“I do not run.” To imply she was a coward was ungentlemanly.
“Okay, you walk swiftly.”
“I prefer to call it speed walking. It’s good for your heart.”
“Call it whatever you like, it’s still avoidance.”
“And that’s been working, hasn’t it?”
“No. Yes.” His lips thinned. “No. I don’t want to avoid you, Dixie. I don’t want LaDawn and Cat and the others to cordon off portions of the break room by groups so they don’t have to worry they’ll witness a murder on pizza night. Everyone avoids us if we’re even within two feet of each other. Sure, we’re civil, just as Cat threatened we’d better be, but the tension is still there. I don’t want everyone to act like one wrong thing said could set us off, do you?”
Caine was right. Last week on pizza night, Sheree had seen the two of them each grabbing a slice of pizza from the same box just as she’d reached for one herself, but she’d jumped back when Dixie had tried to pull it from his grasp and teased Caine he was taking the slice with the most cheese on it. She’d only been joking, but it had stilled all movement.
She saw his point. The last thing she wanted to do was alienate the only people who willingly spoke to her, even if it was through clenched teeth à la LaDawn. “We’re dividing them. Making them choose between us.”
“You bet we are. We’re killing their comfort with just our bad vibes. We’ve got some time left to this competition, Dixie, but eventually, one of us will go home. For the girls, this is their home now. I don’t want to shit all over that just because we acted like asses. Or more importantly, I acted like an ass.”
Perplexed, she murmured, “Okay. Will the real Caine Donovan please stand up?”
“Why doesn’t the real Dixie Davis come sit down?” He patted the place beside him with a convincing, heartbreakingly adorable smile.
It made her want to bracket his jaw with her hands, press her lips to his until he swept her up in his arms like he used to.
Instead, Dixie fought the impulse and took a cautious seat, finding the very edge of the park bench and sitting on it as if it was nothing more than a sliver of wood. “So what are you proposing here? Do you want to have more group hugs? Maybe prayer circles? What will make the girls feel less like they have to choose between us?”
“All we have to do is be friends again, Dixie. And that means I have to lay off razzing you every chance I get.”
Dixie’s lips pursed and her eyes narrowed until Caine was nothing but a delicious hunk of a blurry image. “But it’s how you’re able to breathe. It’s your life force. You can’t do that any more than I can stop buying lip gloss and conditioner.”
Brushing her hair from her face with a tender finger, Caine said, “But I can, and I will if you will. I’ve been pretty hard on you, Dixie. I’m not saying it isn’t without cause, but that reason’s grown older and apparently outdated. Almost ten years older. It’s time to let go of it and behave like adults for the sake of those around us. It’s time. I keep hearing about how you’ve changed from Emmaline, and it occurred to me, I haven’t even bothered to attempt to respect those changes by giving them a chance, let alone paid attention to them. We’re always too caught up in knocking each other’s knees out from under one another.”
Dixie’s jaw dropped open. “Something’s very wrong here. We’ve always done this, Caine. It’s just what we do.”
Or it’s what I do so I don’t have to really face what I’ve done. Caine was the person she’d hurt the most, yet he was the one person she was most afraid to make amends with.
“No, Dixie,” he said, his voice that odd gruff again. “We didn’t always do this, but maybe it’s time we change what we do. I will if you will.”
She went for one last poke at him, to test his commitment to this cease-fire. “And if I don’t?”
“I’m guessin’ my stack of classic Playboys are set for a bonfire, and your makeup’s going to find the trash compactor.”
The inability to breathe kept her silent for a few moments while the music drifted to her ears and the conversations of the surrounding people floated over her head. Now, Dixie. Now would be the perfect time to tell Caine you’re sorry.... “O...kay. It’s a deal.”
“Besides, with you marrying Walker—”
Dixie blanched. Damn her and her need to win everything. “Committing to him.”
He flashed her another genuine smile. “Right. Committing. I’d think you’d want to let what’s happened go and head into your marriage with an open heart, free of old hurts.”
