wasn’t really a guesthouse at all. It was a mini version of the big house with only five bedrooms instead of ten, a pool lined with white travertine along its sloping edges, and an island, complete with palm trees, chaise longues and a bartender in the middle of it all.
As she made her way past the pool area, she noted not a single string bikini or Insanity Workout body to be had. The pool didn’t have a ripple of activity swirling in the crystal-blue waters, dotted with solar lights beneath the surface where she’d expected to see a bevy of beauties playing volleyball on the shoulders of beefy men.
Her images of sex goddesses scantily draped in bikinis, dangling their feet in the pool while they whispered, “I love it when you touch me there” fled and were replaced by the sound of a voice that couldn’t belong to someone more than ten years old.
She followed it toward the wide glass doors leading inside, scooting through the doors, and making her way across the terra-cotta tiled floor to the rounded entryway where the voice grew stronger.
“Ohhhhhh, I’m so wet for you!” an enthusiastic voice cooed. “You’re so big and hard, I just don’t think I can stand it! Doooo me, Enzo,” the little-girl voice—far too youthful for phone sex—purred. “Do me like that, you Italian stallion!”
Dixie stopped all forward movement as if she was playing a game of life-or-death freeze tag, gripping the overstuffed chair in the twilight-filled foyer to keep her legs from collapsing.
She couldn’t do this. The woman’s voice, coming from Landon’s old office, belonged to, at best, a teenager. How could she possibly support anyone who wanted to talk to a child—even if she was a grown woman merely pretending to be a child? How could Landon have supported it? Disgust bloomed in the pit of her stomach, mushrooming until she couldn’t breathe.
This had gone much further than she’d gone in her head. It was one thing for two adults to consensually have make-believe sex with a phone as their barrier. That she could almost handle. But when a man wanted a child he could pretend to have sex with—that was well off her morality chart.
Not to mention—Italians and stallions?
That was her cue. Exit stage left.
Five
A hand clamped on her shoulder, a cool hand with a gentle yet firm grip. “I know what you’re thinking, Dixie. You are the Dixie, right?” a soft voice asked.
She stiffened, caught in the act of running away. “If I said no, would that mean I could escape from this madhouse, and you’d never be the wiser?”
“Well, no. I’d be the wiser. I’d know you just as easily as if I’d run into you buying milk at the Piggly Wiggly. Landon talked about you all the time, and he must have showed us a hundred pictures of you.” She paused for a moment, putting both hands on Dixie’s shaking shoulders, forcing her to turn around.
What met Dixie’s eyes was a creamy-skinned, fresh-faced young woman of no more than maybe thirty, with long chestnut hair spilling over her shoulders and down her spine, and a pair of the widest, deepest green-blue eyes Dixie had ever encountered.
Her coloring was naturally peach-inspired, and the clothes she wore, a T-shirt that read Georgia Tech and black capris, were as simple as Dixie’s. “I’m Catherine, Cat for short, Butler. I’m general manager of Call Girls.”
“Gage’s new fiancée, right?”
Cat flushed a pretty pink—the kind of pink you flushed when you were wildly in love. “That’s me. Em asked me to tell you she’d see you tomorrow. Something about the hot tub at the big house and cold king crab.”
Dixie suppressed a smile. As a single parent with a husband who’d just up and decided he deserved a midlife crisis a little early, Em deserved a good pampering. “She deserves it after today.”
“And you are definitely Dixie Davis. Landon always said you were even prettier in person than you are in your pictures. He was right. And that voice!” Cat said with obvious delight. “It’s fantastic—so raspy and smoky. You’re gonna give the girls a real run for their money.”
Dixie grimaced. “I think today I don’t want to be Dixie Davis, and I don’t want to give anyone a run for anything with my raspy or my smoky.”
Cat grinned, revealing adorable dimples. “If only trading lives with someone else was as easy as the words simply spoken, hmm? Now, before you set off to givin’ someone hell—and yes, I can see that look on your face, Landon described your ire well—hear me out. The voice you hear in there on that phone is Marybell Lyman’s, and she’s not role-playing. It’s just the voice our creator gave her. And it works for her, but we have strict rules about that sort of thing at Call Girls. I promise.”
Still shaken, though to a lesser degree, Dixie’s tongue got the better of her. “Clearly, the rules for Italians and stallions escaped Landon.”
Cat chuckled. “What’s the harm in making a small mob fish feel like a big ol’ shark? That’s why men call us, Dixie. To interact with women they’ve fooled themselves into believing are incapable of living without their magically lust-inducing words.”
Dixie exhaled a breath of regret, ashamed she’d jumped to the same conclusions people still jumped to about her. “I’m sorry. I heard...and I just assumed—”
“Never you fear, Dixie. Landon wouldn’t allow calls generated from men who wanted to talk to underage girls. He was a kind soul. In fact, it remains a strict rule. We entertain lots of fantasies here at Call Girls, but there are absolute no-no’s, and if anyone’s caught indulging a client in something that’s off the table, it’s cause for permanent termination.”
Another sigh of relief shuddered through her, leaving Dixie unsure how to respond to this woman who looked as if she’d just fallen off the pages of Seventeen magazine.
She’d expected women who popped their gum, half-dressed in spandex catsuits, wearing six-inch stilettos and more eyeliner than Brugsby’s Drugstore cosmetics counter could supply. Instead, a pretty, fresh-faced, articulate woman greeted her with a lovely smile and a lilting Southern accent.
One of these things was not like the other, and two of these things weren’t even kinda the same.
Dixie squared her shoulders and pushed her hand toward Cat. “My apologies for my inexcusable manners. Yes. I’m Dixie Davis. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
Cat gripped Dixie’s hand, curling her fingers around it to give it a firm shake before letting it go. “No, it’s not. Not yet anyway. You look like you’re ready to find the nearest pitcher of sweet tea laced with bourbon to drown yourself in.”
“Booze wouldn’t go denied,” Dixie confessed, dropping the tips of her fingers to the pockets in her skirt.
Cat tilted her head, her eyes glittering and playful. “So you made it this far, right? That’s a sure sign you’re at least a little curious. Do you want to soldier on? Or do we end this conversation with a pleasant but cordial ‘it was lovely to meet you?’”
Dixie swallowed hard, her throat full of sandpaper, but she squared her shoulders. She was in. “We soldier. We definitely soldier. Battlefields and hand grenades ahoy.”
Cat’s
