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  “Hey,” she said, crawling into bed with him. “Mac’s gone.”

  “Good,” he said between clenched teeth.

  He could hear Josie hesitate and shift in the bed before she said, “It’s not Mac’s fault that neurosurgeon didn’t tell you what you wanted to hear.”

  “I don’t want to talk about this,” he said.

  “But maybe you should talk about it. It would probably make you feel better.”

  His jaw set. “I’m not paying for your fucking counsel. I don’t need you to lend a goddamned ear. If you really want to help me, shut up and strip.”

  The old Josie wouldn’t have let him talk to her that way. The old Josie would have put him in his place. But this Josie just went silent for a few long moments before saying, “I’m already naked.”

  His dick sprang to life like she’d hit it with a defibrillator. “Hell, Josie, why didn’t you lead with that?”

  She swung a leg over his torso and made herself comfortable, so he could feel the heat of her pussy through the crotch of his tailored trousers. “Now I’m unbuttoning your shirt…”

  She unbuttoned his shirt and let her hands fan over his chest before leaning forward.

  “I’m kissing you on your neck.” She placed a kiss on his shoulder, then started working her way down his chest. “…and on your chest… your stomach.”

  Her soft, warm lips pressed into a few of his ab muscles. Then he heard an unzipping sound. “The next part is a surprise.”

  Her tongue flicked across the slit at the top of his dick and his whole body seized up. It was just a lick, a tease really, but just the thought of Josie touching him that way… She sucked on his bulbous head for a few moments before licking her way down his shaft.

  He clenched his teeth. “Josie…”

  She took him all the way into her mouth, so far in he could feel the back of her warm wet throat on the tip of his dick.

  He groaned out his pleasure and fumbled until he found the back of her head. “Keep going, darlin’,” he said, helping her find a good rhythm.

  And she did just that, bobbing her head up and down on his dick and sucking like a vacuum at the same time.

  “Oh, hell, you’ve got to stop.”

  There was a wet pop of sound when she let go of his penis. “What? You want me to stop? Am I not doing it right?”

  He laughed, actually laughed after being told the procedure he’d been counting on to fix him wasn’t ready for humans yet. “No, you’re doing it too right, darlin’. I don’t want to come in your mouth.”

  “Oh.” A few beats of silence, then she said, “I don’t mind if you come in my mouth.”

  And a bolt of hot lust pumped through his dick. “That’s tempting, darlin’, but what I’m trying to tell you is there’s only one place I want to come right now. Inside you. So I’ll need you to grab a condom and climb on top again.”

  She did what he said, stretching the condom over his aching erection before settling herself on top of him again. But then she asked, “Is this really how you want to do this, or are you just not wanting to tell me I wasn’t doing it right?”

  He affectionately rubbed his hands over her thighs. “When have I ever been the one to spare your feelings?”

  “Never,” she grumbled.

  “That’s right, never. And I’m not going to start now. I’m telling it to you straight. I want to be inside of you.”

  Without warning, he flipped her over, and entered her in one swift move. To his delight, her tunnel was slick and wet, even without foreplay. “And from the feel of it, you want me inside of you, too.”

  Her only answer to that was to wrap her legs around his waist, effectively clamping him to her as he lifted up and started moving inside of her with long, exploratory strokes. He’d wanted to tease her like this for while, but then she started in with her pretty little moans. And soon he was ramming himself inside of her just to hear the sound of her crying out for more.

  He spun a fantasy around them then, imagining he still had his sight, that Josie had voluntarily come to his bed, that they had future together. In the end, they came at the same time, their arms wrapped around each other in a rictus of pleasure.

  He rolled off of her, and she snuggled into his side, laying her head on his chest. They laid like that for a long time, and just when he thought she’d fallen asleep, she said, “When I first got to Alabama, I went looking for my father. I thought maybe after all this time, he’d be happy to finally meet the daughter he’d never known.”

  Beau stilled. He didn’t know much about Josie’s father, just that he had never been in the picture of Josie’s life. He sensed that this story wasn’t one she’d shared with many people. “Did you find him?”

  “I found his grave. In a cemetary not ten miles from here,” A sour sadness tinged her next words. “Turns out he died in a car accident five years ago. Left behind a wife but no kids. He was white, so I guess I’m half-white, too, but I didn’t know that until I’d spent most of my life thinking I was all black--and I guess that’s how he saw me, too. As the black daughter he didn’t want anything to do with, because I was the only kid he ever had, but he never came looking for me.”

  His arm tightened around Josie. “I’m sorry he didn’t come looking for you. Dads can be assholes,” he said, thinking of his father, who had maintained that his pro quarterback son was a bitter disappointment until the very end.

  “The point is I know more than a little something about building an event up in your head and then having the truth crush you back down, and I’m sorry that happened you today.” She nuzzled his chest with her nose. “But I hope you’re feeling a little better about it now.”

  He did feel better. A lot better, in fact, and it was all because of Josie.

  That was when he made a solemn vow to himself: Every single thing he’d fantasized about while they were making love would eventually come to pass, because he would be keeping Josie even after their agreed upon time was up.