Right. That’s what she’d want if Walker were real, and she wasn’t still madly in love with Caine who clearly was managing just fine without her. Oh, Dixie, what have you done?
She plastered a fake smile on her face. “Right. Free of old hurts is cleansing. So let’s try it. But I promise you—one crappy word, one prank, trick, whatever you want to call it—you go down, Donovan.”
He nudged her with his elbow and winked. “Same goes for you, Davis. So, friends? Maybe we’ll grab dinner together, or whatever you call what we eat in the break room at three in the morning.”
Sure. Dinner.
How did you go about being just friends with the one man you’d loved all your life? Yet the idea of a kinder Caine, one who wasn’t calling her a liar and a cheat, spread a healing balm over her bruised heart. “Okay. Deal.”
He stuck his hand out, and Dixie took it without hesitation, letting the warmth of it envelop hers, wishing she could cling to it, pull it to her cheek so he’d draw it back and kiss each of her knuckles the way he’d once done.
Caine surprised her when he pulled her to his side, pressing a gentle kiss to her cheek with warm lips.
Her eyes closed of their own accord as she savored this moment—a moment that felt like goodbye.
Caine let her go and slapped his hands against his delectable thighs, rising with a tilt of his head in the crowd’s direction. “Good. I’m glad. I’m gonna go call up Jo-Lynne, and tease her about missing Kitty’s potato salad.”
Dixie’s head bobbed its agreement with a slow nod even as her throat clogged. “Checkin’ on your mama is important. Say hello to her for me, would you, and give her my best?” Oh, and also tell her I’m sorry. So I can avoid chickening out with her just like I did with you.
“You bet,” he murmured, looking fifty pounds lighter now after agreeing to their truce.
As Dixie watched him push his way through the throng of people, his tall frame navigating it with ease, hot tears stung her eyes.
She had to lean forward and brace her elbows on her knees to keep a constant flow of air to her lungs. Suddenly her dress was even tighter, her push-up bra constricting.
Who were they as friends? What would it be like when Caine no longer sneered at her, but instead, greeted her like just another fellow employee?
Who was she if she wasn’t cultivating some sarcastically flirty response to his taunts? It was as though a piece of her had just died. She didn’t know how to breathe if Caine wasn’t pushing one of her buttons. At least when they were at each other’s throats it was an excuse to interact.
Now she was relegated to the friend pile, and somehow, that didn’t seem nearly as intimate as being his nemesis.
So this was closure. Myriad emotions, now all tied up into one neat package with a pretty bow. Closure well and truly sucked. And hurt. Really, really hurt.
The tap of someone’s hand on a microphone startled Dixie from her pity party. She sat up just as Louella’s voice touched her ears.
“Fine people of Plum Orchard, I’d like to thank y’all for joinin’ us tonight. Lots of announcements to be made here, folks, so if you’ll just bear with me, we’ll get right back to dancing in just a few minutes....”
Dixie tuned her out, kicking off her heels and scoopin
g them up to let them dangle from her fingers. She scrunched her toes up in the cool grass, unsure where to go next.
She had two hours until her shift began. Yet the last thing she wanted to do was rejoin the festivities. Watching Caine give a test run to their new friendship was not on her list of most desirable things to do.
With a grunt, she rose, and with a lump in her chest, began to pick her way through the crowd to head back to the big house.
“And let’s all put our hands together for some new additions to Plum Orchard!” Louella breathed into the mic. “First up, Miss LaDawn Jenkins. A former prostitute turned phone-sex operator, currently running amok with our young children, y’all, helping to shape their minds one foul word at a time.”
Dixie’s head shot up to the sound of all of Plum Orchard sputtering and gasping in horror.
Her shoes fell to the ground. She knew it. Knew it as sure as she’d known Em was a fool to believe the Mags were anything but heartless bitches. Her stomach turned, sour bile flooded her throat.
