It had been an easy promise to make in the heat of the moment. And then Beau had shown his true colors on her very first day of school, embarrassing her in front of his cretin friends and letting her know he didn’t think of her romantically at all.
Or at least that’s what she had thought…
After days of squinting in order to see anything, when he’d brought those glasses out to the shed and said all those nice things to her, she temporarily lost her mind. For a moment, she’d thought Beau Prescott actually liked her as much as he claimed, as much as she secretly liked him.
Afterwards, she even felt bad about rejecting him the many times he’d tried to talk about what had happened over the course of the following weekend. He hadn’t seen how hysterical Loretta had been, how she kept saying she’d lost Josie in-between sobs. Her mother, who she’d never seen shed so much as a tear, actually sobbed over what she had caught her daughter and Beau doing in the shed.
Josie couldn’t have been more embarrassed or remorseful. And she spent the weekend in the somewhat strange position of uring mother that really, it was just sex and that she and Beau had only been messing around, mostly out of adolescent curiosity. They’d used a condom, she told her mother, and Josie was not in love with him the way her mother had been in love with Josie’s father.
She’d tried to convince herself this wasn’t a lie, but in the end, she felt like she was betraying what had happened between her and Beau when she told her mother it meant nothing. And when Beau cornered her in the hallway right after Loretta had refused to let Josie accompany her to church that Sunday morning, she’d lashed out at him in frustration only to immediately regret it when she saw what looked like real hurt in his eyes.
Despite her conflicted feelings, Josie decided to seek Beau out the next day at school and explain what was going on with Loretta, how she wouldn’t talk to Josie, but at the same time watched her like a hawk all weekend. Fool that she was, she’d thought maybe Beau could help her, or at least figure out how to get her mother to start talking to her again. Even after everything that had happened, she still considered Beau a friend.
But then on Monday, Beau had shown her everything Loretta had said about him had been right on the money. And strangely enough, his awful behavior was what fixed things with her mother.
When Josie came home in an obviously foul mood, Loretta spoke her first calm words to Josie in over three days: “What’s wrong with you?”
And when Josie told her what happened at school, Loretta had sighed and put a comforting arm around her daughter’s shoulders. “I told you about messing with them rich white boys.”
“I know you did.” Josie had to work real hard to keep from crying. Apparently, that was all she’d been to Beau, a pawn, and a means for getting back at Colin.
For the rest of her time at Forest Brook, she’d concentrated on her studies. She’d even shut down Colin when he’d finally gotten bold enough to suggest they try to be more than friends their senior year.
“Colin,” she’d answered with a beleaguered sigh, “friends is as far as it goes with me and you… and any other white boy.”
It had been a little awkward for them after that, but they remained best friends until they left for college: Josie to the UAB in Birmingham and Colin to Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Music in Pittsburgh. But he’d kept in touch over email, even after he’d gotten his first record contract his first year of college, dropped out, and made himself over into a country singer who was known for his songwriting skills and ability to play a mean fiddle.
They’d probably still be in touch if Wayne hadn’t started checking her email behind her back in college and flew off the handle when he found out how often Colin had been emailing her.
She could still remember their first real argument like it was yesterday. Wayne had instantly morphed from a perhaps overly attentive, but otherwise perfectly sweet boyfriend into a green-eyed monster, so mad he’d flipped her dorm desk over and sent all her books and papers flying across the room. She’d actually been afraid to defend her long-time friendship with Colin, he’d been so physically angry. It had almost been a relief when he’d stormed out of her room, even though she was fairly sure his exit signaled the end of her very first relationship.
But then he’d returned the next day with a tearful apology and asked her to marry him. She knew now that what she’d thought was a out-of-character moment on Wayne’s part had actually been the first sign of things to come. But back then she’d been a naïve girl, thrilled to have her first black boyfriend, the son of an Atlanta judge no less. And he’d ask her for her hand in marriage!
Loretta’s approval of the relationship also didn’t help when it came to Wayne. Her mother had been so happy when Josie called her with the news. And though, Josie had thought Loretta would be angry about her dropping out of school to follow Wayne to Atlanta, where he’d be working as a junior attorney at his father’s old law firm after he graduated, her normally stoic mother had been just as blinded as Josie by Wayne’s charm and the fact that he was both black and fully invested in Josie.
One time Josie had brought up how controlling Wayne was—how he kept nagging at her to only wear contacts, how he insisted she take out her braids and get a relaxer for the wedding, and how she hadn’t been able to invite Colin to the wedding because Wayne wouldn’t allow it. But Loretta had cut her off with a hard, “You bet put that Fairgood boy out your mind. You got yourself a good black man and he’s willing to marry you!”
Her mother said all of this like Wayne was a hero astronaut and not just a good-looking law student Josie had randomly met while studying for her sociology class in the library. So despite her reservations, Josie married Wayne Simmons, a man who looked just about perfect on paper, in a small wedding ceremony in the backyard of Wayne’s parents’ home in a tony Atlanta suburb.
Her mother had even bought a new church suit for the event. “Oh, you look just like a fairytale princess, baby,” she’d said afterwards. “You living the dream.”
If only, Josie thought now, climbing out of her old bed. She stepped into the shower a few minutes later, still thinking about what a mistake she’d made. What had started out as a dream come true had quickly turned into a nightmare once Wayne moved her to his hometown of Atlanta, a city where she didn’t know anyone and didn’t have a support network.
But the warm spray of the shower helped to wash those terrible memories away before they overwhelmed her as they still occasionally did. At least she had hot water, she reminded herself. And she was grateful for that.
Even if it came at the price of working for Beau Prescott.
Josie shook that unhelpful thought out of her head. It was a brand new day, a Friday, which meant she’d only have to work for eight hours, and then she could go put in some volunteer hours at Ruth’s House.
She got out of the shower feeling much better than when she’d woken up. If she could just keep her head down like her mother had done when she’d had this job, she’d be able to get through the next eight hours, no problem. She looked into the mirror and forced herself to smile.
But it ended up looking more like a grimace.
CHAPTER 5
THE DOORBELL RANG just as Josie was walking through the foyer, on her way to the kitchen, and she found an older, but heavily muscled, black man on the porch.
He introduced himself as Mac, Mr. Prescott’s home aide, and Josie almost hugged him when he asked to be shown up to Beau’s room so he could help him get ready for the day. She was so happy Beau’s L.A. istant had hired somebody else to take care of what Mrs. Prescott had called, “Beau’s most personal needs.”
Beau was an hole, and he’d only grown into a bigger one since high school. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t still a heterosexual woman with eyes in her head that, unlike his, were still working. She couldn’t deny how hot he was—back then and now. And she had enough imagination to guess if Beau’s body looked as good as it had under a zip-up hoodie and jeans yesterday, then it would look doubly as good without any clothes on today. She didn’t think she could keep herself from staring if she was forced to attend to his most personal needs along with her other duties.
Mac, with his affable demeanor and down-to-business clipboard, felt like an extra buffer between Josie and her surly boss. In fact, it was Mac who came down to fetch breakfast for the both of them, which meant her mornings would be Beau Prescott-free from then on.
She gave Mac—or “her savior” as she privately referred to him—a huge smile, and pushed two plates of biscuits and gravy in front of him.
But Mac didn’t smile back. “What do you know about this injury of Mr. Prescott’s?” he asked her.
Josie shrugged. “Not much. His mother said it was temporary and that he just needed me to clean, cook, and do some general care-taking for him until it comes back.”