Their eyes locked for what felt to him to be a centuries-long moment, during which either of them could have turned back. But then she surprised him, by reaching out to him as tentatively as she had reached out to take his gift just a few minutes ago.
She stroked his face and looked into his eyes with what seemed like sincere wonderment. “Is this really happening?” she asked. “Or are you messing with me? Tell me the truth, Beau Prescott.”
Now he shook his head. What had started out as a trick on his part had morphed into something else, something he’d been trying to resist but couldn’t deny himself any longer. And he spoke the truth when he said, “No, Josie, no. I want to be with you. I never wanted to be with another girl the way I want to be with you.”
Her eyes softened and she stepped all the way out of her jeans and panties before tugging his head down, this time bringing his mouth to meet hers.
His heart just about exploded. Could it be Josie felt the same way he did? That they’d both been trying to fight their feelings for one another all this time? He kissed her with all the eagerness of the schoolboy he was and the passion of the man she made him want to be. A man worthy of Josie Witherspoon.
But then the time for introspection came to an end. He pulled a condom out of his wallet and put it on, stopping only to kiss her pretty lips every few seconds or so until it was finally on. He pushed into her, but then froze when she gasped out in pain and he could feel that he’d hit an unexpected barrier.
“You’re a virgin…” he said, his face paling above hers. “I didn’t even think about it or else I would have gone slower. I would have…”
She covered his mouth with her hand. “Beau, I’m okay. I’m glad it’s gone, and I’m glad it’s you, okay?”
Those words sent him over the edge. He wrapped her leg around his waist, loving the way her soft thigh felt against his hard body. Then he was moving inside of her with tentative strokes that got bolder as a sweet fire began to build in both of them.
The very last fragments of his original plan disappeared without a trace and were soon replaced with the intent to make her his. He didn’t care what his father said or the rest of town. He was Beau Prescott, and he’d make Josie Witherspoon his girl no matter what it took.
“Beau, Beau,” she said, so goddamn pretty against his shoulder as her breath hitched faster and faster. She was almost there.
And so was he. But he wouldn’t let himself come first, he swore. He’d think about football, Mike’s grandma in a bikini, the yard tools in the shed, anything if it meant giving her as much pleasure as possible.
“Oh, Beau!” she whispered with awe. “I’m…”
Her whole body arched into his again, and he couldn’t hold on anymore. “Oh hell, Josie.” He released into the condom with a groan.
Then he collapsed against her, spent and happier than he’d been when he’d thrown that fifty-yard touchdown at the state championship game the year before. For a few moments they stood there together, arms around each other, breathing hard, both in shock over what had just happened.
Until a sharp voice behind him said, “Josie Marie Witherspoon!”
And all hell broke loose.
“Oh, my God. Mama!” Josie pushed against his chest. “Get off me!”
He pulled out of her, hastily pulling his own jeans up over his waist.
Loretta Witherspoon stood there with a plate of food he recognized as leftovers from the dinner she’d served his family earlier that night, her face a combination of shock and anger. “I can’t believe what I’m seeing. Oh, Lord, help me.”
“Mama, no. It’s not what you think.” Josie said. He turned towards her and found she was already back in her jeans.
“It’s exactly what I think,” Loretta snapped, her eyes filled with disgust. “I can’t even look at you.”
“Loretta, calm down, I can explain,” Beau began.
But Josie interrupted him. “Mama, I made a mistake. But I swear to you I’m not—”
Before she could finish that sentence, Loretta had already turned around and headed out the door, her angry words trailing back towards them both. “I don’t believe you could do this to me! After all I done told you, after all I’ve done for you.”
“Mama, I swear I’m not in love with him. We were just messing around. Mama, please!”
She started to go after her, but Beau who had been about to claim his undying love for Josie before she began swearing up and down that she didn’t feel that way about him, grabbed her arm.
“What do you mean you made a mistake?” he asked her.
She gave him a withering look. “You know exactly what I mean, Beau Prescott. You came in here with all your sweet talk and your featherweight glasses, and I ended up doing something I shouldn’t have, ever.”
