1-900-Lover

He wasn’t remotely curious. “No,” he said flatly.

“Fine,” his mother replied. “Ordinarily I wouldn’t have seen the need to meddle—”

Ha! Will thought.

“But,” she sighed, and a curious, almost ominous quiver had entered her voice. “I just thought that, given this ph—phone bill, that desperate m-measures should be t-taken.”

More guffaws, more laughter from her end, and he could have sworn he heard his brother, Ben, say, “Hell, yeah! An inflatable woman would have been cheaper.” But that couldn’t possibly be right, Will thought, thoroughly confused, because it didn’t make any sense. And his phone bill? What was wrong with his phone bill, and what did that have to do with her finding him a date?

Will developed an eye twitch. He shoved the key in the ignition and started the truck. “Make sense, Mom. What are you talking about? What’s wrong with my phone bill?”

“Nothing…if you don’t mind that it’s five times more than last month.”

“What?” But that would make it—Will did the mental calculation and blinked, astounded—right at a thousand dollars. His jaw all but dropped.

“You sound surprised, dear,” she continued blithely. “I guess you didn’t realize how long you spent t-talking to y-your 1-900-Lover.” She dissolved into a fit of whooping, wheezing laughter that made his face burn. “At any rate, a real date would have been cheaper, which is why I can’t in good conscience call Rebecca Hillendale and cancel on your behalf. There are times when a mother simply must intervene.”

For the first time in his life, Will Foster knew what it felt like to be literally struck dumb. Not dumb as in he couldn’t speak, but dumb as in stupid, as in he had a brain, but couldn’t for the life of him make it function. Several thoughts swirled simultaneously through his head, but they were disjointed and dim, and he lacked the cognitive ability to put them in any sort of order, much less get them out of his mouth.

The best he could figure out, somehow—and God only knew how—1-900-charges, presumably for phone sex—had ended up on his phone bill. Apparently—and much to his immediate, unwarranted humiliation—his mother had broadcast this at the office—where she’d seemingly forgotten that she worked for him—and then had taken it upon herself to find him a date.

Meanwhile, Rebecca Hillendale was a humpbacked harpy with the disposition of a constipated porcupine and he’d rather die a slow painful death or have his testicles removed with red-hot pincers than to sit through a meal with her. These were the thoughts roiling through his tortured mind, but when he finally managed to speak, it was in short staccato sentences devoid of any emotion except outrage.

“Mother, I’ll be there in a minute.” Will slipped the transmission into reverse, backed into the street, then dropped the gear shift into drive. The truck shot forward. “Nobody leaves.”

“But—”

“Nobody leaves.”

AN HOUR LATER Will’s mind was in order, but his temper was not.

According to the phone company, the calls Will insisted that he hadn’t made, had, in fact, been dialed from his number. Curiously, during hours that he was at work. Another look at the bill—at the dates the calls were placed, specifically—had shed a new light on the situation.

The calls had coincided with his nephew’s visit.

Scott, his sister’s eldest son, typically spent every spring break with Will. Usually Will put him to work, but a four-wheeler accident the week before Scott’s visit had foiled that plan. Scott had been forced to spend the holiday playing catch-up on his studies, and Will had decided it would be shitty to cancel the kid’s visit simply because he’d lose the labor.

Given the make-up work situation, he’d had to plead with his sister for the ungrateful brat to even come, and now as thanks, Scott had put him in a horrible position—he’d left him with a whopping thousand dollar phone bill and the unhappy task of telling his sister that her child had been having phone sex on Will’s watch.

Which led him to his present errand.

Before he called his sister and shared that little tidbit—before he paid the bill, even—he intended to directly contact the author of his misery—the phone sex operator. Over the top? Probably. But what the hell—his normally sedate life had been knocked off-kilter today and he had to do something proactive to put it back on the right path. He couldn’t help it. It was all part and parcel of being a professed control freak. Will took exception to the unflattering term, but couldn’t deny his nature. He liked to do things his way, liked having his way, and ninety-nine-point-nine percent of the time he could say with confidence that his way was the right way.

