Something to Talk About (5 page)

His thick, squared finger rose, pointing directly at her. “It was
you
on the phone last night with my daughter.”

Three

E
m’s eyes slid upward, scanning the length of
him
. This wasn’t her him. Her him wouldn’t have been the angry father from the phone last night. He also wouldn’t be an angry father with a phone number for a place like Call Girls.

She was certainly open to many things since she’d begun working for Call Girls—she would never judge a client, or at least she tried her best not to. But a man she’d turned into a knight in shining armor by virtue of one long glance, calling women for sex who were complete strangers?

“Nella?” She fought the squeak in her voice. “I’ll call you back.” Em slid the phone off and dropped it back into her pocket, taking in a deep breath before confronting him.

Arms crossed over his big chest, encased in a black sweatshirt with a plaid flannel jacket over it, he flared his nostrils. “
You
spoke to my daughter on the phone last night. I’d know your voice anywhere after you read me the first-grade teacher ‘how dare you’ riot act.”

Dixie was about to rush to her aid. Em knew it just by the sound of her heels clacking with a swift pitter-patter across the hardware store’s floor and the narrowing of her eyes. The angry narrow, not to be confused with the smolder narrow.

Em held up a hand to ward off Dixie, who came to stand at her side nonetheless. When it came to looking out for Call Girls, nothing could fluster her. Not even
him.

She cleared her throat and adopted a businesslike tone. “I think we got off on the wrong foot last night. First, let me introduce myself—or reintroduce myself. I’m Emmaline Amos, general manager for Call Girls Inc.” She held out her hand.

He stared at it, his once-promising lips now a hard line.

Em straightened, sucking in her cheeks. Hoping to avoid a spectacle everyone in town would talk about until she made the next spectacle of herself. “Maybe we should discuss this outside?”

His face grew harder, if that was possible. “The hell. I’m fine with discussing it right here. Mind telling me how a six-year-old managed to get through to one of your operators?”

Em’s eyebrow rose. She bristled at the implication she was anything less than acutely aware of everything that went on at Call Girls. “Mind telling me how your
six-
year-old got her hands on a number like ours? She did say it was on
your
desk.”

He ran a hand over his jaw, already littered with stubble, or maybe it had remained littered with stubble because he hadn’t shaved.

His face, formerly known as hard and angry, went suddenly boggled and tame. He scratched his head. “Come to think of it, I have no idea how she got her hands on the number. I sent her straight to bed, and I didn’t have time to talk with her about it this morning. She made me tea, which distracted me because she’s dang cute when she makes me her special tea. That’s how I left her—having tea.”

Which would imply there was someone else looking after his little girl if he’d left her at the house, and still didn’t explain why he had a number for Call Girls. She struggled with how deeply that disappointed her and gave him her “aha” look, hoping her glare would reach him from behind her sunglasses.

It was the glare she gave her boys when they held the answer to their own question. “Then your number-one priority right now is to go focus on bein’ a better parent, and ask her. You obviously missed the chapter on putting things in high places where small children can’t reach them,” she condescended.

He grinned—suddenly, inexplicably. And it was magical. “I obviously did.”

Just like that, he wasn’t angry or yelling anymore. He was like Texas weather. Stormin’ and ragin’ one minute, sunny and blue-skied the next.

“So you—” he leaned in toward her and whispered “—manage a phone-sex company?”

Now that his accusatory tone and mad face were gone, Em’s words suddenly were, too. She swallowed hard, tongue-tied. When he said the words
phone sex,
her heart stopped again. It was husky and raspy like he’d taken a swig of whiskey and it had left him hoarse. His deep timbre vibrated up along her spine with soft fingers.

She understood exactly what he’d said, but somehow, his words had turned into the man of her daydreams asking her to have sex with him. Which couldn’t be right.

Her cheeks flushed.

Dixie pinched her arm and smiled at Em with encouragement. “She does manage a phone-sex company, and she’s amazing.”

Em nodded because it seemed like the right thing to do, not because she considered herself amazing. “I do.”

Now his eyebrow rose, dark and questioning. He made the shape of a phone with his fingers. “So, do you, you know, talk to...people—callers?” He seemed fascinated by the idea that he might have encountered a real live phone-sex operator out and about in the wilds of Plum Orchard, Georgia.

