A Plum Orchard novel

Conservative and prissy.

She wanted to be a new Em. Open to owning her sexuality and leaving the buttoned-up perception of her behind.

Marybell snickered, swirling her glass of Pinot. “Very dramatic, Em, this freein’ of your sexuality. Next you’ll want to read the Kama Sutra cover to cover and pose nude for Playboy.” Marybell chuckled. “Taking calls isn’t like flirting in real life. We openly have sex using our words—we don’t just suggest it. Don’t confuse the two, pretty lady.”

“Girl, you are somethin’ else when you an’ libation join hands in holy alcohol, ain’t you?” LaDawn squawked, slapping her hand on her thigh. “Two glasses of Chardonnay and all of a sudden you’re Em the Emasculator.”

Em felt the office chair she was sitting in wobble. Or was she wobbling? She couldn’t be sure. She giggled on a hiccup, one that jolted her so hard, she fell into Dixie, who stroked her hair with a soothing palm.

She took a deep breath and waved a finger at LaDawn’s lithe form in a “fooled you, didn’t I?” fashion. “It wasn’t Chardonnay, FYI. I had four drinks at the bar. The ones with the orange swirly stuff and the pretty umbrellas in them. Four.” Take that, conservatism.

“Four?” LaDawn and Marybell chirped their surprise in unison.

“Okay, who was on Em duty while I was off two-steppin’, LaDawn?” Marybell asked, casting a glance of aspersion LaDawn’s way.

LaDawn popped her heavily lined lips, brushing her platinum hair off her shoulder with a scoff. “Oh, no. I told you I was gonna take second shift. That means before 11:00 p.m. you were babysitting.”

Marybell shook her head, the pointy spikes of her red-and-green Mohawk beginning to sag after a long girls’ night out. “Nope. Dixie was supposed to take eight to ten. I was ten till 12:00 a.m. We let Cat take the night off, seeing as she can’t keep her eyes open for more than twenty minutes at a time.”

Cat, now sprawled across the chaise, snored to prove their point.

All eyes went to Dixie, who shot them a sheepish grin, full of dimples and sunshine.

LaDawn grabbed the bottle of Chardonnay and poured her and Dixie another glass to share while Marybell dug a blanket out to cover Cat, tucking the edges under her chin. “You were textin’ with that confounded dreamboat of yours again, weren’t you? It’s not girls’ night if you’re textin’ with your man, Dixie. Then it’s girls’ night and Caine,” she admonished with a stern tone, but a smile she couldn’t hide crept across her lips.

Dixie wrinkled her nose. “But he’s so cute when he texts me,” she defended her schoolgirl behavior.

“If you can’t spend twenty minutes without contact with one Mr. Caine Donovan, you can’t be a girl out on a girls’ night. Then you’re just pathetic and maybe should be textin’ someone about obsession therapy,” LaDawn teased, poking Dixie’s arm with a glittery, purple nail. “So I’m callin’ it now, next time we all give up our cell phones at the beginning of the night so we don’t lose track of Em and her newfound love of spirits. Because look what happens when we do that. Four drinks and she gets to thinkin’ she should be learnin’ the tricks of the trade instead of just running the place.” She leaned forward and ruffled Em’s mussed hair with a chuckle.

Em stuck her tongue out at LaDawn.

LaDawn popped her lips at Dixie, ignoring Em. “While you’re off moonin’ over that man, it doesn’t mean Em doesn’t need lookin’ out for. She’s new to the single scene. Especially in a place called Cooters where every horn dog from here to Johnsonville goes to ladies’ night ’cuz the drafts are only a dollar. If someone doesn’t watch her, they’ll eat our innocent Em alive. You dropped the ball, Dixie Davis. Next time, you have to pull your shift and take my shift, too.”

Em gave her friends a sour face, tucking her hair behind her ears. “I’m plenty of adult sittin’ right here, I’ll have you know. I don’t need a babysitter, and I’m not so innocent. And if I want to have four drinks, I will. Maybe I’ll have five,” she said defiantly.

She deserved five. It had been a long two months since the finalization of her divorce. Seven total if you counted the time since she’d found out Clifton was an infidel who wanted to wear women’s clothing and live in Atlanta as Trixie LeMieux.

Most of the pain of that discovery had passed. That Clifton hadn’t even given her the chance to understand that part of him still stung. She’d always prided herself on being open to new things, despite the fact that she was born and raised in a town stuck somewhere in the 1950s.

