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 things in high places where small children can’t reach them,” she condescended.
He grinned—suddenly, inexplicably. And it was magical. “I obviously did.”
Just like that, he wasn’t angry or yelling anymore. He was like Texas weather. Stormin’ and ragin’ one minute, sunny and blue-skied the next.
“So you—” he leaned in toward her and whispered “—manage a phone-sex company?”
Now that his accusatory tone and mad face were gone, Em’s words suddenly were, too. She swallowed hard, tongue-tied. When he said the words phone sex, her heart stopped again. It was husky and raspy like he’d taken a swig of whiskey and it had left him hoarse. His deep timbre vibrated up along her spine with soft fingers.
She understood exactly what he’d said, but somehow, his words had turned into the man of her daydreams asking her to have sex with him. Which couldn’t be right.
Her cheeks flushed.
Dixie pinched her arm and smiled at Em with encouragement. “She does manage a phone-sex company, and she’s amazing.”
Em nodded because it seemed like the right thing to do, not because she considered herself amazing. “I do.”
Now his eyebrow rose, dark and questioning. He made the shape of a phone with his fingers. “So, do you, you know, talk to...people—callers?” He seemed fascinated by the idea that he might have encountered a real live phone-sex operator out and about in the wilds of Plum Orchard, Georgia.
Em knew he was waiting for an answer, but she was mesmerized by the sharp planes of his face, the deep grooves on either side of his mouth, his dark hair, shaggy and curling around the collar of his jacket. And the pink barrette, dangling from a strand of it just behind his ear.
Her heart melted like cold ice cream on a hot July day. A man with a pink barrette in his hair was exactly the man of her daydreams.
“So do you?” he repeated, his eyes intense.
Did she?
“No!” Dixie was quick to answer in her stead. “No. Em doesn’t talk to our clients, do you, Em?” She rubbed Em’s back to prompt her. “But she does talk. I promise. She’s just tired. It’s been a busy week doing all that managing.”
The world morphed back into shape again, bringing with it the crisp colors of the stacks of ceramic tile, people milling in and out of the aisles, and Dixie, pinching her again, even harder. “Yes!” She forced her lips to move, watching the barrette he was so completely unaware of, bobble. “I do talk, but I can’t right now. I have to go. So I hope you’ll excuse us.”
He stuck out his hand, preventing her from leaving. “Before you go, Jax Hawthorne. My apologies. I’m a little overprotective when it comes to my daughter. I really don’t know how she got her hands on a number like yours. Not that your number is bad or anything. Just, well, you know.”
Jax Hawthorne. She’d once mentioned to Dixie, his first name sounded like something out of a romance novel. His last name cinched the deal.
Em hesitated. Touching his hand, that rough, wide, callused hand, the one she’d wondered what it would be like to have touch every inch of her, was probably a bad idea. It would leave an imprint on her skin—one she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to stop thinking about.
But her upbringing and good manners insisted she take it. Em dropped her hand into his, squeezing hard to assert herself in yet another way to prove to the world she was capable—independent. Because stern teacher’s voices and extrafirm handshakes are sure signs of empowerment, Emmaline.
“Anyway,” he said, dragging her back to reality by dropping her hand. “My apologies for reacting without investigating first. Have a nice Saturday, ladies.”
Just as he was about to turn his broad back to walk away, the pink barrette slipped from his hair, dropping to the ground at Em’s feet with a tinny clink.