Shields up, sugarâthings in Plum Orchard are about to get real.
Marybell Lyman is notorious for two things:
Her look. The wicked hairstyle, multiple piercings and practiced sneer that say: âStay backâI bite.â
Her voice. The syrupy lilt thatâs her bread and butter at Call Girls, the prim little townâs flourishing phone-sex company.
Hunky handyman Taggart Hawthorne is mesmerized by the contradiction: such sweet tones inside such a spiky shell! He wants to know more about mysterious Marybell, to hear more of her sexy talkâall for himself.
But Tagâs attentions, delicious as they are, have Marybell panicked. Sheâs been hiding a long time. Sheâs finally got a home, a job and friends she adores. She wonât have it all snatched away by another stupid mistakeâlike falling in love. So when Marybellâs past comes calling, she and the Call Girls will prove no one handles scandals like a Southern girl!
First, to my editor, Leonore Waldrip, for my repetitive overuse of so many thighs and eyes, this oneâs for you! Also, for suggesting a very unusual heroine, and the challenge creating her presented.
And to my BFF, Renee George, who always knows when Iâm on the brink. She listens. She hears. She nurtures. I love you much.
Last, but never least, my husband, Robâyouâre the best decision I foolishly almost didnât make. Thank you for some of the best years of my life!
One
âHeaven and a ring oâ fire...â
Under normal circumstances, Marybell Lyman would have laughed at her employer and friend Dixie Davisâs shocked words when she pushed her way into her small basement apartment, stopped dead in her tracks and tipped her head to the side as if sheâd just witnessed the second coming.
But this circumstance wasnât normal.
Dixie stood poised in her doorway for a moment, the cold draft from the late-winter evening ruffling her knee-length burgundy sweater. Dixie, never without words, stared at her, speechless. She tucked a strand of her long auburn hair behind her ear and hummed something else Marybell couldnât quite hear because of her clogged ears.
Marybell scurried back to her couch without a word, plunking herself down on the new sofa sheâd just had delivered. She huddled into her bathrobe, keeping her head down as far as she could without making her nose begin running again.
When her friends from work had all shown up to coddle her with chicken soup and some good olâ Southern love, sheâd panicked. Her heart racing, her head full of cotton, throbbing an endless, crushing beat, sheâd battled with whether to answer the door.
No one saw her this wayâunmaskedâever, and definitely not Dixie, the owner of the phone sex company where she worked as a phone sex operator.
But it wasnât as though there was any hiding from the three pretty faces full of concern, pressed against the glass of her front door like a trio of suction-cupped Garfields in the back of a car window.
She couldnât simply shoo them away or make up some excuse to keep them from barging in even if she truly wanted to. As a whole, Team Call Girls was unstoppable. If you told them no, they yelled, âBless your heart,â and trampled all over you and your nos with their cute heels.
Why, oh, why hadnât she thought to pull the shade down over the glass before sheâd taken those cold meds and fallen asleep?
Breathe, Marybell. Act natural.
Ha! Easy for the voice inside her head to say. It didnât have to fend off three gawking mother hens, as well meaning as they were, and remain calm while its insides twisted into a knot fit for a Boy Scout.
LaDawn Jenkins, coworker, friend, best phone sex operator in the universe, stood next to Dixie, a woven basket with a red-checkered napkin covering what Marybell suspected were freshly baked rolls, and cocked her platinum-blond head. âI have rolls,â she mumbled, dropping them on the end table next to her box of tissues. âWith butter,â she added, her brow furrowing.
Marybell hunkered farther down in her bathrobe, fighting another violent shudder of chills, almost too feverish to care about her friends seeing her for the first time devoid of what sheâd secretly dubbed her âpeople shield.â
Almost.
She should be in the process of making a break for it. Or at the very least, putting a paper bag over her head. But sheâd spent herself simply finding her gel eye mask and answering the door. Her legs were so weak, her chest so congested and tight, it would take everything she had left in her to move again.
Instead, she cast her eyes toward her feet, covered in fuzzy black calf-length socks with the slipper-grippers on the soles.
Thereâs nowhere to hide but in plain sight now, Marybell Lyman. Youâre stewed. Try not to look obvious.
Emmaline Amos, soon to be Emmaline Hawthorne if the way things were shaping up between her and Jax was any indication, almost fell smack into Dixie and LaDawn when she rushed in the front door. The skid of her conservative black pumps screeched to a halt against the wood floor.