His One and Only (10 page)

“No,” he answered, stepping in on his own. “I know how to step into a fucking shower.”

“I didn’t say you didn’t, I just—”

“This water’s too hot,” he said. “What are you trying to do? Scald my skin off?”

“No, I…”

Footsteps, the sound of the shower curtain being slid opened, and the water went from hot to tepid.

But then she suddenly gasped.

Beau smiled. A gasp like that only meant one thing: she’d looked. She’d seen the evidence of how much he wanted her sticking out, hard and stiff between his legs. And what she’d seen had elicited a gasp from her pretty mouth.

“What’s wrong?” he asked nonchalantly.

“Nothing!” she answered. He imagined her averting her eyes from his naked body. “Nothing at all. How’s the water now?”

The thought of her gaze on his body sent a thick bolt of desire pulsing through his manhood.

“Now it’s too cold,” he answered, wanting to keep her there, wanting to do more than listen to her adjust the temperature of his shower.

The water got a bit hotter, but this time she didn’t ask for his approval before he heard the shower curtain close again.

Beau smiled to himself. She had seen what he was packing, and moreover, it had made her uncomfortable. He decided to take his sweet time in the shower.

Let Josie see just how uncomfortable things could get.

CHAPTER 9

HOW
LONG COULD ONE SHOWER TAKE?
Josie wondered.

She’d cleaned up the mess from the pasta fight and steam cleaned the rug in Beau’s bedroom for the second time that week, but when she’d returned to the bathroom, he was still in the shower. And even though she’d cracked the bathroom door open a few minutes ago, the room had turned into a sauna, making her long-sleeved plaid shirt damp and sticky on her overheated body.

At least she wanted to blame the shower for the state of her body. But her mind kept flashing back to Beau Prescott in the shower, chiseled like a freaking Greek statue, and his manhood, hard as a…

Josie shook her head. It had been too long since she’d seen a man naked. Yes, that was it, she assured herself. She had grown desperate, so much so, she couldn’t stop thinking dirty thoughts about a man who was most likely about to fire her for pelting him with pasta. That was all it was. Nothing more.

She pulled out her phone and wiped a layer of steam off the screen to check the time. It was now ten minutes past when she was supposed to be at Ruth’s House.

She stepped out of the bathroom and called Sam.

“Please tell me your boss isn’t keeping you tonight,” Sam said in lieu of a hello.

Josie grimaced. “Believe me, I wish I could tell you that.”

Sam made a strangled noise. “Ugh, and that’s the cherry on top of this terrible, terrible day.”

“What else happened?”

“Mr. Benson decided he didn’t want Ruth’s House to be great.”

“Oh, not the water heater!” The Benson water heater at Ruth’s house was ancient, seriously ancient. Even the company that made them had gone defunct more than ten years ago. But Sam had been doing her best to keep it alive for years now. “What did the plumber say?”

“That Mr. Benson needs a funeral service and we need to replace him with Mr. Smith.”

The plumber had been after them to replace the Benson with an A.O. Smith from his stock. He’d even offered them a discount on the labor to put it in. But the cost still came to more than two months worth of mortgage payments and they only had enough in the coffers to keep the shelter running for three months if absolutely nothing went wrong.

“We’ll figure something out,” Josie said encouragingly.

But then Sam started crying.

Which just about broke Josie’s heart. “Don’t cry, girl. You’re going to make me cry, too.”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she said, sniffling. “It’s just that I put my life and soul into this place!”

“Foreclosures take a while. If they kick us out of that building, we can find a new place and rent it.”

“You have no idea how long it took me to find a place with enough room to house people on our budget, and that was before a lot of these funding organizations started making cuts.” Sam snuffled. “With this water heater problem, I can barely make payroll next month. And there’s no way I’m going to be able to pay first and last month’s rent on a new place.”

“
We’ll figure out something out.”
Josie promised her. “I don’t know how, but I promise you, we’re not going to let your dream die.”

Suddenly the shower shut off in the bathroom. Josie sighed. “I have to go deal with my insane boss again. Sorry.”

Sam rallied with a sniff. “No problem. Call me later if you want to talk.”

Josie’s heart swelled with love for Sam, who was always putting others first, even when her own hopes and dreams were on the line. “Will do. Love you.”

“Love you, too.”

Then she went back into the hot bathroom.

Part of her wanted to leave, just walk out. There was zero chance Beau would let her keep her job after what she just pulled anyway, so he was obviously keeping her here to make her sweat literally and figuratively.

But the other more practical part of her knew she needed to stick around at least long enough to get her first two days’ pay. She couldn’t go back to a cold mobile home in the dead of winter without at least knowing she’d be able to get the heat, water, and power turned back on. And even then, Lord only knew what she’d do next month. After paying the back charges on her most pertinent bills, she had no idea how long she’d be able to survive on what she had left.

“I’m done,” Beau called out.

Josie reluctantly made her way to the shower, this time reminding herself not to look, not to even glance at Beau Prescott’s ridiculously amazing body.

Back in high school, the one time they’d had sex, she’d been too busy making the biggest mistake of her teenage life to really take a good look at it. However, there was no denying what she’d seen in the shower. Beau Prescott had it going on in the body department with thick muscles that rippled down his arms, across his abdomen, and over his tree trunk legs. As if designed to match all over, what lay between his legs was also larger than usual and ridged from the massive mushroom on top, all the way down its long, thick shaft.

When she’d seen it, she’d felt her womanhood clench so hard, a gasp had escaped her lips before she could stop it.

She could still see the smug smile that had crossed his face when he asked her, “What’s wrong?”

So now he was probably going to fire her and he’d have the satisfaction of knowing Josie had been ogling him like the moony school girl she used to be.

This time when she moved the shower curtain aside, she made it a point to keep her eyes firmly on the bath’s gleaming fixtures, and she turned the water off with two firm twists, chanting, “Don’t look, don’t look, don’t look…” in her head.

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, naked 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.”