Something to Talk About (23 page)

He tapped Jake’s smiling face with a finger and smiled to himself. “I miss you, brother, but I gotta go now. I have a woman to win, and it isn’t going to be easy, but never give up the fight, right?”

The sound of his phone buzzing on the passenger seat made him drop the picture of Jake on the dash and grab up his phone, hoping it was Em.

He read the single word she’d sent him.

The one word he knew he was going to regret the minute he’d agreed to it.

Done.

Fuck.

Nineteen

E
m stared at her phone, ignoring the texts Jax had been sending over for the past two days now. He wanted to talk when she couldn’t speak. There was nothing left to talk about anyway. Continuing with Jax would only bring more misery to him and Maizy.

But heavens, she wanted to. She wanted to burrow against his wide chest and catch her breath against this storm of fury raging in her. Hear his heartbeat beneath her ear.

He’d been angry with her when they’d last parted. It was better she just cut him off, even if seeing his texts, at first funny, then urgent, were breaking bits of her heart off piece by piece.

She’d taken some personal days, telling Dixie she had the flu, sent the boys to Idalee’s, parked her car in the garage, locked up and hidden away.

All the crying and raging she’d been doing over what her mother had said to Clifton Junior and ending it with Jax had lent to her fake cold story when Dixie showed up with chicken soup. From behind a wad of tissues, her eyes red and runny, Em had told her to stay away so she wouldn’t catch it. But that wouldn’t hold water for long.

If Dixie and the girls knew what she was about to do, chaos would surely ensue. She hated scenes, even if they were out of love.

They’d try to talk her out of it. They’d somehow manage to convince her that Emmaline With No Spine could fight Clifton and the big bad meanies of Plum Orchard. Dixie would wave her money around and threaten to sue the pants off someone in her outrageously dramatic way in Em’s defense.

LaDawn would offer to sock the gossips in the mouth and Marybell would growl at Louella a little extra the next time she encountered her.

But would that keep Clifton from trying to take the boys to Atlanta? Would that keep his rich girlfriend from using her money to help him fight fire with fire? Would any of that money keep her son from being teased in school day after day?

She couldn’t risk a custody battle. How could she possibly win when she worked for a phone-sex company? Add in all the grief the boys suffered at school, and it left her too afraid to take a chance she’d lose them forever.

Appease Clifton
were the first words that came to mind.
Make a deal with him. Negotiate. Do whatever you need to in order to keep the boys close.

Her fingers tightened on the papers Clifton had sent. She’d tried calling him, tried to find a way to work this out, but he wasn’t taking her calls.

Now that he’d lobbed the arrow, and she was considering rearranging her whole life, moving to Atlanta to allow him to see the boys more often, he was hiding. The same way he had when she’d found out he was cheating on her.

Her phone buzzed, turning her red, puffy eyes to note a voice mail message from Hank Cotton, her former boss.

Grabbing a tissue, she put the phone to her ear. “Emmaline, Hank Cotton here. I think I might have found you an opening at my brother’s firm. He’s willing to interview you Friday morning, if you can make the trip. On one last note, Plum Orchard is losin’ one of its finest. Best to you always, Emmaline.”

Em grabbed a pen and took down the information and tucked it into her purse, relief flooding her.

Now she just had to get out of her pajamas and pack a bag and speak to her mother.

And find the courage to let go.

Two deep breaths later and she was on her feet when the pounding on her door began.

* * *

“Emmaline, damn it, open this door!” Jax yelled, giving little to no shit that Em’s neighbor Arlo was peeking out of his window.

The hell with the busybodies of this town. He didn’t care if they saw him at her house. He didn’t care if they talked. Let ’em. Let ’em come for Em while he was around.

No one had seen Em for two days due to her alleged flu, but something wasn’t sitting right with him. Couldn’t put his finger on it, but something wasn’t right. She’d ignored every text, every phone call he’d made, and if Em was nothing else, she was polite.

Completely ignoring him didn’t fit her character.

If it was really over between them, he wanted her to say it to his face. He wanted to hear the words, see her when she spoke them.

Fuck, he just wanted to see her.

Because it wasn’t over for him. He had apologizing to do—explaining to do. He had to tell her he was falling in love with her. Even if she rejected him, he was going to say it anyway. Because he didn’t want to miss the chance to do what was right for him and Maizy. For his heart.

Fueled by that thought, Jax fisted his hand and banged harder. “Em, I know you’re in there—talk to me, Em. Just talk to me.”

Nothing. Nothing but the stares of the neighborhood people he’d acquired with the racket he was making, nothing but the sounds of the coming night.

