,” she teased.

And it was true. Sanjeev ran the big house like a well-oiled machine. Nothing, not even the tiniest of details went unnoticed under Sanjeev’s watchful eyes.

“I will always remain loyal to his memory, but above all else, his last wishes. Though,” he said, cocking a raven eyebrow, “I did warn him, during the hatching of the conditions of this will, a war the likes of which no one in Plum Orchard had ever seen was bound to ensue.”

So Sanjeev knew the thought process behind Landon’s last wishes. Interesting. But it wasn’t the time to press. “And he said?” Dixie prompted, shrugging off her jacket and laying it across the bed.

“He said, and I quote, ‘I hope you videotape it and put it on YouTube because it’ll probably get a lot of hits and become the YT’s newest sensation,’” Sanjeev responded with his comical imitation of Landon’s accent.

Her head fell back on her shoulders as laughter, rich and free, spilled from her throat. It was so good to be where Landon’s presence was strong—where his memory still breathed life into every nook and cranny—even if, in his memory, he’d left her between a rock and a hard place.

“So he really has a phone-sex company?”

Sanjeev’s eyes were amused. “Indeed.”

“These women are in the guesthouse right now?”

“They are. It’s where Landon insisted they work.”

Dixie eyed him. “Did he give any thought to what will happen to these poor women when he decided to drop them in Plum Orchard? You know what they’re like here, Sanjeev. How they all gossip. It can ruin your life if you let it.” She knew. She’d stomped on a life or two in her time.

“He gave it great thought. Surely, you know Landon did nothing without care, Dixie. He consulted all of them, and they made the decision together to come here, knowing how judgmental this town can be. However, when you meet the ladies of Call Girls, you’ll understand why Landon left this earth at peace with his choice.”

“The Mags will find a way to make their lives miserable all while looking for a way to have this shut down, Sanjeev. Did Landon think about the fact they could lose their jobs?”

“Have you thought about the fact that Landon has greased many a wheel in his time here on earth and in Plum Orchard—or that he was as careful about picking his lawyers as he was his locations for phone-sex operations?”

Dixie gave a halfhearted laugh, rubbing her eyes. “Point in Landon’s favor.”

“You look tired, Dixie. And I don’t mean the kind of tired grief brings, or the kind a good night’s sleep will fix. I mean soul weary. This worries me.”

Ah, leave it to Sanjeev to look beyond the concealer under her eyes. “It’s been a long couple of years” was all she was willing to admit.

He tugged on a strand of her hair, his eyes concerned. “And in those long years, you forgot to freshen your roots? Who is this Dixie?”

This was the Dixie who was too focused on her goal to pay everyone back and didn’t have time or money to go to the hairdresser. She shrugged, casting her eyes down at her feet. “This Dixie was just caught up in other things.”

“Then this assistant will fetch you some henna before you become too much more caught up. Pronto,” he added with a wink.

Dixie kicked off her heels, sinking her bare feet into the Persian carpet. She leaned her shoulder against the canopy post to fold her hands in front of her. “I just can’t believe he’s gone,” she choked out. Those words would never sound right. “So what will you do next, Sanjeev? Will you go back to India? I imagine Landon left you plenty of money to return in style.”

Though Sanjeev leaving the big house and going back to his homeland left her heart as empty as a good bottle of wine after a long night of girl-talk, Dixie had always wondered if he yearned for the sights and smells of his native country. Much the way she’d longed for the comfort of her small town even with its irrefutable throwback to a simpler way of life, and its antiquated views on a woman’s place in the world.

Sanjeev’s eyes flashed momentary confusion. “I will do as I’ve always done. Maintain the big house and handle the multitude of charities Landon was involved in.”

She cocked her head, her ears burning hot with new information. “So Landon isn’t selling the big house?” He’d left the big house to Sanjeev and the numerous staff?

His arms went around his back. “No, quite the opposite, in fact.”

Uh-huh. Suspicion pricked her spine just as it had with Emmaline back at the funeral home. “You know something I don’t know, don’t you?”

Sanjeev’s eyes shadowed. “I know only the things I know.”

“As clear as mud as always, Sanjeev,” she said even though his evident secrecy made her grin.

Sanjeev’s chin lifted as it always did when he was disgruntled about the fact that he still didn’t have a full understanding of the subtleties of the English language. “For as long as I’ve been in your country, I will never understand you. Mud isn’t clear, Dixie.”

