Oh, they could laugh all they wanted. She’d thought about it long and hard. All while LaDawn ordered her clients around in dominatrix fashion and during request after youthful voice request for Marybell. She’d even thought about it tonight at Cooters, and she didn’t have to think too hard. At least not with four swirly drinks in her stomach and her sense of reason fully affected.
She narrowed her gaze at every one of her friends, sputtering and snorting at the very idea Emmaline Amos could say the P word. Maybe she might even use the—gasp—C word. “Well, won’t you all be sorry when that phone rings and I answer to the tune of Em ’n’ M?”
“Like the rapper or the candy?” Dixie squeaked out between gasps of air tucked between bursts of laughter. She covered her mouth with her hand to keep from disturbing the operators in the back rooms.
She eyed Dixie with a defiant glare, surely fueled by her alcohol consumption. “It might not be as mysterious or sexy as Mistress Taboo or as sticky sweet as Candy Caine was, your Mr. Smexy’s old operator name, but it’s cute, just like me.” Cute and adorable and like someone’s worn stuffed animal. Ugh.
LaDawn was the first to buckle. She hopped up from her chair, coming around the desk to give Em a tight squeeze from behind, her lilting voice clear in Em’s ear, the sweet scent of her lavender body spray in her nose. “We were just teasin’ you, Em. We know you’re a force to be reckoned with, and we wouldn’t have ya any other way. So no phone calls for you. You’re just not made outta the same cloth as the rest of us dirty girls. You’re fine silk and we’re just a polyester blend.”
The jarring ring of Dixie’s office phone created a shrill silence between them—reaction suspended for a mere second before all three women were scrambling to grab the phone to keep it from Em. Chairs scraped against the tile floor, desk organizers fell to the floor with pen-filled thuds.
But Em was quicker, and when all was said and done, and she was high on regret for ever taking LaDawn’s bait, she’d pat herself on the back for just how quick she’d been on the draw being as tipsy as she was.
She snatched at it, holding the receiver up like she’d just won the coveted Swarovski tiara at their local Miss Cherokee Rose Pageant. Triumph streaked her eyes before she growled, “This is Em ’n’ M. Would you like some candy?” Her eyes opened wide at her brilliance. Associating her name with the pleasure of the famous candy. Hah! Innocent Em couldn’t make the dirty, huh? She’d show them.
“You have candy? My daddy loves candy. Maybe he’d like you, too.” A voice so pure, so full of spun sugar and innocence, filled her ear.
Leave it to her to get the one call, out of all the hundreds of calls Call Girls received in a night, from a child.
The universe was obviously conspiring against her and her sexy.
Two
LaDawn pressed the speaker button, the little girl’s voice ringing throughout the office as though on angels’ wings. “So do you have candy? My daddy needs a girlfriend, and I like candy. My uncle said it would make him nicer, the girlfriend, but maybe not the candy. I tried giving him candy, but that didn’t make him nicer.” There was a definitive determination to her charming voice—a voice that to Em’s experienced ears sounded right around six or seven.
Mercy.
No one moved. Everyone froze in their respective spots as three pairs of eyes, full of panic, watched Em.
How had a child managed to get past Nella-Nator? She was like a SWAT team when it came to manning the phones against children violating Call Girls’ strict, over-eighteen policy.
“Hello? Miss Em ’n’ M?”
In a flurry of hands, Dixie and Marybell motioned for her to hang up while LaDawn slid her forefinger across her throat, signaling she should cut the child off.
But Em knew what to do. She had two children of her own, and this one obviously needed to be heard. She cleared her throat, holding up a hand to her friends. “I’m here, and I think you have the wrong number, sugar snap.”
A pout she virtually heard pulsed in Em’s ear. “You mean you don’t have girlfriends there where you are? My daddy needs a girlfriend. At lunch when they were cuttin’ up my grilled cheese sandwich in triangles, I heard my uncle Tag say so to my uncle Gage. They said he needs a girlfriend. I asked them where you get a girlfriend and they said the girlfriend store. I see on the paper my daddy has on his desk that you live in a place called Call Girls. Is that a store where we can buy my daddy a girlfriend? Like Toys ‘R’ Us?”
Em sat down on the chair and smiled into the phone. The child’s sweet voice, so heartbreakingly clear with desire for her father’s happiness, clenched her heart with a vise grip. The leap she’d made with the words call girls wasn’t just adorable, it was smart.