Maizy looked to Jax. “Is this the lady you’re gonna ask to help make the house nice?”
Em’s eyes flew to Jax’s. Had she heard that right? She’d just asked him to have sex with her, and he was going to ask her to help him renovate?
Yes. Of course that was what had just happened. Jax was keeping things aboveboard and clean, and she was rolling around in the mud.
“Yep. She’s the lady I was going to ask to help us with the house.”
Facepalm.
Before Jax had the chance to explain his answer, Dixie and LaDawn were there, all coy smiles and sweet, round eyes.
Dixie strolled up to them, her hands behind her back, her eyebrow raised in that playful way she had. “Y’all gonna come mingle with the rest of us, or do you just want me to drop off a platter of weenies in a blanket and a bottle of wine here in your corner and let you two talk amongst yourselves?”
A wave of dizzy embarrassment washed over Em. Had they been that obvious?
“Yes,” LaDawn answered her question with a whisper in her ear, her throaty tone teasing. She glanced down at Maizy then, holding out her hand to her. “Are you Ms. Maizy? Why, as I live and breath, it’s really you in the flesh, isn’t it?”
Maizy, instantly drawn to LaDawn and all the shiny, colorful things she encompassed, grinned. “You know me?”
LaDawn bobbed her overly blond head. “Your daddy told me all about you over a pizza in our lunchroom. Said you were the apple of his eye. But you don’t look like an apple to me. You look like a little girl with hair the color of a sunset.”
Maizy giggled and took LaDawn’s hand, holding it up to the light as LaDawn drew her away. “You have pretty nails. I like glitter, but Daddy says it makes too much of a mess, and it’s hard to clean up.”
“Well, maybe someday, if we can get your daddy’s permission, we’ll have a girls’ day. You and me, Dixie, Miss Em, Miss Catherine and Marybell, too, and we’ll paint up your nails with some glitter, okay?”
Maizy, entranced by the offer, strolled off with LaDawn, leaving the three of them standing in the corner.
Dixie latched on to Em’s arm while still smiling at Jax. “Can I get you to give me a hand with a couple of things in the kitchen? I need some cookin’ advice,” Dixie prodded with the girlfriend signal in her eyes. The one that said “quit makin’ an ass of yourself, Emmaline Amos.”
Jax’s smile was amused. “Excuse me, ladies. I’m gonna go dig up some of those cocktail shrimp. Em? It was nice talking to you.” He tipped an imaginary hat with a smile and sauntered off toward the buffet table Sanjeev had arranged.
The words nice talking to you, as though they’d just chatted weather and the stock market, penetrated her devil-may-care lover-in-the-afternoon attitude. Slow and lazy, her blatant question began to seep in.
The second Em watched Jax’s broad back retreat out of earshot, Dixie pulled her toward the kitchen. “I don’t want to pry—”
Em winced. “But you will.”
Dixie’s eyes flashed bright, her eyes so wide her eyelashes touched her eyebrows. “Yes. Yes, I will. When the whole room hears my best friend ask a man if he wants to have sex with her, I’m pryin’.”
Her bravado’s bubble burst, splattering her shame all over Dixie’s beautiful chrome-and-granite kitchen. “Everyone heard?”
“Okay, not everyone. Just me, and Marybell, who’s now over there hidin’ in a huddle like some cornered animal at the pound. I’m worried—about her and about your flappy lips.”
Em’s eyes scanned the room, looking for Marybell’s trademark spikes of hair. She was leaning against the side of the impossibly beautiful hutch Landon had made specifically to hold his mother’s china—almost as if she hoped to melt into it and disappear. She held a wineglass of burgundy liquid in front of her face and a plate of toast points and cheese in the other.
Marybell wasn’t prone to large crowds of Plum Orchardians. They judged her like they judged no other because of her outrageous makeup and choice of hairstyles, but she dealt, and she did it often in light of her friendship with Dixie and Caine.
In the midst of her misery, it struck Em odd that Marybell, far less chatty than the rest of them, was exceptionally quiet lately. Her heart tightened. Something was wrong, and she’d been so wrapped up in her dirty thoughts, she’d overlooked her friend.
Em began to pull away from Dixie, forgetting she was due a lecture on what not to say at a dinner party.
Forgetting her erratic behavior, she shrugged Dixie off and made her way toward her friend.
Tugging on Marybell’s arm, she gave her a nudge with her shoulder. “What’re you doin’ over here hidin’ like you’re trying to become one with the furniture?”