Jeep, Emmaline. You said Jeep.
Yes, Mama. My Jeep. Tack on I’m messin’ around with a man I hardly know and every nosy crony in Plum Orchard’ll be sewin’ up scarlet letters to paste on my chest in no time.
Her mother’s words in her head made her move faster. She cracked her head on the ceiling just as Jax was smoothing her sweater back up over her shoulder and making a stern face at the shadowy figure outside the car.
His hand instantly went to the back of her head to protect her from crushing in her skull. “My brother Tag,” he offered. If he was at all embarrassed at being caught in this state, he was a good poker player.
A face a lot like Jax’s, but rougher, even harder angled, grinned into the window while moonlight poured over her indecency through her sunroof.
Perfect.
Still facing the wrong way, she crawled across the seat just as Jax turned the key and hit the button for the automatic window. He poked his head out while Em yanked at her dress, caught on the edge of the middle console.
There was a loud tear, solidifying the nightmare her good sense had become. Embarrassment stained her cheeks with a hot whoosh, but her reactive cringe was what almost drove them over the edge.
In her hot dose of humiliation, she stepped on the gas, revving the engine until it ground out a loud shot of ear-jarring sound.
Jax held up a calm finger to his brother. “One sec.” He leaned over, still seemingly unaffected, and put one hand on her shoulder while he used the other to untwist the edge of her dress, releasing it from the console. As he helped resituate her, he made introductions. “Em, this is my brother Tag. Tag, Emmaline Amos.”
Tag drove his big, square hand through the window. “Nice to meet you, ma’am.”
She slid down into the driver’s seat, looking straight ahead, focusing on the big oak tree, but good breeding and the threat of eternal damnation forced her to hold out her hand. “The same.”
Tag took it and gave it a light squeeze before letting go and focusing on Jax. “It’s Maizy. She’s got a fever. I’m thinking maybe another ear infection, but I can’t remember the recipe for the oil you use that she likes so much. Sorry, bro. Didn’t mean to—” he cleared his throat “—interrupt.”
Another face, equally as handsome, and rough in an entirely different way than Jax and Tag, appeared behind Tag. He held up a hand and waved with what was turning out to be the signature Hawthorne grin. When a smile wasn’t in place, all three were gruff, hard edges, almost angry, but their smiles changed the landscape of everything. “Gage Hawthorne. You must be Emmaline.”
No. Tonight she was dirty girl. Emmaline was all but ashes in a sand-doused fire. She inhaled, keeping herself from pushing the breath from her lips. “That’s me. Nice to meet you.”
So nice. Everything was so nice tonight. This time, she held out her hand, pushing her gaze toward Gage’s—successfully meeting it—crushing the ugly impulse to pop open the passenger door, push Jax out, floor it, drive straight to her house and dive for cover under the fluffy new comforter on her bed.
Gage thumped Tag on the shoulder with a square hand that matched his brother’s almost identically. “I found it, knucklehead. Told you I would if you just waited ten seconds. Leave them alone and come back in.”
Jax’s face was different now, too. He had on his Maizy face. Concern lined it, determination, too. “Guys, it’s okay. If Maizy’s sick, I want to be there.”
Warmth fizzled and bubbled in her stomach. He loved Maizy the way a little girl should be loved by her daddy. Loosening her stiff lips, Em shooed him with her hand. “You should really go. Say hello to Maizy for me, okay?”
Jax’s eyes searched hers, but she managed a warm smile that said all was well, and flicked her fingers again in a gesture to dismiss them all. “Go, before Maizy comes lookin’ for you three out here in the cold. You don’t want her to get worse.”
He was so obviously trying to protect her shredded reputation by not saying anything that not saying anything was making everything worse.
Which made for the perfect escape. “G’night, Jax.” She hitched her jaw toward the door, watching his fingers pop it open and his big body slide out. The gravel beneath his feet crunched in time with her tires as she began to pull away. “Nice meeting you both,” she managed, before driving the window upward with a flick of her finger, blocking out any sort of response from the trio of men.