Cross-dressing hadn’t ever entered her mind when she’d been thinking about what the word open meant, but who’s to say she wouldn’t have adjusted? Clifton just never gave her the chance to say one way or the other. He’d just left.

And now, here she was, single at thirty-six with an eight-year-old and a five-year-old to raise with little help from her ex-husband. His embarrassment after an incident in town, where his secret was publicly and cruelly revealed by none other than Louella Palmer, had kept him from coming to see the boys as often as they needed seeing by their daddy.

Dixie stretched her arms upward with a yawn of her perfectly glossed, pink lips. “Fine. Next girls’ night out, I’ll take two shifts. Now, what do you say we get you home, Em?”

Em shook her off, reaching for more wine. She could drink as much wine as she liked, her internal rebel coaxed. “Stop appeasin’ me, Dixie. I’m a grown woman, and I don’t want to go home to my lonely, empty house right now. Gareth and Clifton Junior are spendin’ the weekend at Mama’s, so I’m a free bird. Just like Lynyrd Skynyrd says.”

Dixie gave her a pointed look—one you’d give a willful preschooler. “You know what they say about idle hands and the devil.”

“As Satan’s closest confidante, I’m sure you’ve heard all the gossip,” Em shot back, squeezing her friend’s arm with a giggle.

When they’d been forced into the race for the phone-sex contest Landon set forth with Em as mediator, leaving them in each other’s company more often than not, she’d used Dixie’s former cruelties full force as a way to continually poke her with what she now lovingly referred to as a “gentle Em reminder.” Nowadays, since they’d become so close, she did it with love, but she still did it.

“I thought we were past my mean girl and well into forgiveness. Will you ever run out of nails for my coffin?” Dixie inquired with gooey sweetness.

“Lucky Judson’s Hardware store has aisles’ and aisles’ worth. How’s never suit you?” Em shot back with a lopsided grin.

LaDawn burst out laughing, the sound rich and deep. She flicked a purple-painted nail at Em. “Phew! You are all ’bout your sass these days, aren’t you, Miss Emmaline? Every time I turn around you’re assertin’ yourself in one way or another. You’re all breathin’ fire at us at the drop of a hat lately.”

Marybell nodded, reaching into a bag of Cheetos Dixie had produced from her deep desk drawer. “Oh, yes, ma’am, she is. If you look at her cross-eyed, flames come right out of her cute little mouth,” she said on a giggle, tweaking Em’s lower lip.

It was true. She’d become a little testy in this quest to show anyone within earshot she was no longer Emmaline Without A Spine. Some would even say she’d gone overboard. Nonetheless, she protested. “Bah! They do not.”

Dixie popped a Cheeto in her mouth, licking her fingers. “Do so. If I simply say the word no, even if it’s when you’re askin’ me if I’d like another glass of sweet tea, you jump right down my throat. You’re always barking orders at us like we wouldn’t listen to you if you didn’t holler them with that stern teacher voice you’ve adopted. Reminds me of old Mrs. Beauchamp. Remember her from third grade?”

Marybell nodded her agreement, her eyes, heavy with dark makeup, playful. “Next thing you know, she’ll show up with a ruler and crack our hands to get her point across.”

Em rolled her eyes at them. Admittedly, as of late, she had a case of the “I will be heard” syndrome. The one where everything she said had to be full throttle or she was convinced she wouldn’t be taken seriously. It would just take some time to find her balance. Toning her stern teacher’s voice down would probably be a good place to start.

“Uh-huh,” LaDawn confirmed, patting Marybell on the back. “You know what, I take back my protestin’ from earlier. Some days, the way you’ve been orderin’ us all around, maybe we should just let you take all the calls and we’ll all go shop for shoes, seein’ as you seem to know how to do it better.”

That sudden need to prove herself, the one she’d just reminded herself was on the warpath, the one that was completely unwarranted and absolutely unnecessary, reared its badly mannered head—again. “I bet I could answer your calls—all of ’em.” She rolled her neck in the “wanna go ’round?” way LaDawn did. “I know all the dirty words because I hear Miss LaDawn here say them like she’s recitin’ her prayers before bedtime, all day long.”

Em’s defensive answer sparked the competitive streak in LaDawn. She sat upright and pointed to the wine bottle. “You just stop talkin’ crazy from over there and have another glass of wine. You would faint dead if you had to pretend to spank some man with my special spatula and scream, ‘You dirty, dirty boy!’ You know it, and so does everyone else sittin’ here.”