“Why not?” he asked.
She tried to snatch her arm back, but he wouldn’t let go.
“Why not?” he asked again.
She glared at him. “Because you’re Beau Prescott, rich asshole quarterback, and I’m better than that.”
Her words felt worse than a punch to the gut, and he dropped her arm. “You think that’s all there is to me?”
“I
know
that’s all there is to you,” she spat back. “And I must have lost my damn mind to let you anywhere near me.”
She angrily readjusted her new glasses on her face. Then as if remembering where she got them from, she said. “But thank you for the glasses. Now we’re even, I guess.”
With that, she ran after her mother, leaving him there like he wasn’t even worth a goodbye. And for the rest of the weekend, she refused to so much as look at him, much less explain why she had turned on a dime like that, all hot for him one minute, then acting like he was a walking pile of radioactive waste the next.
He tried to corner her on Sunday morning after he saw Loretta leave for church without her.
“Josie, if it’s Loretta you’re upset about, I can make her understand. But you’ve got to give me something here.”
Josie rolled her eyes. “It’s not my mama, Beau, it’s you. I shouldn’t have touched you with a ten-foot pole. I know it. She knows it. Everybody knows it but you. So just leave me alone, okay?”
Then she’d walked away from him again, leaving him to simmer over the contempt he’d heard in her voice, like what he’d regarded as the single best moment of his life had been the single worst moment of hers. Really, it had seemed like more of an eye for an eye than hurt feelings when he came up to her and Colin in the hallway the following Monday at school, his body thrumming with boiling anger.
They were laughing over something at her locker. Those two always seemed to be laughing together, like they were the only people on Earth clever enough for the other’s company.
He interrupted their conversation by saying loud enough for everyone in the hallway to hear, “Guess what, Fairgood. I fucked your crush but good last Friday in my family’s shed.”
Then he shoved Colin into the lockers, and it was like swallowing a whole gallon of satisfaction when the junior hit the metal compartments with a loud clang that reverberated down the now silent hallway. Everything had come to a standstill and everybody was watching with mouths gaping open.
Beau’s next words were meant for Colin, but he looked straight at Josie when he said them. “
Now
we’re even.”
Then he strutted away. However, this time, Josie didn’t walk away like the last time he embarrassed her at school.
“Thank you, Beau Prescott,” she yelled behind him. “Thank you for showing me and everybody else you really are as big of an asshole as I thought you were.”
His only answer to that was to give her the finger over his shoulder as he walked away. After that, they both made it a point to steer clear of each other until Beau went off to college to play football first string for the Crimson Tide at the University of Alabama.
But he’d thought about the incident a lot over the years. Mostly because it hadn’t worked.
What happened between them should have killed any desire he ever had for Josie. But humiliating her in front of Colin and a hallway full of students and teachers hadn’t kept his dick from going hard with memories of the one time they’d been together whenever their paths crossed his senior year or when he came home for college vacations. He’d even found himself trying to leash in his desire for her at Loretta’s funeral, which she’d attended with her husband.
And now here he was, unable to see and completely dependent on her.
What had happened to the husband she been with at Loretta’s funeral? And why was she acting so subservient with him? The Josie he used to know would have never deferred to him as Mr. Prescott.
He lifted up and pulled the special phone his assistant, Carol, had given him out of his back pocket. It was a large, rectangular cell phone with oversized buttons covered in braille numbers. And, according to Carol, it was fully voice-activated and set to speakerphone, so he wouldn’t have to constantly speak a command then hold the phone to his ear to hear the answer.
“Call Mom,” he said.
“No number matches that request,” the phone answered in a robotic monotone.
He frowned, hating that he couldn’t just look up the number in his contacts like he used to. Then he tried again. “Call Kitty Prescott.”
“Dialing…” the phone said.
And Kitty Prescott answered the phone with a breezy hello.
“What the hell were you thinking, hiring Josie Witherspoon?” he demanded.
“Beau, darling, is that you?”
