Dakota Cassidy - Talking After Midnight

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As the woman who answered the door made a stumbling, wobbly break for another room, Taggart Hawthorne stood awkwardly at her door, tool belt in hand, remembering only that Em had told him this Marybell Lyman’s protests weren’t an option. She was sick, it was cold out and her heat was broken. Take no prisoners—Em’s exact words.

Which, if you considered her current relationship with his brother, Jax, didn’t surprise him. Em was a warrior disguised in pretty dresses and flowery perfume. Her lipstick was really a magic wand that made you do things you wouldn’t normally do, and her sweet nature bent you to her will without ever realizing you’d been manipulated by flirty eyelashes and pretty words.

Yet she’d become a part of not just his brother’s and his niece Maizy’s world, but his universe, too. And when Em demanded, he listened, largely because he respected the hell out of her.

Tag leaned against the door frame, savoring the smell of chicken soup, tea and Vicks as he assessed the view of this woman’s small but nicely decorated living room.

A thickly cushioned couch in soft ivory, littered from one end to the other with overstuffed pillows in gold and a light turquoise, sat in disarray. What was it with a woman and some fancy pillows?

It was as if the damn things made everything okay. That must be it, because every woman he’d encountered so far always had a mess o’ pillows—little Maizy included.

Though he had to admire her choice in the chest she’d chosen to use as a coffee table. The surface was scarred, battered from years of use, holding a simple, darkly stained bowl of colored balls. It was sturdy, the lines of it clean and squarely crisp, the color a deep walnut, streaked with hints of red and antique white.

If he had a place of his own, and he wasn’t sponging off his brother, Jax, till he got back on his feet, he’d definitely put his feet up on something like that—every night with a plate of hot wings and a football game.

Perusing the walls, where abstract rectangles of ivory, red and that same turquoise she seemed so fond of, streaked the canvases, reminding him of somewhere warm. Somewhere the sun shone all the time and you sat in the sand with a bottle of Corona while salty waves rolled over your toes and buttery-rayed days turned to purple-hued nights.

There was a big square rug in the center of the bleached white barn-wood floor, woven in the same willowy color of her couch.

So this was the apartment of a phone sex operator? Huh. Truth time. He’d been expecting all manner of paraphernalia. In fact, he’d been damn curious when he thought about running into her tools of the trade.

Yet not a hint of a shelf with hooks where rows of worn floggers and masks in black and red might hang. No fuzzy handcuffs tossed carelessly over a doorknob, and there certainly weren’t any leather catsuits.

Obviously, the job did not define the lady.

It didn’t bother him in the least that Em ran a phone sex company. True, when Em had hired him to fix some faulty wiring at Call Girls, it had made him a little uncomfortable to hear the women talking to their clients through the walls of one office or another. Especially LaDawn. Damn, that woman could make somethin’ out of nothing.

But the discomfort had nothing to do with disapproval and everything to do with the fact that even he had to admit, their breathy sighs and softly moaned words turned him on a little.

Still, he just couldn’t connect with the notion. It was a false connection. Once the operator hung up the phone, she was creating another relationship just like the one she’d had with the caller before. He couldn’t submerse himself enough—or maybe his imagination just wasn’t vivid enough to get past the idea. Of course, Em didn’t do the dirty-talkin’, either. This woman, according to Em, did.

Either way, he’d stick with one-on-one, messy, down-in-the-mud, flaws-and-all, human connections.

Speaking of messy, when Marybell finally reappeared, it was with the floppiest-brimmed hat he’d ever seen cover a woman of no more than five foot two. It was white with black polka dots, sporting a big, shiny pink bow around it. The brim was so big it fell over her eyes, masking almost every feature of her face but the tip of her cold-infested nose and her full, chapped lips. It would have swallowed her whole if she didn’t hold it in place.

“Fancy date?” he asked, unable to stop himself from noting how comical she looked in a moth-eaten bathrobe and summer hat, still trying to figure how she fit into the sparse but colorful landscape of her apartment.

She rocked back on her fuzzy black feet. Not amused, said her posture. “Not unless he wants the black plague.”

“So you kiss on the first date?” he asked, almost looking around to see whose mouth those suggestive words had come out of—and more important, why they had come out at all.

She clucked her tongue, her lips never changing their pursed disapproval. “Only if my date doesn’t mind some snot.”

Unfriendly fire, Captain. Man your battleships. “I’m Tag Hawthorne.” He offered his hand, noting it was cracked and calloused from working outside in Jax’s unheated barn.

She backed away, covering one foot with the other in the process. “I’m dying of the flu.”

“Is dying your first name or your last?” Beneath that wide brim of her ridiculous hat, he’d swear he saw her almost smirk. What was with the hat to begin with? Sure, she was sick, but no one could be that vain, could they?

“Why are you here?”

Tag paused. If he was reading her right, there was a whole lot of territorial in her. This is mine. Keep out. So he smiled, opting to reassure her. “Zombie outbreak.”

Her sigh crackled, wheezing from her chest as her fingers pulled a tissue from her bathrobe pocket and pressed it to her nose. “You’re no Daryl,” she replied, her voice, even congested and tight, so sweet it almost hurt his teeth. Fascinating.

“Really, who is?” he joked, still trying to figure out what it was about this woman that made him want not only to get a rise out of her, but to have her treat him with something more than an upturned nose of total disregard. He was all but pulling her pigtails for no reason other than to pull.

Maybe it was the hat. He damn well wanted to see what was under the hat.

Marybell tapped an impatient fingernail on the door she held on to as if it were the armor that helped her protect her castle. “So, you’re here why?”

She wasn’t biting. Not even a nibble. So he slapped on his serious face and played the Emmaline card while still trying to figure out how, in all the trips he’d made to Call Girls over the past few months, he’d missed seeing her. “Em sent me to fix your heat.”

She flapped a hand at him. A ringless hand. Interesting. There were plenty of unattached women in Plum Orchard, a thirsty crew, if you asked him. They’d shown up at Jax’s on more than several occasions with all sorts of casseroles and pies, but he’d never seen Marybell in the mix. “Not necessary. I can take care of it when I’m better.” She began to close the dungeon door on him.

Tag stuck his hand in it, shaking his head. “Uh, no. I mean, wait. That came out wrong. What I mean is, you do know Em, don’t you? I mean, you work with her, right?”

Still nothing but cool disdain and the scent of Vicks. “I do.”

“Well, try living with her. Or almost living with her. She doesn’t like the word no. If I don’t at least look at the problem, she’ll have my head. You don’t want carnage on your hands, do you?”

Her sigh was full of phlegm, making him wince in regret. He was teasing her while she was standing at the door with the raw wind nipping at her. Em wouldn’t like that, either. “Listen, you need to get inside out of the draft. If you get sicker, Em’ll have my head. Just let me take a look, okay? You can trust no one will read a story about you and your hacked-off limbs hanging in a smokehouse in the Plum Orchard Herald. I’m safe. Call Em and check, if you need to.”