Talk Dirty to Me

“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.”