Something to Talk About. Dakota Cassidy

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.

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

      Three

      Em’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