He had to clench his fist to keep from driving it through the cold metal of the door. “This isn’t over, Em. Not by a long shot. I’ll keep coming back until you see me. Until you hear what I have to say.”

He pressed his ear to the door and waited, as though after all that banging, she’d suddenly pop open the door and welcome him with that warm Em smile.

More silence.

Damn it.

If he had to come back with a backhoe, he was going to get her to open her door.

* * *

Em let her cheek rest against the door, distantly watching tears roll off her face and onto the hardwood entryway. The sound of Jax’s truck revving its engine and driving away left her empty and cold.

She wanted to fling open the door and launch herself at him. To tell him it was all her. This had nothing to do with him. But she couldn’t. Seeing him would only make everything that much harder in light of their sex-only relationship.

Why did he want to talk anyway? Did you talk about ending a sexual relationship, or didn’t you just end it? Wasn’t that what they’d agreed on?

Did he need to see her to end it? Admittedly, texts were bad form when breaking up, but they weren’t breaking up, breaking up. They were quitting the sex games.

This was the no harm, no foul part.

But she’d realized something today. Dixie was right. She wasn’t a fling kind of girl. She wasn’t the kind of girl who could take a lover in the afternoon.

Because she was in love with Jax Hawthorne.

* * *

“Daddy?”

“Maizy?”

She hopped up on the couch next to him, the feathers of her boa shedding on the new couch he’d been talked into, and pressed her nose to his. “Do you feel sick?”

“Nope. Why do you ask?”

She used the back of her hand to feel his forehead, knocking him in the eye with the charms from the bracelet Em had given her. “Because you look sick.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Your face is all pouty like Uncle Tag’s.”

Jax rubbed his nose against hers. “I’ll try not to be so pouty.”

“If you’re sad, it’s okay to be pouty. Em said so.”

Em.
She’d only been in their lives for a little while, and already she’d left an impact on Maizy. “Em’s smart.”

Maizy giggled, that light giggle dipped in fairy wings. “She’s nice. Can she be your girlfriend? You’re not so cranky when she’s around.”

His smile was wry. His girlfriend. What had started this all, Maizy’s call to Em. “I don’t think she wants a boyfriend right now, Maizy.”

“Can you make her want to be your girlfriend?” she asked, putting her hands on either side of his face and pressing their noses together so when she twisted her head, their eyes made funny shapes.

“You can’t make someone do something they don’t want to do.”

“You make me eat vegetables and I don’t want to.”

“That’s a little different, honey.” Vegetables and girlfriends. Totally different.

“You said I had to eat vegetables because they’re good for me.”

“What does that have to do with Em?”

“I heard Uncle Gage tell Uncle Tag Em’s good for you.”

The way she connected dots in her head never failed to amaze him. “Still kind of different, and very grown-up stuff you shouldn’t worry about. But vegetables are good for you—that’s why we make you try everything first.”

“Then maybe you should try to make Em your girlfriend. Maybe she doesn’t know she’s good for you, either? Like I didn’t know I liked vegetables.”

Yeah. He’d just make her want to be his girlfriend instead of his lover. It was easy. Yet, a new fire burned in his gut. Why couldn’t it be that simple?

He wanted Em. He wasn’t giving up until she told him to. And even then, he might still not give up.

“Know what, Maizy?”

“What, Daddy?”

“You’re A-Maizy.” He dropped a kiss on her nose, scooped her up and ran her up the stairs quarterback style.

Tomorrow, Em better get ready, because he was going to make her be his girlfriend if it was the last thing he did.

* * *

The next day, he stormed Call Girls take-no-prisoners style. He’d texted her to a deafening silence. Left her voice mail message after voice mail message with no response.

The hell she was sick.

“Em!” Jax headed for Emmaline’s office, ignoring the startled looks on the girls’ faces as he flew past them.

“Jax?” Dixie called, almost running into him in the hall leading to Em’s office.

“Dixie. Jesus, have you seen Em today? I’ve been calling and texting her and haven’t heard a damn thing.”

Dixie’s face collapsed. “Thank God, you’re here. I can’t find her anywhere, either. I’m worried sick. We all are. Especially after she left me this on my desk.”

He plucked the piece of paper from Dixie’s hand and skimmed it. “She’s resigning from Call Girls?” Now he knew something was wrong. Really, really wrong.

“She had to have been in here bright and early. I’m always here by seven, but this was waiting on my desk for me when I got here, and now, none of us can find her anywhere. The boys are with Idalee getting ready for the Winter Solstice fair in the square, but even Idalee doesn’t know where she is. Em told her she needed to leave the boys with her because she had some things to take care of, and it was the last she saw of her. That was two days ago. She’s not sick, Jax. She was covering for something else.”