Dixie tilted her head, squinting one eye. “Know what else isn’t clear?”

He took a solemn stance, his expression serene as he waited.

Dixie began to pace, a revived, caged energy freshly unleashed. Surely Landon had confided his reasons to Sanjeev for putting her and Caine together. “Why Landon would do something like this to me—to both of us? He knew where we stood with each other. Caine and I are in the worst possible place two people who broke up the way we did can be.”

Sanjeev’s eyes shifted downward in subtle recognition before refocusing on Dixie. “A place entirely of your own making.”

Dixie nodded at his more than fair statement. “That’s the absolute truth. You’re right. But he’s pitted us against one another like two children fighting over the last piece of Martha’s peach pie. Why would he want to hurt me like this? He knows—knew—how painful the subject of Caine is for me.”

Sanjeev smiled as though he were recalling a fond memory. “He’s also the man who stood by you even after enduring Louella Palmer’s public accusation that you had a sexually transmitted disease, lest you forget.”

Dixie’s fists clenched at her sides. “The clap to be precise.”

Sanjeev raised his hands and slapped them together, jarring her.

“Still not funny.”

“Oh, Dixie. It was almost a lifetime ago. Surely you can see the humor in it by now?”

“I’m not sure I’ll ever see the humor in Louella Palmer, standing in line behind me at Lucky Judson’s hardware store, randomly clapping while everyone was in on the joke but me.”

The memory of that still stung as freshly as if it had happened just moments ago. A mix-up in her pre-marital test results, tests both she and Caine had agreed to have administered before their marriage, had resulted in the “teetering-on-senility” Dr. Wade Johnson somehow allowing his onetime receptionist, Louella, get her hands on them. Of course, she’d told anyone who’d listen Dixie had the clap.

“What is it your countrymen say about payback?”

“While I see your point, that’s not the point. This phone-sex business isn’t about punishing me for being a mean girl, Sanjeev. Landon loved me when I was horrible, and he loved me after I wasn’t so horrible. Anyway, we’re off track here, friend.”

He pursed his lips, giving his cheekbones a hollowed look. “I’m not off track. There is no track. Landon didn’t always have a rhyme to his reason. As you well know, he did many things on a whim—or because it simply pleased him, but never without the utmost caution. I don’t know what would please him about seeing you suffer when he did nothing but indulge you almost all of your life, even at your worst, but I have no answers, only my orders to keep you safe, well-fed, and comfortable.”

“Nothing concerning Caine Donovan is safe,” she muttered.

Sanjeev acknowledged her words with a nod. “Be that as it may, we’re here in this moment. Now, I have Mona and Lisa to bathe. They’re as unruly as your hair, and I won’t have them laying all over the bed I expressly freshened for you until I’m sure we’re cleared for fleas. You, lovely Dixie,” he said, pointing toward the equally opulent adjoining bathroom, “have an appointment at the guesthouse to meet your fellow employees. Freshening up wouldn’t hurt you either. You’re funeral worn.” He chuckled at his joke, padding out of the room with a wave over his shoulder.

The silence of the bedroom engulfed Dixie in its subtle hues of silk and throw pillows, leaving her a moment to hear the throb of her panicked heart.

Meet your fellow employees, rang in her ears with a hauntingly Vincent Price–like quality. Sanjeev said it as though her new job was something as ho-hum as retail sales or file clerking.

Which brought a thought to mind. What were the women of phone sex like? Did they have office parties or swingers’ parties? Celebrate birthdays with a cake from the local grocery store and attend in pasties and a thong?

Gossip at the water cooler about what a limp dick Dale in Idaho was for calling them from his mother’s basement, and running up her phone bill just so he could get off to the sound of some imagined sex-starved woman who was just waiting for his dulcet tones to lull them into a pretend orgasm? Did they send each other the BDSM joke-of-the-day emails?

Oh, Dixie, reckless and impulsive be thy name.

The jingle of dog collars and heavy breathing startled her from her panic. “You’re overthinking this, Dixie!” Sanjeev called out with a pant as he flew past her bedroom with Mona and Lisa dragging him down the long hallway.

Sure. She, Dixie Davis, was overthinking. Not something often credited to her, but on this rare occasion, certainly applicable. Reaching for her purse, she made her sulky way to the bathroom, paying little attention to her lavish surroundings.