Breaking into a run, she sprinted across the square, pushing people out of the way like some designer-clad linebacker. The freshly trimmed clippings of the boxwood bushes surrounding the gazebo cut into her bare feet with stinging slashes.
She crashed into Howard Fordham’s back, yelping an apology when she knocked his baseball cap off, making a break for the stairs leading up to the gazebo where, from a distance, she saw Annabelle and Lesta-Sue waiting, modern-day Southern sentries, guarding their posts.
“Heads up, ladies!” she yelled in warning, familiar faces whizzing by her bobbing head in a blur, her pulse throbbing in her ears. She had one task—get that microphone away from Louella Palmer and wrap the cord of it around her neck until she strangled her to death with it.
She no longer heard Louella’s voice. Instead, it had become like the voices of the adults in a Charlie Brown cartoon.
She didn’t hear the outrage of the disgruntled crowd or the angry outbursts of protests as she knocked people out of her way, tripping and stumbling.
When Dixie became aware Annabelle and Lesta-Sue were in it for the long haul, staunchly standing their ground, she decided it was all or nothing.
If the Mags were looking for a good rumble, they’d chosen the worthiest opponent.
With a warrior cry, Dixie barreled toward them full speed, knocking them onto the steps with a grunt at the force of their bodies slamming against the wood. Dixie fell on top of Annabelle and wiggled her way up, using Annabelle’s long torso for leverage.
She didn’t think about the fact that her damnably tight dress had risen almost to her hips by the time she reached the final step. She didn’t hear the scream Annabelle let go of when she discovered her nose was bleeding.
She heard nothing but the roar of her anger, screeching through her veins and throbbing in her ears, the huff of her lungs trying to produce enough air to keep them inflated long enough to get her hands on Louella.
Scrambling to the floor of the gazebo, Dixie stumbled to her feet and directed her wild gaze at Louella who still had the microphone in her hand—whose mouth was still moving—whose venom was still pouring from her lips.
That was when everything inside of her, every tightly wound ounce of restraint, uncoiled like the head of an uncontained garden hose. Dixie reared up, her eye of the tiger the microphone Louella held so smugly in her hand.
Dixie lunged at her with a rebel cry, knocking Louella and her pretty gold and chocolate-brown fall ensemble to the ground, making the crowd below them gasp again.
Louella, dazed on the floor of the gazebo, gave Dixie the opening to straddle her and snatch at the microphone.
The screech of feedback ripped through the air, the muffled sounds of Dixie’s hands clawing at Louella’s to wrest it from her mingled with their grunts and eventually, Louella’s piercing scream when Dixie latched onto her hair and yanked hard.
She tore the microphone from Louella, pushing off her opponent’s body and struggling to her feet. With a howl of rage, she threw it out into the dark, using every last ounce of energy she had left. A magnified thunk signaled it had landed on something hard and unyielding.
Dixie mentally brushed her hands together while gasping for the air wheezing from her lungs in harsh puffs. She bent at the waist, resting the heels of her hands on her knees, heedless to the fact that her underwear was the subject of much chatter.
Heedless to the fact that this also left her weak and vulnerable.
In hindsight, as her feet flew out from under her, Dixie realized, she’d forgotten the golden rule of a girl-fight.
Never leave your opponent conscious.
Fourteen
“Ow!” Dixie moaned with a flinch.
“This from a woman who took out not one, but three Mags in the space of two minutes?” Caine quipped. “Hike up your warrior panties and hold still. I can’t see if you need stitches if you keep pulling away, honey.”
He tried to stay calm while looking at Dixie’s battered face, running his fingers over it to reassure himself nothing was broken. He tried to remember his mother’s words about always being a gentleman, even as he considered driving over to Louella’s and beating down her door so they could end this all now.
If Louella was doing this because of the rumor his mother divulged tonight on the phone when he’d told her about the argument Dixie had with the Mags at Madge’s—that Louella had once been in love with him and he’d chosen Dixie without knowing Louella was even interested, he had a record to set straight. He’d never even been a little interested in Louella, and he never had a single clue she’d been interested in him.
