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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 say, Mistress Taboo?” He didn’t wait for Dixie to answer. Instead he held out his arm to Cat and smiled. “Shall we?”
Cat giggled again, soft and as lovely as she was, but a quick glance at Dixie had her clamping her lips shut and frowning before she regained her composure. She roped her arm loosely through Caine’s, keeping a visible distance between them. “C’mon. I’ll introduce you to everyone and familiarize you with what goes on here.”
Dixie stuck her tongue out at Caine behind his back, and hurried to shuffle up to the other side of Cat, grabbing onto her free arm and winking. Her chuckle was throaty, but her words held the ultimate dare. “Let the games begin.”
* * *
Back in her room, freshly showered and comfortable in an old T-shirt, Dixie snatched her phone with Landon’s text from the nightstand and raised her fist to the ceiling with a shake. “You suck, Landon,” she muttered, making Mona and Lisa stir.
After an hour with Caine, Cat and the women of Call Girls, Dixie’s head was still spinning. She’d thought she’d made her choice the moment she’d thrown down the challenge to Caine in Hank Cotton’s office.
Now? She was regretting her impulsivity. Once Cat had explained the inner workings of the phone-sex business, and only after Dixie was done mentally rolling her eyes at Caine, who’d smiled, joked and blatantly flirted with the ladies while making it appear this challenge was going to be akin to some leisurely stroll in the park, she’d waffled.
As she processed bits of information such as, she was her own boss and her hours were flexible, but some of the best, most loyal U.S. clients called in at night between the hours of midnight and three. And it was up to her to create an interesting, yet alluring phone-sex operator pseudonym, a website for that pseudonym, and an area of sex she specialized in. Scripts on how to handle difficult client calls, calls that got out of hand, all kinds of calls, calls, calls were readily available to them.
Shortly after meeting the women who ran the phones, and introductions, and all the details of the running of a phone-sex company, Dixie began to wilt, exhausted from the day’s events.
Cat, clearly intuitive, had handed her the Call Girls phone-sex operator package, and told her to go get some rest before she made her final decision.
That was where she was now. Making her final decision. Her eyes flew to her bedside clock. And she only had eighteen hours and counting to do it.
Tick, tick, tick.
The only thing she had decided on, if she didn’t chicken out, was the pseudonym Mistress Taboo. Caine had used it to taunt her, but it stuck like an earworm.
Flopping on the bed, she absently flipped through the ream of papers Cat had given her while she stroked Mona’s ear. Her eye caught the list of “specialties” Call Girls allowed, stilling her movement. “What, in all of heaven, do you suppose infantilism is, Mona?”
“Oh, you know, the usual. Men in diapers, baby bottles,” Caine said, strolling into her bedroom on bare feet, in a pair of cargo shorts and nothing else.
The defined lines of his face almost always took Dixie’s breath away. Tonight was no exception as the shadows cupped his strong jaw and enhanced his sharp cheekbones.
Her heart thrummed with the inevitable longing it had since the day she’d set her sights on him in high school. Dixie forced herself to look directly into his eyes instead of at the chest she’d once brazenly sat atop as he... Dixie gulped. “How unexpected to find you’re so in the fetish know,” she drawled, digging for the old Dixie, the one who was cocky and capable of keeping her composure catty and aloof all in one sentence.
Caine’s eyebrow rose in that condescending way while his chest glistened in all its lickability in the dim lamplight. Coming to stand at her feet, he reached around her to give Lisa’s broad head a scruff of his knuckles.
As the skin of his arm brushed hers, she sucked in a breath of air at the tightening of her nipples.
“Wanna see who knows the definition of more fetishes?”
“Almost as much as I’d like to see my spleen advertised on eBay.”
Caine’s eyes narrowed, glittering with amusement while his lips formed a sexy, cocky challenge of a smile. “That’s because you know you’ll lose. What’s the matter, Dixie? All bet-out for the day?”
“I’m all Caine’d out for forever. So what do you want, and why are you in my room? I don’t recall hearing a knock.”
Rising to her feet, she brushed a strand of her wet ponytail from her face, stepping around his solid frame.
“Door was open. And pillows,” he said, jamming his hands into the pockets of his shorts as if he wasn’t standing in front of her with no shirt on. “I know Sanjeev always has extra in here. I need another pillow. Please,” he tacked on with syrupy emphasis.
Dixie’s throat grew dry and gritty. “There aren’t a hundred people on staff who could find you pillows?”
“Unlike you, I don’t want to wake the staff for something as ridiculous as a pillow. I know you’re used to having someone at your beck and call, Powder Puff. I, on the other hand, fend quite nicely for myself and wouldn’t dream of waking them.”
“Look at you here in my room, fending,” she mocked. His insinuation that she was selfish enough to wake an entire household over something as trivial as a hangnail infuriated her. In fairness, it wasn’t exactly an untruth from her past, but it was no less infuriating now in the present.
And that was exactly what Caine wanted. Rather than rise further to his bait, Dixie turned on her heel, hoping the sway of her backside made him salivate just like it used to.
