Talk Dirty to Me

by Dakota Cassidy

  Thankfully, her self-esteem had kept her desires in check. But today, the image of him in the pool, his skin lightly bronzed and glistening wet, his arms a tangle of corded muscle, the dark line of hair that wound under his belly button and into his boxer-briefs always stole her breath, made her wet with wanting him.

  Even in the ungodly heat, Dixie shivered and peeked around the pool area, embarrassed by her wicked thoughts. Mona and Lisa slept contentedly under the lounge chair while the floor fan Sanjeev had set up for them misted their chunky bodies, keeping them cool and comfortable.

  Annoyed, she yanked her towel from the blue-and-green chaise, wrapping it around her lower body. Now she had a new lie to contend with. The Walker lie. Idiot. “Walker? Really, Dixie? What kind of fool declares she’s on the verge of marrying a man who calls to engage in phone sex?”

  “The kind that wishes to make Caine the Neanderthal jealous,” Sanjeev provided, handing her a frosty glass of sweet tea with a pink umbrella in it.

  Her sigh was exasperated, but she accepted the glass with gratitude. “You heard?”

  “I believe Wylan Landry three miles down the road by the county line heard.”

  Dixie offered him a sheepish look. “I’m sorry, Sanjeev. I was angry. No one gets my goat like Caine.”

  Sanjeev cocked his head. “I don’t understand how Caine can get your goat. You have two dogs, no goats. You don’t have a goat somewhere, do you, Dixie? Isn’t it enough that I clean up after Toe, Mona and Lisa? I don’t have enough misting fans for a goat, too.”

  Dixie chuckled and shook her head, scrubbing her hair with the towel. “No goats. It just means he pushes my buttons.”

  “You don’t have buttons either.”

  “They’re internal. It’s a metaphor. Never mind. The point is Caine makes me say things out of spite that should never be said in public.”

  “Someone can make you perform a task you don’t want to perform? I assume there’s money to be made in this,” he teased with an easy grin.

  Sipping her tea, Dixie wondered out loud, “What is it about him that makes me behave like a vengeful teenager? I’ve managed to keep my temper and my scheming in check for a long time now. I come back home, and in a matter of seconds, it’s like I never stopped being a blight on humanity.”

  Sanjeev nodded his sympathy. “Love is indeed a puzzle, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t—”

  He held up a hand to prevent her protests. “Oh, but you do, Dixie. To deny you love Caine would be to deny the entirety of your youth. It would be to deny some of the most monumental pieces of your past, and the incidents that have shaped this new, improved you.”

  These days, it felt as if her heart was in a vise grip for all the pangs it suffered. Yes—there was truth in that statement. Back then, when she’d vowed Caine would rue the day he’d broken up with her, most of her supposed changing had all been empty, internal promises based on revenge.

  Once she’d gotten past the initial hurt over the end of their engagement, everything she’d done had been based on showing Caine what he’d missed out on rather than the real work she’d needed to do on herself.

  And then, one day, one ugly, agonizing day, the tables were turned on her, and everything changed.... “It doesn’t matter anyway, Sanjeev. Caine’s never going to see me as anything other than a manipulative liar. It’s not without reason. But for heaven’s mercy, I get it already. Every single thing I do is an excuse for him to remind me that I’ll never be good enough for someone so filthy rich in integrity.”

  “Why not prove him wrong then?”

  Hah! “Because even if Jesus himself dubbed me new and improved right in front of Caine’s very eyes, he still wouldn’t believe it. I’m not here to prove anything to anyone. That’s not how it works.”

  “How what works?”

  “Redemption. It’s not about how many apologies you make. It isn’t about begging for forgiveness. It’s about being actively involved in turning your life around. Actively owning the things you’ve done to hurt people and stopping the hurt. For good.”

  She bit back the next piece of her journey. It was still too personal to share with anyone yet. To speak of it was to diminish the impact it had on her life so long ago. For now, that would stay where it belonged—in her heart and mind.

