LITMIR.BIZ

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cocked her head, her pretty blue eyes playful. “This person thinks your person’s had too much to drink tonight. I know your theory is Jesus drank wine, and that’s supposed to make it okay to indulge—and usually, I’d roll with it. But He didn’t go out on girls’ night with you tonight—and I’m pretty sure He never had a hangover. So, it’s my duty as your person to tell you, you might suffer one come mornin’.”

      But Em wouldn’t hear of hangovers and Jesus. She’d spent two minutes too long thinking about disapproval and Plum Orchard when there were other things to attend. Like learning to smolder—it was what brought all the boys to your yard, or so she’d heard.

      She focused on watching her reflection in her phone as she tried once more to perfect this thing Dixie did with her eyes while men lined up for her.

      It would be nice to have just one man stand in a grocery line, even if it was just next to her. Like the man she’d shared the longest, most breathtaking stare with in the square the night her life had almost fallen apart. The night when she’d accused Dixie of something so deplorable, she still couldn’t breathe from the horror.

      She’d overheard the man’s name was Jax, but in her mind, when she daydreamed about him, he didn’t have a name. To use his name was too intimate—too personal. Attaching his name to her fantasies was akin to writing him personalized love letters. Once you knew a person’s first name, next you were inquiring about their well-being, and that always led to personal details you were better off not knowing. Fantasies didn’t have morning breath or scratch their unmentionables.

      So the man on that night in the square was simply him.

      And she hadn’t seen him in well over two months.

      Em “smoldered” again at Dixie, putting her back into it and rolling her shoulders, pretending she was seducing him. “How’s this?”

      Dixie patted Em’s hand, wrinkling her nose. “When you smolder at me, do it like you’re thinkin’ about doin’ the do, not like you’re squinting because the sun’s in your eyes, honey. More Marilyn Monroe, less like you have bug guts in your eye,” she teased lovingly, pulling Em to her office and waving back at Nella to carry on with her calls.

      Em gave her a pouty expression, plunking her phone down on Dixie’s desk with a sigh. “I guess you’ll just have to stay the Smolder Queen, Dixie. I try and try. Practiced all week for girls’ night tonight, but I just can’t seem to look anything other than a darn fool. Just ask that poor man at the bar who thought I used those drops you get at the ophthalmologist to dilate my eyes.” She batted her eyelashes for effect, only to have them stick together from the extra mascara she’d applied.

      She was officially a girls’ night out failure. Maybe everyone saw what Clifton saw, and trying to change that perception of her was a waste of time.

      Dixie brushed Em’s hair from her face with a chuckle of sympathy, her slender fingers gentle, her blue eyes warm. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the business of smoldering, it’s all about the subtle at first. Stop trying so hard to be someone you’re not. You’re beautiful and funny and sweet all on your own. You don’t need the smolder or anything other than just you to do the talkin’. Turn down the volume on the sexy, Em.”

      “Way down,” LaDawn Jenkins, fellow employee, friend and the best fetish-related phone-sex operator Call Girls had, advised, strolling inside from the guesthouse pool area.

      Marybell Lymen, another operator and friend, followed behind, handing an open bottle of wine to LaDawn, who slugged back the liquid straight from the bottle.

      Catherine Butler-McGrady, now retired after handing her Call Girls GM position over to Em, nodded her agreement, letting Marybell help her perch awkwardly on the end of a purple velvet chaise.

      She rubbed her small swollen belly with a content smile. “You’re plenty sexy without the smolder, Em. Flynn said so just the other day. He said, ‘The longer that sad sack Clifton’s gone, the prettier Em seems to get.’”

      Em snorted. “He did not.” She was not.

      “Did, too,” both LaDawn and Marybell said, dropping into the chairs on the other side of Dixie’s large, white oak desk.

      “And it’s true,” LaDawn confirmed. “You’re much less stuffy since divorcin’ Mr. Shady, honey.”

      She wrinkled her nose at her friends. “Flynn doesn’t count. He’s my cousin, for gravy’s sake, and I might not be as stuffy, but I’m definitely not any sexier.”

      Marybell and LaDawn oozed sexy, and they certainly weren’t afraid of the opposite sex. If she could just have an ounce of whatever it was they had that made talking to anyone other than old and deaf Coon Rider easier...

      Cat waved a hand and scoffed. “You are, too. You’re sweet-sexy. Makes all the boys want to know what’s goin’ on under all that prim and proper. Peel away your layers and such.”

      Em threw her hands up, frustrated with the lack of interest she stirred in the male population. “You make me sound like an onion. And where were all those boys who like onions at, I ask you? I can tell you this, they sure weren’t out tonight.”

      Cat sighed. “Oh, honey, they just weren’t the right men. Nobody said dippin’ your toes back into the dating pool would be easy.”

      LaDawn bobbed her head. “Peelin’ onions isn’t for the faint of heart, Miss Em. When the right one comes along, he’ll peel you raw.”

      Em’s cheeks went hot. “Why is it so easy for you to say things like that and when I try, I sound like a bad actress in one of those dirty movies?”

      Marybell threw her head back and laughed. “Because, silly, we do this for a living. We’re paid to entice men. We know all the tricks of the trade.”

      She eyed the women who’d become some of her closest friends these past few months. “So teach me.” There. She’d said it. Maybe if she took a few lessons in flirting from the experts, she wouldn’t look like such a darn fool come next girls’ night.

      Dixie’s eyes went wide with surprise. “You mean like teach you to talk dirty to men?”

      Em smiled and nodded. Since she’d left her job as Hank Cotton’s legal secretary after Dixie offered to make her general manager of Call Girls, she’d spent a lot of time listening to LaDawn, Marybell and the other operators talk about all manner of “making the business” as Dixie called it—and she was sometimes horrified.

      But most times, especially lately, she was intrigued by the things men wanted the operators to talk about.

      Each day, while she monitored call stats and reports and kept the office running smoothly, she overheard conversations that made her blush the color of her mother’s red velvet cake. Yet, they also left her insatiably curious.

      Maybe it had to do with what Dixie had called her molting process. She was shedding her old married life skin for a new single one, and hearing all the sex talk all day long left her secretly wanting to explore some of those things.

      It was an about-face almost no one would understand. Maybe not even Dixie. Em was everyone’s good girl, well mannered, almost decorous to a fault—and dull as dirt. No one would believe the thoughts Emmaline Amos was having as of late.

      She found her dull was slowly chipping away to reveal a shinier Em. Though she definitely didn’t feel very shiny after her failures tonight. Not even with the added shine of her semisexy new dress and the jellylike cutlets she’d stuffed in her bra to see if having larger breasts would keep her from repelling men like mosquito spray.

      So Em nodded her head again—more sure than ever her alcohol-dipped brain was sending her a subliminal message that she was on the right track. “You heard me. I want to talk dirty. Bring it on.”

      Her friends frowned at her as though she’d just told them she wanted to have relations out in the middle of the square on the steps of the

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