Why would Em resign from Call Girls? She loved her job. She loved Dixie and the girls.

Marybell and LaDawn were right behind Dixie, faces full of worry. “Did we find her?” LaDawn asked.

Dixie shook her head but her eyes were full of determination. “Not yet. But we will. Okay, girls—Jax, you, too. Let’s spread out and find Em. Marybell, you all right with goin’ to Madge’s and askin’ around?”

Marybell was half out the door. “Couldn’t stop me even if Nanette Pruitt was waitin’ for me with Holy Water.”

Dixie raised a fist in the air and laughed. “Go get ’em! LaDawn—”

“I got it. I’ll hit the coffee shop and Lucky’s. Maybe she’s got her head buried in a pile of wood and she just forgot to turn her phone on.”

Dixie gave LaDawn a quick hug before grabbing Jax’s hand. “You come with me. We’ll start at her place and work from there.”

Jax went willingly, first, because these women were a force to be reckoned with, and if anyone could find Em, it’d be them.

Second, because these women were a force to be reckoned with.

Twenty

“M
ama! You open this door right now!” Em pounded on her mother’s front door, shooting a toxic glare at the people staring at her from the front porches lining her mother’s street.

Good. Let ’em stare. The lot of them were bitter, mean, ugly spirits who had no right to judge. It wasn’t enough to talk about her and Clifton. She was an adult—she could take her licks, but Clifton Junior? He’d been physically assaulted because Louella’s bid to hurt anyone in her path had spiraled out of control.

In fact, maybe she’d just tell them that. Em marched down the neat pathway of her childhood home, with its cobblestone pavers and its perfectly aligned boxwoods, the breath coming from her lungs in cloudy huffs.

She planted herself just at the edge of the lawn and raised a fist in the air. “Y’all listen up, you nosy bunch o’ biddies, and yes, that means you, too, Kitty Palmer!” She shot an accusatory finger in Kitty’s direction. “You leave me and my children alone—you understand? One more foul word from your daughter’s forked tongue, and I’ll punch her in the nose even harder than Dixie did! While y’all are talkin’, why don’t you talk about
that!
”

She wiped the spit from the side of her mouth and stomped back along the path to the steps of her mother’s wide front porch, prepared to knock Clora’s door down with just her rage alone.

She’d had two days to figure out how to handle this, but the longer she’d thought about it, the angrier she became. Maybe it was because she’d dropped her resignation off today like some kind o’ thief in the night. Maybe it was because she resented feeling forced to leave a place she loved, despite the cruelty that abounded in Plum Orchard.

Or maybe it was just the very idea that her own mother didn’t have her back. And as she got past the tears and began to focus on what hurt the most, it all came down to her mother and what she’d said to Clifton Junior.

“Mama!” she bellowed. “Open this door!”

The front door popped open and Clora stuck her head out—the first thing she did was scan the street to see if anyone was watching her daughter’s bad behavior.

In that second, Em realized something. Her entire life had been based on Clora’s fear everyone was talking about them. Why was that?

“Emmaline Amos! You get in here right now!” she demanded, her lips tight. “Do you want the whole neighborhood to hear you?”

You bet your tail she did. And she said as much. “You bet I do, Mama! I want them all to hear the horrible things you’ve been saying about me to my son.” Em leaned over the porch railing and yelled out into the street. “I want them to hear it from me so they don’t have to talk about it behind my back like the yellow-bellied cowards they are!”

Clora stamped her foot and pointed inside the door. “Get in here this instant, Emmaline!”

“Or you’ll what, Mama?” She heard the whispers now, out in the dim vestiges of the oncoming night. Everyone talkin’ about Emmaline Amos gone crazy.

“Emmaline!” her mother hissed.

Em decided to take her mother’s advice; pushing past her, she flew into the living room. It was as cold as it had always been. As cold as her mother had always been.

“What on earth has gotten into you, Emmaline? How dare you come to my door in a fit!”

“Oh, I dare, Mama. I dare because you involved my children! I don’t know why you are the way you are, Mama. I don’t know why you can’t enjoy anything, not even your grandsons, but I will not tolerate you speakin’ ill of me to them. You hear me?” she bellowed loud enough to make the lone picture of Jesus on the wall shake from her fury.

Clora paled, but only a little before she rallied and railed at the idea Em would speak so disrespectfully to her elder. “I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about, Emmaline, but you will not speak to me like that.”