Eyes on the winding road leading back to her place, Em began the tedious process of overthinking.
Every word. Every hot caress.
Mercy.
Seven
“Dixie?”
“Yes, Emmaline?”
“Coffee, sunshine.” Em handed the cup to her over the back of the couch without meeting her eyes. She stepped over Dora’s—her enormous Saint Bernard’s—body, stooping to give her ears a quick rub.
Dixie struggled to sit up—as gorgeous as ever, even this early in the morning and a night spent on her narrow couch. “You’re a treasure.”
No. I’m a dirty girl. The crass might even call me a slut. But never a treasure. “You’re welcome.”
Dixie’s yawn made the guilty half of her jump. “Boys still asleep?”
“Uh-huh.” She made her way to the small nook she’d created for the boys’ school backpacks and shoes and began to straighten, fingers tight with tension.
“Can you look at me when you answer me?”
“Not a chance.”
“Do you suppose hidin’ in the boys’ backpacks is going to keep me from asking you probing questions about last night and where you got to until I finally passed out at one in the mornin’?”
“I was hopin’ they’d act as some sort of Dixie-off.” She held up the backpack over her head and danced it in the air with a bounce.
“Not likely,” Dixie said from behind her, grabbing the backpack and setting it aside. She took Em’s hand and walked her to the couch. “Sit. I’ll make you a cup of coffee. You put together your explanation story for me while I do it. Tie up those loose ends and all.” She grinned at Em before setting her mug down on the coffee table and wandering off to the kitchen.
She loved her kitchen. It was the first thing in the house she’d attacked when Clifton left. It was rustic black granite countertops and lovingly antiqued ivory cabinets, a soft-gray-and-muted-black-veined ceramic backsplash with diamond tiled patterns in cream she’d designed herself.
The shiny silver appliances were her gift to herself after Dixie hired her. The stove being her first love. A six-burner gas cooktop splayed out atop her center island and a wall oven with a digital timer set to change the temperature to cook the meals she dropped into the mouth of it before leaving for work.
The laminate flooring, a grainy dark wood, more labor and mostly love, with coils beneath to heat it, was, to date, her crowning glory. Her kitchen said, Em was here.
Like her constructional footprint was all that was necessary for her to finally be heard. Like the grout she’d mixed sang her name when she’d stirred batches and batches of it. Like the floor she’d laid, ruining saw blade after saw blade until she got it right, was her rebel cry for independence.
The peace that single room brought her, the careful choices she’d made for the colors meant to bellow, “This here be Emmaline’s Kitchen—made from hours of splinters and sweat and a two-day rental on a wet saw that ended up being a weeklong four-hundred-dollar bill. See the bloodshed on the corners of the wood-grained cabinet right near the refrigerator. Look at how the wall oven glistens with the tears of the fair Emmaline as she struggled to hook it up all while she sobbed and doused everyone within earshot with some uncharacteristically foul language. Know this before ye enter!”
The kitchen was her statement. Her new beginning.
As Dixie made her way around that v
ery kitchen, gathering up a mug for Em, she asked again, “How’re those loose ends coming, Em?”
Em tucked her hands into her bathrobe, sinking as far into the couch as she could. What could she say? I got home late because Jax Hawthorne did things to me the likes of which I can never define while I enjoyed every second of it—in a car—er, Jeep—like some common tart?
Dixie held the blue mosaic mug out to her before settling into the chair opposite the couch. She tucked a rust-colored pillow to her belly and sighed. “Your couch is awful. My back will never be the same.”
Neither will my vagina. Oh. Mercy. “You were sleeping so soundly, I didn’t want to wake you. So I texted Caine and told him you were spending the night. I hope that’s all right.”
She massaged the back of her neck and grinned. “Thank you. Now no more avoiding this. You ready?”
“With my story?”
“Yep.”
“Why does there have to be a story attached to me coming home late?”
Dixie gave her the saucy “whatever” look and shrugged. “There doesn’t.”
