“Yeah, uh-huh. Don’t think this car topic won’t come up later,” Sam told her.
Josie rushed out of the car and into the hotel lobby—and promptly stopped in her tracks.
Walking out of the elevator bank was Beau Prescott. But not the angry Beau Prescott she’d left to wallow in his own misery six months ago.
This Beau looked so good it took her breath away. She literally didn’t breathe as he walked toward her with confidence and what looked like a light saber leading the way. He’d gotten rid of his long, messy hair and the rough beard. This Beau was clean-shaven and dressed in a summer blazer and white pants that looked like they had been tailored specifically for him.
And this Beau, she noticed, also had a gorgeous black woman beside him, one with creamy light brown skin and a head of read curls that framed her heart-shaped face beautifully. They stopped a few feet outside the elevator, and Beau leaned down to hug her.
Something inside Josie curdled, watching him hug up on another woman. Not only had Beau learned to navigate his blindness, but it also looked like he had moved on to someone new. And though she tried to be happy for him, she just couldn’t manage it.
This was the man, whose memory had kept her up at night for six months. She still had trouble doing the reading homework for her ignments, because whenever she got bored, her mind would drift to thoughts of him, his hands on her body, his commands for her to tell him what he was doing to her even as he was doing them.
Beau let the gorgeous woman out of the hug and started walking toward Josie again. And she scrambled out of his pathway, hiding behind a ficus to watch as he walked by. She couldn’t take her eyes off of him, but she couldn’t bring herself to actually talk to him either.
But then right as he was about to pass by, he sniffed the air and turned toward her. “Josie?”
“H-how did you know it was me?” she asked in surprise, stepping out from behind the ficus.
“Your scent,” he answered with a sheepish smile. “Sandalwood. That’s pretty distinctive in a place like this.”
Josie looked around the lobby at the other hotel patrons, most of whom were white now that the other black women had left. “I guess so. Well, it’s good to see you looking so well, Beau. I mean, you look great. Really good.” Then she made herself stop talking because she was just embarrassing herself now.
Her eyes went to his cane. “Is that one of those ultrasonic canes?” she asked. “I thought they were only in the prototype stage. At least that’s what I read when I was…” she trailed off, as a fresh wave of embarrassment made her face go hot. “…working for you.”
But instead of following her down the path of small talk, he said, “Josie, I don’t want to talk with you about my cane.”
And just when she thought the situation couldn’t get any more embarrassing. “Oh, sorry. I’ll just let you get on your way. Nice seeing you again,” she said. She stepped away from him then, but her somewhat dignified exit was cut short when she tripped over the ficus she’d forgotten was behind her.
To her surprise, he caught her before she could stumble more than a few steps. “You okay?” he asked, pulling her up to his chest.
“I’m fine,” she answered. “Thanks. I’ll just be getting on my way. I’m already...” She started to extract herself from their unexpected embrace, but he held her there, his arms as strong as a pair of steel bands around her. “…late.”
He smiled. “It feels like you’ve gained a little more weight. I like it.”
Josie looked around. A few patrons had stopped to stare. But Beau acted like there was nothing the least bit strange about how he was holding on to her.
“I’m steady now,” she told him. “You can let me go.”
“But how about if I don’t want to?” he asked. “How about if I never want to let you go?”
Her heart started to soar, but then she remembered, “Weren’t you just hugged up on somebody a few minutes ago? A really, really good-looking somebody?”
He chuckled.
“What?”
“His plan worked. You got jealous. It’s just it wasn’t over the right person.”
“I’m not jealous,” she said, even though she totally was. “I was just wondering why you’re talking about never wanting to let me go when you obviously were just hugged up on somebody else.”
“Man, you sound angry. Was she that cute?”
Now she really started struggling to get free. “Let me go,” she said. “Let me go right now, Beau Prescott.”
“No,” he said. “Not until you promise to marry me.”
She stopped struggling. “What?”
And he cursed. “I’m not doing this right.”
“What did you just say?”
“You should have been here earlier. I had this whole speech about how much I love you, about how you make me a better person. But now we’re here, and it sounds like I’m threatening you, but I’m not. Josie, I love you. That’s all. More than I ever loved anybody else, ever.” He reached up and stroked her cheek with the back of his knuckles. “So even though, I know Prescotts don’t apologize, here’s me, Beau Prescott, telling you, Josie Witherspoon, I’m sorry. I’m sorry about the things I said, the way I treated you. Sorrier than I’ve ever been about anything in my entire life. And I’m sorry I can’t leave you alone, but I want you to—no, scratch that, darlin’, I need you to spend the rest of your life with me.”
She stared up at him, her eyes glistening with tears. That speech had been so beautiful, she could barely believe it had come out of Beau Prescott’s mouth. Yet even though his voice shook when he spoke--and this was likely the first apology he’d made to anyone in over twenty years--there was just one more thing she had to see to truly believe he meant what he’d just said.
His eyes.
She tentatively reached up and removed his sunglasses.
He let her, but his arms stiffened around her waist as she took them off, which let her know he wasn’t wholly unaffected by what she was doing.
She found his beautiful silver eyes filled with tears, just like hers. And to her surprise, the dark pupils inside of them shrank under the lobby’s bright lights. “Have you gotten some of your sight back?”
“No, my eyes still respond to light, but they don’t relay a picture to my brain. That’s how my condition works.” She could almost see the effort it was taking for him to hold still under her scrutiny. “I decided to make a donation to UAB’s Department of Ophthalmology, and I’ve got a few other neurosurgeons looking at my file, but as far as I know, I’m going to be blind until further notice. I know that’s not ideal. But I promise, I won’t ever let it affect my ability to love you the way you deserve to be loved ever again.”
She regarded him for several seconds before saying. “You’re right. I don’t like you as much now as when you had your sight.”
His grip around his waist slackened. “Oh,” he said, the expression on his face going from hopeful to devastated to resigned in the space of a few seconds.
But then she said, “I like you way better. Way, way better.” She smiled up at him. “Now you’re perfect. Yes, Beau, I’ll marry you.”
And he smiled back, before pressing his mouth into hers. For a moment, the staring Alabamans in the lobby faded away, and it was only them returned to the love-struck teenagers they’d once been, but then she remembered, “Oh my God, Colin! We were supposed to meet to talk about him giving Ruth’s House a donation.”
But his arms only curled tighter around her and he said, “However much you were planning to ask him for, I’ll match it.”
“But—”
“Double it.”
“Beau—”
“Hell, you’re going to be my wife. I’ll give you my checkbook and let you decide on the amount.”
And lest she think he was actually trying to buy her again, he capped this declaration with the sweetest, most sincere, and most grateful kiss she had ever known.
EPILOGUE
TO THEIR CREDIT, Josie and he did manage to make it out of the back of Mac’s car, before they consummated their reunion. But there was no way he was going to let them get all the way up the stairs, or even to a chair or couch. In fact, Beau considered himself a damn gentleman for closing the door all the way behind him, before he threw Josie down on the foyer’s floor.
She seemed desperate for him, too, because not only did she go down on her back without a word of protest, she unzipped his pants and pulled him out as she did so.
But despite his many changed ways, Beau still wasn’t the type to give his future wife what she wanted without making her work for it. “I don’t hear you narrating, darlin’,” he said, refusing to go along with her as she started to position his between her wet folds.