Will’s first impulse had been to call the 1-900 line, but he’d quickly changed his mind. The unscrupulous witch wasn’t bleeding another friggin’ nickel out of him. Instead, he’d called a P.I. buddy to do a little snooping for him. The best Will had hoped for was a toll-free line, but what his friend had found had been considerably better. A name and address, and, wonder of wonders, a local one at that. What were the odds?

He’d been destined to blast her.

Given the morning from hell he’d had, to be honest, Will didn’t think he’d ever looked forward to doing anything more.

When he’d learned that the woman lived here it was as though Christmas had come early. Rather than taking out his miserable mood on Doris—who he resignedly admitted he would be forced to continue to work with—or his well-meaning but meddlesome mother—whom he’d live to regret pissing off—Will had found out that he could verbally assault a perfect stranger who really deserved it, and finally blow off the steam which had been steadily building since early this morning.

What better person to verbally eviscerate than a woman so lacking in morals that she’d have phone sex with a teenager? A minor? A mere child?

Granted, Scott was seventeen and, given the way the girls followed him around, the kid was most likely getting laid more frequently and with more furor than his uncle. Will nevertheless thought the woman should have used better judgment. But she hadn’t. She’d crossed the line in order to pad her own pockets—with his money, dammit—and for that, she would pay.

A Jackson native, Will had been at once familiar and surprised by the supposed address of the woman. According to his buddy, she lived in an old but affluent neighborhood on a street one wouldn’t normally expect to find an unsavory phone sex operator in residence.

Wisteria Court was located in the historical district. Huge antebellum homes reminiscent of a bygone era, with aged boxwoods, magnolias, weeping willows and tulip trees stood sentinel on the manicured lawns. The neighborhood was rife with the scent of mint juleps and old money, and he found the idea of a phone sex operator in residence among Jackson’s so-called hoity-toity set perversely funny. Ordinarily, the idea would have drawn a smile.

But not today. Today, he was too pissed.

He slowed the truck to a crawl as he checked house numbers, then finally hitting pay dirt, he wheeled the vehicle into the appropriate drive. Anticipation spiked. Finally, Will thought. He purposely stoked his ire on the way to the door by alternately imagining writing the check to the phone company, and telling his sister about Scott’s foray into the seedy world of phone sex—Reach out and touch someone, indeed, Will thought darkly. So, by the time he plied the knocker every last particle of irritation he’d had that morning set ready on his tongue. He’d pulled back the hammer, so to speak, and was ready to unload.

It was to his vast disappointment then, when an elderly woman with pink foam curlers in her hair answered the door and he was forced to put on the safety.

Again.

He stifled the burgeoning urge to scream.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

Baffled, Will frowned. He knew he had the right address. But this… He inwardly shuddered. This couldn’t possibly be the right woman. “Er…Ms. Crosswhite?”

“Nope. Ida Holcomb. You’re looking for Rowan,” she said matter-of-factly. She jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “She lives in the guest house in the back.” The woman gasped, laid a hand over her belly, and shot him a pained look. “Gotta go,” she said abruptly, then slammed the door in his face.

Startled, Will drew back, then, shaking his head, made his way off the porch and toward the rear of the property where the older woman had indicated. He had a bead on her now, Will thought, purposefully striding alongside the house. As he rounded the corner, however, the sight that greeted him caused him to slow and every bit of the anger he’d nursed faded into insignificance.

A vintage Vette—a ’62 if he wasn’t mistaken—in pristine condition sat in the drive next to the house. He whistled low and, had his attention not been instantly drawn elsewhere, he would have been tempted to inspect the car from bumper to bumper. As it was, his gaze had landed on the house and surrounding property, and any notion of the car, while it was admittedly a fine piece of machinery, drifted right out of his head.

The house, a miniature version of the primary residence sat at the very back of the property. White frame, double verandah, utterly charming. But it hadn’t been what made him pause, either—it was the garden around the house that had made such an impact. He blinked, pulling it all into focus, and for some wholly unknown reason, an excited tingle started in the heels of his feet and swiftly moved upward.

Will had been in landscape design for years, had been to countless shows in practically every part of the country, and yet nothing in his experience could compare to this.

Though he recognized every flower, vine, shrub and bush—all of them typical to the average bee-and-butterfly garden—the whimsical layout, the use of color and texture combined with what he could only deduce was the owner’s original metalwork and stained glass made it the most unique garden he’d ever seen. There was no discernable plan, no clear-cut layout, and yet everything grew together in a seamless form of ordered pandemonium.