Em knew he was waiting for an answer, but she was mesmerized by the sharp planes of his face, the deep grooves on either side of his mouth, his dark hair, shaggy and curling around the collar of his jacket. And the pink barrette, dangling from a strand of it just behind his ear.

Her heart melted like cold ice cream on a hot July day. A man with a pink barrette in his hair was exactly the man of her daydreams.

“So do you?” he repeated, his eyes intense.

Did she?

“No!” Dixie was quick to answer in her stead. “No. Em doesn’t talk to our clients, do you, Em?” She rubbed Em’s back to prompt her. “But she does talk. I promise. She’s just tired. It’s been a busy week doing all that managing.”

The world morphed back into shape again, bringing with it the crisp colors of the stacks of ceramic tile, people milling in and out of the aisles, and Dixie, pinching her again, even harder. “Yes!” She forced her lips to move, watching the barrette he was so completely unaware of, bobble. “I do talk, but I can’t right now. I have to go. So I hope you’ll excuse us.”

He stuck out his hand, preventing her from leaving. “Before you go, Jax Hawthorne. My apologies. I’m a little overprotective when it comes to my daughter. I really don’t know how she got her hands on a number like yours. Not that your number is bad or anything. Just, well, you know.”

Jax Hawthorne
. She’d once mentioned to Dixie, his first name sounded like something out of a romance novel. His last name cinched the deal.

Em hesitated. Touching his hand, that rough, wide, callused hand, the one she’d wondered what it would be like to have touch every inch of her, was probably a bad idea. It would leave an imprint on her skin—one she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to stop thinking about.

But her upbringing and good manners insisted she take it. Em dropped her hand into his, squeezing hard to assert herself in yet another way to prove to the world she was capable—independent.
Because stern teacher’s voices and extrafirm handshakes are sure signs of empowerment, Emmaline
.

“Anyway,” he said, dragging her back to reality by dropping her hand. “My apologies for reacting without investigating first. Have a nice Saturday, ladies.”

Just as he was about to turn his broad back to walk away, the pink barrette slipped from his hair, dropping to the ground at Em’s feet with a tinny clink.

She lifted her glasses to set them atop her head as she knelt and scooped it up at the exact moment he knelt to retrieve it, their heads almost touching.

And their eyes met, too—again—in another one of those stares. Long, short, intense, soft. Em couldn’t decide which adjective to lend it. She cleared her tight throat, holding up the barrette. “You dropped this.”

If Jax recognized her without her glasses, he didn’t show it.

He grinned again. “My daughter’s.”

She melted again.

“She likes pink?”

“She said it’s my color. For dress up, I mean,” he corrected, grumbly and deep.

Em smiled at him. “I agree.”

“Then it’s settled. Pink forever.”

“Pink rules.”

“Just like my daughter.”

More melting. “Tell her Miss Em said hello, won’t you?”

“I will.” He took the barrette from her fingers, their skin touching then not, doing hot, delicious things to places on her body that shouldn’t be hotly delicious from just touching fingers. He dropped it in the pocket of his flannel jacket.

“Have a nice afternoon, Mr. Hawthorne.” Em swung upward, thankful for Dixie, who grabbed her by the arm to steady her, murmuring a goodbye to Jax and ushering her out of the hardware store.

Outside, the cold air struck her cheeks, cooling their heat, but assaulting her headache with prickly pinches.

Dixie fanned herself, tugging at the collar of her sweater and lifting her chin to let the air hit it.

So it wasn’t just her. Em fanned herself, too. “It was like Hades in there. Someone needs to tell Lucky to turn down the heat in that store. It felt like August.”

“No, someone needs to tell the two of you to turn down the heat. You and Jax
Hawthorne,
that is.” She smiled, tucking her purse under her arm with that look of confidence on her face.

Em peeked back over her shoulder at the hardware store and made a warning noise at Dixie. “You hush.”

“I surely will not. It’s the truth. Jax Hawthorne is hot. As your person, it’s my duty to tell you, he’s hot for you.”

