CHAPTER FIFTEEN
By the time they climbed those stairs to the sixth floor, William was so winded he had to lean forward, hands on his knees, to catch his breath. “Whoa,” he said.
“Oh I’m sorry,” said Joy.
He looked at up at her. “What? Don’t tell me you have an elevator in this building?”
“No sir.”
William frowned. “Then what are you sorry about?”
“I’m sorry you had to walk up so many flights of stairs just to pee.”
Her humor caught him off guard again, and he laughed. Even his bodyguard smiled. “I’m okay,” he said as they made their way to her apartment, and then inside. The bodyguard remained at the door.
William wasn’t surprised by how clean and airy the tiny apartment was. He could tell, the moment he first met Joy, that she was a neat freak. And the apartment smelled sweet like her. There was no way some man occupied this well-maintained space. And that reality pleased him too.
“The bathroom is right there, just off the living room,” she said.
He assumed it was a one-bedroom apartment. Which meant she had no ensuite.
But while he was using the restroom, Joy went down the hall to her bedroom and began gathering together a pair of jeans and a t-shirt she planned to put on after she got out of that tub.
But she couldn’t wait to get in that tub and get every piece of that jail off of her.
She planned to scrub and scrub until it hurt.
Although she was happy to be back home, coming back home only reminded her that she had failed. That her dream was down the pipe again.
She called Tess, who was still at work pulling a double shift. “I’ll come by when I knock off,” she said happily.
Then she called Gramps, who was happy she was out too. Although he forgot that she had been in jail. “I’ll come see you tomorrow, Gramps,” she promised. Which was enough for him. She ended the call.
“So this is your bedroom?”
Joy turned suddenly when she heard his voice. When she saw William standing there, leaned against her doorjamb, her heart began to pound. Was this the moment he demanded payment for driving her home? Was all that niceness just an act to get her in bed?
It seemed highly unlikely on second thought. Why would he get her out of jail and then drive her three hours to Bridell just to sleep with her? He was a very rich, good looking man. Surely he had tons of women that would be more than happy to make him happy. Women like the super-eager Sloane.
Willima smiled. “Don’t look so alarmed, Joynetta. I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
“Oh.” His smile calmed her. She settled back down. “That’s okay. I just can’t wait to get that jail off of me.”
“I see.”
“I’ll walk you to the door.”
“About that,” William said as he pushed away from her doorjamb and walked further into her small bedroom. “I wanted to talk to you about something.”
“About what?”
“Sit down. Please.”
She was puzzled now as she sat down on the edge of her bed. He sat down beside her.
“What’s wrong?” she asked him.
“I’m getting ready to head back to Chicago.”
“Yes sir.”
“And I want you to come back with me.”
Joy stared at him. “Me? But I’m home now.”
“And you’ll go back home tomorrow. But the only way I can hire you is if you complete the paperwork in my Human Relations department.”
She still didn’t understand. “But I’m not going back to Chicago.”
“Even if your office job is there?”
Tears began to well up in Joy’s eyes. “When they first arrested me for doing nothing wrong, I didn’t wanna have nothing to do with Chicago or Skeffington PR or anything else in this town anymore. For real. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t been thinking about it.”
That was what he was relying on. Her ability to see the whole picture. “And what have you been thinking about, Joynetta?”
“That if I leave town and never look back, it’ll be like giving up. On myself. But I’m no quitter.”
“Damn right you aren’t.”
“Even though I got locked up, that doesn’t mean my dreams disappeared.
I still have my dreams. I still want my dreams to come true like everybody else.
I don’t really wanna go back to Maylene’s and that dead end job.
I don’t wanna be fifty years old and still waiting tables.
Still barely getting by. But that’s what will happen if I give up. ”
William was so touched by her that emotion swelled inside of him.
“What do you think is the best answer?”
“I can’t let those few people in that lobby that day who put me in handcuffs, or those people in that courtroom or at that jail, make me quit on my dreams. I can’t allow them to do that.”
The way she was able to come to such a mature, well-thought-out conclusion about her horrific situation made William feel such a deep, abiding respect for Joynetta that it warmed his heart.
He knew she was different when he first met her.
Her resilience, her smarts, her toughness was reminding him why he felt that way.
“If you go back to Chicago with me tonight, then first thing tomorrow morning you can walk into HR and claim your dream.”
“But I don’t take nothing for granted.” It was as if she didn’t hear him.
“I know I have to prove myself. I know I’m not qualified like those people I saw coming and going in that lobby.
I know they went to those Ivy League schools and have all that great education and have great background and breeding while I’m just a poor girl from across the tracks with a GED who don’t even know what background and breeding is, but I’ll work harder than twenty of them put together and I’ll do the best---”
William quickly placed his large hand on her small hand. He could see how her mind tended to race in all directions whenever she felt she had to prove her point. “Joynetta?” he said in a soft voice, to calm her back down.
She looked at him. “Sir?”
“No need to worry about any of that. You’ve got the job.”
Joy was about to burst with happiness. But she had to be sure. “I do?”
“You do.”
“But I have a record now. I’ve never been in trouble with the law in my whole life before, I declare I haven’t, but now I--”
“You’re not in trouble with anybody,” William said. “I refused to press any charges, so all charges were dropped.”
Joy wanted to jump for joy. “Really?”
“Really.”
“That easily?”
It wasn’t so easy, William thought. He had to order the District Attorney to reverse course entirely. “Yes. That easily.”
“And you promise on a stack of Bibles that if I go back to Chicago I’ll definitely have the job?”
“I give you my word.”
“Oh, William!” she said so heartfelt that William felt it to his soul. “I thought that chance had passed me by.” She was so overwhelmed with gratitude that she jumped up and hugged him with so much gusto that he fell backwards on the bed, taking her with him. She ended up on top of him.