She didn’t notice anything but her purse vibrating the sound of a text message when she threw it on the countertop just under the gorgeous Venetian mirror she didn’t want to look into.

The only person who’d ever texted her was Landon....

Dixie took a hesitant step forward, the tile beneath her feet no longer soothing her with its cool surface. Instead, it magnified the apprehension sweeping along her nerves like an out-of-control firecracker left on the ground to spin haphazardly.

With a trembling hand, she opened her purse on the vanity and snatched her phone out, stifling a shaky breath in order to read the text—from none other than Landon.

My beautiful friend, your journey awaits. Today is the first day of the rest of your life, Dixie-Cup. Carpe phone sex!

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 with 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 though 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.”

Caine’s eyes were contrite when he shot Cat a sheepish grin after scrubbing his knuckles over his jaw. “I’m sorry if we made you feel uncomfortable, too.”

“Apologies accepted. Now let’s let bygones be bygones and get to introductions and the business at hand, okay? The girls are dying to meet you both.”

Caine nodded his dark head. “Perfect. So let’s set about finding our fetishes. Whaddya say, Mistress Taboo?” He didn’t wait for Dixie to answer. Instead he held out his arm to Cat and smiled. “Shall we?”

Cat giggled again, soft and as lovely as she was, but a quick glance at Dixie had her clamping her lips shut and frowning before she regained her composure. She roped her arm loosely through Caine’s, keeping a visible distance between them. “C’mon. I’ll introduce you to everyone and familiarize you with what goes on here.”

Dixie stuck her tongue out at Caine behind his back, and hurried to shuffle up to the other side of Cat, grabbing onto her free arm and winking. Her chuckle was throaty, but her words held the ultimate dare. “Let the games begin.”

* * *

Back in her room, freshly showered and comfortable in an old T-shirt, Dixie snatched her phone with Landon’s text from the nightstand and raised her fist to the ceiling with a shake. “You suck, Landon,” she muttered, making Mona and Lisa stir.

After an hour with Caine, Cat and the women of Call Girls, Dixie’s head was still spinning. She’d thought she’d made her choice the moment she’d thrown down the challenge to Caine in Hank Cotton’s office.

Now? She was regretting her impulsivity. Once Cat had explained the inner workings of the phone-sex business, and only after Dixie was done mentally rolling her eyes at Caine, who’d smiled, joked and blatantly flirted with the ladies while making it appear this challenge was going to be akin to some leisurely stroll in the park, she’d waffled.

As she processed bits of information such as, she was her own boss and her hours were flexible, but some of the best, most loyal U.S. clients called in at night between the hours of midnight and three. And it was up to her to create an interesting, yet alluring phone-sex operator pseudonym, a website for that pseudonym, and an area of sex she specialized in. Scripts on how to handle difficult client calls, calls that got out of hand, all kinds of calls, calls, calls were readily available to them.

Shortly after meeting the women who ran the phones, and introductions, and all the details of the running of a phone-sex company, Dixie began to wilt, exhausted from the day’s events.

Cat, clearly intuitive, had handed her the Call Girls phone-sex operator package, and told her to go get some rest before she made her final decision.

That was where she was now. Making her final decision. Her eyes flew to her bedside clock. And she only had eighteen hours and counting to do it.

Tick, tick, tick.

The only thing she had decided on, if she didn’t chicken out, was the pseudonym Mistress Taboo. Caine had used it to taunt her, but it stuck like an earworm.

Flopping on the bed, she absently flipped through the ream of papers Cat had given her while she stroked Mona’s ear. Her eye caught the list of “specialties” Call Girls allowed, stilling her movement. “What, in all of heaven, do you suppose infantilism is, Mona?”

“Oh, you know, the usual. Men in diapers, baby bottles,” Caine said, strolling into her bedroom on bare feet, in a pair of cargo shorts and nothing else.

The defined lines of his face almost always took Dixie’s breath away. Tonight was no exception as the shadows cupped his strong jaw and enhanced his sharp cheekbones.

Her heart thrummed with the inevitable longing it had since the day she’d set her sights on him in high school. Dixie forced herself to look directly into his eyes instead of at the chest she’d once brazenly sat atop as he... Dixie gulped. “How unexpected to find you’re so in the fetish know,” she drawled, digging for the old Dixie, the one who was cocky and capable of keeping her composure catty and aloof all in one sentence.