Em narrowed her eyes at her friend and pursed her lips. “Oh, there does, too. Don’t you try to guilt me into telling you with your pretend indifference.”
“Is there any other way?”
“We went shopping.”
Dixie popped her lips and tilted her head to nod. “Shopping can take hours and hours. I know. I’m a shopper. No bigger shopper ’n me. Why, sometimes, when I’m looking at paint swatches and bed linens, I make an entire weekend of it. Seventy-two hours of nonstop color wheels and Egyptian cotton.” She sipped her coffee, letting her feet dangle over the arm of the chair.
“You’re mocking me.”
“I am.”
“I can’t talk about it.”
“I don’t want you to do anything you don’t want to do. Let’s just sit quietly together and enjoy the peace of this brand-new Saturday before the boys wake up. I promised to take them to the big house and let Sanjeev spoil them rotten with grilled cheese and ice-cream sundaes for lunch, then some camel time with Toe. You know, just in case you didn’t make it home today after all that shopping.” Dixie hunkered down into the chair, letting her head fall back and closing her eyes.
While Em squirmed. “I can’t talk about it.”
Dixie didn’t open her eyes. “You said that. Whatever you did with Mr. Jax Hawthorne last night has left you redundant.”
“I had almost sex with him!” she blurted out—the words echoing in her skull, taunting. Oh. That sounded so much worse out loud than it ever had in her head.
Dixie kept her eyes closed, but her lips twitched. “I thought we were havin’ quiet time?”
“You know doggone well you’d make me tell you just by virtue of your disapproving silence.”
“I did no such thing. You said you didn’t want to talk about it. I was respectin’ your wishes.”
“With your silent condemnation—the one that makes me squirm until my skin crawls.”
“I can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do, Em. If you squirmed, that was your guilt over not telling your best friend something you so obviously need to talk out. That’s on you. Not me. Now, breakfast? I make a mean bowl of grits. Obviously, you need to refuel.” Her straight face crumpled into a fit of laughter that had her shoulders shaking so hard, she almost spilled her coffee.
Em dropped her coffee mug on the rich-hued surface of her pine table. “This is not funny, Dixie! I’ve done something so unlike me, and I don’t know what to do about it.” Misery, be thy name.
“But does what you did feel good enough that you might not want to take it back? ’Cuz you know, that’s okay. To enjoy the company of a man.”
“I didn’t just enjoy the company of a man, Dixie. I enjoyed his company in a Jeep with the seat flat. I was...I was sexually festive! If word got out I was diddlin’ in, of all things, a Jeep, parked right outside the man’s home while his baby girl slept inside—”
“What?” Dixie sat forward with probing eyes. “What would happen, Em? People would say, that dirty Em. How dare she date a man when she’s just divorced and single and well within her rights to spend time with an attractive, equally single man? Is that what they’d say? Would they call you unseemly, maybe even forward? And why is that so important to you, anyway?”
“Because of what happened with Louella when she put those pictures of him up on Founders’ Day, Dixie. I wouldn’t put it past Louella to be sneakin’ around snoopin’. I don’t want the boys to have more trouble at school, Dixie. Isn’t it bad enough they’re teased unmercifully about Clifton? Add me throwing myself at a man in a parked car, and they’ll never recover.”
Dixie’s eyes flashed angry and hot. “So you’re gonna let Louella dictate your life?”
“If it means the boys won’t have people callin’ their mother a whore on top of everything else, yes.” Yes, she would.
“Because Louella’s so lily-white,” Dixie spat, her lips pursing in distaste. “It’s your life. You should be able to live it the way you want. I understand you don’t want the boys to suffer, but it isn’t like you’re out in the square skinnin’ the seniors alive in the midday sun. You were just having some fun. As long as you’re not cheatin’ or hurting anyone, the notion that it’s bad to have sex for the joy of it is archaic.”
“But that’s the PO, and you know it.”
