“Who was Mrs. Kowalski?”
“My neighbor from downstairs in my apartment building. She’d seen the accident. It was raining. I was in a rush, and I pulled out in front of a big pickup truck. Anyway, she came to the hospital every day. Brought me homemade cookies, muffins, all sorts of goodies to entice me to eat. When I came home, she’d knitted me a blanket and had a freezer full of casseroles and meals at the ready so I wouldn’t have to cook. We became friends—good friends. Over many games of checkers and Parcheesi and lemon Bundt cake, she taught me what it was to give selflessly. She didn’t have to nurse me back to health. She had a husband and two granddaughters. Her life was already pretty full. But she did it because she was kind, and loving, and she didn’t judge me—not even after I told her everything about my horrid past.”
“Acceptance,” he murmured gently. “That’s what healed you.”
Dixie nodded, setting her phone down and promising herself she’d print out Agnes’s pictures and frame them when she got back to Chicago. “That and something Mrs. Kowalski said to me one day that stuck like glue. When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.”
“Lao Tzu,” Walker provided with a low rumble.
She smiled at his wisdom. “You know it?”
“I do.”
That conversation with Agnes still warmed her. “I wanted to be a better person for a baby that was never going to exist. I know that sounds utterly ridiculous, but it’s what helped me move forward after my miscarriage, stop blaming myself.”
“I can’t imagine losing a child, let alone thinking you were responsible for that loss.” His quiet words washed over her like a warm balm. They rang deep with truth, honest and pure. “But you really weren’t, Mistress Taboo. If it didn’t happen that night, it might have happened on another. I believe there’s a reason for everything, but I don’t believe the reason is you were a horrible bitch.”
Dixie closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Thank you for that, Walker.”
“So I’m guessing by this point your restaurant had failed?”
“It was mostly in ruins. I tried to save it at the eleventh hour, but it didn’t work out. But Mrs. Kowalski’s words reminded me, I didn’t have to keep going in that direction. So I changed direction and decided no matter what, I’d pay off my debts to the people who took a foolish chance on a slacker like me. And that’s why I’m at Call Girls.”
“And Mrs. Kowalski? Is she still in your life?”
Dixie’s breathing hitched again, her smile sad. “She died of a heart attack about a year after she saved me from myself. I’ll never forget her, and I’ll never be able to repay her.”
“Maybe the idea is to pay it forward to someone who needs saving like you did?”
“Maybe it is,” she murmured.
“So, I’m just gonna keep right on bein’ nosy about this, Mistress Taboo. Why haven’t you told your ex-fiancé about this? That these are the things that shaped you into who you are today? Wouldn’t he understand?”
Shame. More shame than any one person had room for. “I wanted to. I was actually going to the other night, but he had to leave town, and now, after what’s happened with my friend, there’s no point. He’ll come back to hear about this mess, and there’ll be no goin’ back.”
“So what?”
Her eyes widened. “So what? Are you kidding me? Who wants to be persecuted over and over?”
Walker barked a rebuttal. “Who wants to have someone make decisions for them they have no right to make?”
Dixie’s spine stiffened. “Huh?”
“You’re deciding this man won’t believe you at all before he has the chance to decide for himself. Maybe he’ll look at you and say, ‘Mistress Taboo, I believe. And no one could convince me otherwise.’ It sounds like it’s because you don’t want to face the final piper. If you’re so into movin’ forward, then wouldn’t it only be fair to tell him that? Is he such a jackass he wouldn’t at least listen?”
“No. It’s not that. He’d...listen. It’s just that—”
“Then what can one more shot at it hurt? The worst that can happen is he says forget it, and you do what you originally intended. Go back to Chicago.”
She sat in quiet contemplation.
“Do you want to run away again, Mistress Taboo?” he taunted. “Didn’t you say you did that once when you went to Chicago?”
“Ye...yes.”
“Then quit doing it again, Mistress Taboo.”
A fire began to simmer in her belly. Maybe Walker was right. Maybe she should just confront Caine. Tell him about Mason and the baby, and how much she needed him to trust she was a different person.