“Who else would it be asking why the hell you’d hired Josie Witherspoon behind my back?” he asked.
“Don’t curse at me. I am your mother,” she said.
“A mother who didn’t even visit me in the hospital,” he answered bitterly.
“Oh, Beau, you know I can’t bear hospitals. Hold on a moment, darling.”
And he was forced to listen to her order a martini, “very dry, three olives,” from an unseen waiter, before she came back to the phone and said, “I would have thought you’d be pleased. I know how much you cherished Loretta growing up, and I thought calling her daughter would be a long shot at best, but as it turns out, she’s moved back to Alabama.”
“With her husband?” he asked.
“No,” his mother answered. “She said she wasn’t married anymore. You know how popular divorce is these days with you young people. But it’s for the best, really, because that means she can live on the property just like Loretta did. You won’t want for anything, and I’ll know you’re in good hands.”
Beau screwed up his face. “You can’t just switch out Loretta for her daughter. It’s not the same.”
“I don’t see why not,” his mother answered with the entitlement of a woman who had grown up in a South at a time when daughters really did take over their mothers’ housekeeping duties. “Josie was always a very pleasant girl, and I’m sure she’ll do a fine job taking care of you. If she doesn’t, just let me know, and we’ll bring in someone else. “
“Bring in someone else,” he said. “Now.”
“Oh, Beau, don’t be like that. You haven’t even given the poor girl a chance!”
“I don’t want to give her a chance. I don’t want her here. Get somebody else.”
Kitty let out an exasperated sigh. “Beau, darling, you are letting this injury overcome the few good manners I managed to instill in you. In a few weeks, if you’re truly unhappy with the job she’s doing, then we can talk about replacing her. But really, you can’t expect me to fire her on her first day.”
“I can and I do, since I didn’t even agree to hire her in the first place.”
“Oh, here’s Stavros. I’ll let him know you called purely to be difficult and ungrateful yet again.”
Stavros was his mother’s travel companion. A Greek man just a few years older than him, who she’d taken up with just a few respectful enough years after his father’s death from a heart attack.
“Mother.”
“Toodle-loo, darling.”
“Mother—”
The connection went dead.
He let out a string of curse words and threw the phone. Then he let out another string when he realized he was going to have a hell of a time finding it again.
He had no idea why Josie was back in Alabama, or even why she’d agreed to take the job after so vehemently swearing she’d never work for him. But one thing was certain, he was even more turned on by the girl who lived in their attic than he’d been when he was a kid full of raging hormones. And there was even less chance that she’d sleep with him now.
CHAPTER 4
THE
NEXT MORNING
Josie woke up in the same twin bed she used to sleep in as a teen. Her muscles ached from all the floors she had angrily scrubbed after Beau pointed out that she was working for him now, despite her high school vow that she never would. And the first thing to greet her when she woke up that morning was a fresh wave of humiliation.
What would her mother do if she could see Josie now? Working in the same house, doing the same job she’d done, even though Loretta had wanted so much more for her daughter?
“We need to talk, little girl,” Loretta had said when Josie had come tiptoeing into their shared room one summer night after her curfew.
But the sneaking in hadn’t been necessary. Loretta was sitting up in the twin bed across from hers with the lamp on when Josie crept in, obviously awaiting her daughter’s arrival.
“Where was you at?” Loretta asked her, before she’d even closed the door behind her.
“I was just looking at the stars again,” Josie answered, waving the large constellation book Colin bought her for her birthday the month before. “You can see Jupiter tonight.”
“With that skinny Fairgood boy?”
That was when Josie had begun to feel uncomfortable. No, she hadn’t been with Colin.
She’d only been on the roof for a few minutes when Beau had come climbing up with a backpack strung over his shoulders.
“What are you doing here?” she’d asked. She hadn’t seen Beau on a Friday night in who knew how long. Unlike her, he was the kind of boy who always had things to do and people to do them with come the weekend.
But here he was after dark, pulling a wooden box out of his backpack. “Saw you up here from my bedroom window and I thought you could use this. Found it in some of our old stuff.”