It was gorgeous.

Butterfly bushes, creeping flox, flowering peach and crabapple trees, clematis vines, various lilies, and bedding plants, a variety of ground covers, and perhaps the most interesting of all—antique roses. The swamp rose, in particular, was one that he coveted.

Feeling like he’d been clubbed over the head again, Will slowly resumed his pace. Inexplicably drawn to the roses, the grand dames of antique bushes, he reverently fingered one delicate petal while quietly inspecting the plant. No spots or aphids, and what minimal pruning had been done had been accomplished with a precisely loving hand. Whoever tended this garden had a passion for the process and clearly designed it for their own personal enjoyment.

Not a single detail had been left untended and, despite the fact that he knew this was the work of the skanky phone sex operator, of all people, Will found himself grudgingly impressed. More than impressed. Floored, really. After all, it took a helluva lot of imagination, not to mention a great deal of time and effort to—

The tinkle of feminine laughter drifted to him, snagging his attention back to the task at hand. He scanned the yard and, after a moment, his gaze landed upon a generously rounded, denim-clad rump peeking out from a small raised bed in the far corner of the garden. A pair of tanned, equally shapely legs were attached to the rump. He could see little else save the back of her head, and while he got the impression of long sable-colored hair, in all truthfulness as far as he was concerned she could have been bald and he’d never have noticed—he was too busy admiring her ass.

And oh, what an ass it was.

Full, curvy and heart-shaped, it gently tested the strength of the seams of her roomy cutoffs and accentuated what he could tell even from this distance was a small waist.

She flicked a weed off to her side where a growing pile accumulated on the lawn. “Oh, you naughty boy,” she said, her voice the perfect mixture of flirtatious and intimate. She laughed again, a long wanton giggle that too effectively conjured pImages** of twisted sheets and bare limbs, made the fine hairs on his arms stand on end and a hum of attraction vibrate his spine.

Who the hell was she talking to? Will wondered, trying to peer around her. He frowned, intrigued. Who was a naughty boy? He didn’t see any boy. She leaned back on her haunches, seemingly admiring her handiwork and he saw it then—the headset. In a moment of blind, dawning comprehension he realized what she was doing.

Or having, rather—phone sex.

Right here in her yard. While weeding her garden.

It literally blew what was left of his mind.

“Oh, Roy,” she sighed convincingly. “I’m hot, too. Maybe I should get undressed, slip out of this teddy. There’s not much to it, but I like being naked. It makes me feel…wicked. Would you like that, Roy?”

Apparently Roy did like the idea, Will thought with a wry twist of his lips, because she chuckled softly again. To his astonishment, he felt that sound hiss through his own blood. Felt a curious sense of excitement—one that was almost foreign to him since it had been so long—fizz through his abdomen.

“Okay, I’m ready,” she murmured. “What do you want to do to me first?” Another wanton chuckle, then, “You’re right. Foreplay is highly overrated. And there’s no need, because I’m ready for you right now.”

What happened next, Will would have never believed if he hadn’t seen—and heard—it with his own eyes and ears.

The woman cooed, winced, groaned and moaned into the phone as though Roy weren’t God-knows-where, but instead rooted right there between her delectable thighs. Her breath came in short little puffs—while she enthusiastically attacked the weeds, no less—and she threw in the occasional “Oh, God! Oh, please! Oh, yes, Roy, God yes!” and then rounded out her performance with the most convincing sounding orgasm he’d ever heard.

When her breathing finally slowed, Will felt like he’d been through the wringer. Impossibly, his heart rate had jumped into overdrive, every milligram of moisture had evaporated from his mouth and he’d come within a hairsbreadth of an immaculate orgasm himself, a phenomenon that hadn’t happened to him since he’d first hit puberty. At some point, he’d reached down and held on to her fence, undoubtedly to remain upright because his knees had grown decidedly weak.

“Oh, I enjoyed it, too, Roy,” she murmured, her voice laced with feigned pleasant exhaustion. “You’re the best,” she told him, blatantly catering to the man’s ego. “Call me again sometime, okay?”

To his continued astonishment, she blithely ended the call and went back to weeding, as though nothing remarkable had happened.

