“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