“No, here’s what I know. Your life is yours until you let someone else run it. I learned that from Landon. He taught me to live, Em. Really live. I’m here to tell you, I love livin’, even in this town where no one approves of how I live. There’s nothing wrong with having almost sex in a car between two consenting adults.” Dixie paused, her head cocked in question. “But a question. What is almost sex to you, anyway, Em?”
“Like I have to define that to the devil’s playmate. You know what almost sex is.”
She grinned. “I fear my definition and yours may vary.”
“We hit a few bases and then some. But then we realized we didn’t have a condom, so we couldn’t hit a home run.” Was that regret stabbing at her? Yes. She’d wanted to make love with a man she’d known less than a week.
Dixie giggled and did the wave. “Cheers from the crowd.”
Still, she couldn’t accept that about herself. She wasn’t the kind of woman who had sex just for sex’s sake. “No. Don’t cheer my bad behavior.”
“Why is it bad to enjoy a man, Em?”
“Because I was this close to riding him like he was Seabiscuit.”
So why was that bad?
Because it was. Because her mother said so. Because it sullied her reputation to be so free with her affections. Because it was out of wedlock. Because the rumor mill would have a field day with it. Because Jax could be hurt just by associating with her.
Em ran a hand over her hair, hoping she’d run her mother and all the other gossipmongers in town out of her head, too. “I don’t know. It’s not. I think.” She groaned. “I have all these conflicting feelin’s about it. On the one hand, I wouldn’t say you were loose if you chose to do it. You did choose to do it. You chose it a lot before Caine. On the other hand, I feel like I’ve gone against everything I was raised to believe in. I’ve never had anythin’ but marital relations, Dixie. I know in this day and age that’s ridiculous, but it wasn’t like anyone was offerin’ outside of Clifton anyway.”
Dixie’s eyes bled sympathy. She’d been raised by a mother much like Clora. Nothing should be enjoyed, every moment of her life was a chore—a task she met with the strong hand of the divine guiding it.
“I won’t pick on you for that voice in your head that tells you sex isn’t for a good, upstandin’ woman unless she’s married, but your mother’s done a real number on you, and it makes me want to shake her every time she
sits across the table from me when we have Sunday dinner here. I don’t want to insult you either, but as your person, I’m compelled to say something. I just don’t know if you’ll like it much.”
Meaning, Dixie was loading up the shotgun. “But you’re going to say it anyway....”
Dixie’s brows crunched together, matching the angry line of her lips. “Clora Mitchell’s full of horse manure. She can suck the joy out of a room with just the purse of her disapproving lips, and they’re always pursed. She enjoys nothing without behaving like she just took one for Team Righteous—and it hurt—and she wants us all to know it hurt. I get the impression she’s the kind of woman who endured lovemakin’ rather than getting down in the dirty with it.”
Em cringed. “We weren’t open about...those things.” Heaven forbid. She’d never had those kinds of talks with her mother. In fact, she was shocked to discover she couldn’t remember talking about any of her feelings with either of her parents.
“Okay, then,” Dixie pressed. “Consider this. Maybe she’s slanted your views on things. If that’s what Emmaline really believes, if you really believe you can’t make love with more than one man in a lifetime without burnin’ in the fiery pit of Satan’s flames, and you’re that worried people will talk, then okay. I’ll hush. But if it’s what your mama beat you over the head with and you’re wafflin’ about it, worried she’ll cast that ugly look of disapproval every time you actually find joy in something, you need to do some soul-searchin’.”
Em shook her head, overwhelmed with all the crossed wires in her brain, the confusing mixed messages—the grip her mother’s lack of approval still had on her. “All that aside, Dixie, this isn’t like me. To give in to impulse. But I did. I gave in to it right there in his driveway. I offered to drive because Jax doesn’t know Johnsonville like I do. Now, I wonder if it wasn’t some sort of subliminal premeditation on my part.”
Dixie kept her face blank. “That sounds just like you, Em. Premeditated almost sex.”
She hid her face in her hands. “That’s exactly my point. I let myself get caught up, swept away. I’m sure I came off desperate and pathetic. None of what happened last night was like me.”
Something to Talk About Page 10
