His One and Only

However, she was so busy not looking that she failed to notice Beau climb out of the shower on his own, and she ended up gasping again when she straightened up and found him standing right beside her, as the day he was born. For a moment she fell into a bit of a trance, staring at his body, at the droplets of water running down his chest all the way to his…

She raised her eyes again, keeping them firmly on the ceiling when she asked, “Did you, um, need something else?”

And the smug smile came back. “Yeah, a towel,” he answered, his voice all Alabama drawl.

Red-hot embarrassment suffused Josie’s entire face as she went over to the gold-colored towel rack and pulled off a fluffy white towel with a forest green “P” embroidered on it. She managed to hand the towel to him, keeping her arm long and stiff between them as she did so.

He took it but to her consternation, he didn’t cover himself up with it. Instead, he swiped the towel over his hair and beard a few times before letting it drop to the ground.

Still, Josie kept her eyes planted on the ceiling when she asked, “Do you want another towel?”

“No, I like to air dry.”

She quickly glanced at his Ray-Bans, which were also wet now, and thought about Mindy asking if he still had dreamy eyes.

“How about your sunglasses? I could dry those off for you.”

“I’m letting them air dry, too.”

He was blind, but at that moment Josie knew he could see right through her, and he knew he was making her very uncomfortable. He knew and was unabashedly enjoying it.

“So if you don’t need anything else, I’ll just be heading out…” she said.

She started to turn to leave, but then he said, “One more thing, Josie…”

She stopped. “Yes?”

His face became stone cold serious. “I want you off my mother’s payroll.”

Her heart sank even though she’d been expecting this. “You’re firing me.”

“Yeah, I’m firing you.”

The thought of going back to her grandmother’s unheated trailer made her stomach fill up with sick, nauseous dread. But she refused to give him the satisfaction of knowing just how much she needed this job.

“Fine,” she said, hoping her voice didn’t sound as strangled as she felt. What was she going to do? How would she survive? She knew she wouldn’t be eligible for unemployment considering the short amount of time she’d been there. Maybe she could file for welfare, but how long would that take? What would she live on until then?

Stupid, stupid, stupid… why couldn’t she have just swallowed her pride and taken whatever Beau Prescott dished out? Anything was better than the life that now sat in front of her: no college for sure, and her mother would be rolling in her grave to know her daughter had been reduced to welfare after all the sacrifices she had made to ensure Josie received a better start in life than she had.

She turned to leave again, her mind spinning with this new set of problems, but then Beau said, “Hold up, Josie, I’m not done.”

She turned back to him, furious now. “It doesn’t matter if you’re not done, Beau Prescott. I’m done with you. I just want to go pack my things and try to forget I ever let myself get to the point where I was forced to take a job from you.”

“You weren’t working for me. As your little phone call proved, you were working for my mother. Didn’t you say she was the one signing your paychecks?”

“Paycheck,” she answered, folding her arms. “So far I’ve only earned one for the week of work I did, getting the house ready before you actually got here.”

His face darkened then. “If you’re looking for another job, I could give you one.”

She scrunched her forehead. “First you fire me and now you’re offering me another job?”

“Like I said, I don’t want you on my mother’s payroll.”

She frowned. “What exactly would this job involve, Mr. Prescott?”

“Basically, it would be your old job. Plus…” He pointed in her direction. “You…” He then pointed at himself. “Me… Sex. Whenever and however I want it. And I’ll double whatever my mother is paying you.”

She stared at him for what had to be a full minute, she was that shocked. In fact, she’d probably have kept on like that if he hadn’t asked, “So what’s your answer?”

She had to swallow, because the first time she tried to respond, she found her throat had gone completely dry. “No!” she said, yanking her arm from his grip. “The answer’s no, of course!”

His jaw tightened. “How about if I triple it?”

Her eyes went wide. “I’m not a hooker, Beau Prescott. How dare you—”

“I know you’re not a hooker. A hooker wouldn’t give me near this much trouble. But you’re the only one here, so…” He seemed to think about it. “Fine, one-hundred times whatever my mother was paying you. But that’s my final offer.”

Her first instinct was to say no, a very emphatic no, possibly followed up by a slap and a very dramatic exit, but against her will, the hourly wage he was now offering her popped into her mind’s eye. It flashed at her like a neon sign, while the right side of her brain ran a calculation. With a salary like that, it would take her less than a month to pay off her bills, pay for the rest of her college courses, and keep Ruth’s House funded for another year. Just four weeks and she’d be an independent woman: debt-free, and more importantly, Prescott-free.

Her voice shook. “Are you serious?”

He went very, very still, and the humid air in the room seemed to hang heavier, thick with anticipation.

“I don’t lie,” he said. “And I don’t make offers that I don’t intend to honor.”

“Yes, but—” She swallowed. “I just want to make sure I heard you right.”

He took a step closer to her, leaving nothing but a thin sliver of air between them. “If you sleep with me, I’ll pay you one hundred times whatever my mother was paying you. Deal or no deal?”

Her pride was screaming, “No!” But her brain was busy laying out what she could have if she ignored her pride and took the deal. There was also something else rooting for her to give in—something inside of her that was more than a little interested in the prospect of sleeping with the grown man version of Beau.

But she ignored that part and straightened herself up, lifting her chin and trying her best to act like the kind of jaded person who would actually take a deal like this. “You don’t know how much your mother is paying me. How about if it’s more than you can afford?”

“I’ve got a trust fund I’ve never touched, and I’ve been a professional quarterback all my working life.” His voice sounded thick and dark when he said, “Believe me, I can afford you.”

“I can’t be your...” She pushed the first word that came to her mind, “whore,” out of the way and finished with “…whatever you want me to be forever. There has to be some limits.”

He crooked his head to the side as if this entire conversation was boring him. “Name your terms.”

“I have plans for the spring, plans that don’t include working for you. So I can only stay until then.”

He shrugged. “Fine. I plan to be back in L.A. by then anyway. Once I get my sight back…”

She finished the sentence for him. “You won’t need me anymore. You’ll go back to Los Angeles and your groupies, and everything will be back to the way it was before, just the way you like it.”

“So it’s a deal.”

She gulped, trying her best not to think about her mother. “Yeah, I guess it is. When do I—I mean, um, we—start?”

There was a moment of crackling silence. Then he answered, “Now.” And his lips came crashing down on hers.

CHAPTER 10

HE HADN’T EXPECTED HER TO SAY YES. Of all the ways he had thought she might respond to his proposal, pitched half out of frustrated anger and half out of desperate need, the last one would have been yes.

But when he offered her one hundred times her current salary, she had gone quiet, so quiet, all he could hear were the last drips of water falling from the showerhead and the winter wind roaring outside the bathroom window. Then there was another sound, her shoes squeaking against the tile floor as she turned back to face him.

He braced himself then, thinking she’d say something derisive or maybe even slap him, but she’d hadn’t done either and though she hadn’t actually left the bathroom, her voice sounded faraway when she asked, “Are you serious?”

He had to hold on to himself very tightly, freeze himself to the spot in order to fight the impulse to close the space between them and take her into his arms. Just the hint that she might be open to sharing a bed with him….