  “Besides, you know what I discovered while I cried my eyes out and ate enough fried food to feed a small country, Sanjeev?”

  “I’m all ears, as you say.”

  And here it was, the entire crux of the matter. The eternal weight of loving someone as moral and forthright as Caine, and what had kept her from begging him for a second chance, boiled down to one thing. “There’s no room for error with Caine. I was always afraid I’d mess up back then, and when I did, I realized mistakes just weren’t allowed where he’s concerned. It’s damn hard to impress perfection.”

  Sanjeev wrinkled his nose. “Ah, but, Dixie, Caine is as far from perfect as you are imperfect.”

  “He’s a lot closer to perfection than I am, buddy.”

  “He fights his own demons where you’re concerned.”

  Dixie grinned, pulling off her towel and laying it over the lounge chair to dry. “Demons and me in the same sentence. How unexpected.”

  “Caine has his faults, too, Dixie,” Sanjeev insisted.

  “They’re not as big as mine. He wins.”

  “This isn’t about winning,” Sanjeev said stubbornly. “It’s about what should be.”

  “What should be? Who’s talking in riddles now, Sanjeev?”

  Sanjeev threw up a hand at her and waved her off. “We have no time for this discussion. You have to nap before your shift, and I have to restock the pantry and somehow manage to squeeze in laundering your delicates before the Waltons Mountain marathon.”

  Dixie grabbed his arm. Sanjeev wasn’t known for his comfort with displays of affection. Still, she latched onto his hand anyway and squeezed. “Don’t be silly. You don’t have to do my laundry, Sanjeev. I can do it. You don’t have to cook for me either. Even though I owned a restaurant, lately, I’ve become an expert at microwaved meals. Please don’t go to any trouble for me. Though, I appreciate it—and you.”

  Sanjeev’s eyes assessed her for a moment. His head tilted at an angle as though he’d never seen her before, and then he grinned—a rare and wondrous thing. “That you won’t make me suffer the indignities of my continued confusion when identifying a thong and French cut panties makes me appreciate you back.”

  Her throat tightened at Sanjeev’s silent understanding before she teased, “Then John-Boy awaits.”

  Sanjeev squeezed her hand back before shrugging out of her grasp and calling to Mona and Lisa with a sharp whistle. “Come here, you bottomless pits! Dinner and a movie are at hand!”

  Mona and Lisa snorted their way out from under the lounge chairs, stopping to nuzzle Dixie’s hand before they followed behind Sanjeev, their wide hips wiggling in anticipation.

  She stood, watching Sanjeev and the dogs retreat into the shadows of the house until they disappeared.

  The sting of tears, born of Sanjeev’s forgiveness, a small sign her efforts were genuine and from the heart, threatened to overwhelm her.

  Smiling to herself, she gathered her things, warmed from the inside out.

  * * *

  “This is Mistress Taboo—”

  “Yes. I’m worthy.”

  Her breath caught in her throat as her heart raced. Walker. “Well, hello, Walker.”

  “Howdy to you, too, Mistress Taboo. How are you this fine evenin’?”

  Dixie fought to keep her words calm when her insides were all kinds of tangled. “I’m very well, thank you.”

  “So I see you’re counselin’ men now.”

  Walker had seen the change on her site, me
aning, he’d thought of her since the last time they’d spoken.

  Whoa. Dixie pinched her arm hard enough to make her bite the inside of her lip. A dose of reality was in order. Wasn’t it bad enough that she’d used him as her make-believe boyfriend to hurt Caine, but now she was hoping he’d been daydreaming about her, too?

  She repositioned herself in her chair in an effort to get hold of her spiraling emotions and began arranging the sticky notes she’d accumulated since her phone line had begun to pick up. She kept track of the callers she advised by writing down their identifying traits. “I don’t know if counseling would be the correct word. It’s more like just offering helpful advice from a woman’s perspective.”

