Talk Dirty to Me. Dakota Cassidy
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remain nameless and absolutely doesn’t put you in an emotional tizzy, you know, Caine—you’d better step up your game. He’s four mourners, one a stripper from Glasgow, away from us in the line just outside that door,” Em whispered low in her ear, holding up her phone to show her the warning text message from Augusta White.
Dixie’s stomach dived toward the floor, twisting and swirling as it went. The temptation to take just one quick glance at Caine when they walked through those doors made her twitch.
Don’t you dare look, Dixie. Do not. Her curious eyes would not betray her by peeking to locate his face in the crowd. His delicious, handsome, chiseled face.
No. She wouldn’t allow it. She soothed herself with the idea that it had been close to ten years since she’d last seen him. He was almost thirty-eight now. Maybe he had a paunch and a bald spot.
It could happen. Early senior onset or something.
“Dixie, c’mon now. Let’s go,” Em urged with a squeeze of her hand.
With one last glance of Landon’s smiling face, she picked up the photo and whispered, “Please, please remember this—wherever you are.” Dixie closed her eyes and recited the words they’d used before they hung up after every single phone call, before every goodbye they’d ever shared. “I love you like I love my own spleen.”
That’s a whole lotta love, Dixie Davis, he’d say on a hearty chuckle. Landon’s all-too-familiar response to her decades-old declaration of love echoed in her head, leaving her fighting back another raw sob.
Landon Wells—protector of all things defenseless, smart, rich and the best friend any girl could ever have was dead after a short, but incredibly painful bout with pancreatic cancer.
Everything was bad right now. The world was dull and pointless. The future was cloudy with a chance of lonely. Tears fell from her eyes, making her shoulders shudder uncontrollably.
“Oh, Dixie,” Em whispered into her hair, wrapping an arm around her waist in a show of undeserved sympathy. “He’d hate you crying like this almost as much as he hates bein’ dead, and you know it.”
Dixie’s throat closed and her shoulders shuddered, making Em grip her waist harder. “Stop this right now, Dixie Davis. We have an afterlife party to attend. Landon planned it all out. Rumor has it, Bobby Flay’s gonna be there. You don’t want to miss bacon-wrapped sliders made personally by Bobby Flay, do you?”
Em’s words made Dixie set the photo down and take a deep breath, preparing herself to face the crowd outside. She was right. Landon would hate her grief as much as he’d hated the pity showered upon him when he’d first been diagnosed. He’d told her to live, and while she did all that living, he wanted her to love again.
Someone, he’d said into the phone during their last phone call, his husky voice deep and demanding in her ear even in the last throes of his illness. Love someone until it hurts, Dixie-Cup. And for everyone’s sake, don’t cry over my lifeless body. You’re an ugly crier, girlie.
A deep, shuddering breath later and she turned her swollen eyes to Em’s compassionate gaze. “You’re right. He’d hate to see me cry.”
When Em propped open the door to the viewing room, Dixie stumbled, forcing Em to tighten her grip around her shoulders. “You and your love of astronomically high heels. You’ll break an ankle someday, Dixie.”
But it wasn’t her heels that made Dixie stumble. It wasn’t the endless rows of heads that shot up as they stepped into the chapel to join the mourners, skeptically eyeing their first glimpse of the Horrible Dixie Davis after so many years gone by.
It was Caine Donovan and the momentary eye contact they made as Em pulled her away and down the seemingly endless candlelit aisle of the funeral home. The electric connection his deep blue eyes made with hers snapped and sizzled, sending blistering rushes of heat through her veins.
It was everything and nothing in one short glance, hot and sweet, dismissive and breathtaking. Her heartfelt prayer he’d developed a paunch and had lost all that luscious chocolate-brown hair had gone unnoticed by whoever was in charge of aging.
He stood beside a smug yet pretty, Louella Palmer, wearing a conservative black sundress and matching sun hat, her blond hair sweeping from beneath it. As Dixie and Em moved toward them, Louella’s fingers slipped possessively into the crook of Caine’s arm just as she turned her pert little nose up at them.
A reminder to Dixie she’d once broken the mean girl’s girlfriend code.
Job well done.
“Ladies,” Caine said with an arrogant nod and an impeccably unmistakable impression of Sean Connery. Em whisked Dixie past him so fast she had to run to keep up.
But she hadn’t missed the subtext of his Sean Connery impersonation. Caine had once used that accent, and his uncanny ability to mimic almost anyone’s voice, on more than one intimate occasion. His knowledge of just what a Scottish accent did to her naked flesh was extensive—and he was lobbing it in her face.
Perfect.
Em twittered in girlish delight, bright stains of red slashing her cheeks. “Oh, that man,” she gushed, holding firm to Dixie so she wouldn’t divert off their course to bacon-wrapped sliders. “He’s so delicious. I can’t believe he didn’t take that gift and use it to make big money in Hollywood or somethin’.”
Dixie flapped a hand at her to interrupt. “I know. He’s so dreamy when he does his Sean Connery impression.” And Frank Sinatra, and Jack Nicholson, and Brando, and even Mae West. Caine’s ability to impersonate not only movie stars but almost any stranger’s voice was something they’d once laughed over.
Dizziness swept over Dixie like a soggy blanket, clinging to her skin. But Em kept her moving to the end of the aisle and out the door. “Yes. That. All that dreamy handsome, well, it’s dang hard to hate.” Em’s face was sheepish when they finally stepped outside into the hot August day.
The darkening sky hung as heavy as her heart. Spanish moss dripped from the oak tree above them, drifting to the ground.
Em crumpled some with her conservative black pumps. “Sorry. He’s just such an honorable man. He makes despisin’ him akin to killing cute puppies. Forgive me?”
Dixie gave her a small smile of encouragement, moving toward the parking lot on still-shaky knees. “I’ll forgive you, but only if you call him a mean name in feminine-solidarity. It’s the only way to atone.”
Em pressed her key fob, popping open the locks on her Jeep. She looked over the top of the shiny red car at Dixie who stood on the passenger side and put her hands on either side of her mouth to whisper, “He’s the shittiest-shit that ever lived. Shittier than Attila the Hun and Charlie Manson on a team cannibalistic virgin-killin’ spree.” She curtsied, spreading her black dress out behind her. “Forgiven?”
Dixie smiled and let loose a snort, adjusting the belt of her jacket to let it fall open in order to cool off, if that was possible in the last days of a Georgia August. “Done deal.”
Em winked at her. “Good, right?”
With a deep breath, Dixie let go of the restrictive tension in her chest. “You’re a good human being, Em. Right down to the cannibals and virgins.” Dixie paused, letting their light banter feed her soul.
It was okay to laugh. Landon would have wanted her to laugh. She tapped the roof of the car with a determined flat palm. “All right, c’mon. Let’s get to this shindig before I have to go to the reading of Landon’s will. I really hope you weren’t kidding earlier about the bacon.”
Dixie slipped into the car, taking one last glance of the funeral home in the side-view mirror where her last true friend in the world was housed. Her mentor, her shoulder to cry on, her life raft when everything had gone so sideways.
And then Caine stepped off the curb and into view—his tall, hard frame in the forefront of gloomy clouds pushing