“Because you saw you were in a bad situation and you tried to fix it. That’s more than a lot of women would have done… men, too. You had me fooled into thinking the old Josie was gone, but you’re still in there. Even though I’m blind right now, I can see that girl clearly in you.”
She clamped her lips together to keep from bursting into a fresh round of tears. She hadn’t realized how much she needed to hear that. That she was still her old self, that Wayne hadn’t taken the best parts of her with him to his grave.
“Thank you,” she said. She stood on her tiptoes and pressed her lips softly to his.
But he stiffened and dropped his arms from around her.
She nearly wheeled back, she was so embarrassed. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I should have guessed after that story I just told you, there was no way you’d still be interested in me like that.”
“Josie…”
But Josie couldn’t bear to hear him let her down easily. “I’m just going to go… I don’t know, clean or something.”
She started to leave, but his arm snaked around her waist like a vice.
“Josie,” he said again. Then he grabbed her wrist and placed her hand on his crotch.
Josie’s mouth fell open. It felt like he had a steel rod hidden underneath his sweatpants.
“I want you,” he informed her. “I feel like an ass right now because I want you so bad, even more than before now that I know Sam’s a girl and I’m the only one.”
“Really?” she said, finding it hard to believe the hard proof under her hand.
His mouth hitched into that half smile of his. “Josie Witherspoon, it would take a lot more than that to make me ever stop wanting you.”
“Then why didn’t you kiss me back?”
“Because I can’t think straight when I’m kissing you, and we need to talk about a few things.” He brought her hand up to his face and laid it against his bearded cheek. “Are you still on birth control?”
She nodded.
“I’m going to need a yes or a no out loud,” he reminded her with a teasing smile.
“Yes,” she said.
“And I’m scrupulous about my condom use. I took an STD test a couple of weeks before my accident. For charity.”
She laughed.
“I’m not kidding. L.A. takes HIV awareness very seriously. Last year a bunch of us Suns took the test for World AIDS Day and tweeted the results. You can look it up on the internet if you don’t believe me.”
“I believe you.”
“Good, because Josie, I don’t want anything between us anymore. No more secrets.” He kissed her. “No more condoms. Nothing but you and me, darlin’.”
Josie wasn’t sure how it happened, but somehow they ended up in one of the kitchen table’s chairs with Beau sitting down and Josie straddling him, bottomless, in nothing but one of her plaid shirts.
No words were exchanged, but they kissed and kissed until her kit kat was aching with desire. She let out a sigh of relief when his thick cock pressed in. Without waiting for a command, she began riding him and soon felt his hands on her buttocks as she bounced up and down on his lap.
“Damn, Josie, so tight, so good,” he said.
She arched her back to press more of her pussy into the front of him. And she moaned when he moved his hands under her arms and began physically lifting her up and slamming her back down on his penis as if she weighed nothing.
“This is just the beginning,” he growled. “The things I’m going to do to you tonight, Josie.”
Unbearable pleasure rippled inside of her vagina, signaling a much larger tidal wave on the horizon. “Oh, God, oh, God,” she said. “Mr. Prescott…”
But then he suddenly stopped again and his hands slid down to still her bucking hips. “Call me Beau,” he said.
“What?” she panted.
“From now on I want you to call me Beau. Not Mr. Prescott, not Beau Prescott. I want you to call me Beau.”
“But you said—”
“I don’t care what I said before. Call me Beau.” Technically, he was issuing her yet another command, but there was a plaintive note in his voice. Like he was begging her to call him by his given name.
As if to confirm her assessment, he began moving her on top of him again, his pumping action wild and frenzied. “Call me, Beau, darlin’,” he said, his voice sandpapered with raw desired. “Call me Beau.”
“Beau,” she cried out as a volcano of pleasure began to erupt inside of her. “Beau!”
She wrapped her arms tight around his neck and keened, “Oh, God, Beau!”
The orgasm ripped through, hot and pulsing like electric magma, turning her body into a pool of quivering jelly.
But Beau wouldn’t stop his assault on her senses. He kept bringing her hips down on his with relentless force until he came, too, with a gruff bark of triumph.
“Josie,” he said, with a happy sigh. “Josie.”