Maybe she should search high and low until she found out who’d done this awful thing to Em?
Maybe...
“Mistress Taboo?”
“Yes?” she asked, out of breath and excited.
Walker chuckled. “I hear your wheels turnin’.”
“Maybe you’re right. Maybe I should do just that,” she said with a definitive nod, her long-lost courage poking its head out.
Yeah. She didn’t have to settle. She didn’t have to be poor Dixie. If she was going to leave this town for good, by hell, she was going down in a blaze of truthful glory! The thought left her breathless and determined. “Thank you, Walker. Thank you.”
She heard him smile into the phone. “You’re most welcome, Mistress Taboo. So I guess this is goodbye, huh?”
Dixie grinned. “I’m not sure now that you’ve pumped me up like I’m headed for a round with Mike Tyson. Maybe I’ll stick around to fight another day, huh?”
“Boo-yah. Boo-yah.”
Boo-yah, indeed. “So maybe I’ll talk to you soon, Walker, but if I don’t, thank you. You’re...”
“The fire under your butt.”
She laughed. “Sizzling hot.”
“Goodbye, Mistress Taboo. It’s always been a pleasure.”
“Until another time, Walker, goodbye,” she breathed into the phone, her throat clogged, her chest tight.
Clicking off the earpiece, she let her hand linger on her ear as though she could keep him close for just a little longer.
Whoever Walker was, wherever he came from, he’d been exactly what she needed tonight.
She sat back in her chair, entwining her fingers behind her head and closing her eyes. It was time to hatch mission “Make Everyone Listen.”
“I’ll be your Jewel of the Nile, baby,” in Michael Douglas’s voice echoed through the wall to her office, catching her attention.
She jolted forward on her chair. Caine was back? Maybe he’d taken a red-eye?
Dixie popped out of her chair, the burning embers Walker had stoked under her backside cheering her on. By hook or by crook, it was time to set the record straight.
Dixie threw open the door to her office and rounded the corner to Caine’s office door. She pressed her ear to it and heard. “C’mon, baby, take a voyage on the Starship Enterprise,” in Jean-Luc’s voice.
He was here. Her heart began to thrum, and a nervous smile flitted across her lips. It was now or never. She hesitated, her stomach a flutter of butterfly wings.
What if...
Maybe you should let him decide, Mistress Taboo.Walker’s words came back in a rush.
Dixie used the side of her fist to bang on the door. “Caine! Open up—it’s me. We need to talk!”
There it was again. “I love the way you look tonight,” Frank Sinatra’s voice sang.
Wow—this client sure liked variety. “Caine! Open up,” she yelled, banging the wood again.
“Dixie! What are you doing?” Cat asked, her face worried. “Caine’s not here. He’s in Miami until tomorrow, honey.”
Dixie grabbed Cat and pulled her close to the
door. “Then he has a ghost or a twin in there. Listen.”
“C’mon, baby. Take a voyage on the Starship Enterprise,” Jean-Luc repeated.
Cat’s mouth fell open just as Dixie reached for the doorknob. It was locked.
Cat dug around in her jeans and pulled out a shiny brass key with a conspiratorial smile, her hands steady as she drove it into the lock.
The door popped open, and they both peered inside.
To an empty office and a phone hooked up to a charger. The phone buzzed bright and blue each time it spoke—recorded messages.
“I’ll be your hunk-a-hunk-a burnin’ love,” Elvis said.
Dixie’s eyes narrowed.
Cat’s did, too.
Caine had been cheating? Maybe even all along?
Ohhh!
Oh, the dirty, low-down, let’s-be-friends, son of a horse’s ass! No disrespect to Miss Jo-Lynne, of course.
Dixie scooped up the phone and eyed it. All the tuning him out so she wouldn’t have to suffer the indignity of hearing him talk dirty to a string of women, and he’d never been talking to anyone at all. They were the same phrases she heard over and over just before she put her headset on and listened to some loud Waylon Jennings until she had a call.