  “Who calls a phone-sex operator for a woman’s perspective on love and dating?”

  Dixie tilted her head. He sounded just like Caine. Damn him. Her heart rate slowed down appropriately. “You sound just like everyone else.”

  “Who’s everyone else?”

  “No one specific. Just everyone else.” LaDawn, the Naysayer. She’d mocked Dixie’s change of strategy, even after seeing the jump in her numbers.

  “You have someone specific in mind. I can tell by the sound of your voice, Mistress Taboo. You don’t have to tell me his name. Give him a fake name just like yours, if you want. We do need a point of reference,” he coaxed sweetly.

  She stuck Mike number three’s note in the “Mike pile” where four more “Mikes” just like him who’d called in the last week sat, and asked, “How do you know it’s a him?”

  “Isn’t it always about a man?”

  At least one man, yes. “How’s Golden Boy?” she blurted out.

  His laughter, so inviting and gravelly, made Dixie laugh, too. “And what’s Golden Boy got against you counselin’ men on their sex lives?”

  Walker had begun to tread into personal territory, making her drop her notes on Heath, who used a fictionally tragic character’s name as his phone-sex caller pseudonym. “It’s kind of a long story,” she said carefully. “Suffice it to say, I’m not very good at phone sex, so I found a way around it in order to put food on my plate.”

  His voice held approval. “So you’re scrappy. I like that in a woman.”

  That Walker liked the part of her personality everyone else detested made her stomach tingle. Right or wrong, his words of approval left her with a forbidden glow. Maybe it was the hunger for support, or maybe...maybe it just was. “Or something like that, yes. I’m doing what I have to do to become fiscally stable again.”

  “That’s pretty scrappy, in my opinion.”

  “You say scrappy, others say greedy,” she let slip.

  “Well, now who’d call Mistress Taboo greedy?” he asked, incredulous.

  “Do you have an extra ten sets of hands to count with? I’m sure you’ll need at least that many.”

  “Why’s it greedy to do what you have to do to get work? In this day and age, it should be considered an asset.”

  Walker sounded genuinely interested, and at this point, there was nothing she’d like more than to have someone on her side. Though she reminded herself, this was about getting herself out of debt, not collecting minions to cheer her name in Dixie vs. Caine.

  “Another long story, but we’re not supposed to talk about me. We’re supposed to talk about you. So let’s do that. Do you have a problem with a woman?” Was it crazy to hope Walker’s problems didn’t involve another woman? Like his wife? Or, heaven forbid, his mother? She squelched that thought.

  “I’d rather talk about you.” His answer was definitive in all its silkiness.

  Dixie let out the breath she didn’t realize she was holding. “You don’t want to pay four ninety-nine a minute to talk about me, do you? I’m supposed to be helping you solve your female problems.”

  “I don’t have any female problems. We broke up a long time ago. Female problems solved.”

  Her ears perked to the tune of Walker’s apparently womanless life. Bad ears. “Anyone you’ve been interested in since then?”

  “No one quite like her.”

  Something in Walker’s voice made Dixie push the envelope a little further. “Was that a no one like her as in ‘she was the love of my life and all things incredible,’ or was that a ‘no one like her, she was the worst thing to happen to me since crabs?’”

  Walker’s pause was painfully pensive, his answer, carefully constructed. “It was maybe a little of both. Wait, that’s not fair. She was more good than bad, now that I reflect. Frustrating as hell, kept me on my toes, but I loved the hell out of her anyway.”

  “Was she the love of your life type or just the fondest memory you have of love and it’s now become bigger than it really was?” She asked the question only because she’d asked herself that question over and over about Caine.

  Walker coughed, but his eventual reply was throaty. “She was, and remains to this day, the love of my life. She was the best and the worst thing to ever happen to me.”

  Dixie held in a wistful sigh. “I understand that completely.” Caine had been the best and worst thing that had ever happened to her. And she still loved him anyway.