Dixie held up a hand, leaning forward and putting it between the two women with a look of admonishment. “Girls, how quickly we forget I’ve banned all forms of competition. Em, you stop riling the caged beast, and both of you play nicely with each other.”

“You only banned them because you can’t resist them, Dixie,” Em taunted, knowing full well she was again poking her friend for her former habit of turning everything from pie eating to merely breathing into a death match.

Dixie narrowed her eyes in Em’s direction, her husky voice raspy when she said, “You’re baiting me, Em.”

Em nodded, throwing her a smug smile, though it was full of love. “If I had a worm, I’d dangle it in your face.”

“I still say you couldn’t do it,” LaDawn coaxed with a sly grin, twisting her hair and tying it up with a rubber band she always kept around her slender wrist. “You couldn’t even answer one phone call and say the P word without callin’ out forgiveness from on high. We’ll all be home and in our beds in no time flat before you get ’round to it. I’d bet next week’s girls’ night drinks on it.”

Dixie held up a finger, her eyes flashing warning signals at LaDawn. “In Em’s condition, she’ll end up meeting some crazy killer for chicken and waffles at Madge’s. Stop goading her, LaDawn.”

“Oh, really?” Em challenged, using her hands to push off the desk’s top and stick her face in LaDawn’s. She balanced herself on her waist, teetering. “You’re on, Latex Lady!”

Dropping back to her chair, she picked up the phone on Dixie’s desk and rang Nella.

“Nella? It’s Emmaline. Next caller who doesn’t know his foot from the P word, send them to me on Dixie’s line, please.” She hung up the phone with a triumphant drop of the receiver, almost hearing poor Nella’s jaw drop all the way from the other end of the guesthouse.

“Right here, right now, I’m callin’ it. This is a mistake, Em. You’ve had a little too much to drink, and tomorrow, you’ll regret it,” Marybell said with confidence, fighting a grin. LaDawn cackled, crossing her arms. “So what’s your name for the naughty gonna be, Em? I think Not Gonna Happen’s already been taken.”

Dixie and Marybell erupted in a fit of laughter, followed shortly thereafter by LaDawn.

Oh, they could laugh all they wanted. She’d thought about it long and hard. All while LaDawn ordered her clients around in dominatrix fashion and during request after youthful voice request for Marybell. She’d even thought about it tonight at Cooters, and she didn’t have to think too hard. At least not with four swirly drinks in her stomach and her sense of reason fully affected.

She narrowed her gaze at every one of her friends, sputtering and snorting at the very idea Emmaline Amos could say the P word. Maybe she might even use the—gasp—C word. “Well, won’t you all be sorry when that phone rings and I answer to the tune of Em ’n’ M?”

“Like the rapper or the candy?” Dixie squeaked out between gasps of air tucked between bursts of laughter. She covered her mouth with her hand to keep from disturbing the operators in the back rooms.

She eyed Dixie with a defiant glare, surely fueled by her alcohol consumption. “It might not be as mysterious or sexy as Mistress Taboo or as sticky sweet as Candy Caine was, your Mr. Smexy’s old operator name, but it’s cute, just like me.” Cute and adorable and like someone’s worn stuffed animal. Ugh.

LaDawn was the first to buckle. She hopped up from her chair, coming around the desk to give Em a tight squeeze from behind, her lilting voice clear in Em’s ear, the sweet scent of her lavender body spray in her nose. “We were just teasin’ you, Em. We know you’re a force to be reckoned with, and we wouldn’t have ya any other way. So no phone calls for you. You’re just not made outta the same cloth as the rest of us dirty girls. You’re fine silk and we’re just a polyester blend.”

The jarring ring of Dixie’s office phone created a shrill silence between them—reaction suspended for a mere second before all three women were scrambling to grab the phone to keep it from Em. Chairs scraped against the tile floor, desk organizers fell to the floor with pen-filled thuds.

But Em was quicker, and when all was said and done, and she was high on regret for ever taking LaDawn’s bait, she’d pat herself on the back for just how quick she’d been on the draw being as tipsy as she was.

She snatched at it, holding the receiver up like she’d just won the coveted Swarovski tiara at their local Miss Cherokee Rose Pageant. Triumph streaked her eyes before she growled, “This is Em ’n’ M. Would you like some candy?” Her eyes opened wide at her brilliance. Associating her name with the pleasure of the famous candy. Hah! Innocent Em couldn’t make the dirty, huh? She’d show them.

