Em’s face was relaxed and open. “Tell away.”
“Caine said he didn’t sleep with Louella.”
Em’s red-glossed lips thinned. She tucked a strand of her hair back into the neat bun at the back of her head and clucked her tongue. “Told you I didn’t believe it. Not for a daggone second. The impression I got was that Louella was just salvaging what was left of her pride. As if to say the smoke from Caine’s love haze for you had finally cleared, and he realized she was the better woman. But I never totally believed it because I saw that man’s face after you hightailed it outta there, Dixie. Once the dust settled, he was hurtin’. We could all see it even though he tried to hide it while he handled the aftermath.”
Caine’s pain, voiced out loud, was like a knife in her back. Em’s words left her breathless.
“So you asked him about it?”
Dixie gulped in some air. “I did, and he said never.” No, Dixie. Never.
Those words had haunted her throughout last night while she’d waited for Caine to come back to the big house so they could talk. Finally, around dawn, she’d given up and fallen asleep, but before she had, she’d had an epiphany.
The agony she’d suffered just thinking something had gone on between Louella and Caine had been true, was nothing less than she deserved. She’d deserved to have it chip away at her heart bit by ugly bit.
“Hah! I knew it,” Em chirped, slapping her hand against her thigh. “That Louella’s a lyin’ snake! I think we all knew it. We were all just too afraid to call her a phony to her face. But not anymore. No, ma’am. I’m gonna march right up to her and—”
Dixie grabbed at her arm. “No, Emmaline!”
Em’s gasp of shock rang out. “No? No? What is this word no? Maybe I’ll even beat it out of her with a microphone.”
Dixie took a deep breath and closed her eyes. When she reopened them, she shot Em a pleading look. “I’m going to ask you to let it go. It’s enough that Louella knows she lied. When she goes to bed at night, she’s not right with herself. That’s plenty of guilt. Trust me.”
Em gave her a sour look. “You know, Miss Dixie, there’s a time for letting things go, and there’s a time for loadin’ up your gun for bear. Louella made you miserable for over a month now, and you want to just forget it ever happened?”
“It’s nothing I didn’t do to her, Em,” she whispered harshly, letting her eyes skim the crowd that had begun to gather for the Founder’s Day speech. “So I spent a month fretting over something that didn’t happen? That’s nothing compared to what I did to her in high school.”
Em’s sigh of exasperation sliced through the air, raspy and crisp. She put her hands in the wide pockets of her ruffled skirt and rocked back on her heels. “You were in high school, for heaven’s sake! Not well over the age of consent, still carrying a childhood grudge. You made a stupid bet with Louella. Yes, it was childish and for no other reason than to show her you could best her, but it was most certainly not like claiming you’d made the hokey-pokey with her man. You’ve done nothin’ but good since you stepped back on Plum Orchard soil, and still, you beat yourself up. The Mother Teresa act ends now, Dixie. You stink at pulling it off anyway. Mother Teresa would never have red hair with gaudy nails to match. And if you won’t let me take that viper Louella to task, at the very least, promise me you’ll stop this ridiculous need to accept whatever’s handed to you as a bizarre form of just deserts!”
Dixie broke the intense moment by pinching Em’s cheeks with a grin. “Does this mean you like me now, Em? Like really, really like me? Because I like you,” she teased.
Em burst into a fit of giggles. “It means I like you better ’n I did a month and a half ago, but no more than that. Hear me?”
Dixie rolled her eyes. “If I can’t have you, I don’t want nobody, baby,” she sang, doing her version of John Travolta’s infamous Stayin’ Alive move by jabbing her finger up and down.
But Em wasn’t impressed. She folded her arms over her chest and gave her an eyeful of admonishment. “Oh, Dixie Davis, how the tides have turned.”
“Yup.” She nodded, dancing around her in a circle. “You wanna use it against me at a later date? Dixie Davis Begs Emmaline Amos to Be Her BFF. It’d make a good Plum Orchard Gazette headline.”