When she realized what her overreaction had done, and that she was actually laying on top of the man, and that he was getting so hard beneath her that she could feel his erection, she quickly moved to get up.
“I am so sorry,” she said to him. She was afraid he was going to change his mind on the spot. This lunatic! he was going to yell.
But he pulled her back down on top of him. “I rather like it down here,” he said to her. Then he looked into her eyes. Her sweet, compassionate, beautiful eyes. He rubbed her soft hair. And his voice softened. “Don’t you?”
Joy was so enthralled with the deepness of his sincere blue eyes too, even though they weren’t large like hers, that she couldn’t remember what he was talking about. “Don’t I what?”
William lifted slightly as his aroused penis continued to expand. “Don’t you like it down here?” On top of me, he wanted to add, but wasn’t about to.
Joy thought about her brand-new employment status and forgot about that rock-hard rod that was pushing against her. “Now that I have the job,” she said, “I’d like it down here, up there, and anywhere!”
Her humor was always so sudden and unexpected that William couldn’t help but laugh. The last thing on her mind was his arousal, and it should have been the last thing on his mind too!
But then her look suddenly turned so serious that William thought something had happened. “What is it, Joynetta?”
“The job.”
“What about the job?”
“What is it exactly? And what if I can’t do it, William? What if they say I can’t handle it or I can’t do what they expect of me and then they--”
He quickly wrapped her in his arms to blunt her oncoming panic. He was effectively shielding her from herself. “You’ll be fine, Joynetta. Nobody’s going to fire you. You’ll be able to do the job I guarantee it.”
She leaned back up and looked into his eyes again as if she were searching them. “But how can you be so certain?”
Her youthful innocence, her sincerity, her flat pureness was endearing her to him in such a spectacular fashion that he could hardly believe it. “Because I’ve seen you in action at Maylene’s,” he said. “You’ll be absolutely fine.”
She smiled when his confidence seemed unwavering. And she nodded her agreement. “I concur,” she said and he smiled too.
But as they continued to stare at each other, she realized, after that sudden onset of panic had completely subsided, what he truly meant by liking it down there. And how much bigger down there he had actually gotten.
She looked again into his eyes to see if it was just her or was he as . . . as what? As aroused as she was? It was obvious that he was. She felt it jammed beneath her. But was it just the physical part? Or was it more? Because for her, it felt like more.
But it couldn’t be more. Not even the physical part. He was soon to officially be her boss. Maybe not her immediate supervisor, but THE boss. It would be a disaster for her career if she even thought about going down that road with him.
But she couldn’t move. She couldn’t take her eyes off of him.
William felt similarly stuck. And he knew better than she the disaster their lack of movement could wrought. Somebody had to put an end to those feelings or things could get out of hand. And he knew, given his maturity compared to hers, that that somebody had to be him.
He patted the side of her thigh. “We’d better get up,” he said.
It was music to Joy’s ears. She didn’t want to cause him to change his mind by being the first to say it, but at the same time she knew they had no business being down there like that in the first place. She quickly got off of him and the bed too. Then she reached out her hand to help him up.
Which offended him. Was she trying to insinuate that he was old? “What’s that?” he asked her.
“Let me help you up.”
“I’m not that old,” he snapped, refused her offered hand, and struggled to his feet. Joy smiled as he grunted, but she hid it from him.
But as soon as he stood up and saw her eyes go straight for what he knew was the outline of his highly-aroused penis, he straightened his pants and moved away from her. And went to her dresser mirror to smooth down his hair.
When he turned back, she was smiling. Was she laughing at his arousal? “What are you smiling about?”
“I got a job! And it’s not based on tips either!” Then she stopped smiling. The receptionist had told her that there were several restaurants in that building. Maybe he was going to put her in one of those? “Or is it?” he asked her.
William laughed. “No, Joynetta. It will not be based on tips.”
“Well then!” she said and continued to smile. Then she thought about her friend. “Oh!”
William waited for her to say more. “Oh what?”
“I have a friend, a best friend since third grade. Her name is Contessa, but we call her Tess. Is there any way you could find a job for her too?”
William looked at Joy as if she’d lost her mind.
She saw it too. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
It was in that moment that she realized he was no bush league kind of guy. He was the majors. “Don’t you ever invite others into a room you’re barely in yourself,” he said to her, “because they may end up taking your spot. Understand?”
Joy was about to say but she’s not like that, but she held her tongue. Gramps always told her you never really know people until you’ve got something they want just as badly as you want it. Then you’ll know who you’re dealing with. “Yes sir,” she said instead.
“Now go take your bath because I know you want to.”
“Worse than you could ever imagine.”
“I’ll handle business. Then we’ll go back to Chicago, you’ll spend the night with me, and then you’ll go to HR first thing in the morning and sign the paperwork.
They’ll give you your start date, which is usually two weeks out, and then you can come back home to Bridell and get your affairs in order before you make that permanent move. ”
It sounded like a great plan to Joy.
Especially the part about her getting in that tub.
But equally as special was the part about her spending the night with William. It was going to be like walking onto land filled with mines, but she still wanted to walk that way anyway.
Because she liked William and oddly trusted him. And wanted to be with him.
He went back up front to handle business on his phone. She got in the tub singing a tune. It was like night and day from how she woke up in jail that morning expecting to go to be in that same jail that night.
“Ain’t no need in worrying what tonight is gonna bring.
Cause it’ll be all over in the morning,” was the Winans/Anita Baker song she kept singing.
Since those were the only words she knew to the song, she sung those few lines over and over again as she scrubbed every spot, every dab, every scintilla of jail off of her body.