“You have candy? My daddy loves candy. Maybe he’d like you, too.” A voice so pure, so full of spun sugar and innocence, filled her ear.

Leave it to her to get the one call, out of all the hundreds of calls Call Girls received in a night, from a child.

The universe was obviously conspiring against her and her sexy.

Two

LaDawn pressed the speaker button, the little girl’s voice ringing throughout the office as though on angels’ wings. “So do you have candy? My daddy needs a girlfriend, and I like candy. My uncle said it would make him nicer, the girlfriend, but maybe not the candy. I tried giving him candy, but that didn’t make him nicer.” There was a definitive determination to her charming voice—a voice that to Em’s experienced ears sounded right around six or seven.

Mercy.

No one moved. Everyone froze in their respective spots as three pairs of eyes, full of panic, watched Em.

How had a child managed to get past Nella-Nator? She was like a SWAT team when it came to manning the phones against children violating Call Girls’ strict, over-eighteen policy.

“Hello? Miss Em ’n’ M?”

In a flurry of hands, Dixie and Marybell motioned for her to hang up while LaDawn slid her forefinger across her throat, signaling she should cut the child off.

But Em knew what to do. She had two children of her own, and this one obviously needed to be heard. She cleared her throat, holding up a hand to her friends. “I’m here, and I think you have the wrong number, sugar snap.”

A pout she virtually heard pulsed in Em’s ear. “You mean you don’t have girlfriends there where you are? My daddy needs a girlfriend. At lunch when they were cuttin’ up my grilled cheese sandwich in triangles, I heard my uncle Tag say so to my uncle Gage. They said he needs a girlfriend. I asked them where you get a girlfriend and they said the girlfriend store. I see on the paper my daddy has on his desk that you live in a place called Call Girls. Is that a store where we can buy my daddy a girlfriend? Like Toys ‘R’ Us?”

Em sat down on the chair and smiled into the phone. The child’s sweet voice, so heartbreakingly clear with desire for her father’s happiness, clenched her heart with a vise grip. The leap she’d made with the words call girls wasn’t just adorable, it was smart.

“No, sunshine,” she said gently. “You can’t buy girlfriends here. And you know what? I think your daddy should do the shoppin’, don’t you? He knows what he likes best. Now, I bet it’s about bedtime, right? Long past, if I’m readin’ my clock correctly. You need to scoot off to bed now—all the pretty girls need their pretty sleeps. Can you do that for Miss Em?”

There was a sniffle from the other end of the line, and the muffle of possibly her hand, as though she’d cupped the phone to her mouth to keep her voice hushed. “Are you sure you don’t have any girlfriends there? I know it would make my daddy happy. He hates to cook. He makes all those grumble noises and sighs when it’s suppertime.”

Em’s heart melted bit by gooey-filled bit at this angelic voice and the genuine request she made, one that in a child’s mind, probably should be as simple as shopping for a girlfriend. “I’m sure we don’t have girlfriends here, sugarplum. Now, off you go to bed like all good little girls do and sleep the sleep of the sweet—”

“Who the hell is this?” a megamasculine voice hissed into the phone, clearly enraged.

Em straightened her spine, her eyes wide. Oh, mercy, the poor child had been caught. Em was just about to explain that when Angry Man bellowed into her ear again, “Who the hell are you?”

Sucking her cheeks in and giving her invisible caller the stern-teacher tone, she responded with crisp coolness, “This is Emmaline Amos, general manager of Call Girls—”

“How dare you allow a little girl of six—she’s six, do you hear me—talk to one of your operators?” he growled. “Don’t you have some kind of security that prevents this sort of thing from happening? What kind of business are you running there?”

Em’s tipsy state flew away on wings of outrage. How dare he accuse Call Girls of lax security? Clearly there’d been some mistake, but the quick decision to shoot him down for being so incredibly rude outweighed the notion he might someday be a future client she needed to reassure.

She clamped a hand on her hip. “Excuse me, sir—we’re running a very reputable business with plenty of security, I’ll thank you kindly to remember! Your little girl found our phone number on, according to her, your desk. So, in the future, when you take it upon yourself to seek solace with a woman who is not your intended or otherwise, I highly recommend you don’t leave such things lyin’ about in a place an innocent child of six can find!” Em slammed down the phone with a huff, infuriated their above-standards security measures had been called into question.