It had always been Dixie.
Shit.
Dixie flapped her hands at him, pushing him away as if he was making something out of nothing. “I don’t need stitches. I need aspirin and maybe a bag of peas. A steak, too, if you could manage it, and I don’t mean some cheap steak for my eye. The bloodier the better.”
Caine pushed her hands out of the way, running his fingers over the planes of her face to check for breaks, wincing when he got a close look at her swollen eye, bruised to a deep purple. “You need boxing gloves and a cage.”
He winced. Jesus, she had some shiner. But what was that tingle in his chest? Pride. It damn well was. It was probably wrong, but seeing her tonight, flying up those steps to shut Louella up in defense of the Call Girls, had been a thing of beauty. This side of Dixie, the side he was seeing more and more of lately wasn’t so different than the old Dixie.
Her goal tonight was the difference.
“Well, if this phone-sex thing doesn’t work out, maybe I’ll see if Craigslist has cages.”
LaDawn and Marybell rushed into her room then, skidding to a halt in front of the bed he had insisted she lie down on.
“Are you okay, Dixie?” Marybell reached for her, shoving Caine out of the picture and tilting her chin up to pop one of her eyes open with two fingers. She gazed down into Dixie’s blackened eye until she began to squirm.
Dixie jerked her head away, swiping at her eye with her thumb. “I’m fine. Stop fussing, Marybell. It’s just a black eye.”
“Just a black eye? Look at you, talkin’ like the boxing ring is your home base,” LaDawn crooned, her lips forming a smile. “And on behalf of lil ol’ me, too. I do declare, I’m all kinds of flattered,” she drawled, playfully punching Dixie’s arm.
“Hah!” Dixie snorted. “Don’t kid yourself. I was doing it to keep you in the game, LaDawn. If your numbers don’t make me aspire to do better, then whose will?”
“Good thing you got there before I did,” LaDawn assured her, arms crossed at her chest. “I was gonna show that stuck-up, frilly, tight-ass what a whoopin’ feels like. I put on the nicest dress I have for this party, too. One that keeps my best companionator assets from fallin
’ all over the men of this backwoods town.” She hiked up the front of her overflowing maxi dress to rearrange her assets.
Dixie rubbed her temple, trying to sit up, but Caine settled her back in. “Next time, you do the whoopin’. I’ll just eat and watch the chaos from the safety zone, okay?”
“No. No, sir. There’s not gonna be a next time for me.” LaDawn shook her mane of platinum-blond hair, still tangled up in her big hoop earrings, as she dipped a washcloth in more water, wiping at the scratches on Dixie’s legs with gentle swipes. “No way I’m goin’ somewhere where nobody’ll just let my past be. To think, they were all laughin’ and pointin’ at me behind my back, but smilin’ right in my face and offerin’ me home-cooked food on top of it.”
Dixie grabbed LaDawn’s hand, wincing when she looked up at her. “You will so go back. I’ll take you back, tied and gagged if I have to—and you’ll like it. You live in Plum Orchard now, LaDawn. Marybell, too. This is our town, not just Louella Palmer’s. As long as I’m here, no one’s going to treat you like anything else but the taxpayers you are. I’ll make sure of it.” She groaned, leaning back on the bed when Caine swung her feet upward, repositioning her.
LaDawn shook her head. “It’s not your fault, Dixie. Landon told me it might be like this, but I took the chance anyway because I wanted off the streets for good—and he sure can talk good game with all the fancy stuff he offered. I think Landon coulda talked Jesus into the second coming if he could have gotten face time with him.”
“Tell me about it,” Dixie muttered.
“But I’ll tell you this—I didn’t think there was anything I couldn’t take on. I was a companionator, for Jesus sake. Those of us who companionate, we have our share of haters, mind you, but they ain’t like the people in this town. This small-town bullshit is fierce. At least the haters back home hate ya right up front. These people fed me baked beans before they attacked, Dixie. That’s just not right.”
Talk Dirty to Me Page 20