Em hiked her purse over her shoulder, her emotions seesawing in wide, crazy-ish arcs. “Oh, yes I will! When it comes to my boys, I most certainly will. You’re always so concerned about everyone talkin’ about me—about Clifton—about you—why is it you’re not concerned when you’re talking out of turn and telling my boys their father left because of me? How dare you say something like that to them? How dare you plant one of your bitter seeds? Isn’t it bad enough that you made my entire life miserable with your Bible thumping and your bitterness, but you want to do it again with my sons? Not. In. This. Lifetime!”

Clora’s hard mask of a face cracked for a moment before she turned on her heel and headed into her equally cold kitchen. “I spoke nothing but the truth.”

Em raced after her, cutting her off at the pass, spilling the contents of her purse all over the yellowing linoleum.
“What?”

Clora’s eyes flashed as she stooped to pick up Em’s purse. “I said, I spoke nothing but the truth. If you’d been a better wife, Clifton wouldn’t need to wear women’s clothes.”

Em couldn’t breathe from the accusation. She reached blindly behind her for something to hold on to. “Have you plum lost your mind? How does my being a better wife have anything to do with Clifton wearing high heels?”

“If you’d been a better wife, he wouldn’t have strayed.”

“So what’s your excuse, Mama? Why did my father leave? Because
you w
eren’t a better wife?”

But Clora wasn’t hearing Em, she was staring at the ridiculous birth certificate she’d gotten in the mail, sprawled across the kitchen floor in a heap of makeup and loose change. “Where did this come from, Emmaline?”

Em was genuinely taken aback. She’d just insulted her mother’s wifely skills and she was more concerned with a piece of paper.

Em snatched it from her hand. “Someone thought it would be funny to scratch off my father’s name and put in Ethan Davis. It’s just another one of the many pieces of hate mail I get because I work where women fornicate with their words, Mother.”

But Clora wasn’t responding to her snipe. Her hand was shaking as she slumped down on the floor against the wall. “Who sent it?”

She peered at her mother, confused by the look of terror in her eyes. “Mama, are you hearin’ anything I said? I don’t know who sent it. People who send things like that don’t leave a return address.”

“Someone knows.”

The ominous tone to Clora’s voice startled Em. “Should we cue the spooky music? Someone knows what?”

“That Ethan Davis is your father.”

* * *

Dixie opened the door to Em’s with her spare key to dead silence. Nothing but Dora greeted them. Dixie cupped Dora’s muzzle in her hands and cooed, “Where’s your mama, Dora?”

Jax reached down and scratched Dora’s head, taking in Em’s house. It was just like her—everything about it said Emmaline Amos lived here. From the warmth of all those crazy pillows she was so big on to the wall of pictures of the boys—it said Em. It smelled like her, it felt like her—if he could wrap himself up in it, he would.

Dixie began digging through a pile of papers on the counter.

“Maybe we shouldn’t go through—”

Dixie’s hand with the bangle bracelets on her wrist flew upward, her eyes fixed on the manila envelopes amongst the sale circulars. “Emmaline and I know everythin’ there is to know about each other, Jax Hawthorne. We have no secrets. There is no privacy when my best friend is missing. I know your arrangements are different, but I’m not above snoopin’ through her things if she’s in some kind of trouble. So you just hush with your concerns.”

Jax could see why Caine had chosen Dixie. She was a leader, a strong personality, strong and smart. So he nodded and kept his mouth shut. But he couldn’t stand still. Pacing in front of the wall of pictures of Em and the boys, he stopped at one in particular.

Em with Clifton Junior in a pile of autumn leaves, his chubby hands bracketing her face, his toothless grin wide, his eyes gleaming with adoration for his mother.

And Em, happy, free, beautiful.

His gut tightened when he reached for his phone again to see if maybe he’d missed a text. It was pointless because it hadn’t vibrated in hours, but he looked anyway.

Nothing.
Damn it, Em, where the hell are you?

Dixie’s gasp pulled him from fruitlessly scrolling his phone. “You okay?”

She slid onto the breakfast bar stool and took deep breaths.

Jax crossed the room with Dora in tow and put his hand on her shoulder. “Hey, you feel okay?”

She held up a finger this time. “Give me just a second to process.”

Jax looked over her shoulder at the papers she’d been rifling through then he leaned in closer to be sure he was reading correctly. His eyes narrowed. “That son of a bitch is suing her for custody?”

Dixie’s nod was slow. “That’s not all.” She held up another piece of paper that looked official. “I know where Em is, and we have to go before a murder occurs right here in Plum Orchard!”

* * *

Em felt the life whoosh out of her then return in a rush of flashing lights and her blood pulsing through her veins.
“What?”
she whispered, her voice cracking.