As she fought for breath, so incensed she wanted to hurl every item off Dixie’s desk and slam it against the wall, Dixie, Marybell and LaDawn all stood, still rooted to their spots in quiet mode, waiting, watching.

Cat stirred, eliciting a small snore.

Em’s lips thinned, her fingers clutching the back of her chair, her knuckles white from the effort. “I will not have our security questioned by some man who can’t keep track of his adorable little girl and her penchant for girlfriend shopping. Will not!”

LaDawn was the first to approach her, though it was hesitant. “I’m afraid a’ you, sugarlove.”

Marybell nodded numbly and raised her hand, her bangle bracelets jingling and sliding into place at the bend in her forearm. “Me...too.”

Dixie’s mouth was slightly open, her brow creased. “Wow. You were on fire. See what we mean about the fire breathing?”

If there was one thing Em had in her life besides her boys, it was her job. One she took incredibly seriously. “I take great pride in making sure everything runs smoothly here at Call Girls—especially the phones. How dare he outright declare we would have allowed something like that!”

LaDawn came up behind her and massaged her shoulders with nimble hands, breathing a sigh of a giggle. “Okay, Rocky. It’s over now, and you set him right. Why don’t you grab your chicken breasts? I think it’s time we all head on home and get a good night’s rest. You fought the good fight. You should take a break between matches.”

As her wits gathered, Em couldn’t help but replay the sweet voice in her head, wanting a girlfriend for her daddy so he wouldn’t be so cranky. There had been a hint of sadness, the wish to make everything better for her father that in a six-year-old’s mind meant snuggles and kisses and a girlfriend you bought at the girlfriend store.

The spike of anger she’d rolled with when she’d spoken to that arrogant jackass of a man dissipated in a puff, leaving her with a combination adrenaline/alcohol-related pounder of a headache, and a sad ache in her heart that a sweet little girl wanted her father to have a girlfriend.

This was what she got for thinking she was ever going to be capable of simulating sexual acts with LaDawn’s special spatula and a chair.

Oh, libation, what have you done?

* * *

The hard drop of a hammer on metal had Em gritting her teeth and wincing with pain. No more girls’ night—not ever. At least not when it factored in swirly orange drinks accompanied by chicken cutlet breasts.

Making her way toward Lucky Judson’s Hardware store, she stopped on the curb, unable to properly appreciate the cooler weather with early winter in full swing. Usually, it made her happy to finally be able to wear sweaters and boots. Today, it grated on her hangover and bit at her sinuses, forcing her to tighten the belt around her thigh-length coat to keep the sharp wind from clawing at her silky blouse.

Typically, the square, sitting directly in the center of Plum Orchard, surrounded by the local establishments and quaint row of Victorian houses where the local doctor, lawyer and dentist were housed, made Em smile.

It was always busy and humming with the people she’d grown up with all her life. Today, she’d rather not see any of those people, for surely they’d see her red eyes and sallow skin and label her with a big, fat letter H for shamefully hungover.

Her hangover reminded her of that innocent, sweet voice dipped in angels’ wings on the phone last night. There was something, something the mother in her had picked up on that told her the little girl had sensed a need in her father—loneliness maybe? Children had an uncanny knack for picking up emotions, leading them to act on their simplistic views of the world just to make the boo-boo better.

Not thirty feet from Lucky’s, the scent of freshly brewed coffee rose, making Em’s alcohol-weakened stomach lurch, taking her mind off the little girl momentarily. Or was her stomach lurching at the sight of the Magnolias, lying in wait, all phony smiles as they sat at the new café, hoping to make her their first pounce of the day?

The Magnolias, or Mags as everyone around town called them, were the backbone of all town social events, and what everyone perceived as the cream of Plum Orchard society. The chosen ones with rich families, and what was considered the proper connections.

Em always secretly compared them to henchwomen due to the fact that getting into the Magnolias was as difficult, and probably as bloody, as joining the mob. Unless, of course, you entered by birthright. She’d never been a Magnolia, but Dixie had once been the leader of their pack. They were exclusive, snobbish and plain old mean if anyone dared cross them.

When Dixie had come back to town—a changed woman—she’d crossed the Mags, and they were never going to let Em forget that even though she wasn’t allowed access to their exclusive club, she’d betrayed them simply by accepting Dixie.

Squaring her shoulders for the barb they’d certainly shoot at her, Em forced herself to make her feet move past Louella Palmer and her gang of Magnolia-scented thugs, each sipping on fancy coffee with whipped cream and sprinkles.