Something to Talk About (4 page)

Em’s heart finally struck up the band again, and began to boom in time with her head. Her fingers clutched the strap of the purse slung over her shoulder. Words, as they always did with a man, especially this man, failed her.

A bump from behind jolted her forward, making her aware she was staring. “Gawking, honey,” Dixie whispered in her ear. “Stop gawking and say, ‘hello, divine man. Need a screw for your screwdriver?’”

Em did everything she could to keep from gasping at Dixie’s suggestive words, nudging her in the ribs before sending the man a cool smile and whisking past him into the hardware store, Dixie in tow.

She headed straight for the farthest aisle from the door, almost running into Nanette Pruitt and Essie Guthrie without even acknowledging them, refusing to stop until she was as far away from that man as possible.

Dixie’s ankle boots clacked behind Em, skidding to a halt when she rounded the corner and hid behind a pallet of two-by-fours.

Em grabbed Dixie by her arm and pulled her close, scrunching her eyes shut. All that rapid forward motion left her stomach sketchy at best.

Dixie fought to catch her own breath in a harsh wheeze, before asking, “Why did we just run all the way across Lucky’s like we were runnin’ from a band of Magnolias with lit torches?”

The stomp of work boots as Lucky’s employees loaded and unloaded pallets of heavy wood made her wince, but it was the stench of turpentine and furniture polish that was almost her undoing. She took a gulp of air, thanking whoever was in charge of the universe the moment passed.

Dixie smoothed Em’s hair off her shoulder, giving it a gentle tug. “One more time. Why did we run all the way to the back of the store when what you need is in the front?”

“Because that’s him!” Em wheezed back, pressing her fingers to her queasy stomach and tugging her knit beret farther down her forehead.

Dixie snickered, unwrapping the turquoise scarf from her neck. “I know it’s him, Em. I remember. I was in the square that night when the two of you all but consummated your mad lust just lookin’ at each other. If you’d stared at each other much longer? Total combustion. Poof.” She gestured an explosion with her fingers and a grin full of mischief.

Em groaned out her misery in both ailment and bad memory. One of the worst nights of her life had included the best ten seconds of her life. One long searing gaze over picnic blankets and children’s heads was really all it had been. Yet, there had been more bad that night than good.

“Didn’t you once say you heard Louella call him Jax? What a gorgeous name. You’d better make haste before Annabelle Pruitt lures him to her house for her special fudge candy pops. Or the seal-the-deal cherry crumb pie,” Dixie teased.

But Em was back in the square—locked in the memory of all the horrible stares, the gasps of shock when Clifton’s secret was revealed. “I don’t want to think about that night ever again, Dixie.”

Dixie scoffed, lifting Em’s sunglasses to gaze directly into her eyes. “Stop clinging to a bad memory, Em. It’s over. Everyone knows Clifton cross-dresses now. So what? If anyone should hate the memory of that night, it should be me. Or have you forgotten you thought
I
was the one who’d gossiped about Clifton’s secret to someone and that ‘someone’ told Louella, who accidentally on purpose included the picture of him at the Founders’ Day slide show all dressed up in his Trixie LeMieux gown?”

Em’s lips thinned, snapping her back to reality and the sounds of a busy Saturday at Lucky’s. “We’re not far from the nail aisle, Miss Dixie. Do you want to buy some to seal my coffin all right and proper?”

Dixie snorted a chuckle, scanning the surrounding area and lowering her voice. “Hah! I’ll just borrow some of yours.”

Oh. That night. She’d said so many unforgivable things to Dixie, it left her with an actual physical pain when she remembered them. “I’ve apologized for that night. Over and over, might I remind you?”

Dixie’s smile was full of warmth and sympathy. “Which is sort of my point, silly. You don’t need to apologize anymore because it’s
over,
Em, long ago. And might I remind you, just before all those bad memories happened, you made a good one, too. A really, hot, longingly, deliciously good one. One that involves that enormous man dipped in delicious all the way up to his eyeballs. Whose name is Jax, in case you needed remindin’.”

Fear and humiliation rooted her to the spot, refusing to allow her to move an inch. Her thighs ached from sitting on her haunches, but she’d rather sit on them all day than have that man recognize her.

