“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.”
He opened the box and pulled out a brass spyglass. It was obviously an antique, and it gleamed in the moonlight. “My dad only uses it when he goes out boating, but it should work out here, too. Here, try it.”
Their hands touched when she took it from him, and Josie could only hope to God he couldn’t hear how fast her heart started beating when that happened.
Lately Beau had gone from being just a boy she thought about like a pseudo big brother, to the guy who set her heart to racing at break-neck speeds whenever he came to occupy the same space as her. And what had started out as a little flutter of liking at the beginning of summer had developed into a full-blown crush by the end.
She’d done her best to hide her feelings. Beau was the town’s football star, he was dating a pretty cheerleader, and from what she’d seen the few times she and Loretta had gone to see him play, there were plenty of girls lined up to take Mindy’s place when he was done with her.
Josie, on the other hand, was poor, nerdy, and black. There was no way a guy like Beau would be interested in a girl like her.
She busied herself pulling the spyglass out to its full length and using it to scan the night sky until she found a bright circle with two dots on either side. Jupiter and its four moons. “Hey, I found Jupiter, and… wow! It’s so beautiful.”