Caine’s eyebrow rose in that condescending way while his chest glistened in all its lickability in the dim lamplight. Coming to stand at her feet, he reached around her to give Lisa’s broad head a scruff of his knuckles.

As the skin of his arm brushed hers, she sucked in a breath of air at the tightening of her nipples.

“Wanna see who knows the definition of more fetishes?”

“Almost as much as I’d like to see my spleen advertised on eBay.”

Caine’s eyes narrowed, glittering with amusement while his lips formed a sexy, cocky challenge of a smile. “That’s because you know you’ll lose. What’s the matter, Dixie? All bet-out for the day?”

“I’m all Caine’d out for forever. So what do you want, and why are you in my room? I don’t recall hearing a knock.”

Rising to her feet, she brushed a strand of her wet ponytail from her face, stepping around his solid frame.

“Door was open. And pillows,” he said, jamming his hands into the pockets of his shorts as if he wasn’t standing in front of her with no shirt on. “I know Sanjeev always has extra in here. I need another pillow. Please,” he tacked on with syrupy emphasis.

Dixie’s throat grew dry and gritty. “There aren’t a hundred people on staff who could find you pillows?”

“Unlike you, I don’t want to wake the staff for something as ridiculous as a pillow. I know you’re used to having someone at your beck and call, Powder Puff. I, on the other hand, fend quite nicely for myself and wouldn’t dream of waking them.”

“Look at you here in my room, fending,” she mocked. His insinuation that she was selfish enough to wake an entire household over something as trivial as a hangnail infuriated her. In fairness, it wasn’t exactly an untruth from her past, but it was no less infuriating now in the present.

And that was exactly what Caine wanted. Rather than rise further to his bait, Dixie turned on her heel, hoping the sway of her backside made him salivate just like it used to.

She threw the linen closet door open and peered inside, reaching for the chain to unsuccessfully turn the light on. The bulb was out. For all the fancy, highfalutin’ gadgets Landon had in this house, he’d overlooked the simple things when he’d renovated.

The heavy oak door snapped back at her, smashing into her hip with a hard thud, meaning the spring was broken. Dixie spread her legs to hold it open, using her foot to keep it in place while attempting to adjust her vision to see the interior. The space had a small entry, and was just large enough to house some shelving full of soft, fluffy towels and silken bedding.

The door creaked when Caine came up behind her. Pushing her foot aside, he used his large hands at her waist to move her deeper into the closet. “I asked for a pillow. Not directions to the Fountain of Youth. What’s taking so long?” he questioned, craning his neck upward to glimpse the top shelves.

Distracted by the light press of his fingers and the sting of the fleeting memory when Caine’s hand was never far from hers made her forget about the door. “Don’t let the—”

The door slammed shut behind them with a heavy thud, enveloping them in the quiet, Tide-scented darkness. Caine knocked into her, jolting her forward so her nose just missed the edge of a shelf before righting her with his arms.

Which left his rocklike, warm body pressed tight against her back.

Certainly a dilemma of her libido’s highest order.

Six

“Uh, let the door shut?” Caine finished into her ear, leaving Dixie to fight the shiver his warm breath left in its wake.

Dixie attempted to inch forward and out of his nerve-tingling grasp, but there was nowhere to go. “Impatience be thy name,” she said between the clench of her teeth.

“It’s better than shithead, I guess,” he murmured back.

“Didn’t I mention? Impatience is your middle name.”

“That’s downright mean, Dixie.”

“It’s downright true, Caine.”

“Viper.”

“Mistress Viper to you, thank you very much.” Dixie twisted uncomfortably, bucking against Caine’s hand in the process. “Now quit name-calling and open the door. You know how claustrophobic I am.” Just the thought of how claustrophobic she was made the claustrophobia in her stabby and irritable.

His sigh was a wash of raspy honey in the dark. “Stop wiggling around, woman, and let me—” one hand moved from her waist followed by the sound of the jiggling door handle “—open the damn thing...”

Chalk it up to a long day, but locked in a closet with Caine was the final straw that broke her raw nerves’ back. Though, the fight to keep from having any square inch of her body touching Caine’s worked to distract her fear of the pitch-black closet swallowing her whole. “What is the problem, Caine?” she snapped.

“I can’t—”

“If you use the words can’t and open in the same sentence referring to that doorknob—”

“You’ll what?” he huffed, his chest pushing against her back.

“I’ll suffocate you with one of these fluffy towels.”

She heard him jiggle the door handle again.