“So, are you going to go see if you can recapture that magical moment in the square—or are your eyes too bloodshot?”

“I’m not reliving anything. He saw everything that night.
Everything,
Dixie.”

All on a big screen. Clifton, larger than life, dressed better than Em would ever be capable of dressing herself. He’d heard, too, she was sure.

Who hadn’t heard her call Dixie a sorry excuse for a human being that night? Remembering those awful, ugly words, words Dixie had long ago forgiven her for, still made her feel sick with shame.

The frosty white icing on the cake? She’d run smack into him upon fleeing the square that evening, tears soaking her cheeks, her nylons ripped from tripping over a child’s bike in her mad dash to get away from the prying eyes of everyone attending the Founders’ Day celebration.

Em hadn’t seen him since that night when just before she’d humiliated herself in front of all of Plum Orchard, they’d shared a moment when their eyes met—a brief few seconds still suspended in her mind, and probably much bigger than it had truly been.

What was he doing back here anyway? He couldn’t have been here for the past two months. There was no way you could hide someone the size of him in Plum Orchard—droves of the town’s single women lining up outside wherever he rested his gorgeous, dark head wasn’t something you’d likely miss.

Sure as the day was long, a fresh man even remotely passable didn’t stand a chance in a place where a new face didn’t go unnoticed and the single women outnumbered the single men five to one.

Dixie sighed, finally sliding to sit entirely on the floor, crossing her legs. “Who cares what
Jax
saw? He probably doesn’t even remember anything but that across the crowded square thing you two were doing with your eyes. I saw him look at you, Em. That cancels everything else out. Why didn’t you just say hello to him out there to begin with? You can’t ever do lascivious things to his incredible body if you don’t at least say hello. Well, hold that thought. I guess technically, you could, but I think that classifies you in a category unbefitting a lady.”

Em slid down next to Dixie, letting her head rest against the ends of the wood with a weak sigh. “Stop being plum crazy. A man like that isn’t ever going to let a woman like me do anything to his incredible body.”

“Why the heck not?”

“Spoken like a woman who’s never doubted her incredibleness.” And why would Dixie doubt how gorgeous she was? She exuded confidence and this raw sexuality that oozed from her pores.

“Leave me out of this, and stop making excuses. So tell me again why a man like that wouldn’t let a woman like you have her way with him?”

“Because he’s just
too
much incredible. Incredible men look for incredible women.” At least, that’s the experience she’d had since they’d begun girls’ night. A man like that wouldn’t be interested in her. He’d want a woman who was dynamic, worldly and far more interesting than a woman who’d rather stay at home and bake apple pies while she sipped grape Kool-Aid from a wineglass, fancying herself a real academic because she read mystery novels by the dozen.

She was simple, in taste and in her way of life. He looked like he should drive an Aston Martin and call some elderly woman Miss Moneypenny. He might appear big and gruff, but there was a primal elegance to it—a Daniel Craig air about him that left her knees weak.

Dixie rose, holding out her hand to Em, who took it, moaning when the motion of merely rising unsettled her precarious stomach. “The not-hungover Dixie is going to tell hungover Em to stop being so maudlin and more important, stop talking about yourself like you’re not just as incredible. Because that’s just plain not true. Now,” she said, tucking her gloves inside the pockets of her sweater, “why are you here again? I forgot in light of the hunky man.”

“Tile. I need to pick out some new tile for my bathroom. But first, I need you to take a peek around that corner and be sure he’s gone. Please.” She pointed over her shoulder.

Please let him be gone, please let him be gone.

Dixie poked her head around the tall steel shelves, housing smaller cuts of wood. She gave Em the thumbs-up, holding out her arm to her.

Em hooked arms with Dixie, forcing her shaky legs to keep up. “I warned you you were headed for a hangover, didn’t I?”

“You bein’ the expert, and all,” she remarked dryly, using all her energy to focus on picking new ceramic tile for her bathroom. Since Clifton left, she found herself itching to change the things he’d once loved but she’d hated about their small house. Seeing as she was good with a band saw—or almost any saw—and Dixie had afforded her a generous paycheck, she could do it.

Dixie grinned. “Hangovers and a little sleepin’ around were my specialties. Don’t take from my résumé, Em. It messes with my street cred, lessening the value of all my hard work all those years. It hurts.”