  He didn’t know how yet, but he’d find a way.

  He fell into a deep sleep then, dreaming of a wedding on a football field, him dressed in his Suns uniform, a bride beside him as they listened to the head coach of his football team say, “You may now kiss the bride.” He lifted the bride’s veil, and there was Josie smiling up at him, her happy eyes like a magnet pulling him down to kiss her—

  Knock! Knock! Knock!

  The dream flickered out and was replaced with the absence of any image at all when he opened his eyes. But the sound of knocking on the door remained. Why would Josie be knocking on the door?

  “Who is it?” he called.

  “It’s Mac, Mr. Prescott.”

  He sat up. Josie. He groped around the bed, but it was empty. Where was she?

  “Is it okay if I come in?” Mac asked outside the door.

  “What are you doing here?” Beau asked back. “Is it morning already?”

  The door opened and he heard the click of a light switch being flipped. “Sorry for not waiting for permission, but it seemed like it would be easier to talk without the door. You hungry yet? Got some of Josie’s chili simmering downstairs if you want it.”

  “Is that where Josie is? Downstairs? And you still haven’t told me why you’re here.”

  “Josie was afraid this might happen. That’s why she called me in, so you wouldn’t be confused.”

  He shook his head. “If she called you in to keep me from being confused, it’s not working, because I’m still not understanding what’s going on here.”

  “According to Josie, you fell asleep and she didn’t want to wake you because she thought you needed it after getting that news today.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” he said, signaling for Mac to get on with the story.

  “But she told me to wake you by eight, because you hadn’t eaten lunch and she wanted me to make sure you got some dinner in you.”

  He shook his head. “I’m still not understanding why you’re here telling me this
and not her.”

  Mac’s next words hit him like a punch in the gut. “Oh, because Josie left out of here a couple of hours ago. She said something about it being her night off. She also said not to wait up for her, because she’s going to be back real late, so she’ll… er…. just sleep in her own room tonight.”

  Beau sat there feeling like a fool. While he’d been dreaming of weddings on football fields, Josie had been stealing away to meet up with Sam. And she hadn’t even respected him enough to tell him in person that she was leaving.

  “Mr. Prescott?” came Mac’s voice again. “You all right?”

  CHAPTER 14

  IT WAS HER NIGHT OFF. She was allowed to leave the house. Beau couldn’t keep her from living her own life in her off hours.

  At least that was what Josie told herself. But guilt plagued her as she went about her business at the shelter. As busy as Ruth’s House was, with the usual stack of paperwork, piles of linens that needing washing, and two new intakes, one of a willowy blonde with two big-eyed children in tow, thoughts of Beau Prescott dogged her as she helped Sam put out one fire after another.

  Coming here had seemed like a great idea earlier in the day. She’d let her Saturday duties go the week before, and she knew Sam could more than use the extra pair of hands.

  But really it was Beau’s command that she come right back after going to the grocery store that had made the decision for her.

  She had adjusted surprisingly fast to being someone’s sex partner for money. But the way Beau tried to keep her from leaving the house made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. Not just because of the presumption of it all, but also because it reminded her of Wayne who by the last year of their marriage, didn’t let her go anywhere but the grocery store unaccompanied.

  At first, he, too, had said things like he wanted her there when he got home. He couldn’t stand to be apart from her for as long as it would take for her to have a girls’ night with a kind neighbor who had invited her over for a book club and drinks. At first it had been romantic.

  But then it had turned into something else. Commands to stay in when he was at work. Threats about what he would do if he found out she was visiting her mother without him. “You want her to go back to being some white family’s maid?” he asked her. “Because I can make that happen. But I hope she’s got some retirement savings, because I don’t know anybody looking to hire a middle-aged live-in maid.”

  Her mother didn’t have any retirement savings, and by the time Wayne stopped bothering to even pretend he was a remotely decent person, Josie didn’t feel like she had any choice but to do what he said for fear of what would happen to her mother if she left him.

  Later, when she started volunteering at Ruth’s House, she found out this story was so common, it would have been a cliché if it hadn’t been happening to women across the country every day. Intake after intake told her the same tale: a guy who seemed like a fairytale come true at first only to morph into a cruel task master. These men would insist on getting them pregnant as soon as possible or setting up a beloved relative in a nice place, only to eventually use their loved ones against them. Many men had threatened to take their abused wives’ children away, and Wayne wasn’t the first asshole to threaten to put a parent out on the street.

  After Josie finished shopping, she’d used the store’s ATM to withdraw some “walking around” money, only to discover her bank account had gone from three to five digits. She stared at her new balance, which was more than she could have made in a year doing domestic work. It was enough to keep the shelter open for the next six months at least with money leftover for her to start at UAB in the spring.

  The money represented a fresh start, but it also represented what was really going on between her and Beau. As sweet as that scene had been this morning, she wasn’t his girlfriend, she was his kept woman. And that was all she’d ever be to him—something he’d bought and paid for.

  Josie had come straight back from the grocery store, like Beau had told her to, but she had assured herself she wasn’t under his thumb the way she’d been under Wayne’s. She’d prove it by going to the shelter that night.

