“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.