Em bumped butts with her and wiggled, letting out another giggle. “Gloating is a deadly sin.” She grabbed Dixie’s hand and twirled her.
“That’s gluttony,” Dixie said, ducking under her arm and giggling with her.
Em’s laughter mingled with Dixie’s, but the sudden sharp screech of the microphone in the center of the gazebo made them both turn their heads. “C’mon. It looks like Mayor Hale’s gettin’ ready to give his umpteenth, long-winded Founder’s Day speech. I don’t want the boys to miss seeing their daddy’s picture up on that big projection screen.”
Em’s soon-to-be ex-husband’s family would be honored tonight in the slide show they did every year as a memorial to those who’d made Plum Orchard what it was today. Dixie hoped it would make Em’s boys smile again, proud their father—even if he wasn’t physically here—had left his mark.
After spending a great deal of time with Em’s sons in the guesthouse pool and on several very messy dining excursions, Dixie privately worried about Clifton Junior and his angry take on his parents’ divorce. He was so sullen and withdrawn, it hurt her to the very core to see him so torn and broken.
They made their way across the grass, stepping over spilled cups and popcorn kernels. Dixie’s eyes loosely scanned the crowd for Caine while she kept an eye out for Em’s mother and the boys.
A chubby older hand rose from a quilted blanket in the corner of the square, waving at them. Em’s face lit up at the sight of her mother and two sons. Their smiles, so much like Em’s, were covered in gooey pink and blue cotton candy.
Gareth jumped up from the ground, propelling his stout five-year-old body at Dixie’s legs. His arms wrapped around her, and he smiled up at her. “Miss Dixie!”
She bent and scooped him up, swinging him in the air before settling him on her hip. “Well, who’s this fine-lookin’ gentleman?” She lifted his pilgrim hat and tweaked his nose.
“It’s me, Miss Dixie. Garef,” he replied with serious, indignant eyes.
The pronunciation of his name melted her on the spot. “Oh, my gravy, it is!” She batted her eyelashes at him. “Why, I hardly recognized you without your swimmies, Gareth. When did you get to be such a man?” Dixie walked her fingers up his stomach and planted a kiss on his sticky cheek.
“I’m not no man. I’m five.” He held up five sticky fingers to prove it.
She gave him a squeeze before setting him back on the blanket in order to dig through her purse to find some wet wipes. Clifton Junior sat quietly, as stoic as she’d ever seen any eight-year-old, on the edge of the quilt, his eyes, the same blue as Em’s, taking everything in and sharing none of it.
Her heart shuddered in her chest for Clifton. He was angry and hurt over his father’s departure, according to Em. He had little to say these days—not even to the pediatric divorce therapist Em had insisted he make weekly visits to.
Dixie wiped Gareth up, said her hellos to Em’s mother then plunked down beside him, fanning her dress out over her knees and following his eyes to a delicious man with a child around Clifton’s age.
The man, with hair so dark it gleamed like the feathers on a raven, and features so chiseled you could strike a match on them, threw a baseball to a young girl with fiery red hair. He was gorgeous and graceful, and between throws, he was eyeing up Em as if she was the last woman on earth.
Clifton Junior’s hungry eyes watched the ball, but he said nothing. He didn’t have to. His eyes did all the talking.
Damn Clifton Senior for abandoning his sons. Dixie looked off into the distance with him, taking on the same air of
indifference he exuded. “Do you like baseball?”
His small shoulders shrugged under his SpongeBob sweatshirt with a hearty dose of that indifference. “Sort of.”
“Really? Not me. I think it’s kind of stupid.”
“Everything’s stupid.”
Dixie nodded. “Yep. Pretty much everything.”
He almost looked at her, but instead lifted his chin, giving it a defiant edge. “You don’t think everything’s stupid. You’re an adult.”
“I do so. And adults think stuff’s stupid, too. Kids aren’t the only ones allowed to hate stupid stuff.”
Clifton’s lips thinned at her response, clearly irritated his efforts to spoil a lovely evening weren’t working out. “Being here is stupid. Who cares about Founder’s Day anyway? My dad’s not even here to see it.”
