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