They held each other. Josie straddled across his lap, Beau’s arms wrapped around her like a cocoon, just the two of them, in pure bliss, their baggage dropped, their individual problems on hold. The world stopped spinning and put itself on pause, just for them. And for a moment everything was perfect and pure.
“Josie,” he said, sounding happier than she’d ever heard him. “Josie, I—”
The sound of the doorbell popped their perfect little bubble.
And Beau’s face fell. “Don’t answer it,” he said, drawing her closer and kissing her neck.
“I have to answer it,” she said. “It’s probably Sam. She’s forever leaving her purse behind.”
She scrambled off his lap and pulled on her jeans, hoping to God she didn’t smell too obviously of the mind-blowing sex she’d just had.
“I’ll be right back,” she said as she left the room.
“What happened to ‘Whatever you say, Mr. Prescott’?” he called after her.
“I thought you wanted me to call you Beau now!” she called back, letting the kitchen door swing shut behind her.
She was still giggling when she opened the door…
…and found Colin Fairgood, standing on the doorstep.
CHAPTER 18
COLIN FAIRGOOD WAS STILL TALL
, but he was no longer skinny. Long, lean muscle had thickened out his entire body and even his face, which used to be somewhat gaunt, was now more sculpted and defined. It all made for one very arresting picture, especially when you threw in the blue eyes glittering with determination under his white Stetson.
But still she said, “Colin?” just to make sure this perfect specimen was the same guy she used to walk to the comic book store with every Wednesday.
But then he said, “Holy shit, Jo-Jo, it really is you!” before letting loose that same big, old Colin grin and pulling her into his now very strong arms. “I had nearly given up on trying to find you. I can’t believe you were here all this time!”
She pulled away from him. “You were trying to find me?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I Googled your name last month and found a news story about what that fucker you call an ex-husband tried to do to you. I flew straight out to Atlanta to find you, but by that time it was too late. You’d already moved and nobody could tell me where you went.”
“Are you serious?” She really couldn’t imagine a blond country star at Colin’s level wandering around her old suburb, asking her mostly black neighbors if they knew where she’d gone.
“Dead serious,” he answered. “And you wouldn’t have believed my face when I called my mama up this morning and she mentioned Mindy had seen you in the grocery store, and that you were working for Beau Prescott now. I didn’t think it could be true.”
She cringed inwardly. If he was this incredulous about her being Beau’s maid, how would he react if he found out what else she was getting paid to do for Beau? “Well, I’m really happy to see you,” she said. “I can’t believe you came all this way.”
His eyes ran over her. “Are you okay?” he asked, cupping his hands around her shoulders.
“I’m fine,” she said. “And I’m sorry I got you worried.”
“Don’t apologize to me,” he said angrily. “I’m so mad at myself for letting you fall out of touch like that. And over a stupid wedding invitation. Played right into that fucker’s hands. And now you’re working for Beau, which means you must be really hard up for money.”
“It’s really not that bad,” she started.
But he shook his head. “Don’t try to sugar coat it for me, Jo-Jo. I know you’d rather crawl over broken glass than work for Beau Prescott. Why didn’t you call me? If it was money you needed, I would have bailed you out.”
She opened her mouth to answer, but he smacked himself on the forehead. “What am I saying? Of course you couldn’t call me. You didn’t have my number.” He took her by the hand. “But that’s okay, I’m here now, and I’ve got my limo outside. Let’s go.”
He started to lead her out the door, but she dug her heels into the ground. “Colin, I can’t just leave.”
“Why not?”
She shook her head at him. “Because I work here.”
“Tell Beau to find another housekeeper.”
“I can’t just—” She stopped and lowered her voice. “I’m not supposed to be telling anybody this, because I signed a confidentiality agreement, but Beau’s blind and he’s not taking his rehabilitation seriously. So he doesn’t just need me to cook and clean, he
need
needs me.”
Colin squinted at her as if she had gone crazy. “This is Beau we’re talking about, right? Beau Prescott? Made both of our lives miserable in high school? The one you swore you’d never talk to again after he announced in front of the whole school that he’d tricked you into getting with him—”
She held up her hand to stop the barrage of unkind Beau Prescott statistics. “I know, Col, but he’s still a human being, a
blind
human being now.”