Dixie let a bored sigh escape her lips while gazing up at the fading sun. “Yeah. Who wants to sit around and eat cotton candy and popcorn? I mean, seriously. And sparklers? For sissies.”
“And girls.”
“Not this girl. No way would I even consider holding a sparkler.”
“Really?”
“Truly.”
“You’re not like most girls.”
“Nope. I’m a bona fide not-like-most-girls kind of girl. Ask anyone.”
“You don’t make any sense.”
“Which is probably pretty stupid.”
He laughed. It was faint, and it wasn’t willingly, but it was. “You’re weird.”
Em gasped her disapproval, latching onto Clifton’s chin and forcing him to look at her. “Clifton Junior! You apologize this instant to Miss Dixie! I’m sorry, Dixie! I don’t know what’s come over him as of late.”
Dixie held up a lazy hand, one that indicated she was neither upset nor offended. “No, no. Clifton and I were just talking about things that are stupid. And being weird is definitely not stupid. Right, Clifton?” She gave him a sidelong glance and winked as if they had a special secret.
He smiled back at her. A real smile. One filled with the kind of mischief eight-year-olds should have glued to their sweet faces at all times. “Right, Miss Dixie, and I didn’t mean that you were weird in a rude way. I meant it in a good way,” he said, before jumping up and running toward the direction of the good-looking man and his daughter. He didn’t approach them. Rather he stood on the outskirts of their game of catch, watching.
Em leaned into her and patted Dixie’s leg with affection. “He smiled. I haven’t seen him smile in near three months now. Leave it to you and your charm to turn even the crankiest, most sullen of boys into a puddle of goo.”
“It just takes time, I guess. He’s missin’ Clifton Senior. He’ll adjust. I know he will. He’s of your loins. That means he’s a fighter just like you.”
“My loins...” Em snorted, settling in next to her between a basket of fried chicken and the potato salad.
“Speaking of your loins, I was wondering...did they have anything to do with him?” She hitched her jaw in the direction of tall, dark and lickable. “Because I don’t think wow covers all—” Dixie made a circular motion with her hand “—that.”
Em peered into the twilight of the coming evening, halting all movement. Dixie saw her throat work up and down in a nervous gesture, and her hand, always a sure sign she was flustered, go directly to her throat. “My.”
“Uh-huh. He’s worthy of an ohhhh,” she cooed. “So is he that Jax you were talking about?”
“So what if he is?” Her response was defensive, as if it were unseemly to be caught looking at any other man but Clifton.
“Because if it is, it’s my duty to tell you, he’s been gobbling you up with his eyes since you plunked your cute behind on the ground.”
“Oh, he has not.”
“Has so, has so, has so. Watch. In three—two—one.”
And right on cue, the gorgeous Jax looked up in Em’s direction. Their eyes met and held, locking gazes for a brief moment.
Even Dixie held her breath at the sizzle between the two of them before he broke the spell by nodding to Em in acknowledgment, then returned to his game of catch.
Dixie cleared her throat. “So don’t you ever tell me you’re not attractive, Emmaline Amos. Because you managed to attract the likes of Mr. Sinfully Sexy on a Stick. Go, you.”
“I did not,” Em blustered, hiding her eyes with the curtain of her hair by unleashing her tight bun and giving her locks a shake. “He was probably looking at you. It’s neither here nor there. I’m not on the market. Speaking of markets, where’s Caine?”
“He texted me to tell me he had some emergency with work in Miami, and he’d be back soon.” She was a bagful of vulnerability. She didn’t understand where last night left them, if it left them anywhere at all.
She was afraid this new Dixie and Caine was nothing more than a long goodbye. Caine hadn’t made any commitments to her last night other than he was willing to hear her out, and he hadn’t even shown up for that.
Caine’s words had contradicted themselves. He’d said if he won Call Girls, he could run it from Miami. Yet, when he’d looked up at her, lying beneath her on that hammock, and whispered, I need you, with such intensity, she’d been certain they meant something more than just physically.