Clora crumbled, right in front of her eyes. Like someone had stuck a pin in her and she’d deflated. “Ethan Davis is your father.”

Her breathing picked back up. “No. Thomas Mitchell is my father.”

“Emmaline, we need to sit down—”

Em shook her head, horror spreading throughout her body. “No! I will not listen to you tell me you slept with Ethan Davis! I will not listen to you tell me my whole life was a lie!”

Clora reached for her hand. Physically put her hand out and sought to touch Em’s. Who was this woman? Em cringed, pushing herself away from her mother across the smooth linoleum. “Don’t.”

Clora pulled her hand back and shook her head, using the towel on her shoulder to wipe her eyes. “Then will you at least listen?”

Em fought for breath. Tears? Her mother was shedding real, live tears? “I will not listen to something so despicable. All my life you’ve lied to me. All of it. You’ve been hateful and angry and now I’m supposed to listen?”

“That’s why I lied to you, Emmaline! To protect you from the people of this town!”

“I don’t understand. How did this happen? How could you have done this?” To hear that her mother was anything but all the things she’d preached to Em— chastity, faithfulness—left her unable to process anything else.

“I loved Ethan first. Long before Pearl even knew he was alive, but my father, your grandpa, didn’t like Ethan. Back then, it was just different. Marryin’ the right person was important. Your parents’ approval was more important than it is today. They thought Ethan was irresponsible, and I suppose, at that time, he was. But I loved him.” Her voice cracked and her shoulders shuddered.

Em shook her head. This was all wrong. This wasn’t her mother, talking about love like she was some teenager. This wasn’t her disapproving, purse-lipped mother. This was someone who needed medication.

“So I broke it off with Ethan, and I met Thomas shortly thereafter. I cared about Thomas. I won’t have anyone thinkin’ otherwise.”

Finally, she summoned up some words, words she wanted to use to hurt Clora. Make her hurt like she was hurting. “Because Lord forgive if someone thought otherwise, right, Mama? Never create any scandal, Emmaline. Be a good girl, Emmaline,” she mocked.

Clora trembled under the weak light of the stovetop range. “I never wanted you to suffer for my misdeeds, Emmaline. I didn’t want people to talk about you the way they talked about me. If I kept you on the Lord’s path—”

“The Lord’s path? Have you lost your gourd, Mama? How is infidelity the Lord’s path?” All of the sermons, all of the beating her over the head about being a good girl were because her mother had done something despicable? She’d paid the price for her mother’s sin?

But her mother was lost in her memory, hell-bent on purging herself. “I know what we did was wrong. I don’t know how it happened. It just happened. I knew I deserved every last bit o’ the scorn Pearl set out to shower on me.”

Em clutched her purse, her hands shaking. “Pearl knew? How?”

“She caught us together.” Her mother sobbed a ragged whimper.

Em began to gag, forcing her to press her fingers to her lips.

“But she’s the only person who knows aside from Thomas. Not even Ethan knew. He went to his grave never knowin’ he had two daughters. Pearl’d never tell a soul. It would only bring her humiliation and shame, and she’d never allow that. But it’s what she used to cut me out of the Mags. It’s how she kept me rooted here in my misery. How she kept me in line. I never wanted that to fall at your feet, Emmaline. So I kept quiet.”

“Thomas knew?”

Clora nodded, her eyes filled with tears. “He left me because of it.”

“Why didn’t you tell Mr. Davis about me?” Oh, sweet heaven. He was no longer Mr. Davis.

Her mother looked like she’d just asked her if pigs flew, but her eyes sank to the floor. “How would that have been for you, Emmaline? The illegitimate child of a powerful man like Ethan Davis, livin’ in a town like this with a teenager like Dixie Davis was? She was horrible to you all your life, Emmaline. I never liked the idea of you two bein’ friends, and I like it even less now.”

Everything clicked for Em then. She heard the pieces of it snap into place. All the lessons in decorum. All the anger. All the reminders of bitter retribution were because her mother was making up for her past mistakes. She was punishing herself for sinning, for doing one of the very things she preached was wrong.

It explained her mother’s aversion to Dixie.

As though it was Dixie’s fault she’d grown up with everything and Clora had struggled all her life to provide. “Don’t you mean half sisters, Mama? You leave Dixie alone! She surely had nothin’ to do with you beddin’ her father!”

Dixie... What would this do to Dixie? She’d been Daddy’s little girl, the apple of his eye. Looking back, she remembered seeing them together. He came to all of Dixie’s games when she was a cheerleader, and he’d adored her. She’d adored him.

How would she ever face Dixie again?