Colin scanned the foyer, his eyes suspicious. “So he has you at his beck and call every day. Doesn’t even give you any time off?”
“I get time off,” she said, wondering how she had suddenly been put in the weird position of defending Beau Prescott against her oldest friend.
“When?” he asked, obviously not believing her.
“I get Friday and Saturday nights off,” she said, realizing only now how stingy that must sound to someone who didn’t know about the real deal she and Beau had struck.
Colin’s mouth twisted into a sardonic frown. “You’re right, Jo-Jo. The man’s a real saint. He gives you two whole nights off a week.” He reached into the back pocket of his jeans and pulled out a small business card, handing it to her. “How about meeting me after you get off tonight then. I’m staying at the Birmingham Grand. We could grab a drink and a bite to eat at their bar.”
She glanced down at the heavily embossed card from Birmingham’s most expensive hotel. “The Grand, really? Wow.” She grinned up at him. “You and your fiddle have come a long way.”
He grinned back. “Whoever thought I’d get this far, right?”
Now her smile turned softer. “I did. I always knew you had it in you to do amazing things.”
But what was meant as a hearty congratulations on her part became something much more dramatic when he took her hand and clasped it like a prayer in between his. “Then let me help you,” he said. “I know you’ve had a tough time of it since we last saw each other, but you’re better than working for
Beau Prescott
.”
“Josie,” Beau suddenly yelled out from the kitchen. “What’s taking you so long?”
Colin looked over her shoulder toward the kitchen door. “That him?” he asked. Then before she could answer. “I think I’m going to go reintroduce myself.”
But she shook her head frantically and stopped him from coming inside the house with two hands on his chest. “No, Colin. Not like this. I’m so happy to see you again, but I have to get back to work, so I need you to go now.
Please
.”
He shook his head. “But this conversation ain’t over.”
She was now full on straining to keep Colin from moving forward. Man, he was a lot stronger than the skinny kid she’d grown up with. “I’ll meet you later on, I promise. But now isn’t the time or the place.”
Colin immediately stepped back as if he’d merely been waiting for her to promise to come see him. “Fine. I’ll see you tonight. But if I don’t hear from you by eight, don’t think I’m not coming back here. I worked too hard to find you.” He took her hand in his and kissed the back of her fingers. “And we have a lot to talk about.”
“Josie!” Beau called again, before she could answer.
She took her hand back from Colin. “See you tonight,” she said, before closing the door in his face.
She would never say she was glad Beau was blind, but she was happy she didn’t have to try to hide how nonplussed she was by Colin’s sudden reappearance, because she didn’t think she would have been able to if she tried.
It had transitioned from dusk to night while she’d been going back and forth with Colin at the door, but Beau was now standing by the kitchen table, his ever-present sunglasses covering his eyes.
“What took you so long?” he asked.
And she stood there, trying to decide how much to tell him.
CHAPTER 19
SHE SHOULDN’T HAVE TOLD HIM ANYTHING
, she thought to herself less than an hour later. She had tried to play off Colin’s coming by the house as a fun coincidence, keeping her voice light when she told him he was in town and decided to look her up.
But Beau had crooked his head to the side and asked, “Is he in town for a concert?”
“I’m not sure,” she answered, though she suspected he wasn’t. “I would think that would be the most likely case.”
“Yeah, you were always a little naïve where Fairgood was concerned,” he said.
“The main point is he asked me to catch up over dinner later on. He’s staying at the Birmingham Grand.”
Beau went still. “He asked you to meet him at his hotel?”
“Not in his room or anything. In the bar. We’re just grabbing something to eat.”
Beau gave her a humorless smile. “That sounds fine to me.”
“Really?” she said, trying to keep the surprise out of her voice. It wasn’t like Beau to acquiesce this easily.
“Sure,” he answered. “I’m looking forward to catching up with Fairgood. In fact, we can go now if you want to. Just give me a few minutes to get changed.”
Josie’s face fell, but she hadn’t been able to come up with a response that would get her out of the house and keep him from coming with her. And that was how she ended up at a table for three in the Birmingham Grand’s main bar and restaurant with Beau, waiting for one of the biggest country stars in America to meet them.