LITMIR.BIZ

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were loving, nurturing machines, the lot of them. Give them an ailment, and they were fixing it with age-old home remedies and more smothering love than you could shake a stick at. How could she be angry with them for caring about her?

      But she hadn’t been prepared for their insistent knock on her door. It left her more than uneasy without her cloak of heavy makeup and piercings in place. There was always the chance, even in small-town Plum Orchard, Georgia, she’d be recognized. The people here had been ever so slow to come to terms with how different her appearance was from the likes of them.

      Yet she’d sucked up the strange looks and whispers behind hands at Madge’s Kitchen where she had dinner almost every night before her shift for a reason. It beat the livin’ daylights out of the alternative.

      Rather than answer Em, Marybell deflected, looking her friend square in the eye. She was the master of deflection. “Do I ever see the true Emmaline?” she asked with mock innocence, glad for the cloak of her congestion concealing her weak attempt at subterfuge.

      “Bah! You most certainly do see the true Emmaline. You see her with lipstick.” Em pursed her lips, dragging a throw from the back of Marybell’s couch to cover her with it. She tucked the edges under her chin with gentle fingers, pressing the back of her hand to Marybell’s forehead with a wince.

      Marybell coughed, turning her head and using her arm to shield Em from her germs. “Exactly.” She smiled.

      “Gravy,” Dixie murmured, patting her on the back while setting a cup of steaming lemon tea laced with honey on the end table, her eyes perusing Marybell’s freshly scrubbed face. “Even stricken with the flu and a gel eye mask, you’re beautiful. I don’t like this turn of events Ms. MB,” she joked with her infamous flirty smile. “I’m glad Caine didn’t see you without your goo or I’d be a goner. Plus, you’re younger than me by six years. I simply won’t have you, or anyone in this town, bein’ prettier than me.”

      Em clucked her tongue, shooting Dixie a chiding finger. “Are you sayin’ Caine wouldn’t fall for her with her makeup and the pointy green-and-red things all over her head? Are you sayin’ he doesn’t love you for what’s on your insides, Dixie Davis? That he’s nothing more than a shallow shell of a man with a heartbeat and a chiseled jaw?”

      Marybell giggled, letting a little of her tension ease. Conversation successfully deflected. “I don’t think you have to say anything, Dixie. Caine can’t see anyone but you, whether you have insides or not. Now, I thought I told y’all to stay away so you don’t catch this nasty bug. Surely you don’t want to leave me to answer everyone’s calls because you’re all too sick to do your jobs, do you? Especially if I have to answer LaDawn’s calls. I’m not nearly the Jedi master with the flyswatter she is. I always miss and end up swatting myself.”

      The joke at the Call Girls office, situated in the guesthouse of dearly departed multimillionaire Landon Wells, a man who’d given Marybell everything when she’d had nothing, was LaDawn’s skill with her beloved flyswatter.

      She was like Bruce Lee with a pair of nunchakus. Daryl from The Walking Dead with a bow and arrow. Phone sex operators throughout the land should all cower in fear when LaDawn broke out the flyswatter.

      It was really just an audio prop for her BDSM clients to hear over the phone, but she fooled them into believing it was a flogger every time. For her birthday, they’d collectively had a real flyswatter bronzed with her name on it, which she proudly displayed in her office on her desk.

      Dixie rolled her eyes at Em. “First off, not a chance we’d let you go this alone. There’s nothing like some love and coddlin’ when you’re so sick. Second, you hush, Em. I’m not saying that at all, and you know it. I love our Marybell—even today, nose redder than a tube of crimson lipstick and eyes drippin’ from behind that mask like a leaky faucet.”

      Marybell took the tea with a grateful sigh, still keeping her eyes semiaverted over the rim of the china. “I think what Dixie’s saying is, I’m not Caine’s type.”

      That was okay, too. She was no one’s type, and that was just as well. Buried in small-town Georgia, she’d never have to worry about the temptation of finding someone whose type she was.

      There were few available men in town, anyway, but the men here liked women who wore pretty dresses, the proper-height heel for the appropriate time of day and subtle makeup. Their hair was always long and flowing, or up and smooth. It wasn’t riding a colored line along the tops of their heads, and they certainly weren’t wearing clunky black work boots and leopard-skin leggings slashed as if a knife had been taken to them.

      LaDawn sat down on the chest, scooting the Crock-Pot to the side, tilting Marybell’s chin upward to look her in the eye. Well, as much as her cooling gel eye mask allowed, anyway.

      Her heart stopped cold for a moment, her fingers trembling on the handle of the teacup. Caught. She was caught. They knew who she was and her safe, quiet, if not terribly exciting life would be over.

      That clawing anxiety, usually reserved for late-night insomnia and mentally backtracking every move she made, pushed its way to lodge in her raw throat.

      LaDawn’s lips, the color purple meant to match her nails, turned into a smile. She plucked at a strand of Marybell’s now drying, shoulder-length hair “As I live and breathe. You’re a natural blonde, aren’t you? How do you get all that red-and-green gunk in your hair every day? You know, I’d hate you if it wasn’t for Brugsby’s Drugstore and Miss Clairol.”

      Marybell gulped before she forced a smile, praying she could stare LaDawn down without looking away. “It’s a spray. It washes out easy. And you’d love me any ol’ way, LaDawn. Who’d bring you those frosty pink doughnuts and coffee from Madge’s on the night shift, if not for me? Not even Doc Johnson does that. I’m forever your girl.”

      LaDawn’s eye grew critical, though it still twinkled beneath her purple eye shadow and glittery gold eyeliner. “And when did you stop shavin’ half your eyebrow off? Next thing you know, you’ll be pluckin’ ’em into a fine arch like the rest of us ninnies. Why, if this keeps up, you might even wear a dress. Now, wouldn’t that be somethin’? Our Marybell in anything other than ripped-up or spotted with some kind of animal-print britches?” She chuckled deep and rich.

      Conformity. Blessed be.

      Em rubbed Marybell’s arm and smiled before pulling her frozen fingers into her hand and warming them. “Never you mind LaDawn and her teasin’. I think you’re hair’s pretty as a picture. All that natural curl leaves me with ugly envy in my heart. I don’t know why you hide it behind black eye shadow and all those colors and hair gel. It looks like it takes an awful lot of work to get it to stand up straight like someone scared the life outta you, but I don’t give a fig either way. I like the way you stare society and all its preconceived notions right down, look ’em square in the eye, and dare ’em to say anything. I like it especially when you do it to Louella Palmer. It always makes me giggle till I swear I’m gonna wet myself when her eyes are forced to give you the look of disdain and you growl and snap your teeth at her.”

      Rage against the machine.

      Marybell squeezed Em’s hand. Her snarling at Louella Palmer, the most hateful woman she’d ever encountered, was all part of the act to keep everyone she didn’t allow into her circle at bay.

      Marybell lifted her shoulders in a shrug. “I have a gift. Some people paint. I snarl. If I didn’t have my hair gelled up like I’d been scared half to death, she wouldn’t be afraid of me. Louella fears what she doesn’t understand. Besides, you just like when I growl at her because it keeps her too busy tanglin’ with me to hatch another plot against you and Dixie,” she quipped, accepting the dose of thick emerald-green cold medicine LaDawn handed her, chugging it down like a shot of tequila.

      “You’re a wingman for the ages, MB. No doubt,” Dixie assured with her familiar warmth, rubbing her arms and shivering. “So explain to me why it’s so cold in here? Surely this isn’t on purpose, is it?” Dixie’s brow creased, her pretty

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