LITMIR.BIZ

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stiffened, caught in the act of running away. “If I said no, would that mean I could escape from this madhouse, and you’d never be the wiser?”

      “Well, no. I’d be the wiser. I’d know you just as easily as if I’d run into you buying milk at the Piggly Wiggly. Landon talked about you all the time, and he must have showed us a hundred pictures of you.” She paused for a moment, putting both hands on Dixie’s shaking shoulders, forcing her to turn around.

      What met Dixie’s eyes was a creamy-skinned, fresh-faced young woman of no more than maybe thirty, with long chestnut hair spilling over her shoulders and down her spine, and a pair of the widest, deepest green-blue eyes Dixie had ever encountered.

      Her coloring was naturally peach-inspired, and the clothes she wore, a T-shirt that read Georgia Tech and black capris, were as simple as Dixie’s. “I’m Catherine, Cat for short, Butler. I’m general manager of Call Girls.”

      “Gage’s new fiancée, right?”

      Cat flushed a pretty pink—the kind of pink you flushed when you were wildly in love. “That’s me. Em asked me to tell you she’d see you tomorrow. Something about the hot tub at the big house and cold king crab.”

      Dixie suppressed a smile. As a single parent with a husband who’d just up and decided he deserved a midlife crisis a little early, Em deserved a good pampering. “She deserves it after today.”

      “And you are definitely Dixie Davis. Landon always said you were even prettier in person than you are in your pictures. He was right. And that voice!” Cat said with obvious delight. “It’s fantastic—so raspy and smoky. You’re gonna give the girls a real run for their money.”

      Dixie grimaced. “I think today I don’t want to be Dixie Davis, and I don’t want to give anyone a run for anything with my raspy or my smoky.”

      Cat grinned, revealing adorable dimples. “If only trading lives with someone else was as easy as the words simply spoken, hmm? Now, before you set off to givin’ someone hell—and yes, I can see that look on your face, Landon described your ire well—hear me out. The voice you hear in there on that phone is Marybell Lyman’s, and she’s not role-playing. It’s just the voice our creator gave her. And it works for her, but we have strict rules about that sort of thing at Call Girls. I promise.”

      Still shaken, though to a lesser degree, Dixie’s tongue got the better of her. “Clearly, the rules for Italians and stallions escaped Landon.”

      Cat chuckled. “What’s the harm in making a small mob fish feel like a big ol’ shark? That’s why men call us, Dixie. To interact with women they’ve fooled themselves into believing are incapable of living without their magically lust-inducing words.”

      Dixie exhaled a breath of regret, ashamed she’d jumped to the same conclusions people still jumped to about her. “I’m sorry. I heard...and I just assumed—”

      “Never you fear, Dixie. Landon wouldn’t allow calls generated from men who wanted to talk to underage girls. He was a kind soul. In fact, it remains a strict rule. We entertain lots of fantasies here at Call Girls, but there are absolute no-no’s, and if anyone’s caught indulging a client in something that’s off the table, it’s cause for permanent termination.”

      Another sigh of relief shuddered through her, leaving Dixie unsure how to respond to this woman who looked as if she’d just fallen off the pages of Seventeen magazine.

      She’d expected women who popped their gum, half-dressed in spandex catsuits, wearing six-inch stilettos and more eyeliner than Brugsby’s Drugstore cosmetics counter could supply. Instead, a pretty, fresh-faced, articulate woman greeted her with a lovely smile and a lilting Southern accent.

      One of these things was not like the other, and two of these things weren’t even kinda the same.

      Dixie squared her shoulders and pushed her hand toward Cat. “My apologies for my inexcusable manners. Yes. I’m Dixie Davis. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

      Cat gripped Dixie’s hand, curling her fingers around it to give it a firm shake before letting it go. “No, it’s not. Not yet anyway. You look like you’re ready to find the nearest pitcher of sweet tea laced with bourbon to drown yourself in.”

      “Booze wouldn’t go denied,” Dixie confessed, dropping the tips of her fingers to the pockets in her skirt.

      Cat tilted her head, her eyes glittering and playful. “So you made it this far, right? That’s a sure sign you’re at least a little curious. Do you want to soldier on? Or do we end this conversation with a pleasant but cordial ‘it was lovely to meet you?’”

      Dixie swallowed hard, her throat full of sandpaper, but she squared her shoulders. She was in. “We soldier. We definitely soldier. Battlefields and hand grenades ahoy.”

      Cat’s grin was infectious. “I confess, we all wondered what you’d do. I laid the biggest bet in the ‘Dixie pool’ by the way.”

      “Bet?” Why, yes, Dixie. You’re familiar with bets. Those crazy situations where you challenge some poor soul, not nearly as skilled as you, to race you for the win? Sometimes they involve money—other times? Hands in marriage.

      She shook off the voice of her past and repeated, “Bet?”

      “Well, yes. The bet that said you’d at least come see what you could see. You know, investigate what this was all about? Everyone else thought someone with the kinda means you come from would run away to your palace in wherever it is rich folk build their palaces. Not me, though. I just knew, from all the talkin’ Landon did about you, you wouldn’t turn tail. Knew it. So thank you kindly for the two hundred dollars I just won. Pizza night’s on me.” She let loose a breathy whisper of a giggle.

      Dixie managed to ignore the fact that this as yet unnamed group of women had bet against her and her palace and blurted something random. “You have a pizza night at Call Girls?” Phone-sex operators ate pizza? Next someone would tell her hookers had expense accounts.

      Cat grinned that contagious grin again. “Well, of course we do. We’re not heathens, Dixie. Just because we call all parts southern on your anatomy words your mama would’ve washed your mouth out with soap for sayin’, doesn’t mean we blow up edible condoms and decorate them with whipped cream all the time. We’re just like most everyone else. We have all sorts of things here at the office. Christmas parties—baby showers, ‘Wear Your Pajamas to Work Wednesday.’ You name it, and Landon insisted upon it. You know how much he loved parties, and impromptu parties were his specialty. It boosts morale if you can have a little party on the boss’s dime, don’t you agree?” she said with a conspiratorial wink.

      She’d like to have a little something on the boss, all right. She’d like to have a chokehold on him. “I...” Dixie held up a finger, putting it to her lips for a moment and shook her head. “I’m going to stop now so I don’t come off sounding like an uneducated, high-handed ass. Something I’m sure happens to you a lot. With first impressions being everything, I’ll just say this is unexpected.” Her head swam from so much unexpected.

      “Your surprise is understandable, but I promise you, we’re mostly all just average women who needed to find a way to make ends meet. Well, with the exclusion of LaDawn. She really was a—” Cat leaned in, leaving the lingering scent of jasmine and roses in Dixie’s nose, and whispered, “a lady of the evening in Atlanta. Landon talked her out of the life and gave her a job here at Call Girls where she’s been ever since.”

      Everyone’s knight in shining armor, weren’t you, old buddy?

      “Some of us even have children, and Sheree has a husband who’s out of work.”

      Once again, judge not lest ye be judged, Dixie Davis. “I—I’m sorry... I just thought...”

      Cat crossed her arms over her chest as if she’d heard it all before. Yet, it didn’t come across as a defensive gesture at all. “We know what you thought—or think. It’s what everyone in this

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