Slack-jawed, Will could only stare at her. He blinked. Then blinked again. Though he’d come here with the intention of blasting her into oblivion, curiously his anger had been replaced with a combination of brooding fascination, compelling intrigue and an unwanted smidge of reluctant admiration.

He’d also found the whole thing hilariously funny.

He smothered a chuckle, lifted his hands and began to clap.

His prey gasped, then turned and bright green—true green—eyes tangled with his.

Will almost staggered from the impact. The bottom dropped out of his stomach and, though he knew it was impossible, he felt the ground quake beneath his feet. An electric current zinged up his spine, then back-tracked and settled hotly behind his zipper.

With effort, Will managed to recover. “Very good, Ms. Crosswhite.” He summoned a weak chuckle. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone enjoy…w-weeding quite as m-much as you.”

3

ROWAN WAS ACCUSTOMED to being humiliated. Frankly, she’d long ago resigned herself to the fact that she would stay in a chronic state of humiliation. The level would simply vary, but being humiliated, she knew, was a foregone conclusion.

For instance, buying the enemas today had been humiliating—almost as humiliating as the time she’d had to buy Ida’s wart remover.

Or the time she’d inadvertently pulled a tampon out of her purse and tried to write a check with it.

Or the time she’d accidentally crammed a straw up her nose and caused it to bleed.

Or the time she’d shut her own ear in the car door.

She was constantly getting herself into situations that made her want to shrink out of existence, or at the very least out of someone’s immediate memory. She routinely fell, got choked…something all the time. Humiliating? Yes, every last event.

But nothing—nothing—in her past or present memory could compare to the absolute mortification of this moment.

She wanted to die.

Truly, desperately wanted to die.

Because the hunk leaning against her fence had apparently heard every last syllable of her most recent conversation, from the first Oh, God to the final Oooohhhh, and every dramatic pant, wince and groan in between.

Heat scalded her cheeks, and if she hadn’t already turned around to face him, she would have pretended to be deaf, maybe even blind. Anything to avoid this panic-stricken oh-shit-not-again scenario. Rowan tried consoling herself with the old whatever-doesn’t-kill-you-will-make-you-stronger adage—her normal pep-me-up cheer—but for whatever reason, the message fell flat this time.

Though it took every iota of willpower she possessed and because she was the mistress of her world, Rowan stood, dusted her hands off and reluctantly began to make her way across the yard. And the closer she got, the more humiliated she became. Her heart sank and she swallowed a whimper.

Naturally, he had to be gorgeous.

The guy had been a hunk from a distance—casually messy blond hair, a great smile, broad shoulders and nice legs. But up close, he was downright devastating. His hair was sun-bleached, a dark tawny color around his ears and nape, but several shades lighter on top. His face was lean and tanned, with a mouth slightly fuller than average and a pair of light brown eyes that offset the alpha bone structure with just a hint of boy-next-door. It was a face that said, “Best friend or worst enemy? You choose,” and the compelling combination made a shiver dance up her spine.

“Can I help you?” Rowan finally managed.

“I’m Will Foster,” the guy told her. His smile faded and, unfortunately, a less pleasant look claimed his intriguing features.

So, worst enemy, was it? Rowan thought. Interesting.

“I’m here because your number showed up on my phone bill this month,” he continued, his otherwise nice voice throbbing with barely suppressed outrage. He crossed his arms over his well-muscled chest and an irritating smirk ruined the look of that gorgeous mouth. “But I didn’t call you.”

“If that’s the case, then you’ll need to contact the phone company,” Rowan replied, automatically offering the most expedient solution to his problem. Her nature, she couldn’t help it. She could plant a whimsical garden, draw, paint and create different types of funky art, but put a problem in front of her and she’d find the most efficient answer. She was an anomaly, a right-brained thinker with left-brained tendencies.

The left brain kicked in when she belatedly realized that he shouldn’t even be here. How had he gotten her address? Her name? A finger of un-ease prodded her spine. “How did you get my address, Mr.—”

“Foster,” he reminded her tightly. “And I did contact the phone company. They told me your number had been dialed from my house, which meant the thousand-dollar charges were correct.”

Rowan scowled, baffled. “If the charges were correct, then what are you doing here?”

