Talk Dirty to Me

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.”