“Are you sure, sir?”
“Yes, I’m ing sure,” he answered. “Now get out of here.”
“All right, see you Friday morning.” Apparently Mac knew better than to look free vacation days in the mouth, because the next thing they heard was the sound of his receding footsteps.
“Happy now?” Beau asked Josie.
“Well, you didn’t have to be so rude about it. I mean, cussing? That man’s old enough to be your father.”
He grinned. “Who do you think taught me how to cuss? If you’ve got a problem with how I handle business, you need to take that up with Dad’s ghost.”
She went still above him. “I was sorry to hear about your daddy’s passing.”
Beau finally released her from his hold, the mood effectively killed. “Don’t be. He was a bastard. You knew that, everybody did. And at least we were finally able to take the company public, and fill dad’s vacant CEO position with someone who, unlike me, actually gives two shits about the company.”
“Maybe so, but I should have made it back for his funeral. I mean, you came back to Birmingham for my mother’s funeral. I should have done the same.”
Her voice sounded far away now, like she was talking to him but giving her full attention to something else.
“Why don’t you run down and whip us up some breakfast?” he said, trying to get her back. “Something good like pancakes.”
That did it. He could hear the smile in her voice when she said, “Mac wouldn’t approve.”
“Well, Mac isn’t here, is he?”
She chuckled and said, “Whatever you say, Mr. Prescott.”
CHAPTER 12
“WHATEVER YOU SAY, MR. PRESCOTT” was a phrase Josie became very familiar with over the course of the week, during which they fell into a comfortable but intense routine of amazing sex, followed by meals that definitely weren’t on Beau’s diet plan.
She whipped up as many of his old favorites as she could, given the challenge of having to use whatever ingredients were in the house. But eventually she told Beau that she had to go to the grocery store.
“Does that involve you leaving the house?” he asked when she introduced the subject over a breakfast of grits smothered in butter, cream, and cheese on Wednesday morning.
“You know it does,” she answered, fingering the lace trim on the black satin nightie she was wearing. She’d overnighted it to herself a couple of days ago, thinking he’d like the feel of it, even if he couldn’t see it. She’d been right. It was eleven in the morning, but they were just now eating breakfast because he’d kept her up well into the night “breaking in the nightie,” as he called it.
Now he shook his head, in denial of her grocery store request. “What if I need you while you’re out?”
A shadow crossed her heart. By “need,” she knew he didn’t mean need her help. He still refused to accept that from her. In fact, she’d yet to see him walk any meaningful distance by himself, because he found a reason to send her out of the room whenever he wanted to go to the bathroom or take a shower.
However, when she came back from whatever errand he’d sent her on, she’d see the evidence of his struggle in the messes he left behind: overturned furniture, drawers of clothing in complete disarray, a shower littered with cleaning products he’d accidently knocked over.
And despite her attempts to stay cynical and detached from his situation, his helplessness worked at her heart. She wished he would let her help him, and hated that she had to stop herself from offering after he’d snapped, “No, Josie, I don’t want your help. That’s not what I’m paying you for, so stop ing offering. ”
Reminding her of their arrangement was his way of shutting down the conversation any time she tried to broach the topic of his blindness. Otherwise, he treated her more kindly than she ever would have expected. He complimented her food, kept her laughing with his NFL stories, and kept her coming more times than she would ever have imagined could be physically possible.
Thinking about how he had thanked her for the nightie by dipping his head between her legs and licking and kissing her down there until she begged him to stop because the back-to-back were becoming too much, she crossed her legs and tried to focus on the grocery store issue.
“Imagine these grits with shrimp and some green onions. Maybe bacon, too.”
“God, you fight dirty, Josie Witherspoon.” He threw down his cloth napkin. “Go on then. I got to take a shower anyways and now I got a hankering for shrimp and grits I know won’t be going away until you break out Miss Loretta’s old recipe.”
Josie took advantage of his blindness to pump her fist in triumph. At least she thought it was a triumph.
But when she went to clear the dishes, Beau caught her by the arm. And one arm was all he needed to pull her into his lap. Soon his other hand was under her nightie and inside her womanhood, exploring her wet folds with rough curiosity. And her , despite being a little sore still from last nights’ sexual Olympics, nonetheless rallied, the bud between her legs standing at attention.
“Well, look at this,” he drawled in her ear. “Josie Witherspoon, were you sitting over there with no panties on, getting wet, thinking about what all we did last night?”
Since that had been exactly what she’d been doing, her only answer to that was to blush.
He was massaging her now. “You know, I was going to leave you alone this morning, but it seems to me you might have one more orgasm in you.”
He still had on the sweatpants he wore as pajama bottoms, but she could feel his rod, so hard and heavy against the back of her , he might as well have had it pulled out.
Now his fingers were relentlessly plunging into her tunnel while the ball of his palm made circles over her with a steady rhythm.
She bit her lip and cried out, the satin material of her nightie gliding over her body while his hand brought her to rough .
Bubbles of pleasure rose through her kit kat and then exploded inside of her, turning Josie into a sack of liquid bones as she slumped forward on the table.
“Now you can go to the grocery store,” he said from behind her. “And pick up some condoms so I can welcome you home good and proper.”
Despite his promise to welcome her home, when she came in with the groceries, she found him in the kitchen fuming in front of the open refrigerator.
Josie took in the overturned bowl of fruit on the counter and the several jars on the floor at Beau’s feet, and immediately figured out what was going on.
“You looking for something?” She kept her voice casual and relaxed.
“A Coke,” he answered, his jaw tight. “I haven’t had one in like a year, because I’m always in training.”
By Coke, Josie knew he meant any soda. Like many southerners, Beau called all sodas Coke.
Josie glanced at the two cans of Pepsi, which unlike the poor mayonnaise and pickle jars, sat unmolested in the very back of the fridge. “Here, I can get one for you.”
“No, I don’t want you to get it for me. What did I say about you offering me help?”
“Yeah, but seriously, it’s just a Coke. And it’s right there, if you just let me—”
“Get out.”
Josie blinked. “What?”
“You heard me. It’s my house, my kitchen, and I’m paying you to do whatever I say. So get the out.”
Josie opened her mouth to protest, but then closed it again. From the rigid way Beau was holding the refrigerator door open, she could tell he wasn’t going to stop until he’d found his Coke. Without her help.
“Whatever you say, Mr. Prescott.” But this time it didn’t feel like the soft joke it had become between them over the past few days.
She set the two bags of groceries down in the corner as far away from the refrigerator as she could and left through the large, hinged patio doors at the back of the house.
“WHERE WERE YOU?” Beau asked when Josie came back into his bedroom a couple of hours later. “I tried using the intercom but you didn’t answer.”
She glanced at the intercom, which he hadn’t used since he got here.
“Did you need something?” she asked.
“No, but…” He touched his Ray-Bans, looking a little uncomfortable. “Where were you?”
“Well, first I was reading in the shed. Then I had to spend some time cleaning up the mess in the kitchen and putting away the groceries that didn’t spoil when you ordered me to get out.”
She waited then, but true to form, Beau just stood there, clenching and unclenching his fist.
Prescotts don’t apologize, she reminded herself.
“What were you reading?” he asked.
She folded her arms. “Nothing you’d know.”