This was over the line, she thought, instinctively backing away from him. If there’d been a problem that the phone company couldn’t resolve, then why hadn’t he simply called? Why had he gone to the trouble to track her down? Common sense told her she should be alarmed, but the intense irritation stiffening every muscle in her body negated the logical emotion. Her eyes narrowed. Of all the damned nerve…

“I’m here because you had phone sex with my nephew,” he retorted angrily. “My underage nephew.”

Rowan’s first impulse was to deny the charge—she knew perfectly well that she hadn’t had phone sex with a minor…but she had talked to one.

The flash of insight jimmied an exasperated grunt from her throat and she managed a slight smile. “You’re Scott’s uncle, aren’t you?” She’d been expecting this. Not this as in a visit, but at least that explained why he’d gone to the trouble to find her. She relaxed marginally. Things were beginning to make sense.

His lips twisted into another annoying smirk. “I’m impressed, Ms. Crosswhite. For a thousand dollars you should remember his name.”

The smart-ass was making it damned hard to forget her self-righteous anger, Rowan thought, heartily annoyed. Pity she couldn’t forget how gorgeous he was. “I remember his name because he called me several times.”

“I know.” He fished what she recognized as his phone bill from the back pocket of his shorts and ran an eye over it. She watched in a sort of drunken fascination as his lips moved, counting off the calls. “Six times, to be precise.”

Rowan pushed her hair over her shoulder and assumed a negligent pose, struggled to detach her gaze from those distracting lips. “That sounds about right.”

“Did you realize that he was underage? Or did you just not care?”

Rowan knew that he had every reason to be upset, particularly since he was laboring under the mistaken assumption that she’d had phone sex with his nephew. Nevertheless, she didn’t appreciate the sarcasm or the censure, and she sure as hell didn’t appreciate being tracked down at her house, having her privacy violated.

“Yes, I knew he was underage—”

His lips curled without humor and he rocked back on his heels. “Then you just didn’t care. But you will care, Ms. Crosswhite, when his parents prosecute you.”

Rowan felt her eyes widen. “You’re probably right. However, being as I’ve done nothing to be prosecuted for, then I don’t have anything to worry about, do I?”

“Phone sex with a minor—”

Her patience snapped and she barely stifled the urge to scream. “I didn’t have phone sex with your nephew, Mr. Foster,” Rowan all but growled. “I helped him with his science homework.”

For a split second his face went comically blank, then a smug disbelieving smile drifted over his too-gorgeous lips. “And what were you doing with Roy, I wonder?” he drawled lazily. “Teaching him the difference between a consonant and a vowel?”

Renewed embarrassment flooded her cheeks and while she had appreciated the fact that he owned a sense of humor, she didn’t appreciate it being at her expense. Rowan pulled in a deep calming breath and called upon her past experience with irate parents to see her through this provoking scene. She’d dealt with enough of them over the years to handle this, she told herself. One of them had to remain professional, and clearly it wasn’t him.

“Have you spoken to Scott?” she asked, striving for a calm she didn’t feel. “Have you asked him what happened?”

“No, I haven’t.” A muscle jumped in his tense jaw. “Since I’ll have to tell his mother first, it’s not a conversation that I’m looking forward to.”

“Well, you can handle that however you want to,” she retorted, “but as for my part, I have proof that I didn’t have phone sex with Scott, Mr. Foster.” And she did, thank God, Rowan thought, immensely relieved.

A perplexed line emerged between his brows. “Proof?”

“I have a record feature on my phone. For safety reasons,” she clarified at his astounded look. Honestly. “Kooks, weirdoes, harassment—”

Comprehension dawned and he nodded abruptly.

“Anyway, when I realized that Scott was underage—which was almost immediately—I hit record.” She pulled a shrug. “In fact, I’ve recorded every conversation with Scott and will have to insist that you listen to them, just so there’s no misunderstanding. I thought I might hear from an outraged parent—or an uncle, as it’s turned out—though, frankly, I thought that I’d receive a phone call.” She pinned him with a weighty stare. “Which brings me back to my first question—how did you get my name and address?” she persisted. “How did you find me? Because to be quite honest with you, Mr. Foster, it, uh… It kind of freaks me out.”