“Not a date,” Jax repeated.
“Emmaline Amos,” Tag replied, adopting his impression of a feminine voice, complete with a bat of his eyelashes and a twirl of his finger around a lock of his shaggy hair.
Gage’s eyes opened wide. “No shit! The one that works at the phone-sex company with Caine?”
Jax’s eyes narrowed in Gage’s direction. “Get your mind out of the gutter, Gage. She’s the GM. She doesn’t answer the calls.”
Gage flicked his fingers at Jax’s reflection. “Oh, stop getting your back up. Still, workin’ in a place like that—” he wiggled his dark eyebrows “—I bet she knows a thing or two.”
Tag slapped him on the back of the head. “Shut up, Gage. This is the first time our wee boy’s been out in as long as you’ve been sexually active. Leave him the hell alone.” Tag’s eyes sought Jax’s again with the “If you need to talk...” signal before he said, “I’m happy for you, man. Glad to see you’re getting out. New town—new life. Clean slate, right?”
Jax and Tag had a clear understanding of clean slates. Both of them wanted one—both of them were going about finding them in their own ways.
Maizy, the final piece to their nonconformist, but totally a work-in-loving-progress puzzle, dipped between pairs of legs to latch on to Jax’s thigh. “You’re going out, Daddy?”
He looked down at his daughter; her bright auburn hair and freckles so much like her mother’s, so unlike the Hawthorne’s dark looks, and his chest tightened with that unconditional love her dark, chocolate-brown eyes summoned. “I am, kidlet.” He scooped her up in his arms, dropping a kiss on her freckled nose. “You got a problem with that?”
She captured both sides of his face and rubbed their noses together. “Only if you’re going out for ice cream. Then I’d be madder than a hornet.”
Jax hitched his jaw, making a comically confused face. “A hornet? Where’d you learn that, Maizy-do?”
She roped her arms around his neck, resting her cheek on his. “Uncle Gage says it all the time. He said it’s better for me ’n the S word.”
Jax rolled his eyes at Gage. “A sight better, I’d say. So, you gonna eat all your dinner like a good girl for Uncle Tag while I’m gone?”
“If he promises not to burn the fish sticks again.” Her honesty always made him laugh. They were all shitty cooks. Him probably being the shittiest. On the best of nights, they only managed to eke out a barely passable meal for Maizy. It included all the approved food groups suitable for a six-year-old.
It just wasn’t always edible—at least not the outside of it. Sometimes, if you picked your way to the middle of a chicken breast, there was a silver lining. But what Maizy lacked in their culinary finesse, they more than made up for with love. No one would ever mess with Maizy Hawthorne as long as her uncles and father were around.
“Note to self—Daddy needs to watch the Food Network more.” He’d made a vow—once they settled into this rundown house so full of all the potential Gage and Tag kept talking about, he’d learn to cook. For Maizy. Because everything was for her, and that’s how it was going to stay.
“Hey!” Tag teased, tugging on a tightly coiled ringlet of his niece’s hair. “They were blackened fish sticks, thank you very much, Ms. Food Critic. Cajun style. I was trying to broaden your food horizons.”
Maizy shook her head full of curls and wrinkled her nose with her trademark display of disapproval at Tag. “Uncle Gage said that was a fib. It was really just burned. It was yucky.”
Gage scooped her out of Jax’s arms and swung her around his back so she could hold tight to his neck piggyback style. “It sure was yucky. Probably the biggest fib Uncle Tag ever told you, too. It was right up there with, ‘Look, Maizy-do—this big ole gooey mess tastes just like Chicken McNuggets if you close your eyes and pretend. Give it a chance.’”
Maizy giggled, squeezing Gage’s neck. “That was so gross. So if Daddy won’t be here, will you be my unicorn tonight, Uncle Gage?”
Gage reached upward and ruffled her hair with a smile. “I’ll always be your unicorn.”
The phone interrupted Maizy’s giggling as Gage galloped out of the bathroom with her. “I’ll get it. You finish prettying up for your daaate,” Tag drawled with a laugh.
One last glance in the mirror, and Jax sucked in a deep breath, bracing his hands on either side of the pink, shell-shaped sink. Damn. He was nervous. When was the last time he could lay claim to that emotion? Especially when it concerned a woman whom he absolutely wasn’t dating?
He rolled his head from side to side to loosen his muscles, tight with anticipation.
Tag’s scruffy head was back in his line of vision. “Uh, Jax?”
“Yep?”
“Someone’s on the phone for you.”
His ears picked up something in Tag’s voice—something almost urgent, maybe even ominous. No one ever called them. No one who stirred up the kind of warning Tag’s voice held anyway. “Who is it?”
Tag’s throat worked, his Adam’s apple sliding up and down. His lips fell into a thin line as he jammed his hands into the pockets of his worn jeans.
A strange chill rolled along his spine. A warning chill. “Who the hell is it, Tag?”
“Reece. It’s Reece.”
The floor fell away from Jax’s feet in a tidal wave of his blood pounding in his ears and his heart dropping to his feet. Well, that explained why Tag’s voice sounded alarms in Jax’s head.
Fuck. Fuck, no.
Five
The front door to Em’s small ranch blew open with a gust of winter wind, Dixie’s beautiful face in the middle of it. “Well, hello, fine sir! Might I interest you in a cheeseburger and some fries with your aunt Dixie and the girls? Like a real dinner date?” Dixie swung Gareth up into her arms, nuzzling his neck with her nose until he was in a fit of giggles.
The moment Dixie walked through Em’s front door, Gareth launched himself at her. Dixie, Caine, Sanjeev and the girls had become as important to Em and her children as any family member.
Her mother didn’t like it, and no one in town did either for that matter. But she no longer cared what other people didn’t like. She didn’t care that the women in town mocked her parenting for letting the boys be around the women of Call Girls. Their “I can’t believe she’d allow young, impressionable boys in the presence of those women” snide comments rolled right off her like water off a duck’s back.
At least those women were honest. They might talk dirty, but they didn’t talk behind your back.
Over the months, during the hardest transition of their lives, Dixie and the girls were always there for her and her sons.
While she’d picked up the pieces of her life, while she’d driven Clifton to his counselor, while she’d learned how to be single—they’d been there, too. Helping her through meltdowns, passing her tissues and teaching her how to be a part of a group of women who accepted her for who she was. That was more than she could say for her judgmental mother and the Mags.
“Stop, Aunt Dixie!” Gareth cried between bouts of laughter as Dixie kicked the door shut with her foot. “I have somefin’ to tell you ’bout school. It’s ’portant!”
Em held her breath. Please, don’t let it be another incident where one of his classmates poked fun at him about his father’s cross-dressing.
Dixie’s eyes twinkled down at Em’s youngest son. “Did you find a new sweetheart? You better not be courtin’