Oh. Oh, Caine Donovan. What have you done?
Dixie’s eyes narrowed again, but her lungs worked right as rain when she yelped, “Caine Donovan, when I’m through with you, you’re gonna wish for a slow, painful death!”
The ultimate challenge, the one where she plucked each luscious strand of hair from his head as she poked him with a cattle prod had begun.
May the odds be ever in your favor, Candy Caine!
Twenty-One
“Oh, Candy Caine... Wake up, sugahh plummm,” Dixie cooed with a thick drawl in Caine’s ear, moving her fingers along his sumptuously hard belly until she skimmed the top of his navy blue boxer-briefs. The reaction she received made her smile that much wider.
It was the evening after her discovery Caine had been cheating, and to Dixie’s delight, he’d arrived home in the late afternoon, telling Sanjeev he needed a nap.
His arms, warm and strong, sculpted and hard, automatically reached for her, but his eyes remained closed. “Is that you, Mistress Taboo?” he asked, deep and sexy-sleepy.
“Uh-huh,” she whispered, letting her tongue flit over the shell of his ear.
Caine moaned low and hot against her cheek, kneading her back with his hands. “To what do I owe this visit? Body snatchers, right? You’re Dixie’s doppelganger.”
Dixie giggled in her best breathy Marilyn Monroe. “Now you’re just talkin’ silly.” Her hand roamed over the width of his bicep as she nipped her way down his neck, purring as she went.
“Possession? A demon possessed you?”
“No possession.”
“Too much plum wine?”
“Why I never,” she said, pretending to be offended.
“Oh, you have so,” he accused, though his voice was light.
“Okay, guilty. But I’m definitely not under the influence right now. Unless you count your intoxicating deliciousness.”
Caine stilled his roving hands. “My what?”
Dixie lifted her head, letting her eyes meet his confused gaze. She fluttered her eyelashes. “You heard me.” She returned her lips to the heat of his skin, taking pride in his hiss of pleasure.
“Question?” he squawked.
“Ask,” she demanded, enjoying the tension in his muscles as her fingers skimmed the crisp hair on his belly just below the surface of the white band of his underwear.
“What’s this about?”
Letting the length of her hair tease his stomach, something she knew drove him wild, Dixie rolled her head to see if he was looking at her. “You really wanna know what this is about, Candy Caine?”
“I do, Mistress Taboo.”
Just the way she’d planned, she popped up, hopping off his bed.
“Here’s what this is all about!” she bellowed like some demented warrior, dumping an entire pitcher’s worth of ice-cold water on his head.
Caine reared up off the bed with a roar, water spraying everywhere. “What the hell?”
Dixie bolted for the door with a scream, Caine’s Call Girls cell phone in her hand. She waved it above her head as she made a break for her bedroom. “Cheater, cheater, toe jam eater!” she singsonged, slipping into her room and turning to slam the door on his lying face.
When she’d hatched her payback, she hadn’t counted on Caine still being as quick as he’d ever been. His dripping wet fingers grasped the edge of the heavy door and gave it a good shove, sending her backward to the frantic barks of Mona and Lisa.
She stumbled, but caught herself by stabilizing her feet and thanking her Zumba DVD for giving her the balance of a dancer.
Dixie held up the phone between them as if it was some sort of super shield. “You low-down, lying, underhanded, self-righteous cheater! Ohhhhh,” she sneered up at him. “All that garbage about playing fair and bein’ friends all while you were cheating!”
Caine, his tanned skin glistening from the water like some Adonis, went all humble and pleading, surprising her. “Okay, first, I’m not a cheater, and if you’ll just let me explain, you’ll know why I did it.”
But Dixie threw her hand up, phone in place. “Don’t you dare come any closer, cheater! I worked the phones legitimately while you were cheating! I’d bet you never answered a single call! All that Dixie bashing, all that takin’ me to task over and over for being underhanded all those years ago, and you were doing the same thing. Racking all those fake numbers up for calls that never even existed. How did you do that, Candy Caine? One of your computer friends from Miami help you out, maybe? Like maybe the same person who designed your trashy website?” Cat had rechecked Caine’s numbers, and they were solid. But if he hadn’t been talking to anyone, how had he managed to finagle any numbers at all?
