This should have made him happy. After overhearing her profess her love to some guy named Sam outside his room the night before, he’d felt worse than pathetic. She’d already moved on to a new boyfriend and here he was, still pining after some girl who had rejected him years ago. The last thing he should want were unnecessary encounters with Josie.
But even though they hadn’t been in the same room since he overturned his tray the night before, he was still deeply aware of her presence in his house. He could smell the sandalwood scent she wore in the hallway outside his room. He could taste her personality in the down-home touches she put on the healthy meals she’d been making him. A few times, he’d heard Mac talking in another room with her. Once she’d even she laughed at something he said, and the sound, which he knew well but hadn’t heard in a while, not only hit him straight in the heart, it filled him with jealousy.
“You got a thing for Josie?” he asked Mac late that afternoon while they were setting up for his first series of bench presses.
Mac chuckled. “Nah, man. Josie’s cute, but I’ve been married over thirty years to my high school sweetheart. Do you know how much alimony that woman would get if she caught me stepping out?”
Beau forced a laugh. Then he wondered if he’d ever get used to not knowing the physical details of the people he spoke with. He’d guessed, incorrectly, that Mac was younger than a thirty-year marriage would suggest.
“Sorry, man,” he said, trying to play it off. “I just thought she might like you. I heard her laughing at one of your jokes earlier and the truth is, you aren’t all that funny.”
Mac guffawed. “Living with you, I suspect that girl’s just happy to hear any joke. She almost seems scared to be in the same room with you. You could stand to lighten up around her, you know.”
Yeah, he knew all right, but he couldn’t seem to lighten up or even stop obsessing over her.
Why had she come back to Alabama? And why had she agreed to take this job? Unlike the Josie he used to know, she just did everything he told her to do without a hint of her old sass.
Truth be told, when he’d flipped his tray off the table the night before, it had been half jealousy on his part and half a test to see how she’d respond. But she hadn’t protested or even grumbled. Just quietly cleaned up the mess, a meek shell of the Josie he used to know.
He couldn’t get a read on her and it was frustrating the hell out of him.
Still, flipping the tray had been wrong, he admitted to himself when he was back at the bay window after Mac left for the day. Maybe if he was nicer to her she’d open up to him, or at least talk to him as easily as she’d talked to Mac earlier. Or maybe she’d…
An image of Josie smiling at him in the glasses he’d brought her sprang to his mind, and his dick immediately swelled with the sweet pain of unfettered desire inside his jeans. Worse, he couldn’t stop the sequence once it started. The images came hard and fast, bombarding him: kissing her, tasting her, and finally moving inside her, watching her pretty face as she came, her eyes squeezed shut—
The phone’s loud spoken ringtone shattered the remembered fantasy. “Incoming call from Kitty Prescott! Incoming call from Kitty Prescott!”
Mac had said he left the phone on the nightstand, so Beau groped along the left side of the bed to guide his way to the nightstand. Only, he stubbed his toe against the thick, wooden bed post, and the sudden pain had him cursing and stumbling into a part of the room that had no furniture nearby with which to orient himself.
The phone continued to chirp, “Incoming call from Kitty Prescott! Incoming call from Kitty Prescott!”
Eventually he found his way to the nightstand, but it wasn’t pretty. He fell twice and knocked over a houseplant and something fragile (he heard it shatter into pieces when it hit the floor). But finally he had the phone in his hand.
“Answer call.”
“Hello, darling!” his mother sing-songed.
“Mom,” he said. “How’s wherever you are this week?”
“Oh, the Seychelles are beautiful, darling,” she answered. “If only your injury hadn’t been quite so dramatic, you could join us on our cruise.”
Beau had learned over the years to ignore most of what came out of his self-involved mother’s mouth. Also, he’d rather deal with a million Josie’s than spend any amount of time trapped on a cruise ship with his mother and her boyfriend. So he just said, “Glad to hear you’re having fun, Mom.”
“I am having a rather lovely time,” his mother answered. “Or perhaps I should say I was having a lovely time until Josie Witherspoon called here asking for a raise.”
“What?”
“She told me that you were a lot more work than she thought you would be and wondered if she might get more money.”
His heart iced over. Josie had been complaining about him behind his back, to his mother of all people. “And what did you say?”
“I reminded her I could get a Mexican to do her job for half the money.” His mother, who came from a long line of southern debutantes, answered in a voice ringing with entitled indignation. “But might I just say, I was very surprised she’d try to finagle a raise so soon. Josie has always been such a sweet girl. Never gave me a moment of trouble even in her teenage years, which is more than I can say about you. You were a little hellion from the age of four.”
Beau rolled his eyes in spite of himself. Use your mom’s Miss Alabama sash to make a slingshot once, and you’re labeled a troublemaker for life.
“What did she say when you said no?”
He could almost hear the frown in his mother’s voice when she answered, “She said she was sorry to have bothered me and she got right off the phone, as well she should after overstepping like that. But she sounded sad.”
“I’m sure she did,” he said, his voice flat. “Since working with me is such a hardship.”
“I suspect she needs the money,” his mother said in an off-hand way. To the former beauty queen who had never lacked for anything in her life, money was one of those trivial things only the unsophisticated worried about. “But I’m calling to make sure her complaints are without merit. You were always so great with Loretta. You’re not giving her daughter any trouble, now are you?”
“Don’t worry,” he answered. “Josie won’t be calling you anymore. I’ll take care of it.”