  “So you had someone like that in your past, too, Mistress Taboo?”

  “I did.” I still do.

  “What happened?”

  “We broke up, of course.”

  “Why?”

  “It was my fault,” she was quick to reply.

  “How could anyone as cute as you are...uh, as cute as you sound be at fault?”

  Ugh. The constant explanations of her dirty deeds was like living Groundhog Day. “I just did something that made him change his idea of who I was—or who he thought I’d become.”

  “You didn’t cheat, did you? I’d have to take back my scrappy compliment, if you did,” he chastised, though his tone was still light and teasing.

  She resumed organizing her sticky notes for her callers. “No. It was nothing like that. Though, I’m not proud to say, I once cheated, too... He was a high school boyfriend, and I was young, not that that should excuse it. Anyway, I didn’t cheat on him. I would never...” Dixie sighed into the phone. Trying to inject her personal experiences into her brand of “therapy” without exposing herself was proving more and more difficult.

  For all she knew, Walker was a serial killer who got his kicks off of getting to know his victims in unusual ways before hunting them down, throwing them in a pit of dirt and flaying them alive while he screamed the word infidel.

  “And then what happened?”

  “I did something really stupid and petty, and then I behaved abominably, which led him to believe I’d always behave abominably.”

  Walker scoffed. “He sounds like a judgmental ass.”

  Dixie’s feathers instantly became ruffled on Caine’s behalf. “It wasn’t without reason,” she defended. Wait. Why was she defending Caine? For all the flak he gave her, she should be willing to throw him to the wolves. Yet, ultimately, no matter how he’d handled their breakup, he’d been right.

  “Which begs the question, had you behaved badly before?”

  Her eyes went wide. “Why would you ask that?”

  “Well, you defended him like you were defendin’ your mother, and you were quick to do it, too. I figure, with my superior detecting skills, if he wasn’t a bad guy, or a judgmental jackass, you must’ve given him reason to believe you might slip up again.”

  Score one for Walker. “Fair enough. Yes. I’d behaved badly before.”

  “How bad is bad?”

  “Hah! I was probably a nominee for the worst human being on the planet. In fact, I’d wager I could have given some of those villains on soap operas a run for their money.”

  “Like Victor Kiriakis, Days of our Lives bad?”

  Dixie grinned, leaning back in her
chair and throwing her feet up on the desk to stretch her cramped calves. “I’d like to think more along the lines of Joan Collins from Dynasty bad. She was definitely more glam than Victor.”

  Walker whistled. “Wow. That’s bad.”

  Dixie nodded her head, forgetting once more that Walker was the client. “Yeah. Superbad, in fact. But I learned the most valuable lesson of my life. Since then, I’ve been trying to mend the error of my ways.”

  “What was the lesson? What turned Mistress Taboo into a fence mender?”

  Her fingers, flicking the tip of a ballpoint, froze. She gulped back her discomfort, massaging her chest, suddenly so tight she couldn’t breathe.

  This was too deep. She’d never told a soul about Mason. Not even her Landon. So, she sidestepped his very personal question by brushing it off. “It was very A Christmas Carol. You know, bad girl reflects on her life and realizes she’s all alone in the big bad world with no friends and a family who’s all but given up on her ever being anything but a lying, manipulative, self-entitled brat? But without ghosts,” she added with a chuckle.

  “I’m familiar with the story.”

  “Then you know how it goes.”

  “So you don’t want to tell me what really happened?”

  What she really wanted was this introspection to end. “It’s a little personal.”

  “And here we hardly know each other, right?”

  She smiled her relief at his lighter tone, sinking back in her chair. “It takes at least four phone calls deep before I reveal all my secrets. But I warn you, you’ll need a shower and clean underwear when I’m done.”

  “There she is, the Mistress Taboo I know.” His voice showered her with warm approval. “It’s been real nice chattin’ with you tonight.”

  “Is our conversation over already?” Again, she found herself wanting to ask when or if he’d call again.