“Who are you?” he asked. “And what are you doing in my kitchen?”
At this point, he was bracing himself for the worst, for this woman to tell him she was the person Josie had hired to replace her, because she was quitting after what happened the night before.
“Oh, Josie didn’t tell you we were meeting or who I am?” The woman sounded as surprised as he felt to have an unannounced stranger in his kitchen.
“No,” he said. “And if you’re here about the housekeeping position, then tell Josie if she wants to quit, she needs come back here and tell me herself.”
“Okay, I am so confused, because obviously you have no idea who I am, and I thought Josie would have—” She broke off. “You know what? It doesn’t even matter, because I’m here now, so I’ll just tell you…”
He heard her take a deep breath. “My name is Sam. And I’m in your kitchen because Josie asked me to talk to you.”
CHAPTER 17
A BOMB COULD HAVE DROPPED in the kitchen and Beau doubted he’d have been more surprised.
“You’re Sam,” he said, his voice sounding dull and hollow in his own ears.
“Yes, I’m Sam,” she answered, still sounding confused.
She wasn’t the only one. “So Josie sent you here to tell me she’s a lesbian?”
Sam laughed outright. “No! Not that I know of, at least. She’s the best friend I have in Alabama. She said you had some questions and I should answer them.”
He frowned but made his way to the kitchen table and dropped into the chair beside her. “Okay, then my first question is why has she been spending all her Friday and Saturday nights with you?”
“It’s not exactly with me. Josie is one of the most dedicated volunteers at Ruth’s House, the domestic violence shelter I started when I moved here. She used to be there just about every day, but then she got this job.” He heard the sound of Sam shifting in her seat. “At least I think it’s a job. I’m assuming if she asked me to come in and talk to you, it’s become more than that.”
Regret and remorse exploded like a landmine inside Beau’s chest. “Why didn’t she tell me she was going out to volunteer? I would have been fine with that, but she let me assume the worst. Was she toying with me? Trying to drive me crazy?”
Sam didn’t answer right away, but when she did, her voice was very careful. “I’m not sure you fully understand the situation here. A lot of women volunteer their time for pet causes, but nobody volunteers at a women’s abuse shelter on Friday and Saturday nights.”
And it all started to fall into place. “She didn’t want me to know how important the shelter was to her, because she knew I’d ask why.”
“I think so, yes.”
Beau’s hand curled into a fist on top of the table. “It was her ex-husband. He hit her, didn’t he? That’s why she came back to Alabama. That’s why she was so down and out when my mother called her about taking this job.”
“I’m sorry,” Sam said. “I can’t answer any of those questions for you. That’s Josie’s story to tell. I’m just here to help you understand some things. Like why she wouldn’t necessarily want to tell you where she was going on Friday and Saturday nights, and why she’d rather let you believe she was seeing someone else than tell you she was volunteering.”
“She said it was none of my business,” Beau said.
“Well, she’s right about that,” Sam answered, with a hint of humor in her voice. “But you also have to understand if she’s romantically involved with you, she might be a little bit more wary than someone who hasn’t been through what she’s been through. A woman with Josie’s past isn’t going to respond well to anyone trying to monitor her comings and goings because that’s one of the first signs you’re in an abusive relationship.”
He felt Sam place a hand on top of his. “Also, in situations like Josie’s, shame is an ongoing thing. Sometimes, even after a woman manages to get out of an abusive relationship, she’ll beat herself up for years with blame. She’s not necessarily going to want to explain how she’s feeling or why she’s feeling it, especially to someone she’s dating.”
His mind reeled, trying to take all this in, even as more and more things started falling into place. That was why Josie had screamed when he grabbed her last Saturday. That was why she’d sounded so distant when he asked her to come straight home from the grocery store. And the thin scar on her breast…
“Where is she?” Beau asked. The need to talk to Josie felt like it was burning a hole in his chest.
“I’m not done,” Sam told him. “There are other things we should go over—”
““I need to talk to her,” he said, yanking his hand away.
“You don’t understand—”
“I do understand,” he said, trying to calm down. “But you don’t understand that I can’t talk to you because she thinks she can’t talk to me. She sent you because she’s afraid of me. That’s why I need to talk to her. I need her to know she can tell me anything. Anything and I’ll still—”
He broke off.
He felt Sam’s gentle hand on his shoulder. “You’ll still love her. That’s what you were about to say, wasn’t it?”
He shook his head. He was done talking to Josie’s best friend. “I need to talk to her.”
A pause, then Sam’s hand came off of his shoulder. Next he heard a tapping noise that he could only hope was the sound of her texting Josie.
“GIRL.” SAM’S MESSAGE BLINKED onto Josie’s phone a mere ten minutes after she heard Beau making his way downstairs from the confines of her little room.
“That bad?” she texted back.
“He says he won’t talk to me, only you. If you want, I can tell him it’s me or nobody else, but I think he wants to apologize for whatever went down between you two.”
Josie nearly wrote back, “Prescotts don’t apologize.” But then she realized she was not only putting Sam in an awkward position, she was treating her like a high school go between. “Okay, I’m coming down,” she texted. “You can go.”
Next came some more back and forth texts, with Sam asking her if she was sure several times, then turning around and texting, “Okay, but you had better call me later with details. Dude is waaay sexier than I was prepared for. Luckily he’s blind or he would have seen my day-um! face when he walked in all shirtless and yummy looking.”