Or had they? Win or lose Call Girls, he could go right back to his life in Miami and run the company from some beach house while women in colorful bikinis strolled past his lounge chair in the sand under a blazing Florida sky.
He still might not trust her the way she needed him to. Worrying that Caine was just holding his breath until she made another horrible mistake was no longer an option. He had to trust her enough to believe she’d begun to make the right choices.
How could anyone live like that when you knew you’d surely make more mistakes?
Her chest tightened when she realized, she couldn’t go on with Caine this way anymore.
Wouldn’t.
Em was dead on. Dixie was all about punishing herself, and being with Caine, making love to him, spending time with him while almost certain she’d lose him all over again, was the biggest form of self-inflicted harm going.
To postpone the inevitable, to drag out the end, hurt almost as much as letting go. The very idea of letting Caine go—actually saying the words out loud—was almost more than she could wrap her mind around. Her throat went dry, and her limbs went buttery soft simply thinking about it.
Somewhere, in the crazy recesses of her mind, she’d always thought she and Caine would find each other again. Now that she’d grown up and experienced one of the hardest journeys of her life before returning to Plum Orchard, she knew that was all just make-believe.
But it had been the old Dixie’s way of thinking.
The reformed Dixie saw Caine needed more substance in a woman. He needed trust—deep trust. He needed someone who would match his brand of integrity one selfless act at a time.
As the world continued around her, as children waved sparklers, as people laughed and chatted, and the high school marching band pounded out a patriotic beat, everything screamed to a screeching halt for her.
She would do the right thing and stop torturing herself by ending whatever this was with Caine. She’d apologize to him once and for all, and then she’d walk away—for good.
Even if everything inside her rebelled against the very idea.
Her fingers twisted the quilt beneath her to quell the bone-deep ache.
Leaning forward, Dixie scrunched her eyes shut and fought for breath when her phone buzzed. Her hand blindly reached for it, stupidly hoping it might be Caine—afraid it might be Caine.
Do you know how much I love you, Dixie-Cup? More than I love my own spleen. That’s a whole lotta love. Love yourself that much, too, would you, please?
She rea
d the text from Landon again, hearing him in her head as if he was sitting right next to her, eating Em’s mother’s potato salad. She pinched the bridge of her nose.
Love yourself, Dixie. Love yourself enough to know when to let go.
Upon Landon’s words, Dixie knew exactly what she had to do.
“Hey! Where’d you go there?” Em asked, smiling down at her, holding her hand out to offer her help up. “The slide show’s about to start. Gareth wants to be front and center to see his grandparents and Clifton Senior up on that big screen. You comin’?”
Dixie took a ragged breath and accepted Em’s hand with a squeeze. “I wouldn’t miss it.” She held out her hand to Gareth who smiled his chubby grin from behind Em’s knees. “Let’s go see Daddy, little man.”
Mayor Hale had begun to read off the prestigious list of the founders of Plum Orchard with their accompanying pictures while Em, Dixie and Gareth plunged into the crowd, pushing their way toward the front to get closer to the gazebo.
Sandwiched between a scowling Nanette and Reverend Watson, Dixie swung Gareth up in her arms so he could see the screen.
Em tugged on his T-shirt from behind. “Daddy’s next!”
“Next up,” Mayor Hale’s voice rumbled into the microphone, “we have the Amos family, five generations strong and still going. One of our original founding fathers...”
She forced herself to focus on the pictures projected and Mayor Hale’s deep drone rather than dwell on what she planned to tell Caine.
“And next up, Clifton Amos Senior!” The crowd politely clapped and Dixie squeezed Gareth to show her excitement for him, bouncing him up and down. “Son of Harlow and Idalee, one-time all-state football champ, six-time 4-H blue ribbon holder, father of two fine young men, Clifton Junior, now a strapping eight years old, and little Gareth, five, and last—but certainly not least—husband to the lovely Emmaline Amos. Join me in a round of applause for such an esteemed member of our little burg, Clifton Amos, everybody!”
Talk Dirty to Me Page 27