“Ready your weapon. I. Can’t.”

Slapping his hand from her waist, Dixie managed to turn around in the tiny space, her nose brushing the springy hairs on his chest. “Let me try.” She twisted the handle, her heart pounding out her body’s awareness of Caine’s. “It’s locked, damn it.”

“Oh, Sherlock, still such a cracker jack,” Caine cooed in another of his flowing British accents.

“Oh, Holmes, still just a sidekick with a big mouth.”

“Move over, Dixie, and let me give it another try.”

Dixie snorted to the tune of the irritation in his tone. “You do that, Hulk. I’ll wait over here in the two square inches of space, cowering weakly so the big, strong man can save me.”

They attempted to switch positions only to find themselves so closely fused their bodies were forced to make contact—delicious, heated, full-bodied contact.

Her slip of a T-shirt left little between them, the material so worn over time it was like having on nothing at all.

“So now what, Dixie-Cup?” he grumbled huskily, his chin brushing the top of her head.

Dixie had to close her eyes to keep from swaying as the comfort of the familiar assaulted her. She would not allow her head to move just a hair forward and rest on his chest.

She gritted her teeth. “Get us out of here before I claw my way past you to get to that door. And stop calling me Dixie-Cup!” Because pettily lashing out was going to make this situation better.

Caine’s fingertips twitched against hers. Knowing him the way she did, she also knew he was smiling into the dark. “But I’ve always called you Dixie-Cup, Dixie-Cup.”

“No. Landon called me Dixie-Cup. You called me a liar.” Dixie’s chest tightened with the familiar constriction of his taunts.

Caine’s fingers wound into the length of her hair, tugging her head back. “You were a liar,” he replied smoothly, yet the edge to his voice was hard...raw.

Rivulets of sweat began to form between her breasts, and she wasn’t sure if it was panic because the closet was hot and suffocating—or because Caine was. Fear of both made her strike out again. “Move, Caine, or I swear I’ll scream!”

His response was to drag her to him, her spine arching, driving her against him, a moan rising to her lips when an aching rush of wet heat grew in her cleft. Her body’s reply to him, to the gruff tug of her hair, and the once familiar command it wrought, infuriated her.

“Go away, Caine. Better yet, go back to Miami.”

Caine’s silky lips skimmed the darkness. “Like hell, I will. I was here first,” he said, reaching a hand down to grip her hip, drawing her closer to the rigid outline of his cock, sharply defined against his cargo shorts.

She gave him a shove only to have the sound of the thump of his back hitting the door cut into the darkness. “You don’t want Call Girls. You want to best me so you can flip your middle finger up in the air in my direction while you tell everyone over a round on you at Cooters you whooped mean girl Dixie Davis.”

“Actually, I was going to buy everyone dinner while I did that. I’m disappointed to find you think me so damn cheap.”

Don’t take the bait, Dixie. Be the adult. “The point is you want to win.”

His chuckle was thick to her ears, tipping her off to the fact that she wasn’t alone in her arousal. “Oh, you bet I do. And in the process, adding a multimillion-dollar company to my portfolio won’t make me sad.”

“A portfolio. Nice luxury if you can get it,” she managed, stifling a breathy sigh when he let go of her hair and cupped the back of her head.

Caine’s body curved into hers even as his mouth continued its agonizing path upward. “Are things really that bad off, Dixie?”

Were things really that bad off? Was the sinking of the Titanic just a little boating incident? But Dixie stiffened at his question—the question that sounded warm and sympathetic. Oh, no, sir.

She wasn’t falling for that old trick. The “draw someone into your web by being a kind shoulder to cry on, then wait for the moment you could use their misfortune to up your own game” trick. She was once the master. “Things are none of your business.”

“Pride is a sin, Dixie,” Caine murmured into the darkness, his voice growing heavy, his body melting into hers.

Fight the Caine charisma, Dixie. Fight it like you own a Justice League cape. “Falling for the notion that you’re even a little concerned about me is a sin.” Summoning what was left of her shredding will, she returned her focus to her claustrophobia. It was the lesser of the two evils. The mere thought they’d be stuck together like this until Sanjeev came to tell her breakfast was ready fed her fear.

Her heart began a panicked staccato. The heat of their bodies coupled with the stifling lack of air served her focus on her claustrophobia mission well. “We have to get out of here, Caine!” She shoved at the solid wall of his chest again. Yet it only made him tighten his hold.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.