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