Jax Hawthorne.
A flutter of nerves made Em shiver. Just the notion he might find her equally attractive after all that fantasizing about him wasn’t acceptable. She’d only end up disappointed when the fantasy ended. “He’s hot for my backside on a silver platter because of his little girl callin’ up a sex line. Nothing more.”

Dixie shook her head no with an impish grin. “Tell me that the next time the two of you spontaneously combust with one little glance.”

Em shuffled her feet, giving in to Dixie’s theory just a little. Jax’s face at the mention of his daughter left her heart fluttering like it had hummingbird wings. “Did you hear him talk about his little girl? He wears barrettes in his hair for his daughter when they play dress up.” How endearing and in tune to his daughter’s needs for a man so big and rough. More melting ensued.

Dixie giggled, lilting and girlish. “I saw. I heard. I conclude. Hot man, hot for you, who loves his little girl so much he’ll let her dress him up, grows hotter.”

Em let just one schoolgirl sigh escape her lips—allowed herself just a second or two to believe a man like Jax Hawthorne could find her attractive. But then the cold wind, growing colder by the minute, blasted her in the face and she winced. “It doesn’t matter. He said he left his little girl at home. He surely didn’t leave her alone. That must mean there’s a Mrs. Hawthorne.” Less melting, more gut-gnawing disappointment.

Dixie wiggled her finger in Em’s direction. “Would his daughter be lookin’ for a girlfriend for her father if there was a Mrs. Hawthorne? And if there is, he owes her an apology, ’cuz he’s been cheatin’ on her with his eyes. Now, come with me. I’ll have Sanjeev fix you up some hair of the dog and we’ll take care of that hangover. Then we’ll talk more about the cues a man gives a woman when he’s hot for her and almost certainly unmarried.”

Em began a slow stroll alongside her when doubt set in. “He didn’t even remember me.”
Jax Hawthorne,
that is.

“That’s because you had your sunglasses on. He couldn’t see those eyes he all but made the business with in the square that night.”

“I took them off, and anyway, shouldn’t he have known me just by my scent...or something?”

“Only if he’s a vampire, or is that werewolf?”

“Let’s not talk about him anymore. I need hangover relief STAT.” Em popped open the doors of her Jeep.

“Him’s name is Jax Hawthorne. I know you’re turning his name over and over in your mind. And we can avoid the subject of him all you like because that’s what you do when you’re flustered. But we’ll have to address this eventually, because I heard a little something while you were giving him hell. So, guess who’s movin’ to Plum Orchard permanently?” Dixie hopped in the car with a grin and shut the door.

Em’s stomach nose-dived while her heart fought for a way out of the captivity of her chest. Permanently? How, in the name of the good man above, would she survive his sexual napalm living in a community as small as Plum Orchard?

* * *

Jax shoulder bumped Caine Donovan, his longtime friend and old college roommate, before dropping down on a stool at the breakfast bar. “This—” he craned his neck to indicate the enormity of what Caine called the Big House “—is some shit. That guy that used to come visit you all the time in college left you all of this? Your best friend, right?”

Caine smiled, his grin easy as he leaned forward on the breakfast bar and sipped his beer. “Yep. Landon Wells, and yes, again. Technically, he left it to my fiancée, Dixie, but I scored big because I’m smart enough to marry her. He also left us something else. Something that’s gonna blow your head off. It’s one of the reasons I called you when I heard you were moving into your aunt’s place. You need something to do with your time since you sold the business. Your brothers told me you’re a total shithead lately.”

Jax was still reeling after meeting one Emmaline Amos up close and in person. The woman he’d seen across the town square when he’d been here two months ago, signing the papers to take possession of his aunt’s house.

When she’d run from the square that night and straight into him after seeing a picture of what he’d heard through Plum Orchard’s gossipy grapevine was her husband dressed in drag, her vulnerability, her raw humiliation, had touched a nerve.

Soft and sweet, her dark hair falling over her shoulders like silk, she’d caught his attention then and stuck like glue to his mind’s eye since.

Today, when she’d used that tone with him, under the guise of some good old-fashioned Southern decorum, it did something funny to his chest. It was like telling him to go straight to hell while she smiled that cute smile.

She was hot and sweet, and she’d tried pretty hard to maintain her composure, leading Jax to believe she remembered him from that night, too.

“Jax?” Caine nudged him across the marble countertop.