Em giggled. “Stop chattering. It makes my head swim.”

Dixie rested her arm high on a rack holding row after row of colorful tile. “That’s because you’re hungover. A swimming head’s a sure sign.”

“Hush, and help me pick out some new tile, would you, please? I don’t want to waste a Saturday doing nothing while the boys are away.”

“Are you really going to tackle this project alone? It’s a lot of work. Why won’t you just let me pay someone to do it for you?” Dixie’s face had skeptical all over it.

“It’s called Em’s big, fat pride. If I let someone do it, I won’t have done it myself. There’s a certain sense of self-satisfaction in remodeling an entire house all on your own. It’s not like I don’t know my way around a wet saw, Dixie. I mean, I did spend the first months of my divorce watching nothing but the DIY channel and YouTube. It gives me something to do while the boys are off at Mama’s, or when Clifton finally gets around to bringing them to Atlanta for his visitation. It’s clean, hard work—and it’s good for the soul. But also because I don’t want these busybodies to start talkin’ and saying I’m just your person because of all that money you have now. So let’s be clear.” She raised her voice a decibel so there’d be no mistake about whether Emmaline Amos took handouts. “I don’t love you for your mountains of money.”

Dixie held up a blue ceramic square with a yellow sunflower on it for Em’s inspection. “Then why do you love me, Em?”

Em shook her head when she peeked at the tile by lifting her dark glasses. No sunflowers. “I love you because lovin’ you is like havin’ an in with the devil’s head playmate. I’m always guaranteed an invite to the exorcism.”

Her phone buzzed against her hip, cutting Dixie off. She dragged it out of her pocket, frowning when she saw it was Nella, Call Girls’ receptionist.

Em held the phone up to Dixie so she could see who was calling. “My work never ends, does it? Sure, let’s give Em a job, you said. Let’s give her a juicy paycheck to match, you said. Let’s give her a title like general manager to match her big paycheck. I should have known there’d be Saturday strings attached with you in charge, Dixie,” she joked, scrolling her phone’s screen. “Nella?”

“Let me start right out by apologizing.” She rushed her words together, her voice riddled with anxiety. “I confused my lines again, and crossed wires, or pressed the wrong button, or whatever it is you do when you do it wrong—I did it. I’m so sorry, Em! I’m still learnin’ the phones. I would never want to do anything to jeopardize the good fortune that’s come my way since you hired me.”

Em smiled into the phone, full of sympathy for Nella. She’d hired Nella three weeks ago on a recommendation from her cousin Flynn. She didn’t know the details about what initially brought Nella to Plum Orchard, and she made it her business not to ask why she always looked so sad when she thought no one was looking.

She only knew Nella’s circumstances had left her jobless, and she kept to herself, but her sweet face, enormous round green eyes and cute pixie haircut were a total contradiction to the way she handled parsing out good calls from bad like a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound linebacker. “Nella? It’s okay. Everyone makes mistakes. You’re new. It happens.”

Nella groaned into Em’s ear, a vibrating buzz like a dentist’s drill to her sensitive head. “I promise you, it won’t happen again. I heard all that yelling, and I just knew I had to apologize for causin’ trouble, but I couldn’t find you to do it by the time I had a free moment.”

That’s because by that time, she’d been flat out on her big bed, clothes still on, snoring and drooling. “Nella, please don’t fret a second longer. Everything’s fine. You made a simple mistake, and I took care of it. That poor little girl shouldn’t have had access to a number...” She trailed off when she caught sight of Dixie, jumping up and down, waving her arms.

Em furrowed her brow, cocking her head in question while Dixie danced around. “She said she found it on her daddy’s desk! I was horrified, and this poor, sweet angel—”

“It was damn well you,” a voice as deep and booming as a canyon accused, creating a hush in the chatter of gossipy conversation all around her from the patrons of Lucky’s.

Em whipped around just in time to see Dixie stood behind him. She threw her hands up in the air in obvious defeat, shooting Em a digusted roll of her eyes.

It was him. The him.

But he wasn’t looking down at her with the look of her two-month-old daydreams. The look that said he’d gobble her up whole and no one in the world compared to her.

No.

This him was glaring at her—lording over her as though she was personally responsible for the Civil War and global warming.