and saw Dixie-Cup had gone belly up. Though I will tell you, I wasn’t one of them. Honest.” Facing Dixie, she held her right palm up.
“I didn’t want him to rescue me. I went in with my eyes wide open. I left Plum Orchard to open the restaurant with them wide open, too—definitely one of my more harebrained schemes. But I never told Landon a thing. I lied to him and told him everything was okay, because he was so sick and he had enough to worry about. I let him believe I walked away from all of my investors.”
“You’re doin’ this to pay back all those investors, aren’t you? Because most of those investors were Davis family connections.”
Shame and humiliation tinged Dixie’s gut, but she refused to let it dampen her determination. “If I have to sell an organ on Craigslist.”
Em let go of a heavy sigh. “That’s what I figured. But it isn’t like your mama’s friends couldn’t afford the investment, Dixie. They’ll just write it off as a loss. And isn’t that what bankruptcy is for anyway? So you don’t have to pay anyone back?”
Dixie shook her head sharply. No. That was the easy way out. No more easy. “It was the easiest way to keep the bank at bay, but I still owe a debt as far as I’m concerned. I’ll repay it.”
Em’s pretty blue eyes searched hers, a hint of admiration in them until they clouded back over with skepticism. “I just don’t know what to think of you anymore, Miss Dixie,” she said, her tone clear with conflict.
“Then think about other things. Like how uproariously, ironically funny it’ll be when everyone in town finds out Dixie Davis, reformed mean girl in deep financial debt, is selling sex.”
“You should’ve told Landon, Dixie. He’d have wanted to know. He loved you. He said that often to me durin’ his last month. He said if he’d been hitting for the other team, it would always be you.”
He had said that on a million occasions. He’d said it when he admired the color of her hair or what he called the sexy half curve of her lip when she was thinking. He’d said it when she was singing along with the radio, and her sultry voice made every song sound dirty.
Dixie smiled at the memory, and it grew wider. He’d said, The only person I’d change who I am for is you, Dixie Davis. You make this gay man pause from time to time. But then I remember I can’t change, and you love Caine Donovan. Nothing can change that, girlie.
Something had.
Dixie shuddered a breath from her lungs and began to descend the steps one at a time, taking Em with her.
Maybe it was Landon’s spirit. Maybe it was just desperation, but an ember of hope sparked, and if she fanned it just right... “But he didn’t know, and he didn’t hit for my team, and now here we are. So let’s go back to the big house and research phone sex, because I plan to be the best Lady Lana Call Girls has ever seen. Caine Donovan will rue the day he talks dirty to some lonely woman with Johnny Depp’s voice.”
The pound of footsteps from behind them startled the women. Caine flew down the stairs past them, ruffling Em’s hair on the way. “Race ya to the big house, ladies!” he yelled as none other than Christopher Walken, taking the steps two at a time as if he was twelve, and they were still walking the halls of Plum Orchard Middle School.
“So we have some work cut out for us,” Em squeaked.
Dixie’s eyebrow rose. “We? Won’t that cause trouble for you with Louella and the gang?” Louella was going to have a kitten if she found out Em was helping Dixie Davis—once girlfriend-code breaker extraordinaire, now sworn enemy.
Em flapped her hand, but her eyes wouldn’t meet Dixie’s. “Bah. They pay me little mind unless they need somethin’ legal, so I pay little mind back. It’s the same as it always was—just like high school. I wasn’t born a Mag, so I’ll never be a Mag. And since Clifton left me for that no-good woman in Atlanta, they only tolerate me because I can be of help from time to time in the legal area. I was always an outsider, Dixie. That’s still just as true as it ever was.”
Dixie grinned. Em was bucking the system even though Dixie knew the lack of acceptance from the reigning queens of popularity and prominence stung. “Then we can be outsiders together.” She tugged at her arm.
But Em hesitated. “Wait. Before we go any further, there’s one more thing.”
Dixie stiffened. “Now what? Oh, wait, I know. Landon owned a brothel, too, right? Is this the part where you tell me I have to get rid of my flannel pajamas for crotchless underwear, but you couldn’t tell me before because it was confidential?” She accented the word with a roll of her eyes.
Em’s hand fluttered to her neck. “Why, Dixie, I almost think that would be easier.”
Hackles rose on the back of Dixie’s neck. “Than?”
“Telling you about the court-slash-Landon-appointed mediator. Remember Hank mentioned that?” Em’s feet were suddenly moving down the steps at a rapid pace, the skirt of her dress flying behind her.
Dixie followed suit, pushing the exit door to hold it open. “Vaguely. I was a little caught up in the ‘oh, baby, I like it like that’ at that point.”
Em stepped around her and held her hand out with a grimace. “Meet your court-appointed mediator.”
Four
Dixie stood at the foot of the bed in her appointed room at Landon’s house. The house he’d bought, expanded and renovated from top to bottom. He had instructed she stay in the aptly dubbed Princess room, the room he’d always given her whenever she’d come back home during and after college to visit the big house.
Buttery lemon and pastel green leaves whispered across the wallpaper on the walls, surrounding the centerpiece of the room—a king-size canopy bed handcrafted in Italy of chestnut and ash and lacquered in a soft cream.
This was the bed where she and Caine had spent the nights just before their engagement party, wrapped in each other’s arms, contemplating their future.
Caine would spread her out on the cool sheets while the sky outside grew heavy with stars. He’d rise up above her, running his possessive hands along her skin, paying special detail to the dip where her waist met hip, leaning forward and nipping at it while his hair grazed her shivering, frantic flesh.
Her hands always rose to caress his thighs, loving the response he gave when he’d fall over her, taking her legs up around his neck and moaning the words with a rasp, You, Dixie. I need to lick you or I’ll damned well lose my mind.
Those decadent, raw sounds coming from his lips always made her press her hips upward, begging.
When his head finally dipped between her legs, it was almost a surprise how the wondrous lust filled her up.
Jesus, Dixie, you’re all I can think about day and night, were always the last words he spoke before he parted her cleft with his thumbs and slipped his tongue inside her, drawing long passes around her clit, making her beg him to capture the bud between his lips and suck the hard nub until she was thrashing her way toward insanity.
Rising up on his elbows, his glittering eyes held victory in them when they found hers. His raw power never failed to wrench the breath from her