  And if Beau tried to stop her, she’d remind him about the terms they’d agreed to. But when she’d crawled into bed naked with him after his appointment, it had been more than she’d expected.

  She hadn’t been surprised he hadn’t wanted to talk about his appointment with the UAB neurosurgeon. But then he hadn’t let her finish the blow-job that had been meant to take his mind off of it.

  Why had he insisted on coming inside of her, like he really did care about her and wasn’t just interested in having a play-thing until he could get back to his groupies in L.A.? Why had he held on to her like that when they came together, like he was trying to crawl inside of her, so they could be bound in the moment forever?

  And what had possessed her to tell him about finding her father’s grave? She cringed at the memory. Obviously, she was letting herself get too close to a man who wasn’t supposed to be anything more than a client.

  “Josie? Josie? Please report to the front desk!” Nancy’s young voice sounded frantic over the intercom and it was enough to snap her out of her Beau meditation.

  She threw down the sheets she’d been folding and ran to the reception area.

  “What’s up?” she said to the girl, who was ducked below the window, obviously hiding from whoever was out there. She’d dropped the metal curtain down, but that wasn’t enough to keep the sound of someone shouting, “Hey! Hey!” and banging so hard on the window the curtain rattled.

  “There’s a guy out there who says his wife is here. I think he’s drunk.”

  They both jumped when a fresh round of bangs sounded on the window. “Hey! I know you’re in there! Open up!”

  “And there’s a new intake out there with him. He must have followed her in.”

  “Did you call Curtis?”

  “He’s still dealing with the guy from earlier.”

  Josie cursed. This was what Sam referred to as a pile up and it was also the reason they’d wanted more than one security guard for the shelter for some time now. The problem with abusive husbands was they weren’t dumb. On big intake nights, Ruth’s House could usually count on at least one husband or boyfriend figuring out his wife or girlfriend was at Ruth’s House and creating a ruckus until Curtis threatened them with jail time. Then if they didn’t go away, Curtis would cuff them and take them to the security trailer, which sat behind Ruth’s House until the police showed up.

  However, if another husband showed up while Curtis was in the security trailer, and managed to get past the first set of doors, usually by sneaking in behind a possible intake, that was what Sam called a “pile-up.”

  Josie didn’t know what was scarier, that the situation happened enough for Sam to have a nickname for it or that it was happening right now.

  “Did you call Sam? She’ll know what to do.”

  “She’s in deep process with that blonde and her kids.” Nancy said. “But I can call her on the intercom if you think I should.”

  Deep process meant the woman wasn’t sure if she could leave her abusive husband yet, so Sam had commanded they not be bothered while she tried to convince the woman to make a decision that could save both her and her children’s lives.

  Josie shook her head. “No, let me see if I can handle it.”

  Taking a deep breath, she walked up to the window and yanked open the curtain. “Sir! Our security guard will be back any moment now, so I suggest you stop banging on this glass and get out of here…”

  She trailed off when she saw the person on the other side of the glass. It was Beau’ high school football buddy, Mike Lancer! About fifty pounds heavier, and from the look of his red drunk face, about twelve years meaner, but it was unmistakably him, nonetheless.

  He slammed his hand against the window. “Josie Witherspoon. What the hell are you doing here? Do you have my wife and kids back there?”
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  The willowy blonde with two kids. Mike Lancer was the abusive husband they’d come here to escape.

  “I- I don’t know who you’re talking about,” she said, falling back on shelter protocol.

  “I know she’s back there. Who the hell do you think you are?!”

  “Sir, I’m asking you to leave now,” she said, using her best stern voice.

  “You don’t think I know why you’re back in town? Probably servicing Beau like you did back in high school when you let him ‘tap that ass’ as you people like to say.”

  He banged on the glass so hard, the whole wall seemed to rattle.

  “You’re nothing but a whore!” he yelled. “And you’re lucky you’re behind that glass, because if you were out here, I’d teach you exactly what happens to little whores who go sticking their noses where they don’t belong!”

  His words hit her like bullets, not just because part of what Mike was accusing her of was true, but also because Mike Lancer really did look angry enough to come through the glass.

  But she swallowed her fear and picked up the phone. “If you don’t get out of here, I’ll call the police. And then you’ll have to explain to them why you’re so far away from Forest Brook, shouting at us.”

  Mike paled. Unlike Beau, he’d always been way more concerned with keeping up his family’s name.

  He slammed his fist against the glass one last time, but in the end, he walked out of the shelter, glaring over his shoulder at Josie all the way.

  And Josie let out a huge sigh of relief.

  “Oh, my God! That was so scary!” Nancy said beside her. Her voice cracked on the last word and she covered her mouth with both hands, obviously fighting back tears. This was why receptionists tended not last long at Ruth’s House.

  “It’s okay,” Josie said, drawing the younger girl into her arms. “I was scared, too.”

  “I feel sick,” Nancy said into her shoulder.

  “And I felt sick to my stomach, too,” Josie said, thinking about how Beau used to actually hang out with Mike before he’d left his Alabama life behind to join the NFL.