take them away.
More banging on her door. Loud. Obnoxious. Heavy-handed.
Gravy sakes, could a sick woman just be left to die in splotchy, ugly red runny-nosed peace?
Not if Emmaline Amos and Dixie Davis are your friends, Marybell. With friendship came a certain amount of invasion of privacy, she’d learned. Still, she was going to kill them for waking her again, and just when she’d found a bit of sleep without the threat of coughing her left lung to implosion.
Muddled and fuzzy, Marybell sat upright, her head pulsing its angry protest, making her reach for another tissue. The last time she’d looked at the clock while the girls were still here, it was five in the afternoon. She’d slept for three solid hours.
Pulling herself to a standing position, she shivered as she left behind the warmth of the heating pad and made her way to the front door, jamming her hands into the deep pockets of her favorite, albeit ratty, flannel bathrobe.
She began to open it with a moment’s hesitation, warding off another coughing spell. Then she caught hold of her runaway fears, forcing herself to rationalize through the thick haze of cold meds. Clearly, her friends hadn’t made the connection to her past, and they’d already seen her. So seeing her twice without her makeup and hair gel wouldn’t change anything. What was done was done.
Still, Marybell kept her eyes averted—in hindsight, she’d wish her tongue had done the same. She yanked open the door, her eyelids at half-mast. “You know, you three are like havin’ really annoying sisters. Maybe akin to the stepsisters in Cinderella, only nicer and with smaller feet,” she grumbled, sneezing into her tissue. “How will I ever nab the prince if you pair of mother hens won’t let me rest? Would you have me search for my Prince Charming lookin’ like this?”
A delicious man with hair the color of a dark, exotic wood, worn just long enough to brush the collar of his black sweatshirt, partially covered by the navy-blue knit hat he wore, smiled a smile surely carved with the tool of a god. “Wow. Prince Charming’s a lot of pressure, don’t you think?”
Her breathing stalled while her heart crashed against her ribs and her eyes swiftly hit the floor.
“Are you Marybell Lyman?” he prompted, rough and chocolaty rich, cocking his head in question.
Oh, no. Heaven, no.
She knew that voice. That voice had been in the Call Girls office on more than one occasion as of late. The voice that was always looking for his brother, Jax, who’d created some security software for Dixie and Caine, specifically designed for Call Girls. The voice that belonged to this man—an unconventionally delicious man.
One who made her tremble in her zebra-striped leggings and work boots. One she’d avoided purposely for several months now—even with her Mohawk and trimmings in place.
A man from her past she’d only vaguely known socially, but who would most certainly know her sans her “people shield.”
And hate her for the knowing.
But she had her eye mask. Everything was okay. Her hands self-consciously flew to her face to find her eye mask was no longer there.
Oh, gravy.
Think fast, Marybell Lyman, or all your carefully built walls, all your beloved friends, job and possessions will come crashin’ around your ears.
* * *
As the woman who answered the door made a stumbling, wobbly break for another room, Taggart Hawthorne stood awkwardly at her door, tool belt in hand, remembering only that Em had told him this Marybell Lyman’s protests weren’t an option. She was sick, it was cold out and her heat was broken. Take no prisoners—Em’s exact words.
Which, if you considered her current relationship with his brother, Jax, didn’t surprise him. Em was a warrior disguised in pretty dresses and flowery perfume. Her lipstick was really a magic wand that made you do things you wouldn’t normally do, and her sweet nature bent you to her will without ever realizing you’d been manipulated by flirty eyelashes and pretty words.
Yet she’d become a part of not just his brother’s and his niece Maizy’s world, but his universe, too. And when Em demanded, he listened, largely because he respected the hell out of her.
Tag leaned against the door frame, savoring the smell of chicken soup, tea and Vicks as he assessed the view of this woman’s small but nicely decorated living room.
A thickly cushioned couch in soft ivory, littered from one end to the other with overstuffed pillows in gold and a light turquoise, sat in disarray. What was it with a woman and some fancy pillows?
It was as if the damn things made everything okay. That must be it, because every woman he’d encountered so far always had a mess o’ pillows—little Maizy included.
Though he had to admire her choice in the chest she’d chosen to use as a coffee table. The surface was scarred, battered from years of use, holding a simple, darkly stained bowl of colored balls. It was sturdy, the lines of it clean and squarely crisp, the color a deep walnut, streaked with hints of red and antique white.
If he had a place of his own, and he wasn’t sponging off his brother, Jax, till he got back on his feet, he’d definitely put his feet up on something like that—every night with a plate of hot wings and a football game.
Perusing the walls, where abstract rectangles of ivory, red and that same turquoise she seemed so fond of, streaked the canvases, reminding him of somewhere warm. Somewhere the sun shone all the time and you sat in the sand with a bottle of Corona while salty waves rolled over your toes and buttery-rayed days turned to purple-hued nights.
There was a big square rug in the center of the bleached white barn-wood floor, woven in the same willowy color of her couch.
So this was the apartment of a phone sex operator? Huh. Truth time. He’d been expecting all manner of paraphernalia. In fact, he’d been damn curious when he thought about running into her tools of the trade.
Yet not a hint of a shelf with hooks where rows of worn floggers and masks in black and red might hang. No fuzzy handcuffs tossed carelessly over a doorknob, and there certainly weren’t any leather catsuits.
Obviously, the job did not define the lady.
It didn’t bother him in the least that Em ran a phone sex company. True, when Em had hired him to fix some faulty wiring at Call Girls, it had made him a little uncomfortable to hear the women talking to their clients through the walls of one office or another. Especially LaDawn. Damn, that woman could make somethin’ out of nothing.
But the discomfort had nothing to do with disapproval and everything to do with the fact that even he had to admit, their breathy sighs and softly moaned words turned him on a little.
Still, he just couldn’t connect with the notion. It was a false connection. Once the operator hung up the phone, she was creating another relationship just like the one she’d had with the caller before. He couldn’t submerse himself enough—or maybe his imagination just wasn’t vivid enough to get past the idea. Of course, Em didn’t do the dirty-talkin’, either. This woman, according