His chest, glorious and dripping wet, rose and fell. “Dixie, if you’ll just hear me out.”
“You should be ashamed of yourself!” She grabbed a picture of Landon from her nightstand. “Landon’s ashamed of you, aren’t you, Landon?” Dixie thrust the picture of Landon into Caine’s face. “Tell him, Landon.” She held the picture back up to her ear with a smirk. “What’s that you say? Caine’s just as smarmy as I am?”
“Dixie,” he warned in that oh-so-reasonable tone of his, moving closer, the material of his boxer-briefs sticking to him in all the right places. “If you’ll just hear what I have to say, I can clear—”
Dixie hopped up on her bed, making Mona and Lisa bark excitedly, cutting Caine off. “Don’t you dare come near me, Donovan! Get out of my bedroom right now, or I’ll start throwing things and have Sanjeev charge you for them,” she threatened, reaching for a very expensive vase with her toe.
“Dixie,” he said once more, inching closer, leaving behind a pool of water in his wake.
“Get—out!” she hollered, snatching the vase up and hurling it at his head with the speed of a torpedo.
Caine ducked just in time before the vase crashed against the wall, splintering into a million gold and green pieces.
Sanjeev flew around the corner as one of her perfume bottles sailed across the room. Dixie laughed out loud when it cracked and the room filled with the scent of pears. “Get out, Caine!”
“Dixie Davis!” Sanjeev bellowed, freezing all movement. Even Mona and Lisa stopped hopping around the bed. “The two of you will cease this instant!”
“But!” They both yelled together in protest.
Sanjeev threw a hand up, his normally calm eyes flashing all sorts of threats. “Enough! I will not have you desecrate the beauty of my housekeeping with your foolishness. Caine? You will leave this room now. You
will go back to yours, and you will mop up every last drop of water on my meticulously maintained carpets!”
Caine frowned, but his expression was tame. “But she started it.”
“Pay very close attention to me, Caine Donovan. I don’t care who started this. You will do as I’ve told you, or you’ll suffer the consequences!”
Caine’s eyes grew petulant. He crossed his arms over his chest in a defiant gesture. “What’re you gonna do? Take away my dessert?”
“Yes!” Sanjeev whisper-yelled.
“Damn,” Caine muttered, backing toward the door.
Sanjeev’s gaze swung to her, all hot and fiery. “And you, Mistress Taboo. You will clean up every last splinter of glass or never shall another of my curries pass your lips. Do we understand each other?”
Dixie pouted in response, straightening her sweater and smoothing it over her jeans.
“Oh, no, young lady. I’m not Landon. Your sullen act and sultry-pouty lips do not pull the wool over my eyes. Dustpan and broom, nowwwww!” He jabbed his finger toward her bathroom.
Dixie dropped on her butt to the bed, bouncing as she fell to the mattress. She tried one last sad face only to be greeted by Sanjeev’s surprisingly stern eyes, before slinking off the edge with a huff.
Sanjeev turned his back to whistle to the dogs. “Mona, Lisa, come! I won’t allow you to dwell with heathens!”
While his back was turned, Dixie stuck her tongue out at a contrite Caine, jamming her fingers into her ears and wiggling them.
Caine’s lips thinned.
Sanjeev whipped around as if he had eyes in the back of his head. “Dixie Davis! The bathroom. Now. March!” he ordered. “And not another word from either of you. Not. One.”
Caine left first, stomping back to his bedroom and slamming the door like a ten-year-old.
The moment he left, Dixie collapsed, muffling a fit of giggles. She’d won—fair and square. No tricks, no loopholes, just her and a phone.
“This—” Sanjeev muttered, eyes ablaze “—is amusing how, Dixie?”
Dixie hopped off the bed and hugged him hard. “I’m sorry I made a mess of your floors, but it was for a good cause.”
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