Dakota Cassidy - Something to Talk About

Sexy is as sexy does. And in Plum Orchard, sugar, it does!

Emmeline Amos is sick of her ex saying she’s boring and prissy. After all, she works for a phone-sex company! (As general manager, but still.) On a rare girls’ night out, fueled by blender drinks and bravado, Em accepts a shocking dare—to handle a call herself. But it’s tipsy Em who gets an earful from an irate single father on the other end of the line. Awkward.

But not as awkward as discovering that same mad dad is Call Girls’ gorgeous new programmer. Jax Hawthorne is still upset that his daughter called the “girlfriend store” on his behalf, but he can’t deny he’d choose a hot-librarian type like Em if he were looking for love. Which he’s not.

Em wants to do more than just talk the talk. So she makes a bawdy bargain with Jax. They’ve both been burned before—this time, they’ll keep it strictly physical. Except as soon as they settle on no strings attached, things start to get tangled.… www.DakotaCassidy.com

Something to Talk About

Dakota Cassidy

www.mirabooks.co.uk

To my amazing sister-in-law, Laura. Without the peace and quiet of your beautiful mountaintop, and the bedroom that overlooks it, this book would have never been done. Thank you, thank you for the respite, the peace of mind while we house-hunted.

For my BFF, Renee George, honestly, is there anyone else who could talk me down in the middle of shipping my son off to college, downsizing my house, writing five books in a year, and moving across country, like you can? Methinks not. :) You’re an amazing friend, and I treasure you so.

And my youngest son, Cameron, my well-adjusted, funny, super smart, way more mature than I’ll ever be college kid. I miss you, son. I miss your chubby cheeks as an infant. Your haughty glare of disdain as a tween. Your grunts hello as a young adult. Your amazing conversations just before you left for college to take the world on. You are, and will always be, one of the brightest moments of my life. To say I’m simply proud of you will never, ever be enough.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

One

“Hellooo,” Emmaline Amos growled comically slow into her cell phone. “This is Mistress Taboo. Are you worrrthy?” The infamous line her best friend Dixie Davis had perfected during her three-month stint as a phone-sex operator bounced off the walls in the offices of Call Girls Inc., sounding ridiculous coming from her lips.

As a follow-up, Em looked in her best friend Dixie’s direction, and attempted to mimic her famous sultry gaze. Or what their group of mutual friends had all officially dubbed the “Dixie Smolder.”

The smolder was a combination pack—one part come-hither glance, one part dreamy half wink of her eyes. When Dixie did it, all the men fell at her feet in a big pile of redneck limbs and puddles of drool.

When Em tried it on for size like she had tonight during girls’ night out—it was as though she’d invented the unsexy.

From behind her reception desk, Nella Carter, Call Girls’ new operator in charge of assigning calls, began to giggle until she had to hold her stomach and cover her mouth.

When she caught her breath, she pointed at Dixie. “You,” she snorted, “were Mistress Taboo, boss? I still get calls for her. Seriously, you?”

Dixie rolled her eyes at the mention of her former phone-sex operator nom de plume. “Em’s had too much wine. I absolutely never, ever sounded or looked like that,” she protested, sipping her glass of wine with a giggle, knowing full well she had.

Em reached for the bottle of wine between them on Nella’s desk and nodded her head, the giddy buzz in her brain making her mouth work overtime. “You did, too. You sounded just like that, all sexified and naughty.”

“Then we can all thank heaven Mistress Taboo is officially retired from phone-sex operatin’ and instead became the owner of Call Girls, ’cuz that was plain painful to my ears.” Dixie mocked a shudder.

Em poured herself another glass of wine, the fluid sloshing in time with her liquid-filled stomach. “Do not deny the win that encompasses Mistress Taboo, Dixie Davis. Just look what that very naughty name, and winning this crazy phone-sex contest Landon thought up for you and Caine, got you.”

Nella adjusted her headset, her hazel eyes wide with surprise. “You won Call Girls? In a contest?”

Em slapped her hand on the desk. “You bet she did. Not only did she win a multimillion-dollar phone-sex company, but she won a house the size of Atlanta, with that camel you pass by every day in the backyard, no less. She got Sanjeev, the personal assistant from heaven above. The whole shebang, lock, stock and flyswatters posing as floggers. To boot, she also found her way back to the arms of your other boss, Caine Donovan, a man so divine, angels weep with longin’ for him.” She waved a wobbly hand around the lush guesthouse office where Call Girls was headquartered and grinned. “And she talked me into running it all as general manager. This wasn’t just a win, it was an epic win.”

Dixie grinned. “Who better to keep us all in line when Cat and Flynn ran off and got married and are now preparin’ for their first child than you, Em? If you could keep me and Caine on the righteous path, you could keep Satan himself honest.”

Nella gave her lush surroundings a fresh eye. “So Call Girls Inc. belonged to Landon Wells, right? The one everybody’s either callin’ richer than God or crazier than a bedbug?”

“Uh-huh. Rest his soul. And now it belongs to Dixie here.” Even two months later, Em still hadn’t quite digested the situation.

Nella frowned. “I don’t get it. How do you win a phone-sex company?”

“You have the most amazing best friend ever, who even on his deathbed, knew what was good for you. Landon was both Dixie’s and Caine’s best friend. Dixie and Caine were engaged ten years ago, but they had a fallin’-out to beat the likes of World War Three, broke up and left town.”

Dixie shook her head of red curls with a giggle. “Your general manager exaggerates. It was not like World War Three.”

But Em disagreed. “Hah! Lest you forget the fire and rain... Anyway, Landon, in all his wisdom and hilarious sense of humor, knew they belonged together. So when Dixie and Caine came back for his funeral, he left this very company to them in his will—with one stipulation. They had to become phone-sex operators and work the phones. Whoever collected the most calls at the end of two months won the company.”

Nella suddenly grinned. “So that’s what all the talk about the Phone-sex Hunger Games is? I hear the rumblin’s in town all the time about you and Caine and how you two got back together. I ignored the bad and focused on how romantic it was under such a crazy set of circumstances.”

Yeah. Em sighed and nodded at Nella. “The most romantic set of circumstances ever. Friends like Landon don’t come along often. He loved these two so much, he meddled from the afterlife.”

Dixie’s smile was misty-eyed and blissful at the same time. “I’ll always wish Landon was here to see it—see us finally together. Maybe walk me down that aisle now that Caine’s proposed. And see you and I such good friends after a long spell of resentment.” She patted Em’s hand, tipping the glass she held upright to keep more liquid from sloshing out.