She threw the linen closet door open and peered inside, reaching for the chain to unsuccessfully turn the light on. The bulb was out. For all the fancy, highfalutin’ gadgets Landon had in this house, he’d overlooked the simple things when he’d renovated.
The heavy oak door snapped back at her, smashing into her hip with a hard thud, meaning the spring was broken. Dixie spread her legs to hold it open, using her foot to keep it in place while attempting to adjust her vision to see the interior. The space had a small entry, and was just large enough to house some shelving full of soft, fluffy towels and silken bedding.
The door creaked when Caine came up behind her. Pushing her foot aside, he used his large hands at her waist to move her deeper into the closet. “I asked for a pillow. Not directions to the Fountain of Youth. What’s taking so long?” he questioned, craning his neck upward to glimpse the top shelves.
Distracted by the light press of his fingers and the sting of the fleeting memory when Caine’s hand was never far from hers made her forget about the door. “Don’t let the—”
The door slammed shut behind them with a heavy thud, enveloping them in the quiet, Tide-scented darkness. Caine knocked into her, jolting her forward so her nose just missed the edge of a shelf before righting her with his arms.
Which left his rocklike, warm body pressed tight against her back.
Certainly a dilemma of her libido’s highest order.
Six
“Uh, let the door shut?” Caine finished into her ear, leaving Dixie to fight the shiver his warm breath left in its wake.
Dixie attempted to inch forward and out of his nerve-tingling grasp, but there was nowhere to go. “Impatience be thy name,” she said between the clench of her teeth.
“It’s better than shithead, I guess,” he murmured back.
“Didn’t I mention? Impatience is your middle name.”
“That’s downright mean, Dixie.”
“It’s downright true, Caine.”
“Viper.”
“Mistress Viper to you, thank you very much.” Dixie twisted uncomfortably, bucking against Caine’s hand in the process. “Now quit name-calling and open the door. You know how claustrophobic I am.” Just the thought of how claustrophobic she was made the claustrophobia in her stabby and irritable.
His sigh was a wash of raspy honey in the dark. “Stop wiggling around, woman, and let me—” one hand moved from her waist followed by the sound of the jiggling door handle “—open the damn thing...”
Chalk it up to a long day, but locked in a closet with Caine was the final straw that broke her raw nerves’ back. Though, the fight to keep from having any square inch of her body touching Caine’s worked to distract her fear of the pitch-black closet swallowing her whole. “What is the problem, Caine?” she snapped.
“I can’t—”
“If you use the words can’t and open in the same sentence referring to that doorknob—”
“You’ll what?” he huffed, his chest pushing against her back.
“I’ll suffocate you with one of these fluffy towels.”
She heard him jiggle the door handle again.
“Ready your weapon. I. Can’t.”
Slapping his hand from her waist, Dixie managed to turn around in the tiny space, her nose brushing the springy hairs on his chest. “Let me try.” She twisted the handle, her heart pounding out her body’s awareness of Caine’s. “It’s locked, damn it.”
“Oh, Sherlock, still such a cracker jack,” Caine cooed in another of his flowing British accents.
“Oh, Holmes, still just a sidekick with a big mouth.”
“Move over, Dixie, and let me give it another try.”
Dixie snorted to the tune of the irritation in his tone. “You do that, Hulk. I’ll wait over here in the two square inches of space, cowering weakly so the big, strong man can save me.”
They attempted to switch positions only to find themselves so closely fused their bodies were forced to make contact—delicious, heated, full-bodied contact.
Her slip of a T-shirt left little between them, the material so worn over time it was like having on nothing at all.
“So now what, Dixie-Cup?” he grumbled huskily, his chin brushing the top of her head.
Dixie had to close her eyes to keep from swaying as the comfort of the familiar assaulted her. She would not allow her head to move just a hair forward and rest on his chest.
She gritted her teeth. “Get us out of here before I claw my way past you to get to that door. And stop calling me Dixie-Cup!” Because pettily lashing out was going to make this situation better.
Caine’s fingertips twitched against hers. Knowing him the way she did, she also knew he was smiling into the dark. “But I’ve always called you Dixie-Cup, Dixie-Cup.”
“No. Landon called me Dixie-Cup. You called me a liar.” Dixie’s chest tightened with the familiar constriction of his taunts.
Caine’s fingers wound into the length of her hair, tugging her head back. “You were a liar,” he replied smoothly, yet the edge to his voice was hard...raw.
Rivulets of sweat began to form between her breasts, and she wasn’t sure if it was panic because the closet was hot and suffocating—or because Caine was. Fear of both made her strike out again. “Move, Caine, or I swear I’ll scream!”
His response was to drag her to him, her spine arching, driving her against him, a moan rising to her lips when an aching rush of wet heat grew in her cleft. Her body’s reply to him, to the gruff tug of her hair, and the once familiar command it wrought, infuriated her.
“Go away, Caine. Better yet, go back to Miami.”
