She wrote 100 zesty NC romance novels, and she knew Fabio. Farewell, Dixie Browning.

In her long life, Dixie Browning penned more than 100 tastefully erotic romance novels for Harlequin and Silhouette paperbacks — a body of work that sizzled from its barely-buttoned pages.

The books came short enough to finish in a beach chair or a chaise lounge by the pool, offering a detour into a world populated by men with strong jaws, sleek cars and irresistible gazes.

Their titles suggested forbidden passion, hearts in turmoil and reason overthrown — “The Tender Barbarian” or “Matchmaker’s Moon.” And their characters spoke with words that throbbed from the page: “Behave, you wanton creature!”

Her novels won an armload of awards and got her invited to conferences. And she had enough acclaim within the genre to get personally acquainted with Fabio, the swarthy, shirtless model for romance covers everywhere.

But Browning, who died this month at 93, took all the inspiration for her fantasy world from the scenes of her everyday life — a true romance set on the Outer Banks, with her husband of 61 years cast as its hero.

‘Through romantic eyes’

For more than 1,000 pages, she created a breathless adventure for the casual dreamer, modeled on her own love story.

“The number one thing,” said her daughter Elizabeth Browning Fox, “is she was so in love with her husband she saw the world through romantic eyes.”

Born Dixie Burrus, she grew up in Hatteras Village of the 1930s and ‘40s, when going shopping, getting mail or venturing more than a dozen miles by land required a boat.

Her father, Dick Burrus, played first base for the Philadelphia Athletics and the Boston Braves until a hernia cut his career short and sent him back to the Outer Banks, where he managed a dock and a Texaco distributorship.

Raised on fishing boats, Browning never left the barrier islands when a hurricane struck. But she did venture to college as a young woman, eventually choosing nursing school in Winston-Salem because it was free.

And while there, she went on a blind date with Lee Browning Jr., an electrical engineer for R.J. Reynolds who took her on a picnic to eat hard-boiled eggs. They got serious quickly, which violated her nursing school’s no-boyfriend policy and got her expelled — a small price to pay for happiness.

‘Aspects of Daddy’ show up in books

“She knew the moment she laid eyes on him that she was going to marry him,” Fox said. “Different aspects of Daddy showed up in a lot of her books. He was the most ethical person ever. He was very, very bright. He was very methodical, and sometimes it drove my artist mother crazy.”

Freed from the nursing profession that didn’t ignite her interest, Browning turned to watercolor painting, developing enough of a talent for it to write newspaper columns about art. Later, she would serve as the first president of the NC Watercolor Society, turning out landscapes and sea scenes that hang in galleries around the country.

But in about 1970, she opened a romance novel, read through to the end and immediately declared, “I can do this.”

So she did. More than 100 times, often on a six-book contract.

The lovers who tangled in the sand dunes in her novels did so on Nags Head or Hatteras, and they went on dates to blue marlin tournaments or performances of “The Lost Colony” — all Outer Banks staples.

And the women who populated her pages insisted on living independent, self-made lives free from men’s control, only to get swept up in dizzying affairs that “court disaster.”

“Her heroines,” her daughter said, “none of them were shrinking violets, and all of them had some adversity. Our family is full of self-made women. Her mother and her grandmother had college degrees.”

Suggestive, but not salacious

Out of all her books, Fox said, the raciest ones bore the red covers. But by contemporary standards, these pot-boilers never reach a full boil. Even the climactic passion scenes stopped short of anything you couldn’t show on “As the World Turns.”

Browning’s romances were more cat-and-mouse, full of suggestive but humorous banter. A titillated reader is treated to erotic fare along the lines of earlobe nibbling and midnight swims in the buff, which became an issue with her publishers.

“Silhouette and Harlequin started wanting more sex, more sex, more fluff,” her daughter said. “When the books they wanted lost substance, she decided to retire.”

Lee Browning Jr. died in 2011, more than six decades after their hard-boiled egg date. And when Dixie followed him two weeks ago, she thought it was time.

“She was absolutely ready to go,” Fox said. “She missed her husband.”

One can imagine them entwined again in the cosmos, lost in each other’s gazes, whispering their names over and over.